Consider This from NPR - BONUS: The Great Wager

Episode Date: March 6, 2022

President Richard Nixon has a plan: He wants to go to China. The only problem? The U.S. and China have had zero contact since the Communist Party took over China two decades before. In this episode of The Great Wager from NPR and WBUR's Here & Now, host Jane Perlez digs into the beginning of Nixon's improbable diplomatic mission. Listen to the rest of The Great Wager here. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Consider This listeners, Elsa Chang here with a weekend bonus episode. This one takes us back in time to 50 years ago when then President Richard Nixon went to China to meet with Mao Zedong. At the time, a diplomatic relationship between these two leaders seemed improbable. Nixon was an avowed anti-communist and China was in the middle of the brutal cultural revolution. But they did have a common opponent, the Soviet Union. This is the first episode in a new series from NPR and WBUR's Here and Now. It's called The Great Wager, and it's hosted by Jane Perlez of The New York Times. And after you finish this one, you can find the rest of the episodes in Here and Now's podcast feed. Okay, Jane will take it from here.

The White House, 1969. Richard Nixon is the new president of the United States. Richard Milhouse Nixon, hail to the chief. He's sitting in the Oval Office and he's mulling over a big idea that he thinks will cement his legacy as a great president. He calls his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, into the Oval.

The two men sit down. Nixon tells Kissinger, we want to make friends with China. Get moving. This is urgent. To Kissinger, this is totally shocking. Richard Nixon has been running his whole career as an anti-communist. There's only one threat to peace and one threat to freedom. That that is presented by the international communist movement. China is run by a strong communist party. The Chinese have a saying for America, running dogs of capitalism. Their leader, Ma Zedong, is a totalitarian, revolutionary, hardline communist. We can see that China is the basic cause of all of our troubles in Asia.

If China had not gone communist, we would not have had a war in Korea. If China were not communist, there would be no war in Indochina. And now, Richard Nixon, the big anti-communist, wants to turn the tables? Kissinger comes out of this meeting wondering what the hell's going on. Here's what his deputy, Alexander Haig, remembers Kissinger saying. The man wants to open up relations with China. He must be crazy. But Kissinger has orders from the president, and he gets to work on one of the most surprising and important diplomatic missions of the last century that is still playing out today. I'm Jane Perlez, and this is The Great Wager,

how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made friends with China 50 years ago, and how it's all falling apart. We're now rivals, even enemies, but it wasn't always that way. We actually were friends for many decades. This is about how we became friends and how it unraveled. So after hearing Nixon's idea, Kissinger mulls this over and he decides to get on board. Nixon actually does have good reasons for wanting to go to China. It's the height of the

Cold War. Was that the Soviet Union is trying to develop a first strike capability, the ability to knock out virtually all our missiles, bombers and submarines in a single massive attack. And Nixon sees China as a way to put pressure on the Soviet Union. The Soviets are America's major enemy with almost as many nuclear weapons as the Soviet Union. The Soviets are America's major enemy, with almost as many nuclear weapons as the United States. We must be ready all the time for the atomic bomb. Duck and cover! A very hot flashpoint in the ongoing Cold War is Vietnam. The Soviets are supporting the North Vietnamese against the Americans fighting there. The death toll is high,

and the Vietnam War is a big political problem for Nixon. It's hugely unpopular. Nixon's idea is basically that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So if China is on America's side, the Soviets will be off balance. Nixon has another reason for wanting to get close to the Chinese. He wants to enhance his own reputation. He thinks this will help him go down in the history books as the man who made peace with China. I mean, listen to how he described it. He says the Chinese-American relationship can be the great linchpin of peace in the world.

No doubt he's too cynical to actually believe that this is the key to world peace. But if it is, he sure wants credit for it. Making the decision to get in touch with China is the easy part. Figuring out how to actually do it in the Cold War situation is difficult. But the timing is right. The Soviets and the Chinese used to be one big communist monolithic bloc. But they are no longer. They're actually fighting each other on the border.

This is ironclad evidence of the Soviet revisionists' attempt to seize Chinese territory. And he has something else going for him. The leader of China, Mao Zedong, asks four of his compatriots to come up with some ideas of how he should get out from under the pressure of the Soviets. One of them, the foreign minister, tells Mao Zedong, you need to get closer to the Americans. Play the America card. The two leaders don't know what the other is doing, but they're actually converging. We should remember this is not the booming China of today. China back then is insular and impoverished.

