Restaurant Rick

“In November, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, Chiao Kuan-hua, delivered a speech to the United Nations that Bush thought “was clearly hostile to the United States, referring to us as bullies etc.” American officials were under strict orders not to reply except in warm generalities, but Bush, still stung by the Taiwan defeat and thinking of domestic U.S. opinion, argued for a stronger response. “If we appear to be pushed around by Peking at every turn,” Bush said, “the whole thing can backfire on the President.” Kissinger was unmoved by Bush’s views. To Kissinger the relationship with Peking was too sensitive and too momentous to be subject to the emotions of a given moment. To have Bush making a contrary case, even internally, was infuriating. The two men met in Washington. “He started off madder than hell,” Bush recalled. “I want to treat you as I do four other ambassadors, dealing directly with you,” Kissinger said, “but if you are uncooperative I will treat you like any other ambassador.” The threat did not sit well with Bush, who pushed back. “I reacted very strongly…and told him that I damn sure had a feel for this country and I felt we had to react” to provocative Chinese rhetoric. For two or three minutes—an eternity in such circumstances—both men spoke candidly and passionately. It was, Bush thought, “a very heated” exchange. Bush insisted he was arguing out of conviction, not self-interest. “I told him very clearly when he got upset that I was not trying to screw things up, I was trying to serve the President [by defending the U.S. against the Chinese attacks] and that it was the only interest I had,” Bush recalled saying. “He ought to get that through his head. I was not trying to get any power.” After hearing Bush out, Kissinger “really cooled down.”
― Jon Meacham, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush