none of that would have happened in '72. what do you think all the players would think, meaning mao, and richard nixon and all if they were back here and saw the kind of numbers today? >> i think mao and jo would be spinning in their graves not so much because of the trade, although i don't think they would have understood it, but because of the way that china has moved down the way they would see as a capitalist path. the way that shanghai is throwing up all the office buildings, the fact that capitalists are join the communist party. that was antithetical to everything they thought was important. kissinger said at the time in the negotiations, he said to li, the state department is going to insist on me putting something in the communique in what we've talked about about trade and cultural exchanges. he said you and i know that will never amount to anything. one of the few times perhaps dr. kissinger was wrong. nixon lived to see at least the beginnings of it. nixon lived on until the 1990s

and he was very pleased by it. he said on one of his last trichs trich s trips to china, i'd like to think i've helped make it possible, the extraordinary burgeoning of the chinese economy. whether he'd be pleased by the trade imbalance and whether so much american debt is held by china, i don't know. it can be seen as a real weakness or point of vulner ability for the united states, but on the other hand the fact that china holds so much american debt means they want to maintain a good relationship with the united states. >> what's the downside? >> the downside for the trade figures is the loss of jobs in the united states and that's really hitting american workers quite hard, but americans are workers and consumers, the advantage of the united states is cheap goods made in china. i think walmart is the single biggest trading partner with china. >> 60% of what they buy at least comes from china? >> the trade relationship between walmart and china is bigger than the trade

relationships with most country. it's quite extraordinary. that's a down side. the other down side is that the chinese will continue to try to get into the american market and continue to try to protect their own and a trade imbalance that side i think will always lead to political tensions. >> what about them owning $349 billion of our debt? >> well, the fact that they own so much of your debt means in a way that they have a vested interest in seeing a healthy united states. and what they don't want is that debt they hold to become worthless, so if the american dollar begins to flag and if the american dollar were to begin to lose value, that two hurt the chinese. you could argue that the nature of the relationship actually makes each country half to think about the prosperity of the other. >> there's a picture in the book that probably had a bigger impact on me than you although you gave it dominance in the book. and they're names. i just saw faces that i remember. some of them have passed on.

and i'll just mention some of them, aldo beckman was with "the chicago tribune," stan carno, forest boyd, david kraslo, and john scali, with abc, phil small ran the washington bureau of cbs and became nbc news president, and jerry horst, went on to be the spokesman for gerald ford in the white house for a month. i think i see diane sawyer. eric severeid, and ed fuoy, who was with several of the networks, teddy white who wrote the books "making the president" and dan rather, bill buckley is at the back. i want to ask you about him. john chancellor i think. barbara walters. fay well, who was with storer broadcast and helen thomas who

is still sitting in the white house newsroom is in this. not only in this picture but in other pictures that you have. where did you find that picture? and did you know any of those names? did you know those folks when you saw them in the picture? >> no, i knew very few of them. we found the photograph in the -- i think it's in the national archives in washington, because there's a whole record of the nixon trip which was taken by both chinese and american photographers. and i couldn't match names to all faces. i have a list of all the journalists who were there, but i didn't know enough of them, but i did recognize diane sawyer and a few others. this is the creme de la creme of the american profession. >> walter cronkite was there, is he in that picture? i can't tell. >> i think he is. all the journalists who were there, it was taken and nixon said let's have a group picture taken, and i imagine they are all there, because they tended to go as a group. max frankel from "the times" is there. >> he's in the picture. >> i'm trying to think who else is there.

>> also in the picture this wouldn't mean much to most of our viewers but there's all kinds of very valuable people, namely technicians and lighting people and camera people are in this picture, the whole american press group. >> i suspect they're all the networks vice presidents because they didn't get permission to go so they said they would come along as lighting experts, and so they sort of got themselves in as technicians. but it was an amazing crew. and the chinese didn't know what had hit them. when nixon and kissinger and li were negotiating the details of the trip and kissinger said, of course, we'd like to bring some press and li coming from a society where there isn't a free press. what are you thinking of? two or three journalists? no, actually, we were thinking of 700. and so they had to negotiate. and they finally i think got an agreement to have about 100. but for the chinese, that was unprecedented. >> go back to -- i want to ask

you about pakistan. pakistan was the gateway for henry kissinger to go secretly into china. how did that come about? >> once nixon decided that he wanted to have sort of opening to china, the real problem is how to do it, because the mistrust and suspicion and the hostility on both sides was so long, the americans could not simply say publicly to the chinese, we want to talk. nor did they have any way of actually getting to the chinese, so what nixon did is talk to people he knew had good relations with the chinese and, for example, in, 69 he talked to charles de gaulle in paris. paris already had a relationship with china saying would you let the chinese we want to talk and he did the same with the lovely dictator of romania. and he finally found a route through pakistan. pakistan was on very good terms with china, partly because china was an enemy of india's which pakistan was also very hostile to. and pakistan was one of the few

countries that actually had direct flights into china. and pakistan had the further advantage at least for this of being a dictatorship, and general khan could do what he wanted pretty well, the president of pakistan, so, that's the channel that was established. and so the americans would send a message saying we'd like to talk and the chinese would send one back, possibly, what do you want to talk about, and another message would go back. no direct communications. no pieces of paper went from washington to beijing or beijing to washington, it went through this intermediary in pakistan or sometimes through the ambassador of pakistan in beijing or in washington. and it was a very, very important route and that's really the way the invitation to send henry kissinger came. >> by the way, what kind of -- i assume you looked at the press. what kind of press did richard nixon get overall? watergate hadn't happened. >> no. >> that was in june of that same year. >> yeah. >> what kind of press w her

>> he got really good press. nixon got the view that the press hated him. he used to go on about the liberal establishment and the press aren't fair to me and they hate me. the press on a whole were pretty favorable to him. and the china trip got amazing coverage. a lot of it was live on prime time television on the u.s. >> because of the time difference. >> because 8:00 in the morning in beijing is 8:00 at night in the u.s. and so quite often people as they were having their ssupper r supper would see the live footage from beijing. the banquet from beijing was shown live on american television, it was the most watched and recognized in american history up to that point and nixon got the press reports every day while he was in china and i think was pretty pleased with them. >> what role did bob haldeman play? >> i think it was frankel from

"the new york times" or it was john chancellor from cbs? >> nbc. >> he said the trip was haldeman's masterpiece. and i think he is right. haldeman had been in pr before he came to work for the white house and he put advanced parties out and there had been technicians in beijing a month before nixon arrived and the reporters went on ahead the day before so they'd be there. they planned the camera angles. they started where the plane would start in the beijing airport. they planned as much as they could. they even had to install a satellite feed because the chinese didn't have the facilities to feed up to a satellite. and so the americans and haldeman had made meticulous preparations. >> did anything go wrong? >> with the -- >> with the whole trip. >> with the whole trip? a few details, minor things. wonderful things if you'll permit me an anecdote. the chinese had done a lot of

furnishing and polishing to get ready for the visit. and the hotel had been all redone and they had wooden toilet seats and they polished them with sumac, and some people are allergic to sumac and a lot of the american press had boils in a very uncomfortable place. there were no major things that went seriously wrong. when nixon went to the ming tombs outside beijing which is one of the great sort of historic monuments of china, here it was february, pretty cold in february, and here were the average chinese citizens radios.picnics and listening to and someone came up and collected all the transistors and all the so-called average families got into buses and taken away. and i think sometimes americans would notice they would see the same average chinese families at different stops and someone pointed this out and li was

rather embarrassed. there were minor hitches. the big thing that nearly took the whole thing off the rails was the uproar over the shanghai communique. >> one of the sections in the back where you list everybody, i count one, two, three, four, five, five people you talked to from canada. john small in ottawa, blair seaborn in ottawa, robert edmons in toronto and john frazier in ottawa. what would those folks have been able to tell you about this trip? >> well, what they told me about was first of all the canadian negotiations which led up to canadian recognition, i was interested in that because it preceded the american one. and what they could also tell me because a number of them had been in the foreign affairs bureau in ottawa, they could tell me the reaction of the americans, because the state department didn't know that nixon and kissinger were thinking of the only to china,

