Miles Yu: Seeking a strategic opening to Beijing, primarily motivated by a desire to extricate the U.S. from the Vietnam War, President Nixon ordered the termination of the 7th Fleet’s permanent Taiwan Strait Patrol Force. Regular patrols gave way to intermittent transits of lesser ships, partly to provide Beijing with diplomatic “face” as Washington pursued rapprochement. Subsequent policy decisions, such as lifting the strategic embargo on China in June 1971 and diplomatic normalization in 1979, deepened the shift in American strategy.
The decision may have appeared tactically useful in the context of the Cold War. Strategically, however, it marked the beginning of a long retreat from visible American maritime leadership in the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing gradually exploited the resulting vacuum…