Long before I lived in China as a New York Times correspondent, I actually traveled there on a student trip. It was 1967, the height of the Cultural Revolution. We saw massive student demonstrations in favor of Chairman Mao. He was almost like a god. And everything was against America. Mao wanted to eliminate traces of capitalism in Western society, and he did so with incredible brutality.

It's estimated that millions died. When we were there, universities were closed and factories barely functioned. And the people were really poor. There were no skyscrapers, no luxury malls that exist in the big cities today. I talked to a friend of mine, Huang Hong. She was a child in this period, and she recalled playing games with her friends in Beijing. They counted cars. It wasn't hard.

China then was a totally different world. Beijing had no traffic. There were hardly any cars on the road. And if we could count like more than 10 cars, it was a big day. Think about that. Only seeing 10 cars, it was a big day. Think about that. Only seeing 10 cars a day in Beijing. Mao has a lot to gain from a new relationship with the United States. He needs them as a foil against the Soviets who are giving him real trouble.

A few months after Nixon speaks to Kissinger, things are getting really bad between China and the Soviets. To show you how bad, we're going to take you to a lunch in Washington. A senior diplomat at the State Department gets a call one morning from the KGB agent at the Soviet embassy. How about lunch, says the KGB guy. They meet at the Beef and Bird, a haunt in central Washington, not far from the Soviet embassy. Dark brown drinks at lunchtime, waiters in black ties. They talk, small talk at first, and then Davidoff, the KGB agent, leans into Stearman, the American, and says, what would the United States think

if the Soviets took out all of China's nuclear weapons? He's basically suggesting that the Soviet Union is going to start a nuclear war with China. Stearman has a piece of fish on his fork. He's about to put it in his mouth. He puts it back on his plate instead. Stearman races back to the State Department. He taps out a memo that goes to the tippy-top of the US government.

Nuclear bombs are loaded onto aircraft. Bombs are loaded onto ships. Military bases are put on global high alert. It's getting very serious between the Soviet Union and China, and Nixon and Kissinger can see that their play of bringing China towards the United States could help defuse a really extremely serious Cold War situation. The Soviet Union will be less likely to provoke a huge conflict with China if the United States is on China's side. Nixon and Kissinger are now in full throttle,

trying to get in touch with the Chinese. They call in the American ambassador to Warsaw, Poland. Nixon brings him into the Oval Office. His name is Walter Stessel. He's silver-haired, good-looking. He once thought of being a movie star instead of being a diplomat. That's how good his looks were. He's now a little older, and he's getting marching orders from Nixon.

Make contact with the Chinese in Warsaw and keep it a secret. Sturzel goes back to Warsaw and tries to figure out where's the best place. The Chinese are quite elusive. He finds, eventually, a fashion show of all places. He gets a seat in the front row, and his political officer, Tom Simons, is assigned to the back to be the lookout for what the Chinese do. My name is Thomas W. Simons, Jr. I'm a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and ambassador,

and in 1969, I was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. Sure enough, towards the end, as the dresses get skimpier and skimpier... I think the models were Polish. They were beautiful. I remember what they were showing was kind of pastel-colored outfits. Suddenly, the Chinese get up and storm out. I think they found it distasteful. I gave Stessel the high sign that we'd agreed on and bolted after them. Together, the Americans, Simons and Stessel, chase after the Chinese.

They manage to catch up at the bottom of some stairs outside the fashion show. It was the 3rd of December. It was a crisp, cold night. I mean, it was sparkling cold. At that point, the senior of the two Chinese was already down by their car. And so I had to gallop after the junior who was in the middle of that apron of steps and sort of corral him until Stessel could catch up with me. And Stil says to the Chinese in his broken Polish. My president wishes you to know that he wants to improve relations with your country.

Soon after, the Chinese diplomats roll up at the American embassy in Warsaw. A big black, boxy Chinese limousine. They go upstairs to the second floor. There's a big table ready. The windows have been covered with special curtains to stop eavesdropping. Tom Simons is there taking notes.

And there's this kind of aha moment. He hears the two sides agree on something. The leaders of their two countries are going to meet in person. And I have to say, the hair on the back of my head stood up. If this happens, it will change the global balance of power. Nixon's plan that Kissinger thought was so crazy seems to be coming together. But there's a long way to go and a lot of hurdles ahead.

The Great Wager is brought to you by Here and Now and WBUR Podcasts. Our series was reported and narrated by me, Jane Perlez, and produced by Grace Tatter. Editorial direction from Scott Tong and Jeb Sharp. Sound design by Paul Vycus and engineered by Mike Moschetto. Our executive producer is Ben Brock-Johnson.