(The National Interest)
Thirty years ago, the People’s Liberation Army marched on Beijing. Troops fired indiscriminately on unarmed civilians. Tanks crushed the innocent underfoot. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were murdered, while many others were thrown in prison for years or decades; some received lifetime sentences. Some protesters, like the man who stepped in front of an armored column, which was captured in an iconic photo, simply disappeared.
The international community responded with righteous outrage—an outrage that came swiftly, but ultimately proved illusory. The United States set the tone, with President George H. W. Bush dispatching his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, on a secret trip to Beijing in July just weeks after the president had announced a suspension of high-level meetings in response to the massacre.
Bush’s unmistakable intention was to keep U.S.-China relations on an even keel despite the murders that occurred between June 3 and June 4. A State Department document prepared for Scowcroft and Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who accompanied the national security adviser, laid out the “themes” for the visit. It described in anodyne language the Chinese government’s handling of “those of its citizens involved in recent events in China” as an “internal affair” and made President Bush’s priorities clear: Read more