A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China: An Investigative History. - Review - book review

Parameters, Winter, 2000 by Dr. Andrew Scobell

By Patrick Tyler. New York: Public Affairs, 1999. 276 pp. $27.50.

Several years ago when a US Department of Defense consultant briefed a Pentagon audience about the current state of US ties with China, he encapsulated his message in the phrase, "It's Taiwan, stupid!" This same irreverent phrase captures the core constant in the stormy relationship between the United States and China over the last three decades of the 20th century. Patrick Tyler clearly concurs with this pithy assessment. It is not coincidental that the first chapter of A Great Wall begins with the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis. Chapter two jumps back in time to the Sino-Soviet border clashes of 1969, and subsequent chapters chronologically recount US-China relations from that year up until 1999.

The book reads like a Washington insider account of US-China relations. This is all the more remarkable given that the author's most relevant professional experience was as the New York Times bureau chief in Beijing. Thanks to painstaking archival research, numerous participant interviews, a good eye for drama, and a flair for writing, the author makes the reader feel privy to the inner workings of six successive administrations (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton) as each sought to manage relations with China.

Tyler evokes an atmosphere appropriate for the elite machinations and personal pettiness that characterized America's China policy in the 1970s and 1980s. The author provides nuanced pictures of pivotal figures like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski (national security advisors to Presidents Nixon and Carter, respectively). He skillfully balances the geopolitical astuteness and keen political instincts of these two men with their surprising diplomatic naivete in dealing with Beijing and nastiness in dealing with other Washington officials they viewed as rivals. On the former point, this reviewer continues to be amazed by the schoolboy excitement upon their first visits to China evident in the memoirs of Kissinger and Brzezinski, supposedly two battle-hardened cold warriors. And on the latter point, one cannot but wonder, while reading about the intensity of the personality conflicts and bureaucratic turf wars Tyler describes, whether at times senior officials lost sight of US national interests. A prime example is the running battle between Brzezinski and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke during a key 1978 visit to China.

Not so well explored is China's clear shift into the center of the maelstrom of US domestic politics and the battles between the legislative and executive branches in the 1990s over who runs China policy. But Tyler does make a strong case for the bilateral relationship suffering from inattentiveness by the Clinton Administration. This stands in dramatic contrast to the attention of earlier administrations, notably those of Nixon and Bush, with these presidents and their national security advisors finding it impossible to resist the temptation to micromanage China policy. The larger lesson for future administrations is that for the relationship to go forward, top leaders from both countries must be deeply committed to nurturing it. If not, the relationship will atrophy.

Tyler makes clear that the issue of Taiwan is now front and center in US-China relations and can no longer be shunted to the sidelines. The sobering tone of the prologue seems vindicated by the tough language in Beijing's White Paper on Taiwan issued in February 2000 and the menacing threats of Chinese leaders in the run-up to Taiwan's presidential election the next month. These moves suggest that the Strait will continue to be plagued by periodic crises--any of which have the real potential to escalate into hostilities that will involve the United States. And Tyler contends: "The risk of war in the Taiwan Strait will continue to increase in the first decade of the twenty-first century."

Tyler's history is without a doubt the most compelling account of late-20th-century US-China relations. But those who desire comprehensive coverage of the subject should also consult Jim Mann's About Face (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). Two drier but still eminently readable scholarly accounts of the same period are extremely useful, too: Harry Harding's A Fragile Relationship (Brookings Institution, 1992), and Robert Ross's Negotiating Cooperation (Stanford Univ. Press, 1995).

Dr. Andrew Scobell, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.