Donald Trump’s Nixon Moment That Wasn’t

In 1971, Richard Nixon announced his plan to visit Beijing—marking a geopolitical turning point, as the trip would be the first for a U.S. president in 25 years. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield offered an observation that has since become a Washington commonplace. “Only a Republican, perhaps only a Nixon,” he told U.S. News & World Report, “could have made this break and gotten away with it.”This notion entered the political lexicon to denote a particular kind of calculation: that on certain issues, only a hard-liner has the credibility to pursue a softer line and survive politically.Last week in Beijing, Donald Trump had his Nixon moment. He scrapped a policy that combined hardheaded diplomacy with action to protect U.S. interests and check Chinese power. In its place, he embraced the notion that a personal bond with Chinese leader Xi Jinping can ensure stability.Trump is getting away with this move politically. Geopolitically, he will not. His new stance imperils Americans and emboldens China, which makes a future crisis likelier than ever.[Read: A checkers player meets a three-dimensional-chess master]In recent decades, Republicans and Democrats have largely agreed to treat China as a strategic competitor. The United States has tightened export controls on advanced technology, reduced its economic exposure to China, and thickened its web of alliances across the Indo-Pacific. That shift began during the first Trump administration; the Biden administration intensified it.Trump has long been a vocal critic of China. He began his second term with a trade war that pushed tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent. He reversed course after China retaliated and demonstrated, through its grip on rare earth processing, that it could inflict real pain in return. Then he began speaking of his great personal relationship with Xi and of the advent of a U.S.-China G2.In Beijing last week, he praised Xi in terms he seldom uses for America’s democratic allies: “a great leader