With management of the US-China relationship in the hands of politically constrained, thin-skinned leaders, disputes between the two superpowers have become exceedingly difficult to resolve. Personalised diplomacy has outlived its usefulness. Multiple layers of personal connections helped to tip the balance of power in the first Cold War: Nixon and Mao Zedong at the top, underpinned by Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai working out the details of US-China engagement.īut those days are over. More than just stagecraft, US president Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972 was a decisive strategic gambit aimed at the triangulation of the former Soviet Union. Yes, that played a crucial role in the early days of the US-China relationship. The underlying problem is overreliance on personalised diplomacy. The risks of accidental conflict, as underscored in my recent book, remain high. ![]() And this is to say nothing of reported Chinese surveillance and military activity in Cuba, which bears an eerie resemblance to the events that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, one of the most frightening moments of the Cold War. ![]() The failure to reestablish military-to-military communications is especially worrisome, given the recent spate of near-misses between the two superpowers’ warships in the Taiwan Strait and aircraft over the South China Sea. Despite the predictable optimistic spin on the visit, both sides agreed to strengthen people-to-people exchanges and promised to continue talks, it did little to defuse the increasingly fraught conflict between the United States and China. NEW HAVEN - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s long-delayed trip to Beijing has come and gone.
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