Nixon's China trip was Chinese victory

PARIS -- Even now, it is generally thought that Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972 was a U.S. diplomatic coup that recast the geopolitical balance to America's advantage.

That certainly was how the trip was presented at the time, although even then it wasn't clear how this could be true, since the United States seemed to have gained nothing.

The purpose of Nixon's initiative was to get China's help in ending the Vietnam War while putting the Soviet Union at a disadvantage. This is how the matter was portrayed in the accounts of President Nixon and the memoirs of his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.

But the visit accomplished neither. When Mr. Kissinger asked Zhou Enlai for help with the Vietnam problem, the Chinese primeminister replied, "You must get out of Vietnam. Let the Vietnamese solve their own problems."

Good advice

That was good advice, but Nixon and Kissinger were looking for more than advice. The war went on until South Vietnamese forces were routed and the surviving Americans scrambled to helicopters on the U.S. Embassy roof.

Before the Nixon visit, the Chinese had two great enemies: the U.S.S.R. on their inner Asian border; and the United States in Southeast and Northern Asia, and on their Pacific Ocean frontier.

Afterward, they could play Washington against Moscow. The geopolitical balance was changed, but to China's advantage.

The story of this extraordinary episode in U.S. foreign relations is developed with new detail in a documentary television program called "Playing the China Card," which is scheduled to appear soon on