Both the Presidents, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, sought second terms (Trump is seeking), and both used (Trump is using) their distinctive stands on China as an election issue during their re-elections. Nixon won his second term with a thumping win. Trump’s is yet to be seen.
Nixon's re-election challenge:
Richard Nixon became
the 37th President of the United States by winning the Nov 1968
presidential elections. Vietnam war was a boiling issue in 1968. The war,
considered as the proxy war between the US and USSR, was going on since 1955. Nixon promised that "the new leadership will end the
war and win the peace in the Pacific”. This approach won him 1968 presidential
elections and secured his first term as the President (Jan 1969 – Dec 1972). But Vietnam war was far from getting over (it
was to end only in 1975 inflicting a massive defeat on the US). Nixon faced a
re-election in Nov 1972. He needed an extraordinarily strong focal point to
make his campaign super-strong that would dwarf his failure on Vietnam.
And China it was.
Trump's re-election challenge:
Donald Trump won
the Nov 2016 elections and secured his first term as the President (Jan 2017 –
Dec 2020). His “make America Great Again” slogan, promise to build the wall and
bringing jobs back to the US won him the presidency (despite losing the popular
vote). He looked at China’s global rise very skeptically from day 1. His anti-China
rhetoric, trade wars, levying of sanctions antagonized China. He played a vital
role in damaging the US-China relation in his term-1. He now faces a re-election
in Nov 2020. Although he was positioned to win with 50-50 chances against his
democrat opponent is Feb 2020, the Corona crisis and his terrible handing of it
has severely weakened Trump’s chances to win a second term. And he needs a strong
“external” focus to take his people’s minds off his failure to handle the
pandemic. And China it is.
Nixon & his China policy:
Around 1970-71 the cold war was at its peak. Nixon wanted to adopt a foreign policy that would relax the strained relations with USSR. He wanted to tame the USSR. Around 15 months before Nov 1972 US elections, he came up with a program called Détente, a strategy to relax the strained relations. But the route to Moscow, he realized, was through Beijing. He decided to warm up to China.
Nixon’s NSA, Henry Kissinger traveled to Beijing and fixed up a meeting with Chinese top boss Mao Zedong. In July 1971 Washington and Beijing simultaneously announced (US on TV, China on radio) about this meeting that was planned for February 1972. The world was shocked with surprise. After more than 25 years of isolation from the communist nation, Nixon managed to break the ice. Nixon met Mao in Feb 1972.
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| Nixon meets Mao in Feb 1972 in Beijing |
Nixon’s strategy worked. USSR and China
were not on great terms that time and USSR, fearing that US may cozy up with
China, decided to agree to a meeting. Merely within 3 months, in May 1972, Nixon
and Leonid Brezhnev (USSR’s Chairman and General Secretory of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union) met in Moscow.
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| Nixon meets Brezhnev in May 1972 in Moscow |
This was an unbelievable political event. The two arch-rival superpowers had shaken hands. Nixon’s popularity shot up back home. He won a landslide victory in the Nov 1972 elections winning 49 out of 50 states. Nixon’s China policy not only he won him the second term, but brought stability, peace, prosperity to the world.
Trump & his China policy:
Trump maintained
a healthy lead over his Democrat rival Joe Biden before the Corona Virus hit
the world. But Corona crisis flattened the American health and economy, pushing
the US into the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. The already
strained relation deteriorated further when Trump put the blame of the virus on
China calling it the ‘China virus’. President Trump had failed miserably in
handling corona crisis. His ratings fell, gap between him and Biden narrowed and
mid-May they both stood at each having a 50% chance to win.
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| Illustration by UK Illustrator Gary Baker |
Trump is facing the same situation as Nixon did and needs an “international” agenda to divert attention of the people from internal threat to an external threat. (In Nixon’s case the discontent was with the unending Vietnam war).
The “Chinese Virus” issue came to Trump’s rescue. He started coming down heavily on China in all forms of media and social media. There is no love for his country in that outburst; it indicates a desperate attempt to retain the White House.
The George Floyd episode, and Trump’s
heavy-handedness in handling it worsened things for Trump even further. His
approval ratings nosedived, and disapproval ratings skyrocketed.
Today Biden maintains a 9.5 % lead over
Trump (51.1% against 41.5%). Trump is desperate and under criticism at home and
is likely to use China policy in a reverse and haywire manner.
Nixon' China approach vs Trump's China approach:
Trump’s use of China (rather China virus)
is unlikely to win him his second term like it did for Nixon. There is a stark
difference between the intellectual and diplomatic capabilities of Nixon and Trump
as well as their understanding of global power equations.
- Nixon, a hardliner anti-communist had no love for China. But he saw a strategic advantage for the US in enhancing ties with China than with Moscow.
- Nixon’s China policy (followed by decline of the Soviet Union in 1991), made US a sole superpower and the only global influencer, and that status continued until the arrival of Trump, who from day-1 is weakening that status.
- While Nixon’s resetting of the US-China relationship provided tremendous economic boost to the US, Trump’s resetting of the US-China relationship is making the US economy implode (the trade deficit wars of Trump are only going to do more damage to the US economy than good in the longer term).
- Nixon’s China policy triggered a globalization wave and put US on an expansionist path that in general benefited the world at large. Trump on the other hand is putting the US on a withdrawal path and weakening its standing as a global superpower and that is going to hurt not just the US, but the world in general. Nixon expanded US' status as a superpower. Trump is diminishing that status.
