Question and Answer

SUSSER: Okay, let me start. One -- actually, several of the panelists referred to, I guess, what Dr. Brzezinski described as something, it was too sensitive to be entrusted to the State Department. We are in the State Department now. But General Scowcroft, I guess from your perspective, did this change? I would assume it would once Dr. Kissinger took over both positions simultaneously as National Security Advisor and Secretary?

SCOWCROFT: Well, it changed. I don't know if it changed with the Department as a whole because Dr. Kissinger was Dr. Kissinger and, you know, he had his group inside the State Department the way he had in the NSC. But you know, I don't -- on this issue, there was no fundamental difference between the NSC system and the State Department, so I don't see that. I don't know. Win, maybe.

LORD: Let me comment on the issue of the State Department in the opening and Chas. Freeman has made his own comments on this. Again, in retrospect, I think it would have been better if -- it had to be closely held for reasons I've already mentioned, but we certainly could have trusted, say, Marshall Green and one or two of his colleagues to work with us, let Rogers know. I think it could have been kept secret and we would have benefited.

Having said that, the State Department did contribute to the preparations, even for the secret trip even though they didn't know about the trip. We commissioned -- Holdridge and I commissioned many papers. I'm sure some are written by Chas. I hadn't realized he had done absolutely everything, which is quite amazing. (Laughter.)

FREEMAN: Only half.

LORD: Yeah, only half. Okay, well, that's quite amazing, too.

But in any event, we got some very useful stuff, including Taiwan issue, past historical stuff, and we would commission that. Holdridge knew a lot about China. We had CIA reports and we had outside experts ranging from a professor from Michigan to André Malraux. So there was considerable preparation, including by the State Department once removed getting ready for the trip. Then once the secret trip had been taken, there was full collaboration on the Nixon trip and of course opening up the liaison offices. So it was a temporary thing.

Now, one other sore spot -- again, no one is proud of including Henry Kissinger himself in his memoirs -- is cutting the State Department out of the communiqué drafting in Shanghai. Now, the October part we did a lot of it, but then we have to finish it off in China. I happen to think it was a brilliant communiqué the way it came out, but it was a very awkward moment in Hangzhou, the last stop in the President's trip, I was with Kissinger and the President comes in and says, "We've got a real problem. Secretary Rogers and Marshall Green think the communiqué is lousy." Now, it wasn't quite that strong, but partly out of some concerns, partly out of understandable pique at having been cut out and having their expertise, they wanted to reopen the negotiations. So Kissinger was less than enthusiastic about this.

All he had to do was go to the Chinese, to Zhou Enlai, and say, "Look, I know Mao has approved this communiqué personally. I know the entire politburo has approved this communiqué personally. We're now down in Hangzhou but we'd sort of like to reopen the negotiations." This was awkward. The Chinese let us save face. We got some changes, the most important of which I think Marshall Green put forward, which was a good suggestion. Some of the others we just couldn't fundamentally change at that late stage.

We had some phrasing in there reaffirming all our alliances, like Japan, but of course leaving out Taiwan. Marshall pointed out that this exception would obviously be known and underlined and so I think he suggested, or Kissinger agreed, or in any event we worked it out. We dropped all references to alliances so that it wouldn't single out Taiwan.

And then Henry in his press conference in Shanghai took the remarkable step, which he foreshadowed to the Chinese, of reaffirming our defense alliance with Taiwan on Chinese soil, which is a good trick.

So that's just a long way, because I gather we're trying to look at the history and the chronology here of saying the State Department did play an important role and some of the being cut out was less than seemly, but in any event it came out extremely well in terms of substance and long-term relations.

FREEMAN: I think that is a very accurate description of the course of events that Win has given. I would say as a general rule when policy decisions, foreign policy decisions, have a very highly high impact on domestic politics, there is a natural instinct in the White House to manage those directly, and I think that is correct. And that certainly was the case with the opening to China.

