ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the principal features of that initial accommodation. It explores the implications of the Sino-American relationship that has subsequently evolved through two different phases: from 1971 until Mao Zedong’s death, and from the implementation of the Modernizations in 1978 to the present. The chapter analyses the probability for the success of a US strategy that is based on attempting to co-opt China. Like many US analysts writing at the time, Nixon was trying to conceive of an Asia beyond Vietnam. The Vietnam War was clearly destroying the postwar Pax Americana global design, and no matter how Vietnam might be resolved, US policy in Asia would have to change. Vietnam was inevitably in the forefront of the minds of the Nixon administration, initially elected to power in 1968, the most traumatic political year since the Great Depression.
