The Group of Two that could change the world
When President Jimmy Carter sent me to China in 1978 to initiate the secret negotiations that resulted in the normalisation of US-China relations, only 1,200 foreigners lived in Beijing ; just the other day 1,100 American officials moved into the new US embassy - and it is estimated that 150,000 foreigners now live in the city. Our world is different, better and safer because of that normalisation. It precipitated almost from the start security co-operation that has been of genuine benefit both to the US and China. The effect was to change the cold war's global chessboard - to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union. Indirectly, the normalisation facilitated Chairman Deng Xiaoping's decision to undertake a comprehensive economic reform. China's growth would have been much harder without the expansion in US-Chinese trade and financial relations that followed normalisation.
By Zbigniew Brzezinski - President Carter's national security adviser
vendredi 19 juin 2009, par L'Idiot Du Village
