A Great Wall
by Patrick Tyler
PublicAffairs

It's both convenient and dangerous to talk about how things are less certain now that the Cold War is over. Constant longing for the black-and-white simplicity of that era colors the mountain of foreign policy editorials and books that study the way foreign relations have evolved since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But "A Great Wall," by former New York Times Beijing Bureau Chief Patrick Tyler, does a good job putting on display the full richness and complexity of Cold War foreign relations. "A Great Wall" captures the awkward, dangerous dance of "triangular diplomacy" which defined the relationship among the Soviet Union, China and the United States.

This tension, often forgotten by those who wax nostalgic for the simple "Us versus Them" attitude of the Cold War's heyday, meant that any warming of relations between two of the three giants put the third in danger of being locked out of world power — or being attacked outright. One of Tyler's most shocking revelations is how close the Soviet Union came to attacking China during Nixon's administration, and how close America came to supporting the assault, with a specific eye to destroying China's capability to wage nuclear war.

While "A Great Wall" is first and foremost about U.S. relations with The People's Republic of China, it manages to cover a fair amount of related ground, at times delving into proxy wars in Africa, American electoral politics and the complexities of Sino-Soviet relations. First and foremost, however, the book is organized chronologically, dipping into six different U.S. presidential administrations: those of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

The gem, not surprisingly, is the heady era of Richard Nixon. And it should come as little additional shock that star of this time period is national security advisor Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, whose sometimes reckless use of power and influence is now legendary, will always be remembered for his work on Sino-U.S. diplomacy. But Tyler goes to the heart of Kissinger's impact on U.S. policy, and looks at a struggle for China policy that pitted the mercurial, ego-driven, scheming Harvard professor against the plodding but straight-shooting bureaucracy of the U.S. State Department — a rivalry with an outcome that would undermine State's authority for years to come.

"A Great Wall" is a remarkably thorough and dutiful chronicle of this and a host of other events that have had a great impact on America and the world as whole. It isn't, however, much fun to read — Tyler's emphasis on strict retelling of anecdotes and the minutiae of history makes "A Great Wall" a very powerful reference or educational text, but hard to peruse for long stretches of time. It's hard to fault Tyler's thorough, absorbing and important chronicle, but the arcs of theme and opinion that undergird "A Great Wall" could have been greatly strengthened, and brought into the book's foreground.

But as long as China remains America's major rival on the stage of international relations, and one of the few nations holding the destiny of the world in its hands, "A Great Wall" will remain important reading. A host of miscalculations, lost opportunities and misunderstandings haunt its pages, and the future architects of U.S. foreign policy will need to drink deeply of past failures before they can build a relationship with China that works — for the long haul.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)