The China Threat: Memories, Myths, and Realities in the 1950s

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s views on international relations and his attitude toward Asia make clear how implausible it is that Ike would threaten John F. Kennedy about opening diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Eisenhower gave precedence to Europe, and he saw his most serious challenge as coming from the Soviet Union. His time on the battlefield in World War II had reinforced his conviction that America’s critical disputes and opportunities would arise in Europe. The people he gathered around him—those with whom he argued and to whom he listened, both military and political—strongly agreed with that European bias. This was true of his personal circle and his key foreign policy adviser and executer John Foster Dulles. Christian Herter, who replaced Dulles when he was stricken by cancer, shared similar leanings.

The rest of the world made up an arena for the struggle with Communism, but it was an arena of considerably less consequence. Eisenhower did, as president, face a daunting array of crises, including Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, the Taiwan Strait in 1954–1955 and 1958, the Suez in 1956, Lebanon in 1958, Indonesia in 1958, and Berlin in 1959 as well as longer term conflict with Cuba and in Indochina. Some of these confrontations he imposed upon himself, but he managed them so as to minimize the potential of negative repercussions for his administration. Eisenhower intuitively understood risk management. He knew what could be done and what remained beyond reach. He became an enthusiastic advocate and practitioner of covert action, recognizing the benefits of secrecy and deniability. Much could be done without a major commitment of U.S. power.¹

A man prudent about the relationship between means and ends, Eisenhower never seriously considered challenging Mao Zedong’s hold on power in China. Although his most voluble Republican supporters wanted him to overthrow the Communist regime, and administration rhetoric sometimes suggested he was on the verge of doing so, the reality was much different. Eisenhower refused to divert his presidency into a long and treacherous conflict that could produce a world war. Eisenhower was, after all, convinced that war with China would mean war with the Soviet Union. Moreover, he saw no viable alternatives to Communist rule in China, as he was persuaded of Mao’s absolute control on the mainland and disdainful of Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist Chinese forces in Taiwan.

For decades analysts wondered how carefully Eisenhower’s views needed to be studied since he appeared to play a small role in his own administration. In fact, he was the ultimate arbiter of policy to whom Secretary of State Dulles and others provided recommendations. He reached the final decisions himself.² That Eisenhower played his role forcefully and decisively has become clearer as declassified documents and fresh inquiries rescued the president’s reputation and clarified administration relationships.³ No longer seen as grandfatherly and inconsequential, Eisenhower has emerged as a reasonably sophisticated analyst of world affairs, better informed than many thought at the time.⁴ He recognized competing interests among Communist states and understood that United States policy could be effective only if flexible. Although he worked closely with his secretary of state, meeting with him daily, Ike had his own ideas and remained the source of his foreign policy. As Eisenhower later wrote, Dulles “never made a serious pronouncement, agreement or proposal without complete and exhaustive consultation with me in advance and, of course, my approval.”⁵

Growing up in a rural small town, by the time Eisenhower became president he had developed a relatively sophisticated appreciation of world affairs. Prolonged service in Europe during World War II and as commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) brought intense interaction with key European leaders and high-level American officials. Eisenhower was popular, exuding warmth, geniality, determination, and dedication. Successful military command and military diplomacy imbued him with self-confidence, and he radiated that assurance, effortlessly persuading others to rely on his decisions.

What Eisenhower learned from history was far less significant than what he culled from personal experience and watching people. He wrote in one of several memoirs about reading history as a youth, and his high school classmates predicted he would have a career teaching history at Yale. But Ike’s reading in history had not been of the sort that prepared a young man to understand the complicated interplay of international forces. In fact, he never sought bold interpretations of events and complicated theories of causation. He preferred to surround himself with those who knew how to use power and find practical solutions—military men and high-level officials in Europe during the war, military and businessmen during his presidency.

