Didn’t Pat Buchanan try to talk Nixon out of kow towing to China?
Nixon / China
At the time we were at the height of the Cold War. The USSR was semi-closed, and China was closed iron tight.
Here was a body of one billion people on Russia’s flank. Nixon viewed opening up China as a strategic move based on developing ties with a massive body of people in close proximity with Russia.
Knowing what China was up to, was a decent goal to achieve. Developing “some” exchanges would have been decent. What took place decades later wouldn’t be.
For what it was, it was a decent move. We’re talking in the early 1970s. The USSR wouldn’t fall for two more decades.
No matter what Nixon did, he didn’t move all our manufacturing off shore and gift China with almost our entire patent database, at least as it relates to manufacturing, and even space related tech.
It wasn’t until two decades later that the U. S. developed a policy of just throwing trillions of U.S. dollars at China and gifting them with half to a full century of technology, jumping China ahead a number of decades in it’s capabilities.
Translate that out to creating a strategic global enemy that had one goal in mind, to become the world’s dominant hegemonic power.
GHW Bush, and Bill Clinton are the two people I see as facilitation this reality in China. Of course GW and Obadingo didn’t lift a finger to fix things.
Not until Trump have we addressed what has been/is taking place in China since the early 1990s, and what never should have taken place with it.
I’ve numerous times addressed our relationship with China as perhaps the biggest nation to nation blunder in the existence of man.