Triangular Diplomacy and the U.S. systemic cycle of accumulation (1969-1975)

Abstract

This research aims to examine the possible correlation between the Triangular Diplomacy of the US, China, and the USSR (1969-1975) and the transition from the phase of material expansion of the capitalist world-economy – led by US hegemony – to the phase of financial expansion. This analysis is grounded in Giovanni Arrighi’s theory of Systemic Cycles of Accumulation (SCAs). Based on this framework, we verify that the Triangular Diplomacy strategy, engineered by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, leveraged the Sino-Soviet tension to secure American interests, given that the two socialist powers had severed relations in 1969. Conversely, China and the USSR perceived a potential crisis of US hegemony, evidenced by factors such as the end of the Bretton Woods system, the US setback in the Vietnam War, and the 1973 Oil Crisis. Therefore, we advance the hypothesis that the rapprochement between the United States and the socialist states signifies the structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy from the phase of material expansion to financial expansion, a shift perceived by the actors in the early 1970s. This transformation is represented by the decrease in the export of commodity-capital and the systemic necessity of transitioning toward financial capital.