Eisenhower’s passage to international involvement led through West Point, where he enrolled in 1911. The Point similarly did not open his eyes to the world since it did not demand much of cadets. The curriculum had not yet been retooled—that would follow World War I—and although cadets studied history and mathematics, they spent more time on gunnery, horseback riding, and other military training. Instructors rarely inspired curiosity about international relations, and Eisenhower reserved his enthusiasm for athletic competition.⁶ His ingrained disinterest in intellectual pursuits survived his years as Columbia University’s president and his brother Milton’s university affiliations. He noted in his diary that Congress’s high hurdles for confirmation of administration nominees would drive away the truly talented so that “sooner or later we will be unable to get anybody to take jobs in Washington except business failures, college professors, and New Deallawyers.”⁷ As for his own intellectual curiosity, he told an erstwhile friend and sometime speech writer Emmet Hughes, “he had found through the years… only one particular pleasure in history: the mental exercise of memorizing majestic dates.”⁸

Upon assuming office, Eisenhower emphasized national security issues, including anti-Communism/containment, nuclear deterrence, collective security and opposition to revolution. Determined to protect the homeland from a new surprise attack, he believed that safety required stability in Europe, and he worked hard to advance European unity, promote free trade, and block Communist expansion.

Was he, then, a rabid cold warrior? Recent studies of Eisenhower’s presidency have placed great weight upon the harsh and provocative rhetoric of the president and his administration.⁹ The record, however, is more nuanced and lends itself to conflicting interpretations. As supreme commander in Europe, Eisenhower had cooperated with the Soviets to achieve a rapid victory, but also to avoid differences that might produce renewed fighting. After the war’s end, he shared a widely held assumption that Americans and Soviets could continue to work together. During a visit to Moscow, he found Stalin “benign and fatherly” and told the press he could see “nothing in the future that would prevent Russia and the United States from being the closest possible friends.”¹⁰ His expectation that mutual understanding could endure dissipated slowly, and more because he realized his views did not accord with those of voters than because he had changed his mind about the need for a Grand Alliance. Similarly, in contrast to most conservatives, he sympathized with the idea of a multinational world governing body with its own military capability but abandoned that as his political ambitions grew.¹¹

China, whether Communist or free, neither captured Eisenhower’s imagination nor struck him as an urgent problem compared with Europe. Even when stationed in Asia between 1933 and 1939, China did not occupy his mind. His post in the Philippines under General Douglas MacArthur involved management of an unpredictable, brilliant, and condescending superior rather than engagement with Asia. During World War II, he joined General George C. Marshall’s planning staff at the War Department, utilizing this Asian experience to lay out the immediate requirements for defeating Japan. He repeatedly urged greater effort to assist the Chinese.¹² Quickly, however, he focused his energies on Atlantic rather than Pacific operations. His stated priorities for 1942 did not include objectives in Asia.¹³ By mid-June, his dynamic career had catapulted him past senior officers to take command of the European theater, where he believed the most important battles would be joined. He visited China in 1946 on a tour through Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and he lamented publication of the 1949 China White Paper by the Truman administration, which sought to escape blame for the Communist takeover of China, but these were not significant commitments of his time or attention.¹⁴

As the Korean War raged, Eisenhower devoted his mind to Europe, not Asia, becoming commander of NATO. He had long urged that the Pentagon withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula and opposed introducing Chiang Kai-shek’s forces into the mix, convinced they could not fight effectively. During the campaign, he faced constant questions about ending the conflict and finally played to public emotion when he pledged to go to Korea, a declaration disparaged as “pure show-biz” by war hero General Omar Bradley. His actual feelings about Korea were captured by his frequent observation, “If there must be a war there let it be Asians against Asians.”¹⁵

China did provide a cautionary note. Eisenhower came to see its political hazards and its ability to bring out surprising irresponsibility from American civilian and military officials. He understood the potency of charges that Democratic incompetence and perfidy had compromised China’s future. As Republicans struggled to recapture the White House, the party saw no issue as too minor, no tactic too nasty. Thus China intruded into American domestic politics, carried into the 1952 presidential campaign by Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), the China Lobby, and the Korean War. For the most part, the American people had no interest in Chinese affairs and knew little about Asia in general. But in the fierce contest for political control of the nation, Republicans employed accusation, innuendo, and deceit to prove to voters that the loss of China to Communism had been the work of leaders who acted in disregard of the common interest and the personal welfare of the American people. As part of a broader indictment of Democratic mismanagement, corruption, and vulnerability to Communist subversion, the China debate contributed to the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower tried to remain judicious. He rebuffed ideas about using atomic weapons against an Asian people for the second time. He refused to sanction suggestions that the U.S. government bombard Chinese cities to punish Mao’s intervention in Korea. Nevertheless, as Eisenhower struggled to win voters, especially conservatives in his party, his accusations regarding China policy became harsher and more frequent. He insisted that “the loss of China to the Communists [had been] the greatest diplomatic defeat in the nation’s history” and stridently denounced inept Democratic Party decision making.¹⁶