and the official reaction was we wish you wouldn't do it. a couple of them could tell, john frazier, for example, was in beijing when the nixon party arrived, so he gave me sort of an eyewitness account and he also knows chinese and so he could tell me what -- he told me a wonderful story. the night that nixon arrived. the chinese gave a very cool reception because they didn't want i think to look excited by it and they didn't know whether mao would give his sort of approval to it. and the night that the nixon party had arrived in beijing, apparently it was a long news broadcast and john frazier from canada told me this, it was all about the model farms and so-and-so and the women workers of szechwan province had hit a new high. and a little item at the end, by the way, president nixon paid us a visit today. i got some color from the canadians. >> "paris 1919" which i have here, you told us that it had sold well.

there's a lot in there about the ottoman and about independence of the arabs and palestine. for those who didn't read this book and didn't hear our first chat a few years ago, what's in it? >> it's about the paris peace conference at the end of the first world war, what i did was look at the various issues which those three men, roy george of britain on the left, the middle man is george clemenseaux of france and woodrow wilson of the united states and they had a huge range of issues to settle, because the first world war had left europe -- >> the man on the far left in this picture is your great grandfather. >> yes. yes, he is. >> david lloyd george. i'm sorry, go ahead. >> who i never knew, but anyway, it is my great grandfather. but the world was in a mess and what they had to try to do was figure out what to do with it.

and they spent a lot of time of worrying about germany and you mentioned the ottomans, and the turks had a huge empire which included turkey and the balkans and included most of the arab territories in the middle east. suddenly the ottoman's had fallen to pieces and the arab territory was cut loose, and no one knew what to do with them. so this conference and those three men began to try to work out what to do with the arab world, not really taking much account of what the arabs themselves wanted to happen to want and what they in the end did. it's still with us today, they drew the borders, which are there in the modern middle east. >> when we last talked this war wasn't going on, and as you have watched this war, what can we learn from your book "paris 1919" about what has happened over there? >> well, what could have been learned possibly was the problems that iraq sanctions imposed.

because there is an uncanny and rather disturbing parallel between the british experience in iraq and the british essentially created iraq. and there's some justification for it. you can argue that iraq is a geographic unit, but what they did was create a country with a great many different peoples as we now know about the shia/sunni split, we know about the kurds, religious differences and different historical traditions. people in the south are influenced by iran and persia and the people in the north are more influenced by turkey, so they created a country which is a tricky country, and the british thought they could run it cheaply. they thought it would pay for itself. they thought they want to have much trouble. they thought they could find a local who would rule it for them or a few locals who would rule it for them and they also felt with their superior technology they'd have no trouble dealing with any resistance or any opposition, and i do think -- i mean, history never repeats itself, but you do sometimes see

rather disturbing analogies. and i think we can say, i know in retrospect it's always easy, but i think perhaps the united states and the coalition in general went into iraq thinking it would be easier than it was to control it once saddam hussein was gone, and perhaps they should have been a little bit more wary because of the preceden precedence. >> what impact did what happened at the versailles peace conference and the paris meeting in 1919 have on what led to the world as it was in 1972 when nixon and mao met? >> well, what the paris peace conference, that's so interesting, the paris peace conference among other things marked the emergence i think on to the world stage of the united states as a really significant player. the united states was a powerful country, but it was only i think beginning to realize its power as the first world war went on and i think the united states moves on to the world stage in 1919 really determined to make a difference. i mean, really determined that it should use its power to make

a difference in the world. and s seeing i think in paris the emergence of this new power of the united states, which, of course, then becomes the superpower in the years after the second world war. in the case of china what happened at the paris peace conference gave a real spurt to communism. because the chinese were an ally in the first world war of britain and the united states and so on and had joined the war and contributed a fair amount to it in the form of labor which had helped build the trenches in europe. china hoped they would get back german territory that germany had taken from china in the years before the first world war, and they didn't get it back, those territories were given to japan which was an ally of the west in the 1914, 1918 war and the chinese felt it was a cynical betrayal, they felt the west that they looked to with some hope that possibly the west was going to be a friend and that included the united states, of course, had turned on them, betrayed them, and a number of the young and more