The second point I'd make, however, is that sometimes institutional rivalries are a problem and I would cite here the transition between the Carter Administration and the Reagan Administration when it suddenly dawned on people that the only official who was going to be left after this transition who knew the inner history of the U.S.-China relationship was me, Country Director for China. But I had not been briefed on and knew only fragments of what had been going on directly between the National Security Advisor, Mr. Dr. Brzezinski, and the Chinese. And some of the programs and areas of cooperation they had agreed to were quite important and quite complex.

And so I was brought over to the White House to read all the files and bring myself up to speed, which was a good thing; otherwise, the government would have once again administered a frontal lobotomy to itself with the predictable results.

SUSSER: It's a well told story that in 1954 when Zhou Enlai met John Foster Dulles in Geneva and Dulles refused to shake his hand that Zhou held that grudge for the next decade and a half. Could you guys comment a bit about the personal dynamics between Mao and Zhou and Nixon and Kissinger when they each first met?

LORD: Let me take a crack at that first. Precisely because of this history of the handshake, Nixon was determined when he got off the plane in February '72 to stride toward Zhou Enlai and put out his hand, and it was very carefully choreographed and of course the Chinese picked that up immediately.

Briefly on Mao and Zhou, and this could go on forever and I don't want to hog this podium here. When we walked in with Mao, you were immediately struck by his physical presence. I don't mean that he was Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I do mean he was exuding authority. Now, how much of that as you figure in advance this is a great historical figure and you sort of assume that, I don't think it can be quantified. But I think we all felt that you'd get this sense even if you didn't know who he was when you walked into the room.

The interesting thing was that Zhou Enlai in his presence -- here's Zhou Enlai, the most charismatic foreign diplomat I've ever seen, Kissinger says the most impressive he's ever met along with de Gaulle, who dominates by his intelligence, by his humor, his sense of history, his tactical sagesse, et cetera, at every meeting he's in, in the presence of Mao was totally subservient, close to obsequious in his body language. Extraordinary. Now, you could argue that's why he survived and he was always number three and not number two and he wasn't active in his youth, but we were struck by the contrast of Zhou in the meeting with the Chairman as opposed to being on his own. The contrast between Mao and Zhou was extraordinary. First of all, the conversations -- and I was in every one between Nixon and Mao and Zhou and Kissinger and Zhou and Mao, I do think will go down as some of the most extraordinary diplomatic exchanges in American diplomatic history.

But they were totally different. Mao spoke in brushstrokes and, as I said, we were initially sort of disappointed because he seemed very sort of casual and he just would sort of go to allusions.

For example, in a later meeting he said -- as Brzezinski I think mentioned, he wanted to send us ten million women to the United States and we couldn't figure out what that was all about. I asked my wife who was born in Shanghai and he says he's having trouble with Madame Mao. And that's of course exactly he was saying -- (laughter) -- but this is the kind of thing you've got to sort of figure out with Mao. And so in a seemingly casual way in that one hour he hit enough points, particularly as I said on the Soviets in Taiwan and a few other things like I haven't changed China -- as Nixon said -- I've only changed a few things around Beijing, indicating the problems he had.

So that we realized in the course of the following week in talking to Zhou that he had gotten the framework he needed. But he was rough. He could use scatological language and wasn't at all eloquent -- more like a union dock leader but impressive in that sense. Whereas Zhou Enlai -- and now I'll stop -- was extraordinarily elegant Mandarin and extremely polished and extremely skillful and clever.

Finally, I'll make the point that we had no illusions however -- however impressive these gentlemen were that they were not ruthless. Of course they were ruthless and of course it was a very grim society that they were presiding over. So we had no illusions about who we were dealing with but they were impressive in their own way.

FREEMAN: Two quick comments. First, the interesting question is not so much -- to me is not so much Mao and Zhou but Nixon, who had no small talk, but was probably -- when you read the transcripts you will see the quality of the man's mind in foreign affairs which is superb. But he could not handle a dinner conversation, as a result of which I got a lot of conversation in with Zhou Enlai at the dinner table on my own, so that's the first point.