That Eisenhower succumbed quickly to the combined force of conservative Republicans and China Lobby activists who pressed him to take a harder line toward Red China became further apparent at the start of his administration. In his State of the Union address on February 2, 1953, just days into his presidency, he deliberately gave the impression that he was reversing Truman’s policy on China. He declared that the U.S. 7th Fleet would no longer shield the mainland from Nationalist Chinese attack. American naval vessels would, however, remain in the Formosa Strait,¹⁷ providing a privileged sanctuary to the Kuomintang (KMT).¹⁸ Eisenhower anticipated mollifying Chiang Kai-shek’s American proponents and raising morale in Taiwan while disquieting China’s Communists, especially in Korea.

Ike’s announcement regarding Chiang disturbed more than Beijing, raising complaints from Congress and American allies in Europe. All feared that the United States would be drawn into a new war when Nationalist troops got into trouble.¹⁹ To Eisenhower’s surprise, critics thought the president had become too deeply immersed in Asian affairs, having traveled to Korea as president-elect and ostensibly putting China issues at the top of his presidential agenda. Ike, however, had no such intention. He expressed his bewilderment to a close confidant just days after the State of the Union speech:

The new policy of unleashing Chiang, as the press choose to call it, therefore, only appeared to signal that Eisenhower would be a firm supporter of Taiwan and a belligerent opponent of China. Eisenhower approached administration obligations from the point of view of a five-star general and a veteran risk manager as well as a politician and fiscal conservative: judging dangers and opportunities, understanding international situations and behavior through this mix of perspectives. On China the combination dictated moderation, not gambling. Eisenhower insisted that a war waged against Beijing would not only be dangerous and foolhardy but would consume massive resources better directed toward dealing with the primary antagonist in Moscow.

Appointment of Charles E. Wilson as secretary of defense provided clear evidence of Eisenhower’s absolute confidence in his own military intuition and determination to be his own national security adviser. He found Wilson narrow and simplistic on strategic issues but needed the man’s organizational expertise, accrued as president of General Motors, to run the vast Defense Department bureaucracy.²¹ For decisions on the uses of military power, the president-general planned to rely on himself.

When his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur W. Radford joined with Wilson to urge an Asia-first policy, Eisenhower rejected their advice, secure in his own conviction that Europe’s security took preeminence.²² Ike could not have been shocked by Radford’s position. The admiral’s appointment had more than a little to do with the protective coloration that his advocacy of China Lobby sentiment could provide for the Atlantic-directed president. Eisenhower would, however, frequently discount or rebuff Radford’s views on Asia. Radford’s aggressive recommendations regarding China, in particular, did not receive presidential support.²³

The president similarly ignored the views of his vice president. Tethered to Richard Nixon because of domestic politics, Eisenhower did not trust him. The president tape-recorded their conversations in case Nixon later misrepresented something said in the Oval Office.²⁴ He did not consider Nixon an original thinker, finding his views on many issues predictable and unhelpful.²⁵ He had no qualms about using Nixon to browbeat others so that his own positive message would not be sullied. It is not surprising that Nixon described Ike as “devious.”²⁶ To Cyrus Eaton, banker and frequent critic of U.S. foreign policies, Ike would remark that he had repeatedly been forced to suppress Nixon’s enthusiasm for sending “American troops to every continent to destroy Communism by force.”²⁷ Eisenhower on occasion ostentatiously ignored or harshly berated his vice president; one observer recalled of Nixon that “he came back from humiliating talks with Eisenhower almost in tears.”²⁸ Indeed, Ike had become sufficiently disenchanted that by 1956 he almost pushed Nixon off the reelection ticket.

