When in 1972, President Richard Nixon visited Mao Tse Tung in China, this visit to the People’s Republic, executed in deep secrecy, signalled to the rest of the world, and in particular America’s major partners, that the United States had recognized a force in the world that would not permit its exclusion from global affairs. This admission of China’s potential elevation to major player status was not in itself a revelation to many of the US’s Nato partners. For while surprising, it demonstrated to them that the United States, driven in the post-World War II period by a deep ideological antagonism to the communist powers, was beginning to perceive that both the Soviet Union and China were themselves starting to see the world beyond their frontiers and the world communist system, as a necessary element in their further development and search for status.
