Six decades ago, as Mao's Communists seized power, the question in Washington was, 'Who lost China?' Now, as his capitalist descendants stand astride the world stage and Washington worries about decline, it seems to be, 'Who lost America?'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
During the Reagan Administration, so much attention was devoted to fighting Marxism in Nicaragua and El Salvador that Washington lost sight of longer-term challenges in other countries.
More than four decades after Nixon met Mao, the relationship between the U.S. and China has reached a pivotal moment. To date, even as China has become more powerful and present in our lives, Americans have generally found it to be an unsatisfying 'enemy.'
In point of fact all Americans are automatically turned down by China these days because of the escalation of Johnson's war in Vietnam, which several times has intruded into China.
In 1949, China declared independence - an event known in Western discourse as 'the loss of China' in the U.S. - with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.
As I've said many times and publicly, a war between China and Taiwan that involves the United States is a lose-lose-lose.
Historians are going to look back on rising China and say America, at least under the Bush years, did not get that wrong.
America lost its face with the debacle of the Vietnam War.
I grew up pretty much prevented from knowing anything from Communist China except that they were the bad guys that stole our country.
In the end, we lost IndoChina to the communists. But we did not lose Southeast Asia.
President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.
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