China Review International

This is an important book for readers seeking a deeper understanding of American foreign policy toward China during a period of dramatic change. The outlines of what happened and why are well known, but Professor Goh shows, through an admirably thorough and clearly presented assessment of a wide range of recently declassified material, how complicated and interesting was the change in the opinion and thinking about China by the American leadership. The book also contributes importantly to an understanding of this subject by providing an alternative to the prevailing realist balance-of-power assessments of this major twentieth-century international breakthrough, arguing in favor of constructivist approaches in interpreting the change in American policy.

Instead of asking "Why did the U.S.-China rapprochement happen in 1972?" Goh focuses on the broader question "How did China, after having been America's most implacable enemy, become its friend and even tacit ally during the Nixon administration?" Her study seeks the origins of the policy of bilateral rapprochement in the ideas of American officials concerning reconciliation with China in the decade preceding the presidency of Richard Nixon, and it investigates the creation and implementation of rapprochement during the Nixon administration. By situating the U.S.-China rapprochement within the wider discursive and policy-making context of the time, this study highlights the shortcomings of prevailing orthodox realist balance-of-power explanations of events and their ability to account for the process of change.

The book also is repeatedly explicit about its own contribution to the field in using the theoretical knowledge of political science in the pursuit of a deeper understanding of history. It builds on developments in two disciplinary fields: the increasing engagement with such theory on the part of some diplomatic historians, of whom the author is an example, and the rise of constructivist approaches in political science and international relations and their application to such episodes in diplomatic history as the events described in this book.

The book has three main parts. The first covers the period 1961-1968 and assesses competing views and discourses among U.S. decision makers about the possible improvement of relations with China at that time. The second examines the years 1969-1971, analyzing the change in views and discourses among decision makers during a time of rapid change in American thinking when rapprochement with China was favored. The third reviews the change in views and discourses of rapprochement in practice during the years 1971-1974. As more material is declassified [End Page 417] and released in future years, Goh seems well positioned to continue this kind of assessment in future studies on the complicated and often contentious American approach toward China since 1974.

The three parts and their chapters use assessments of what U.S. government decision makers had to say about their thinking on China to explain the Sino-American rapprochement in three ways. First, they identify key "subdiscourses"—arguments or schools of thought—regarding reconciliation with China, and explore their individual rationales, achievements, and limitations. Second, they analyze how these separate discursive strands and points of view related to each other: in the case of conflicting views, how one eventually became dominant, and in other cases how one subdiscourse or point of view eventually evolved into another, with its continuities and innovations. This analysis includes examining how external and other factors influenced the strength and efficacy of a particular point of view or argument, the bureaucratic politics that determined the effectiveness of the advocacy of an internal policy, and the methods of persuasion and negotiation that were employed, such as the deliberate representation of particular subjects. Third, these discourses and points of view are then related to policy choices and outcomes, since policy action is seen as the ultimate means by which discursive change is consolidated.

The resulting analysis finds that China evolved from America's mortal enemy to...