Thank you for the more detailed analysis, but my comment was meant to remind people that at the time Nixon approached China there was a viable threat from the Soviet Union.
Whenever you have two enemies who have a falling out, you seek to drive a wedge between them and you consider opportunities to shore up the weaker of the two. This is especially true if their conflict could come to blows. My father used to describe this as the “let’s you and him fight” strategy.
There are lots of Freepers who were not around during these times and are not aware of some of the subtle things which transpired. One of my coworkers last month tried to imply that the Soviet Union had already collapsed at the time of the Nixon presidency. I have no idea where he got this stupid idea. It occurred to me that the left probably promotes this revisionist history in order to (1) give cover to Carter for his idiotic stance toward the Soviet Union and (2) deny any credit to President Ronald Reagan for the subsequent collapse.
A lot of folks never did catch on the fact that the Soviet Union was a much bigger supporter of the North Vietnamese during the war than the Chinese. Going back even further, one of the things that annoys me about the TV program MASH is that they push the allusion that the Chinese were the main backers of the North Koreans when the Soviets were the primary backers as evidenced by peace overtures soon after the death of Stalin and the subsequent internal political instability in the Soviet Union.
I must have missed all of those Soviet troops pouring across the Yalu River.
On that you are correct. The Chinese and Vietnamese hate each other. In fact the Chinese were the supporters of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and were ticked off that the Vietnamese were the ones who ousted Pol Pot and company. It led briefly to a war between the two in 1979. And the Vietnamese were literally begging for us to return to Cam Ranh Bay, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, because they still fear the ChiComs.