radical chinese now looked to another direction for inspiration and friendship and that was to the new revolution in russia, the bolshevik revolution, the communist revolution in hurussia, so i thk you can argue that the communist party has its origins in the paris peace conference of 1919. >> on the cover of your book about paris 1919, we just talking about it, david lloyd george who is over here on this side would be britain, in the middle clemenseaux france and next to him, woodrow wilson. if you put the current people that run those three countries in that spot and you relate that to what happened in our relationships between france, great britain, and the united states over the iraq war, help me out here. any relationship to what happened, brits creating iraq, france, were they against it or for it?

>> the americans didn't want to see france and britain behaving in the middle east like colonial powers. woodrow wilson said we didn't fight this war to hand over people to be colonies of part of one power or another. and his idea was the league of nations which was very much, of course, his greatest hope for the world and the institution he really brought into existence. his idea was that the league of nations would supervise britain and france's running of the middle east or anyone else's running of the middle east for the benefit of the people of the middle east. woodrow wilson felt, and i think he had some reason to think this, that large parts of the middle east were not yet ready for self-government. that's not true of egypt which is always a different question, but there are parts of the middle east who had no experience of self-government and how do you create countries? you can't create countries out of nothing.

woodrow wilson insisted that the mitt middle east be run for the benefit of the people of the middle east. and they wanted to protect their existing colonies. what they were also concerned about was oil, because oil was now beginning to become a very important commodity for domestic fuel but also for industry and for the british it was very important because they were now running their navy off oil, so sources of oil which everybody knew there was some in the middle east, they didn't know how much, but they certainly knew there was something there become very important. and so the british and the french go along with woodrow wilson but really what i think they want to do is run the middle east to suit themselves. i'm trying to think of the present day. i think britain and france have a different attitude towards the middle east today, in fact, i think certainly the british and

french publics are very critical of the american involvement there. as far as the relationship between british, french, and american leaders, there's always talk of a special relationship between the two english speaking leaders between britain and the united states. and you do see britain and united states in iraq. the united states was a little bit more suspicious at that time. >> but we also see britain pulling out now. they had 40,000 troops in there, it won't be too long before they have 5,000 troops in there and we'll end up being there by ourselves. the french have never really supported our efforts there. you say in 1919, they got syria and lebanon. >> the french got syria and lebanon. the british got iraq and palestine which then they divided into palestine and jordan, or trans-jordan and part of pal leestine and part of tha

became israel and the west bank and so on and trans-jordan became jordan. so, the -- i mean, i think the political circumstances are very different today. the british i think are pulling out of iraq. i think the americans are saying they're very pleased about it. dick cheney was on television the other night saying we see this as a very necessary move and a victory. i don't know. i suspect that british public opinion and opinion within the labor party is now i think turning very much against the occupation of iraq. >> so, go to palestine and then to israel and in your book you discuss zionism and the need, then, that they wanted a place -- jews wanted a place to go in the world. >> i mean, zionism was a very powerful movement among the jews of the world. interestingly enough at that time not so much among american jews. american jews really became zionist as a result of hitler and the second world war, but there was a lot of pressure among the jewish people to have

a homeland of their own. there were parts of the world in europe, in russia, for example, where jews simply did not feel safe and were very badly treated and so understandably the world zionist movement came into being looking for a homeland for the jews and understandably the place it looked for a homeland and it toyed with the idea of africa, but understandably the place it looked for homeland was in the historic birthplace of the jewish religion and the jewish people in what was called palestine in those days. >> who was interested in uganda for a jewish state? >> theodore hertzel was interested. it was the heyday of western imperialism, i think there was also talk of mozambique and at one point buying a bit of latin america as well, but the religious ties and the ties of memory back to what was in those days the province of the ottoman empire back to palestine which

