Ambassador Winston Lord

Ambassador Lord, would you like to start off?

AMBASSADOR WINSTON LORD: Thank you. Let me begin by explaining why I'm going first on this panel, and in so doing I will, knowing my fellow panelists who have heard this story before, but this is a conference on scholarship and history and there's a gaping hole in the volumes released; namely, it does not demonstrate that I was the first American official to go into China after 22 years of mutual isolation and hostility. Most people know it was not Nixon, they figured it was Kissinger. That's absolutely false. I was with Kissinger along with Smyser on the plane, a Pakistani plane flying from Islamabad to Beijing. And as we got close to the Chinese border, no American having been there for 22 years, I went to the front of the plane and as we crossed into China I was first. (Laughter.)

So now that we got that straight, let me do the following in ten minutes. We have a huge amount of material to cover, so what I will do is focus on the '69 to '72 period and with broad strokes try to give us a framework for subsequent presentations and discussion.

One week after his inauguration, President Nixon, on February 1, sent a memo to Kissinger saying, in effect, he wanted to move ahead with the Chinese. What were our motives? What was China's rationale? Our motives -- and Zelikow touched on this, I disagree with some of his emphasis. But in any event, there was a variety of reasons we wanted to move toward China: generally give us more diplomatic flexibility on the world stage, including with the communist world so Moscow wouldn't be the only spokesperson to deal with one-quarter of the world's population; to improve relations with the Soviet Union to help end the Vietnam War and to promote stability in Asia.

The Chinese, in turn, were isolated during the Cultural Revolution diplomatically. They sought security by dealing with the far barbarian to balance off the near barbarians, above all the Soviets but also the Indians, the Vietnamese, Japanese, other traditional hostile neighbors. And they wanted to move ahead, figuring if they moved with us other countries would follow.

We faced two challenges to move ahead, one public and one private. The private one was how do you communicate with the Chinese since we were totally cut off. And here we tried several secret channels, including Romania and France, and ended up with Pakistan, a mutual friend.

The public problem was to send an audience -- send signals to various audiences, the American audiences and also others around the world, that our policy was indeed shifting. So in addition to statements and foreign policy reports and toasts and speeches, we unilaterally lifted some trade and travel restrictions as a signal to the Chinese they didn't have to respond immediately. We took our ship out of the Taiwan patrol and we made clear that we would not support Soviet pressures against the Chinese.

The Chinese, in turn, over months and years, responded. They released a couple of American yachtsmen that drifted into their space. The Edgar Snow interview, the famous one about inviting Nixon. And of course the ping pong diplomacy in April 1971.

It was decided through the Pakistani channel that Kissinger would be the one to go, that it would be secret that he would go to Beijing, and I can elaborate on all these points. The big sticking point to fix on a secret trip was to make sure that the agenda went beyond Taiwan, which the Chinese first insisted upon, to broader issues, and once that was settled, we were off.

It was a public trip to Southeast Asia and South Asia and the cover story for Kissinger's secret journey to China was that he was going to get a stomachache in Pakistan. The problem is he got a stomachache before he got there in India and he had to keep that secret so as not to mess up his later cover.

On the way to Pakistan, I got a call from the Deputy National Security Advisor Al Haig telling us that once again the Soviets had turned us down for a summit. We were prepared to go to Moscow first. They didn't know we were going to China, of course, and so that clinched the sequence of the summits.

On that plane, you may think that Kissinger was worried about dealing with Zhou Enlai, the James Bond secret aspects, the geopolitical earthquakes. No, he wasn't. He was worried about the fact he had no shirts. His assistant forgot to pack any shirts for Henry. I, of course, quipped to him that he hadn't even sat down to negotiate with the Chinese and he had already lost his shirt. (Laughter.) So he borrowed one from John Holdridge, who was about 6' 3" and he went around looking like a penguin. (Laughter.) And the shirt, of course, said on the collar, "Made in Taiwan." (Laughter.)

We spent 48 hours in Beijing, over 17 hours with Zhou Enlai, four more hours on a communiqué announcing the President's forthcoming summit, 110 pages with Smyser, Lord and Holdridge taking notes. We agreed we would go ahead; there was mutual interest. We went over the agenda for the President's trip and we worked out the announcement, very sparse because it was dramatic in and of itself. But that was delicate negotiations with the Chinese. They wanted to make clear that Nixon was eager to come to China and we wanted to make clear that China was eager to have Nixon. We split the difference and we also made sure that the communiqué said that we would talk about issues of mutual concern and not just normalization, i.e., Taiwan.

On the way back from this trip, by the way, we stopped in Paris for secret negotiations with the Vietnamese. The announcement was made in mid-July in San Clemente. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive in America, although some of the right were concerned, obviously a shock to Taiwan and Japan. And from then on we began to communicate with the Chinese both through Paris and through the UN ambassador in New York.

This brings us to the October '71 public trip. We went back again for two reasons: to arrange the logistics for the President's February '72 trip -- security, media, where he would go, what he would do; and also substance, again further elaborate the agenda and above all to begin negotiating what became to be known as the Shanghai Communiqué. We went in with the usual traditional draft of stressing harmony and agreement. Zhou Enlai almost literally threw this on the floor and said this is ridiculous, it's got no credibility, we've been enemies for 22 years, this will shake up our friends, it will confuse our domestic audiences, let's each state our own positions, and then when we can't agree on certain areas then they'll have more credibility. He was, of course, right and, as a result, that communiqué is still invoked today after 22 years, which is very unusual for a diplomatic communiqué. It involved some hair-raising drafting overnight in which I stayed up till 3 to redraft entirely the communiqué and then Kissinger took it at 3 am. But it came out quite well, but leaving aside, of course, the key issue of Taiwan where there's still a major gap.

By the way, there was heightened security in Beijing in this October trip. We did not realize at the time that the Lin Biao incident was going on. And as we left China, unfortunately in terms of timing, the UN vote admitted China and kicked out Taiwan.

This brings me to the Nixon trip itself in February '72. It was a period of great drama in U.S. diplomacy generally -- the Moscow summit a few months later, ending the Vietnam War, et cetera. I've worked with several presidents. I've never seen any president prepare as hard or as thoroughly for a trip as Nixon did on this. We put together six huge briefing books. He marked up every page. He kept asking questions as we flew across the Pacific.

Mao asked to see us within an hour of our arrival, putting his stamp of approval on the process. I was fortunate enough to be in that meeting but I was cut out of all the pictures and communiqué because, unfortunately and wrongly, Secretary Rogers was not at the meeting. This would have been a further humiliation.

At first the discussion with Mao, which lasted an hour, seemed a little disappointing to us. It seemed casual. He was using broad strokes and allusions and anecdotes. We didn't quite get everything he was saying. But as we reflected over the coming days and hours and hours of talks with Zhou Enlai, we realized that Mao in a seemingly casual way had established the strategic framework on all the key issues, most notably that the Taiwan issue could wait and that we had a mutual concern about the polar bear to their north.

In the remainder of the summit we fleshed out the rest of the communiqué, including the key issue on Taiwan. And we can come back to that, but the point is that both sides made concessions here. The Chinese had to put off the resolution of this issue. We maintained diplomatic relations, a defense treaty and arms sales, and the Chinese had to live with that. We, in turn, had to make some assurances. We can come back to that.

And then the other key aspect of the communiqué was the anti-hegemony clause, namely our common concern with the Russians.

So let me conclude with the impact of this trip or series of trips. It's fair to say that even flying back from China, Kissinger and Nixon were worried about the reaction in the United States. We didn't realize how dramatic and positive the television images were and it was overwhelmingly well received in the United States. Other countries begin to move quickly in our wake, most notably Japan, and of course this helped Nixon get reelected but it was not a major portion of that, I don't think, and that certainly wasn't his reason.

But for the United States, the most immediate impact was a dramatic improvement with Moscow within weeks and months, a Berlin agreement, an arms control agreement, another summit meeting with the Russians. Taiwan was shocked, of course, and it was painful for all of us, but in subsequent years, thanks to their own efforts, they became a flourishing economy, a flourishing democracy and they have de facto security independence. And meanwhile we've moved ahead and established this extensive relationship with China. I think seven presidents of both parties have performed a significant and very skillful balancing act to promote both of these objectives.

With Japan it was a shock, but I would point out that we convinced in our conversations Zhou that the U.S.-Japan alliance was in China's interest in terms of stability in Asia and generally the U.S. military presence was in China's interest. So that was a plus. Asia was more stable. Vietnam, modest help, but it did help us somewhat in the agreement. And psychologically for the American people, this dramatic opening put in context the necessarily and inevitable sloppy close to the Vietnam War, which was a downer to say the least. So while we were extricating ourselves from a corner of Southeast Asia, we were opening up with this great power and one-quarter of the world's people.

China, of course, got security out of this, stability around its borders, allowed it concentrate on its economy, and you now see the fantastic results as a result of that. And we both got out of this a more stable Asia and a very rich relationship.

So, in close, I would say that the opening to China I think will stand as one of the three or four most important and most positive geopolitical events since World War II. Thank you. (Applause.)