The second point I'd make is that you need to look, as you read these documents, look at the structure of this meeting which is not unprecedented but which is entirely appropriate. Actually FDR pioneered this during World War II. That you reserve for your discussions at the summit those things on which you may reach agreement. And all the disagreements, to the extent you can, you shove off on the foreign ministers in a separate meeting and let them yell and scream at each other and register all the points that you have to go to tell your allies and friends you registered, but you don't introduce this negative tone into the discussions at the top. And as I said I was -- I ended up interpreting for Secretary Rogers and they were very contentious discussions. But I think all of us there understood why we were having them while other discussions went on elsewhere, at least I did.

SCOWCROFT: Just very quickly, in '72 I did not -- was not in the meeting with Mao. Zhou Enlai was obviously extremely impressive. I went in with President Ford, though, in 1974. Mao had had several strokes and he looked, for all intents and purposes, like a huge sack of rice sitting in a chair like this. He would growl something. He had an interpreter, two nurses and a doctor and they would all put their heads together and converse and then decide what Mao had said and tell us all. But in that meeting he made an elliptical comment about Deng Xiaoping, which in retrospect said, you're purged, buddy. You may not know it but you're purged, which was quite astonishing. But even then when he was half a vegetable he exuded this kind of majesty which certainly didn't come from his look, from anything. He was a very remarkable individual.

LORD: One quick comment again about the Ford meeting with Mao and, in fact, the last couple of meetings with Mao that Kissinger had as well. He was extremely physically weak and could only grunt a few words. We got a little suspicious though. He would grunt maybe three or four words and then we'd get a five-minute translation from the interpreter. So we figured he was saying, number one is my Taiwan my policy; number two is my Soviet policy and please take it from there.

But I do want to underline it took great physical courage on his part to get through these meetings but he clearly was fading at the end and, of course, had a very tense relationship with Zhou Enlai as well as Deng at the end.

QUESTION: In the approach both to the Chinese initially and then as we moved on towards normalization, were there, I guess, contingency plans, plans made for exactly how to break this to the Taiwanese or was it just winged on the fly when the news came out or was this carefully thought out in advance?

LORD: Okay. Well, that obviously was the most painful dimension of this whole opening was what it would do to Taiwan but as I've said earlier they have rebounded magnificently from this diplomatic shock. No, a great deal of thought was given to this.

The general strategy followed first by Kissinger and then by Nixon was in the meetings with Mao and Zhou were to make some general statements of policy and assurances going forward like no independence. We would not support independence. We wouldn't support Japan moving in -- one China, one Taiwan kind of thing -- but to say nothing that committed us to an actual act. People like to think that a lot of concessions were made by Nixon and Kissinger on the Taiwan issue of the Chinese; that's true, but it's equally true that the Chinese made a lot of concessions.

When we first arrived in July '71, Zhou Enlai said the President can't come unless he's established diplomatic relations with Beijing and broken them and the defense treaty with Taiwan before he comes. Well, we got -- I don't he was serious about that, but he certainly pushed us on it. For years they had said in Warsaw talks and elsewhere that they wouldn't do anything with us unless we resolve the issue of Taiwan, or at least Taiwan had to be the only item on the agenda. And we finally resolved that through the Pakistani channel as I said where we enlarged it or in the short communiqué where we included not just normalization but issues of mutual concern.

So Nixon and Kissinger did have Taiwan's concerns in mind. There was no way to do this without hurting Taiwan. But the strategy was figuring that that the Chinese because of their desire for balancing the polar bear and the general isolation would be willing to postpone the hard decisions on Taiwan and, indeed, Zhou Enlai said we recognize the courage of your President coming here. We won't embarrass him for now on this issue, although it remains a matter of strong principle. And throughout, as I think Chas mentioned, we did keep briefing the Taiwan authorities and reassuring them on the basic elements of diplomatic relations, defense treaty and arms sales and rounding off the edges on the general long-term assurances.

SCOWCROFT: Just a quick anecdote to show that not everything went smoothly on this whole thing. When there was -- debate went on in the UN about transferring a seat from Taiwan to the communist, President Bush was our ambassador to the UN and he was vociferously defending the right of Taiwan to maintain a seat at the very time that he was having the rug pulled out from under him in Washington.