Eisenhower’s presidency reflected his ideological crusade against Communism, and in that sense men like Wilson, Radford, and Nixon belonged in his administration. He eagerly grasped the tools of political and psychological warfare, which he wielded in places as diverse as Iran and Guatemala as well as the United States.²⁹ Eisenhower, Dulles, Wilson, Radford, and Nixon saw the world as a dangerous place and wanted the American people and the nation’s allies to remain alert to ideological and security challenges. What some historians have emphasized as a relentless focus on apocalyptic visions of the future and a governing style in which apocalypse management substituted for reasoned analysis, however, exaggerates the importance of this one aspect of the Eisenhower administration’s attitudes and policies.³⁰

Much more must be understood about the policies and practices of the 1950s. The records of Eisenhower’s conversations, his memos, and his diary show another side of the president, as he repeatedly offered pragmatic responses to problems even when he knew that politics would prevent him from following through. These confidential for a did not gain him political advantage. He did not need to express flexible views or contemplate alternative directions. He often articulated harsh judgments that were of a piece with his public declarations, but more interesting are the times when he distanced himself from those views. Eisenhower did not prove to be a bold innovator, but he did allow himself to air the frustration of a man trapped by his times. Moreover, he complained that Dulles worried too much about enemies who might seek to undermine him and the White House as they had devastated Truman and Acheson.³¹

China policy should be seen not simply as one among many cases of anti-Communist confrontation or American statesmen failing to understand the larger world around them. Rather, China policy reflected Eisenhower’s strengths and weaknesses as a president, diplomat, and military leader. The muddled approach to China, as this book demonstrates, provides the clearest picture of Ike’s logic, intentions, and disappointments.

To begin with, Eisenhower never planned to unleash Chiang Kai-shek. He did not intend to allow the United States to be dragged into a war because of irresponsible initiatives by the Nationalists. He accepted small-scale raids on and reconnaissance against China, begun in the Truman period, but worried about more aggressive maneuvers like those encouraged by William C. Chase, chief of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Taipei, including interdiction of shipping and capture of mainlanders.³²

As the administration became more familiar with the dynamics of the region and disturbed by Beijing’s behavior, Eisenhower stiffened his stance but never gave up his basic preference for a constructive policy. Concerned about morale in Taiwan, he opted to use American forces during two separate Strait crises to preserve a bastion for the Free Chinese. Conversely, at National Security Council (NSC) meetings, he suggested that China ought to be in the United Nations and that the United States should trade with the Chinese.

He could and did, in private functions, detail good reasons to open diplomatic relations.³³ He lamented that Americans since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency had considered diplomatic recognition equivalent to approval of a government, which made his recognition of China impossible.³⁴ To India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru he remarked in 1956 that “he would like to get our people over their currently very adverse attitude toward Red China.”³⁵ Moreover, he worried about Chiang Kai-shek’s ability to plunge the United States into an unwanted war. He felt about relations with Chiang much as he did about dealings with the similarly difficult Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser: “we frequently find ourselves victims of the tyrannies of the weak” and “give to the little nations opportunities to embarrass us greatly.”³⁶

Simultaneously, this political general could not have been more sensitive to the dynamics of democratic politics. He became the first president to set up a congressional liaison staff in the White House, met often with members, and instructed his staff to be sensitive to the pulse of the legislative branch.³⁷ Aware of the Republican position on China, he concluded that he must not defy those party prohibitions against a new approach. He accepted these strictures even though he deplored China Lobby efforts to manipulate the U.S. government. About William Knowland (R-CA), the so-called senator from Formosa, Eisenhower confided in his diary that he found the Senator extraordinarily “stupid” and told his close friend General Alfred M. Gruenther that the Republican majority leader lacked an independent foreign policy position other than “‘to develop high blood pressure’ whenever he says ‘Red China.’”³⁸ In fact, Eisenhower’s contempt extended to the entire right wing of the Grand Old Party, whose members he disparaged as “the most ignorant people now living in the United States.” Through most of his presidency, both houses of Congress were under Democratic Party control, and Eisenhower found himself working quite smoothly with Democrats and moderate Republicans Sam Rayburn (D-TX), Lyndon Johnson (D-TX), Charles Halleck (R-IN), and Everett Dirksen (R-IL)rather than the Republican right. Eisenhower saw Halleck as a useful “team player” and felt that Dirksen shared his own “middle-of-the-road philosophy.” The House and Senate Democratic leaders were welcomed at the White House for more practical reasons. Eisenhower actually did not trust Rayburn and Johnson, disliking the latter as “superficial and opportunistic,” a “small man… [lacking] depth of mind… [and] breadth of vision,” but their power on the Senate floor commanded presidential respect.³⁹

