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Testing Sincerity:Henry Kissinger's Opening Encounter With the Chinese Leadership
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Although the Chinese leaders assessed Kissinger’s sincerity in this way, Kissinger appears not to have assessed theirs similarly. We do not, however, believe that this fact necessarily undermines our claim about assessing sincerity by means of coherence. Kissinger, after all, in these conversations made all the claims to which Mao and Zhou responded. Thus, only Kissinger’s sincerity was at issue. We have also here discussed the application of pragmatic analysis to modeling the recently declassified contents of political interactions between the US and China in secret negotiations leading to and building rapprochement between 1971 and 1974. The method combines linguistic analyses of the propositional contents of the talks, argument analyses of each side’s moves and countermoves in this discourse, and (although not in this interim report) logical deductions to test counterfactual hypotheses. The diachronic analysis of the negotiation discourse and the empirically supported background assumptions that underlie this discourse, dialogical analysis is able to progressively elaborate and deepen our understanding of the US-PRC interaction. In this paper, we have illustrated the pragmatic component of the dialogical method in the analysis of one set of Sino-American talks pertaining to the Soviet threat in February 1973. We have also discussed the central question of the significance of Kissinger’s offers of strategic alliance and aid to the Chinese, and provided the background knowledge of the changing empirical context affecting each side’s logical positions over this period. The dialogical method is best considered a technique for generating systematic readings of negotiation dialogues. The method forces the analyst to detail the interpretive inferences that underlie his or her readings, thus rendering these inferences subject to criticism. In applying this method to the analysis of the newly-available Kissinger-Mao/Zhou transcripts, we hope to contribute to building the store of historical knowledge and assessment, and thus to the debate on what is a controversial issue and period in American foreign policy and US-China relations. At the same time, we hope that this use of the dialogical method will help to advance our theoretical understanding of negotiation as an object of empirical study.
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| | Authors: Duffy, Gavan. and Goh, Evelyn. |
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31
Although the Chinese leaders assessed Kissinger’s sincerity in this way, Kissinger
appears not to have assessed theirs similarly. We do not, however, believe that this fact
necessarily undermines our claim about assessing sincerity by means of coherence.
Kissinger, after all, in these conversations made all the claims to which Mao and Zhou
responded. Thus, only Kissinger’s sincerity was at issue.
We have also here discussed the application of pragmatic analysis to modeling the
recently declassified contents of political interactions between the US and China in secret
negotiations leading to and building rapprochement between 1971 and 1974. The method
combines linguistic analyses of the propositional contents of the talks, argument analyses
of each side’s moves and countermoves in this discourse, and (although not in this
interim report) logical deductions to test counterfactual hypotheses. The diachronic
analysis of the negotiation discourse and the empirically supported background
assumptions that underlie this discourse, dialogical analysis is able to progressively
elaborate and deepen our understanding of the US-PRC interaction.
In this paper, we have illustrated the pragmatic component of the dialogical method in the
analysis of one set of Sino-American talks pertaining to the Soviet threat in February
1973. We have also discussed the central question of the significance of Kissinger’s
offers of strategic alliance and aid to the Chinese, and provided the background
knowledge of the changing empirical context affecting each side’s logical positions over
this period.
The dialogical method is best considered a technique for generating systematic readings
of negotiation dialogues. The method forces the analyst to detail the interpretive
inferences that underlie his or her readings, thus rendering these inferences subject to
criticism. In applying this method to the analysis of the newly-available Kissinger-
Mao/Zhou transcripts, we hope to contribute to building the store of historical knowledge
and assessment, and thus to the debate on what is a controversial issue and period in
American foreign policy and US-China relations. At the same time, we hope that this use
of the dialogical method will help to advance our theoretical understanding of negotiation
as an object of empirical study.
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