FREEMAN: It's interesting that -- Dr. Brzezinski really should be here to address this question because I think the most notorious slipup was the informing of Jiang Jingguo when normalization was announced. And as you know, very unusually, the communiqué issued here on the 15th of December and in Beijing on the 16th of December, 1978, was dated January 1, 1979. It was effective only two weeks later and it was put out in large measure because of concern about possible leaks. But the means by which Taipei was notified were not elegant, to put it mildly.

And I take this as an example of an issue that somewhat undercuts Dr. Brzezinski's assertion that secrecy had to be followed here. In my experience, the NSC can be, at its best, very good at coordinating policy; it is usually miserable at implementing it. And I could give you multiple examples from the course of my career, and I'm sure every other Foreign Service officer could find others, where we had to behave like the little guy in the Bullwinkle cartoons after the elephant, you know, sweeping up what -- (laughter) -- only polite people would call debris. So there is a -- when our government works well, I think it works very well. It did not work well in that instance and I think it's a management caution for the future.

SCOWCROFT: I'm not going to respond. (Laughter.)

LORD: One further comment on Zhou and Mao and their style because I think it was quite indicative of Zhou Enlai's skill. I wanted to add on the secret trip we saw the Forbidden City all by ourselves. They closed it off and we went and had a Peking duck lunch in Zhongnanhai -- no, at the Great Hall of the People -- anyway, it doesn't matter -- with Zhou Enlai. In the course of the lunch, he talked about the Cultural Revolution. Now this started in 1966 and technically wasn't over 1976, although it was still going on, although by far the most rabid dimensions was subsiding by '71.

He had been locked -- Zhou had been locked in his own office. He had seen many of his colleagues persecuted. He had saved some people and some artifacts and he was a very pragmatic person who made the trains run a little bit on time in Mao's chaotic China, so obviously the Cultural Revolution wasn't Nirvana for him.

On the other hand, he had a chairman -- and he always wanted to survive with this chairman -- who was going to read the transcript and hear about the meeting and a discussion of the Cultural Revolution at lunch. So how did Zhou square this circle? It was something along the following lines. I don't have it verbatim but it's in the volume, I'm sure:

You know, Dr. Kissinger, the Cultural Revolution has been very full of turmoil here. And I have to say that I didn't fully understand the purpose of this. It seemed to me that there are a lot of excesses and people were hurt and it really had some unpleasant aspects. But that just shows you how short-sighted I am compared to the chairman -- (laughter) -- because the chairman understood that the bureaucracy in China was ossifying our revolution, that we're going to become another Soviet Union, we had to shake things up. And therefore he saw much further than I did the need to go through this terrible turmoil and all the terrible things that happened and he was a very wise man to do this.

So of course, he was telling us he thought the Cultural Revolution was a horrible mistake, but if Mao read the transcript he'd still be safe.

QUESTION: And how do you put the personality of Deng Xiaoping in the mix compared with Mao and Zhou?

SCOWCROFT: Well, as I say, I can't compare them too well because I just had one meeting with Zhou Enlai and one semi-meeting with Mao. But I think Deng Xiaoping was to me very uncharacteristically person for the Chinese. You know, usually when you meet with the Chinese you meet in a U-shaped -- the chairs are in a U-shaped room and you and your interlocutor are sitting side by side facing out. And typical Chinese -- they talk to the wall in front of you. Well, Deng instead would sit on the edge of his chair and lean right over in your face and make his points. He was very lively and so very animated. He chain smoked. I mean, literally chain smoked; light one off the butt of another and he had a spittoon by him. Always had a spittoon and every once in awhile he'd make a comment and he turn around and puuuck. (Laughter.) So he was a remarkable individual.

LORD: Let me add a few comments on that. I was at a great many meeting with him. He was sort of a transition figure from Mao to Deng's successes, in a sense that Deng was the last of the long marchers, the charismatic revolutionary leaders and/or military leaders and so he still he had those credentials unlike Jiang Zemin and others who've come since then who have ascended through managing the economy or through bureaucracy or through technical skills. They don't have these credentials by virtual of chronology. So he was a figure that had the history and the resonance and the prestige to a certain extent of Mao and Zhou, but he also had some of the technocratic skills that his successors had. And of course his greatest contribution was opening up China starting in 1979. A man of remarkable resilience who was up and down about three or four times in the course of his political career and so he had the personality that Brent has mentioned and he always was stressing the importance of U.S.-China relations and warning about both the Japanese and the Russians. And if there were difficult times -- and we'd have them on our trips to China -- usually we'd see Deng last and the atmosphere would greatly improve. He would make sure these other bits of underbrush were cleared away by others.

So he will go down in history with a mixed record in my opinion. Great credit for the opening -- we see the results even as we sit here today, great credit for promoting U.S.-Chinese relations but always a dark stain on his legacy of Tiananmen Square, which after all he ordered the army in. And it's against the backdrop of political repression, generally on Deng. He was Mao's front man for the '56 anti-rightist campaign. He purged Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who were relatively moderate, and he ordered the tanks into Tiananmen Square so he's a got a mixed legacy.

FREEMAN: I have a couple of things to say. First, Deng Xiaoping, blunt and direct as he was and engaging as he was, had an extraordinary sense of what he was trying to accomplish. And I can recall -- I'll give you one anecdote with maybe a little bonus.

In August of 1981, I was chargé in Beijing. I took in several visitors to see Deng Xiaoping; one of whom was Charlie Wick who was the head of USIA at the time. The other was Chief Justice Burger of the Supreme Court. Deng Xiaoping in the course of the conversation said flatly, "When the history of our country is written, Mao Zedong will be seen as my precursor. The real revolution began three years ago." And he had a sense of destiny and his role in it and I think history will be kinder to him as the architect of modern China than Win suggests.

The second anecdote is Charlie Wick for some reason was trying to get radio transmitters installed in Shenyang to broadcast all over Central Asia and the Soviet Union and, in order to persuade Deng Xiaoping of this, proceeded to try to convince him of the evils of Soviet communism. And Deng Xiaoping interrupted him -- and this is the blunt part -- and said, "Young man," -- Charlie was only in his sixties, I think -- he said, "Young man, at age 23, I was Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party and I was purged because of my opposition to the Soviet communism and that happened to me two other times. And there is no need for you to tell me about the evils of Soviet communism. Now what do you really want?" And then we had a discussion. But the man had a way of cutting through what a lot of people don't and coming straight to the point and letting you know exactly where you stand.

SCOWCROFT: If I could just add one point. I do agree with Win that he's a mixed record figure, but I think my sense is he's the true revolutionary in China, not Mao. Mao was a sort of continuation of the imperial thing. Deng changed things. And when he decided that the stability of the country, the stability of the regime depended on economic progress, on giving the average Chinese the sense that his life was getting better, his standard of living was going up; that was the real revolution in China. And when he said, you know, to get rich is glorious, they have followed through on that and that is why China is the powerhouse it is now. Now that's creating its own problems now because the Communist Party out in the field and so on still believe his dictum -- to get rich is glorious, so they're cooperating with the local government people to seize land and sell it to developers and so on because they're being judged on how much is your province producing in terms of increasing GNP. So he's creating enormous problems now, but I think he more than any other individual is responsible for the China today.

QUESTION: Just a more general question. What were -- I guess your expectations before you made these trips, before the first trip, before the normalization trip and how did the results measure up with your expectations before hand? From your perspectives were these, you know, total successes or did it not quite go as you had expected or did you have any expectations?

LORD: Well, if we can start chronologically with the first secret trip or Nixon trip, it certainly exceeded everyone's expectations, and they were quite large, of the positive reaction not only around the world but in the United States. As I said earlier, Nixon and Kissinger were still fretting on the way back on the plane how this was going to be received in the U.S. And so in that respect, although I thought -- they figured it would be very positively generally in the world, they were worried about the domestic reaction and that was very positive. There were some people worried about it, but on a whole, as I said, it put Vietnam in a context and it was a dramatic -- to show that we were not crippled by that war, et cetera.

