The First Cut is the Deepest: George H.W. Bush and CHIREP at the U.N. 1970-1971

Scholarship on George H.W. Bush tends to regard his career with the State Department in the context of traditional presidential biography. His tenure as Ambassador to the United Nations thus becomes a line-item on a presidential resume with little significance beyond its usefulness as a political credential. This paper situates Bush’s voice as it appears in his personal diary into one of the widescreen events of Sino-American rapprochement, the conclusion in 1971 of the long-simmering conflict over Chinese representation at the U.N. (CHIREP) between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the American-backed Republic of China (ROC). As chief of the U.S. Mission to the U.N. (USUN) in 1971 the fight over CHIREP represents George H.W. Bush’s “first bleeding,” a baptism into both the ecology of international diplomacy and a sustained, imbricate relationship with the People’s Republic of China