On Reflection | Opinion: If only Nixon could go to China, can only Trump go to North Korea?
There are many examples of world leaders making bold U-turns when it comes to foreign policy, and a Trump-Kim Jong-un meeting might be just audacious enough to work
The “Nixon-to-China” trope has, over the past four decades, come to mean that only a politician with unquestioned credentials could make a sharp policy U-turn against their own party and past positions. It denotes an unorthodox, out-of-the-box move that would be widely derided if attempted by another politician without the same unimpeachable bona fides.
Nixon was an unassailable anti-Communist Cold Warrior and red-baiter. So only Nixon, it was said, could take the bold step of opening diplomatic relations with Communist China in 1972. Any Democrat attempting that diplomatic rapprochement would have been derided as “soft on Communism”, or worse.
Also in the “Nixon-to-China” vein, only Ronald Reagan could have negotiated a sweeping arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, so solid was his anti-Communist street cred. Only Israeli hawk Ariel Sharon could have successfully withdrawn troops from the Gaza Strip without being labelled a softie. And only a centre-left Democrat like Bill Clinton could have presided over a reform of America’s welfare state.
The idea has been floating around ever since Trump’s secretary of state, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, said back in March, during a visit to the region, that America’s “strategic patience” with North Korea had run out and it was time for a new approach to the hermit kingdom.