Japan's reaction I think was predictable and I think could have been moderated somewhat, but sort of like Taiwan that was inevitable. I think the positive impact which we didn't predict by any means fully was the impact on the Soviets. We were trying to open up in China precisely to improve relations with the Soviets, not to hurt them. But I don't think anyone thought that within a matter of -- literally of months, in some cases weeks, we just moved ahead across the board with the Soviets on Berlin, on arms control, on economic agreements and on a summit meeting.

Finally, on Vietnam, the other key issue and expectation, I think the President always put more weight, particularly with the Russians helping us on Vietnam and to a certain extent, Chinese and Kissinger who felt they probably wouldn't. So I think the results in Vietnam were about what we would have expected namely, that they wouldn't cut off aid to their lips and teeth ally. We didn't realize fully just how bad relations were and they were in a competition with Moscow.

But we did feel -- and I think they did weigh in and it helped modestly in Hanoi along the following lines. Look, the Americans have made an offer to get out and we've made this offer of a ceasefire and withdrawal unilaterally and prisoners of war being returned in May '71. And we kept emphasizing to the Chinese and I think they relayed to Hanoi that this was a significant achievement for them.

The Chinese felt, I think -- and we would tell them this, Kissinger explicitly and Nixon -- that if we go further and overthrow Thieu and put in a coalition government, which was the Vietnamese demand until late '72 and then they finally moved because they saw McGovern wasn't going to get in and Nixon was going to be there again, this would humiliate the U.S., we'd be less able to balance the Soviet Union in China's own interest.

Furthermore, as Smyser pointed out, it was in China's interest to get this war over with, competition with the Russians and it was ideologically awkward for us to be fighting the supposed ally near their borders. So for all these reasons, we hope that China would help. It was a modest help, but not insignificant. And therefore, the expectations I think were mixed. In some cases, we did better than we thought. Other cases, not as well. But over the long run, of course, the full promise and the distant horizon of this relationship has been more than fulfilled in a very positive sense.

FREEMAN: Just one comment. Counselor Zelikow in his talk quoted the State Department drafted response to NSM 14. That was actually drafted by the late Paul Kreisberg. And as you will recall, the point was to speculate in August of 1969 contrary to the conventional wisdom at the time that the United States might actually benefit by the end of Chinese isolation and the inclusion of China in the regional and international system. I think it's fair to say that the greatest success and the greatest surprise of American policy going back to those early days is the amazing extent to which that happened.

China which in 1971 and '2 was full of billboards announcing that the people want liberation and revolution and what not and which was involved with the Puerto Rican independence movement and all kinds of other troublemaking all over the place. And with the Khmer Rouge as well as with the Vietnamese Communist Party and which was an enemy of the status quo explicitly demanding its overthrow has been peacefully integrated into the global system is now a member of every major international organization and somewhat ironically, if I may make a comment in 2006, it is more of a defender of the global status quo than the United States and therefore less of a source of international stability.

So this peaceful integration of China or the transformation of China from outlaw to supporter of the status quo given the weight of China in world affairs and particularly its weight as it has grown in recent years, is an amazing, absolutely amazing achievement that no one would have predicted however much -- whatever we smoked back in 1972.

QUESTION: A little more general, how would you compare -- several of the panelists mentioned Mao's tendency to speak in broad strokes with kind of poetic illusions and vast freedom. You referred to the 41 signals being sent between Beijing and Washington. How do you -- how would you compare dealing with the Chinese as opposed to dealing with the Russians or West Europeans or so on?

LORD: Well, during this period as I mentioned with the Chinese, we had very dramatic developments with the Russians as well, the difference in the two relationships is with Russia we had a lot of concrete issues to negotiate: arms control, economics, principals in international relations and so there was an actual full agenda. With the Chinese it was more, as Kissinger said -- I mean Brzezinski said, first kiss. I won't carry that any further. He's exhausted that subject.