contained all the holy places in jerusalem and elsewhere. >> did the brits want israel? >> british opinion was divided but lloyd george was very much for it and so was his foreign secretary. israel maybe not, but they wanted a jewish homeland in palestine, and i think the reason for it was partly sentimental. lloyd george and a lot of them had grown up on the bible and the idea of the jews returning to their homeland was something i think was tremendously -- tremendously emotional for them. i think they also felt that a jewish presence there would help to safeguard the suez canal which was a very important link for the british out to their empire in india and they didn't think, in fact, nor did the zionist think that the local arab population of which was a very backward part of the ottoman empire would matter, they didn't think they would have an opinion, they thought they would be happy to tell their land to the jewish settlers coming in and they didn't, or very few foresaw a problem. the british thought if they

could promise a jewish homeland, it would win over a very influential jewish bankers, for example, in the united states, it would help to make german jews who were very important community in germany crit cal of their own government's war efforts. they did it i think for a whole variety of reasons. >> what was france's attitude about israel? >> france was never enthusiastic, but they went along with britain. >> who was ballford? >> he was the british form secretary. it came in the letter of the lord rothschild, and he said her majesty's government look with favor upon the establishment of a jewish homeland in palestine, and that i think weitzman who was one of the leaders of the world zionist movement and for a lot of the supporters of the jewish presence in palestine, that was really a promise of a state. and they knew it. they knew that a jewish homeland

had the potential to grow into a state, and i think for a lot of the -- a lot of the jews in europe and indeed now for some american jews this was the beginning of a return to the homeland and the possibility of a jewish state where jews would be the majority and be safe. the british i think foolishly didn't recognize some of the difficulties they would get into and they had also at the same time promised arab leaders that if they rose up against the on themans ottomans, there would be an independent arab state or states. what the british are doing a promising arab independence and promising a piece of arab territory to a group from coming from the outside and that leads to the feeling of the arabs have of being trayed and poisoned the relationships. >> what is your sense of what you know of history of what will happen in a place like iraq or

the middle east more broadly or israel? >> well, israel it seems to me is such a deeply divided society now and they've also got a huge demographic problem that the arab populations both within israel and the occupied territories of the west bank and gaza is growing. and i think israel's going to have to make some very, very hard decisions in the near future, but it's difficult because i think israeli politics is now so complex, it's very hard to get clear decisions and very hard if i were an israeli to know what is the best solution for israel, what is the way to go ahead. i think the middle east is a very gloomy prospect indeed. i see iraq sliding further and further into civil war and anarchy and lebanon had 16 or 17 years of civil war, ghastly destruction and the awful thing for iraq is to see it play out. and we're seeing ethnic

cleansing and the sunnis being driven out of shia areas and the shia driven out of sunni areas, and i find it ghastly and very hard to see it happen. one prospect might be the major players, iran and turkey and the sunni arab countries could come together and work out a political solution for iraq. but i don't see that happening. i don't see the united states and iran talking anytime soon and that seems to me is a great problem. >> when do you start, again, at st. anthony's in oxford? >> i start technically at the beginning of july. i'll spend the summer moving. >> what is the average age of students that come to the 250-person graduate school? >> they would be that have done the four years of university, 21, 22, 23, sometimes we get older students. st. anthony's gets students that are working at the foreign office in london and they take a year and think and write and do whatever they want. >> what's the next book?

>> i will do a little book on the uses and abuses of history, because i think history is used and often misused -- >> by? >> by a lot of people. by nationalist leaders that try to create histories where their people have been always right and other people are wrong. to religious leaders who create histories of potential enemies enemies which i don't think necessarily exist and states member and states people who use history saying we must do this now because look what happened in the past when someone didn't do something similar. that's my next project and one day i will do something on yalta. >> you say it's a little book. this book on nixon and mao is almost 400 pages long. the other book i haven't looked at the numbers but it's about 550 pages long. what's a little book? >> a little book is under 100 pages and i'm really going to stick to it this time. i always write too much. >> is random house going to publish it? >> i don't know. i haven't talked to them yet.