The president enjoyed policy debate and often looked to advisors other than John Foster and Allen Dulles in formulating his foreign policies. In fact, the Dulles brothers were, most often, likely to confirm Eisenhower’s preexisting views rather than challenge him. Eisenhower was, however, less bellicose, less moralistic, and more judicious than his secretary of state. Not always a patient man, Ike thought Foster Dulles boring, his briefings “frequently too long and in too much [historical] detail.” Emmet Hughes, presidential speech writer, observed Ike’s impatience with Dulles, noting “the slow glaze across the blue eyes, signaling the end of all mental contact” when Dulles spoke.⁴⁰ As for Allen, the intelligence chief who provided regular briefings, Ike found his remarks “too philosophical, laborious and tedious.”⁴¹ Neither of the pedantic Dulles brothers, with whom Ike often grew irritated, built a personal rapport with the president.⁴² Ike used their obvious talents, often having Foster deliver the strident ideological defenses of policy that the times demanded, but rarely relied exclusively on their advice.

Instead Eisenhower turned to people who had experience in the business world or the military that made them no-nonsense problem solvers. He relaxed with individuals who shared his moderate view of international affairs rather than the rabid right-wing philosophy he had to wrestle with in the public arena. They were virtually all Atlanticists who saw China through the lens of European, not regional, priorities.

General Lucius Clay, for instance, spent much of his military career wrestling with German problems. He worked as Eisenhower’s deputy heading American occupation forces there and oversaw the Berlin airlift. A private citizen and successful businessman during Eisenhower’s presidency, and unwilling to become Ike’s “Colonel House… or… Harry Hopkins,” Clay nevertheless could exercise considerable influence. “Ike and Lucius were very, very close. They understood each other instinctively… were on the same wavelength,” according to the chairman of the Republican Party Leonard Hall.⁴³ Eisenhower turned over choice of his cabinet to Clay, relying implicitly on his judgment. Clay engaged Ike on policy and did not hesitate to argue with the president. He persuaded Ike to take seriously the threat from the Bricker Amendment, which sought to circumscribe presidential authority by increasing that of Congress. Under its provisions, Congress would have been able to annul executive agreements and refuse to activate treaties.

Clay did not play any significant role on China policy but informally could say more to the president than many others since he had had more contact with the Chinese. His memories were not happy ones. He recalled wartime China vividly and with distaste. Responsible in 1943 for arranging payment for seven airbases slated for construction in China, Clay was angered when the Nationalist Chinese pressed Washington to pay $2 billion for airfields that Clay valued at $200 million.⁴⁴ When Nationalist leaders refused to revalue their currency from 20:1 closer to the street price of 120:1, Clay advocated curtailing U.S. military operations on the mainland. He later dismissed Republican attacks on the Truman administration for losing China, convinced as he was that “the clear answer was Chiang Kai-shek.”⁴⁵

Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, who joined the administration a stranger to Ike on Lucius Clay’s recommendation, quickly became a central figure in the cabinet. Charming and candid, Humphrey frequently played golf and bridge with the president. Eisenhower sought Humphrey’s advice about sound fiscal policies and made the treasury secretary a permanent member of the National Security Council even though he was more stridently anti-Communist and decidedly more isolationist than Eisenhower. Explaining Humphrey’s usefulness, the president’s brother Milton Eisenhower noted that the treasury secretary was “an isolationist who is learning that isolationist policies won’t work.”⁴⁶ On China, Humphrey’s proved a voice of caution. For instance, in late 1954 he joined Defense Secretary Wilson and National Security Advisor Robert Cutler in opposing a commitment to defending the offshore islands, worrying that such peripheral commitments unnecessarily unbalanced the budget.⁴⁷

General Walter Be dell Smith had been Ike’s chief of staff, “Eisenhower’s son-of-a-bitch,” during World War II. Subsequently Smith put his skills as “a specialist in psychological bullying” to work as Truman’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the wake of the intelligence community’s inability to predict the Soviet atomic bomb test and the start of the Korean War.⁴⁸ In the weeks after his October 7, 1950, assumption of the helm at CIA, events in Korea blindsided him when, contrary to intelligence analysis, the Chinese entered the war. Smith was further dismayed by the CIA loss of hundreds of would-be spies sent into Communist China after 1951and false reports of a third force just waiting for CIA support to rise up against Mao Zedong.⁴⁹

How much Smith intervened in Dulles’s decisions after Eisenhower made him under secretary of state is unclear, but he monitored the secretary and department for the president. He could, according to Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson, get access to the president at any time, and diplomat Robert Murphy believed that Smith could offer criticism and suggestions on policy more freely than Dulles.⁵⁰ Smith came to State already wary of one Dulles—Allen had been an unruly figure working for Smith at the CIA—and found that he neither liked nor respected the other Dulles brother, Foster, for whom he now worked. Moreover, Dulles used him primarily to carry out decisions rather than help originate policies or coordinate decision making. Accordingly, Smith’s stay at State proved short. Until he left, however, Smith and Eisenhower shared views on pending decisions by telephone several times a day.