But the fact is it was more conceptual and we had to sort of reassure each other what our mutual interests were and sketch the longer term trend. So by definition, you didn't have concrete agreements. That's one reason we kept briefing the Chinese on Soviet relations with us -- one, to reassure them that we weren't doing anything behind their back, but also to make the Chinese nervous that we had a lot of concrete agreements with the Soviets. We didn't have them with the Chinese, so it was designed to spur the Chinese to have good relations, even as it worked the other way with the Russians.

Now in terms of style, this may be somewhat exaggerated and certainly is no longer true today necessarily. But in the early '70s, there's no question that Kissinger and Nixon found the Chinese style much more pleasant and attractive and easy -- not easy, but at least reliable to deal with than the Russians. With the Russians the feeling was you were dealing with rug merchants. And they would come in and they would inflate greatly their opening position from what they really needed and bargained like in the bazaar until you got down to your bottom line, so you never quite knew when you got to the bottom line of the other side -- could be unpleasant.

There were instances when we'd reach an agreement, for example, in arms control in May 1971 and it was published the Russians would do their own translation and sort of stick it to us a little bit in ways that were not very pleasant. But the Chinese -- and again, this may be has been romanticized in retrospect and it's certainly no longer true. But at the time, the general approach was to lay out what they really needed at the beginning, their bottom line.

And in effect, say we have these principles, we've got to respect these principles for them to be flexible in details and tactics within that framework. Can't have a two-China policy, can't have two embassies in Washington. Fine, you have an embassy and a liaison office, which is an embassy in everything but name. And so Kissinger and Nixon felt that with the Chinese, it was a more pleasant process than with the Soviets that you could figure out what they really needed and get quickly to a possible compromise in contrast to the Russians.

SCOWCROFT: You know, I would just add that I think with the Chinese, there was no common background. We were coming out two decades of total isolation. We had no communications with them. So we didn't know what they were like, they didn't know what we were like, so a lot of it -- I don't disagree with anything that Win has said, but it was this kind of feeling our way and getting acquainted with each other what -- how did each one feel about this problem or the other?

With the Soviets on the other hand, it was a fundamentally hostile approach. We didn't like each other, we made it clear we didn't like each other. We were there because we thought there were practical things we could do to improve and reduce the dangerous intentions in the relationship. But there was no fundamental spirit of give and take. There was no trust, anything. This was the hardest of hard in negotiations. And of course, for the Europeans it was different from either one of those. We had common backgrounds, we've worked with each other over and over and over again, so it was a much more congenial kind of approach.

FREEMAN: Two quick points. With China, we had an arranged marriage. That marriage, that relationship was not driven by affection at the outset. There was no affection. It was a very cold-blooded decision on both sides. But as we began to interact, we discovered affection and maybe more than that because as Tiananmen showed, we emotionally had too much invested in China. You have to have illusions to be disillusioned.

The second point I'd make is that the Chinese have a very distinctive negotiating style. In fact, I was reminded of this the other day. I met someone in the intelligence community here who told me that a memo I'd written during this period on Chinese negotiating style was declassified. And apparently it was sent -- it was one of the things that was retyped, rather than on Department of State briefing paper.

And the basic points that I made were precisely those that Win and Brent have made, that the Chinese approach principles quite differently from concrete arrangements. Principles are strategic goals which are immutable. Concrete arrangements are ways to accomplish common purposes consistent with those strategic goals. It is a very distinctive style and I think described later by Dick Solomon in a book done through Rand and it has really nothing in common with European or Russian styles and Americans tend to find it rather appealing.

QUESTION: Well, speaking of the Russians, how much do you feel the Chinese feared the Soviets? Were they in effect using us to move the Soviets the way we were using the Chinese to move the Soviets.

