The constructivist approach to the study of international relations seems to have become popular today. Evelyn Goh's book uses the constructivist approach to study one of the most dramatic events in the history of international relations in the twentieth century: Richard Nixon's rapprochement with China. The traditional orthodox interpretation of Sino-American relations views bilateral relations in the 1960s as an extension of hostility and antagonism that started in the early 1950s; Nixon's dramatic departure in the early 1970s resulted from his realistic calculation of American strategic interests and the assistance China might provide in counterbalancing the increasing Soviet threat. This book analyzes the Sino-American rapprochement from a different angle. By identifying and tracing, throughout the 1960s within the U.S. government, the changing perception of China and the idea of a new China policy associated with the rapprochement, Goh tries to answer the question of how the rapprochement could have been achieved, rather than why it happened in 1972.

Constructivists believe that states develop interests and social identities, which change over time. At any given moment, state actors inhabit an environment of shared understandings and expectations, and social reality is the product of people constructing that reality. According to constructivists, the international system does not produce an automatic “objective” causal influence on a state's actions. Rather, the state's policy choices and responses result from a process of perception and interpretation by its decision makers, through which they come to understand the situation that the state faces.

The focus of this book is the forging of this subjective context in which image, ideas, and perceptions regarding China, mostly in the form of linguistic representation and rhetorical strategy, or a “discourse,” as the author puts it, and how one or more advocacies became dominant, and finally to what effect within the policymaking process. The central argument of the book is about the power of this constructed reality. Goh argues that there were several options, rendered by the Sino-Soviet split in early 1960s, available to U.S. decision makers at the time, and that Nixon chose to improve relations with China due, to a large extent, to the accumulated themes and change in perception resulting from debates about the nature of China and its capabilities. It was the gradual move to alternative policy positions within the governmental decision-making process from 1961 to 1974 that finally paved the way for Nixon's departure from the traditional post-1949 China policy.

The book is divided into three parts. By exploring the mostly midlevel official debates about China policy during the 1960s, Part I investigates how the rethinking of China policy occurred within official circles. The author reveals in this part that in contrast to the dominant image of China as “Red Menace” and “Revolutionary Rival,” there were proponents of two revisionist discourses of China as “Troubled Modernizer” and Resurgent Power,” which suggested seeking better relations with China for reasons other than common opposition to the Soviet Union. Part II investigates the period of transition from 1969 to 1971, when the competing discourses funneled down to a more intense policy debate about variations on the agreed theme of improving relations with China in the face of a clear opportunity. It argues that the revisionist view of China gradually gained momentum and had an impact on Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's new conceptualization of triangular politics. Part III deals with how the Nixon administration's new China policy was advocated to the Chinese and justified to the various domestic constituencies in the United States as well as to international allies. Nixon and Kissinger tried to sell the rapprochement to Mao by cultivating an image of China as a noninimical partner, persuading the Chinese leaders that areas of common interest existed. This part also analyzes the implementation of the rapprochement policy from 1971 to 1974.

Constructivism is regarded as a form of “inside” theory, in contrast to “outside” social science theories that make use of the approaches of the natural sciences. While outside theories assume the existence of lawlike connections between different factors, which can be identified and qualified, the inside approach emphasizes the need to explore complex human beings, who are full of meanings, motives, symbols and intentions (see Fred Chernoff, The Power of International Theory, 2005). In that sense, Goh's constructivist perspective offers a unique understanding of events that occurred in Sino-American relations in the 1960s and 1970s and ways to interpret them, rather than to identify a causal chain of events.

Based on some newly declassified documents from the Johnson and Nixon administrations, the book is full of discussion about the ideas underpinning U.S. debates for reconciliation with China. To Goh, actors and their perceptions matter and international relations are historically contingent, because “alternative actors with alternative identities and practices are capable of effecting change” (p. 258). Goh tries to prove that the constructivist approach may help to strengthen historical research by providing conceptual tools for analyzing the connection between ideas and outcomes.

The problem with the constructivist approach is that the important question is left unanswered: Where do human perception and ideas, particularly the change of ideas, come from? Some may well argue that they come from the changing reality of the external environment and that the ideas or the change in ideas may only reflect the changing reality. To some, changing ideas about China within the governmental decision-making process in the 1960s may be argued to have been predetermined by the changing situation in the international system. After all, it is existence that determines ideas, not vice versa, as Marxists would put it. In a sense, the rapprochement between China and the United States may have been structured and thus explained more convincingly by the traditional and rationalist balance-of-power approach.

Nonetheless, the book is overall an interesting and important supplement to the orthodox rationalist explanation of the U.S.-China rapprochement. It definitely contributes to our general understanding of how and why this important event occurred the way it did. It makes us think about the power of ideas, as well as the power of the constructivist approach.