The United States specifically reaffirmed its intention to remain in South Korea and Japan, and unstated but understood, in the Philippines. In one sense, Nixon’s China opening was a new chapter in the long history of ever-shifting realignments in the world balance of power. These shifts, so often bewildering, are a constant factor in world politics. Consider that just three decades earlier, the United States was allied with both Nationalist and Communist China against Japan, and with the Soviet Union against Germany, while in 1972 America’s closest allies were Japan and Germany. Nixon had not established diplomatic relations with China (although he did so in all but name, and formal recognition came in 1978, by which time, not incidentally, China was at war with Communist Cambodia and Communist Vietnam), much less entered into a military alliance directed against the Soviets. No provisions had been made for new trade agreements between the United States and China. But such carping should not obscure the reality: the China opening was certainly Nixon’s greatest triumph, and he certainly deserved the credit for it. If the immediate payoff was slight at best, except for disturbing the sleep of the men in Kremlin, the long-term opportunities Nixon had made possible were vast. If in part the trip was self-serving (the television coverage at the beginning of his re-election campaign), it also showed Nixon to be a man of courage, intelligence, and imagination. Sometimes, in world diplomacy, the hardest things to do are those that cry out most for doing.
There were two important areas of the Shanghai agreement. The first concerned the Soviet Union, and it was easily reached. All sentiments were expressed in the final communiqué with a provision that neither nation “should seek hegemony in the Asia Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.” As the Chinese were daily accusing the Soviets of seeking hegemony, all the world understood the slightly veiled language.
The second agreement was on Taiwan. The Chinese regarded the presence of American armed forces on the island as an occupation, which was intolerable. So long as the American troops were there, no improvement in U.S.-Chinese relations was possible. For his part, Nixon had been one of Chiang’s foremost American supporters for twenty-three years; he could not simply walk away and casually sacrifice the Nationalist Chinese.