LORD: Well, the quick answer is yes and no. Yes, the Soviets were a factor. And they wanted, as I said earlier, the poor barbarian and to help balance them off against the Soviets and to restrain the Soviets around the world. But theirs was more defensive vis-à-vis Russia because they're so much weaker. In our case, we were using the Chinese to try to make progress concretely with the Russians. So those are the -- that's the major difference. Because clearly that was in the Chinese mind and a Soviet factor in the Anti-Hegemony clause and the Shanghai communiqué was the single most motivating force, but there are many other reasons on both sides that I mentioned earlier.>/p>

While I've got the mike, on the negotiating styles, one of the strengths of Nixon and Kissinger and they had their flaws like everyone else, but their ability particularly Kissinger had more detailed negotiations to adjust to their interlocutor's style, culture and history, even if they weren't experts. Henry was essentially a European expert. He didn't know that much about Asia. But he quickly saw the Chinese style that we've described. He knew how to deal with the Russian style and then if he's with the Arabs, it would be more romantic and you've got to save face with the Israelis understandably given their history and their insecurities were like Talmudic scholars and going over every last detail to make sure they got what they needed.

I remember once in the shuttle we were with Golda Maier and the others and they gave us ten compromises to get out of Sadat. We went to Cairo, got nine out of ten, came back and the Israelis complained about the tenth the entire time. So -- and then the Vietnamese, of course, just try to wear you down and they didn't negotiate at all in retrospect until they saw that they had to deal with this madman Nixon for another four years and not McGovern and they suddenly got more flexible.

FREEMAN: I think the Chinese and particularly Deng Xiaoping became increasingly uncomfortable with our use of them to put pressure on the Soviet Union. And as the 1980s began to increase Chinese leverage in its own right, they began to play the same game using us more and more against the Russians. Fair enough.

SUSSER: Time's just about up. Would you at least like to take a minute or two just to sum up? Final observations?

General Scowcroft.

SCOWCROFT: Well, I'll make just one comment I haven't made before and that is about the whole Chinese negotiating style. The Chinese came out of a period of almost total isolation. They were autarchic by nature, they were autarchic by design. They thought they were self-sufficient, they didn't need any outside communications and so on. So we started the relationship on purely bilateral kinds of affairs and issues. And that has gradually changed. But I think as Philip Zelikow said, referring to Bob Zoellick and the responsible stakeholder, what is happening now is the Chinese are beginning to engage us on issues that are not purely bilateral, that are general, worldwide or regional issues.

This has been a gradual development over this entire period. And I think that while you can look at the Chinese as being reluctant negotiators, I think they are gradually moving out and gradually becoming a stakeholder in the world as they become more dependent for both imports and exports and other things on what goes on in the world. They're a long way from there, but I think that's the evolution that's taking place in Chinese diplomacy.

FREEMAN: I think when you read this record and when the record of subsequent negotiations, particularly those bearing on the Taiwan issue are released, I mean, the normalization negotiations, I mean, the August 1982 communiqué negotiations, you will draw the conclusion that the United States has broken almost every commitment we made to the Chinese over the course of the succeeding period. The fact that there has been great progress on the Taiwan issue and that, as I said in the outset, I believe it is moving toward resolution. That was a great deal to Chinese statecraft and patience and left to our fidelity, to our friends or our word. So there are interesting things to be discovered in these documents and I'm sure you'll enjoy them.

SUSSER: Ambassador Lord, you were the first one into China. You get the last word.

LORD: Okay. I was going to make some other comments, but that was a real bombshell at the end. Maybe we can pursue it. I don't know whether the chair is going to be here tomorrow. I don't want to leave it at that. I think that's unfair to seven American presidents. I think it's wrong. I think we have stretched some commitments, particularly arms sales to Taiwan. No doubt about that. We did somersaults to continue to justify the quality and quantity of arms sales. But to sit here and say that America has not left -- kept its word, is not only inaccurate. I think it's very damaging for an audience like that to hear that, unsubstantiated. So we ought to continue that. And of course, we stretch it. So have the Chinese.

But I continue to believe that seven presidents of both parties have pursued remarkable diplomacy with all the inevitable ups and downs, this is always going to be a sweet and sour relationship. The fact is we've moved ahead with China and Taiwan has flourished and we've done it by sticking to basic principles occasionally stretching it. The Chinese in turn have done the same. And I think we should leave this in a much more positive note than suggest the United States has not kept its word.

SUSSER: Thank you gentlemen. It's been a fascinating two hours. Thank you. We are adjourned today. (Applause.)