Eisenhower and Smith remained in regular contact when Smith headed the U.S. delegation at the 1954 Geneva conference on Korea and Indochina, where he wrestled with the Soviet and Communist Chinese delegations. Eisenhower trusted Smith’s judgment, values, moderation, and diplomatic skills and wanted to be kept apprised of conference developments. Thus he read about Smith’s unhappiness with Chinese lack of “restraint” and “intransigence.” He similarly knew that Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had sympathized with Smith’s complaint, observing “you must… remember that China is always going to be China, she is never going to be European.”⁵¹ This mattered to the Russian, and it mattered to Ike.

Al Gruenther, also a Europeanist, had been one of Eisenhower’s key planners during World War II and served as the head of NATO in the 1950s. Eisenhower had come to see Gruenther as brilliant, loyal, discreet, and effective, recording that he was an “indispensable” man.⁵² They frequently exchanged letters, and after 1956, when Gruenther returned to Washington, D.C., they regularly played bridge. Ike again thought of him as indispensable, noting “a talk with him after a hard day’s work never failed to give me a lift.”⁵³ Gruenther, however, knew little about China; his limited exposure had involved discussions with Douglas MacArthur’s about efforts to prevent the fall of Taiwan, and in contrast to Eisenhower, Gruenther became an admirer of the general.⁵⁴

John J. McCloy has less often been labeled an Eisenhower intimate and has denied that he served a significant role in advising the president. A lawyer, onetime assistant defense secretary, banker, and businessman who chaired the Ford Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations, McCloy fit the profile of wealthy and influential friends who populated Eisenhower’s informal cabinet. Several times he was close to becoming secretary of state: in 1952, when Eisenhower preferred him over Dulles; in 1958, when Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, along with Lucius Clay and Milton Eisenhower tried to convince Eisenhower to dump Dulles and put McCloy in his place; and in 1959, upon Dulles’s resignation, when Al Gruenther promoted McCloy instead of Herter for the job.⁵⁵

Although a Europeanist like Eisenhower’s other confidants, McCloy had definite opinions on Chinese affairs, which he frankly imparted to Eisenhower and Dulles. These views had been shaped by McCloy’s natural pragmatism, his negative wartime China-aid experiences, and his exposure to a bitter George C. Marshall after the general’s failed mediation attempt in China in 1945–1947. Marshall, McCloy recalled, thought that the idea of “ostracizing China” just because it was Communist was senseless and harmful. McCloy agreed and believed Eisenhower’s China policy to be mistaken. Thus, when during the 1958 Strait crisis Dulles consulted McCloy and sought to have him persuade Chiang Kai-shek to leave the offshore islands, McCloy faced a dilemma. He wanted to rationalize policy and felt that the administration should push for more than simple evacuation but concluded that Dulles already held fixed ideas, Chiang could not be moved, and that he, McCloy, did not want to become a target of the China Lobby.⁵⁶

Finally, Andrew J. Goodpaster served as Eisenhower’s most essential aide, performing daily national security and intelligence briefings, handling paper flow, taking notes, acting as liaison to the military and intelligence community, and providing advice. Ike included Goodpaster in virtually every conversation, consultation, and deliberation whether with the cabinet, NSC, or ad hoc groups and at all levels of classification. Goodpaster recalled, “many times the specific things that I would take up to the president would be matters of discussion between us.”⁵⁷ He never acted as a passive facilitator, noting “I talked with him often in very broad terms about what kind of an effort should the United States project in the world and what should be our relationship with Russia… rising problems such as out in the Far East.” For the president he filled “the role of a confidential adviser,” Goodpaster asserted, “and he, I think, looked to me to, sort of, understand the problems and put them together in some way that we could come to grips with them. And often… when he had a question, I would suggest how that might be handled by the government.”⁵⁸

Goodpaster knew no more about Asia than did most others in Eisenhower’s inner circle. Like Ike, he was from the Midwest and West Point; he later obtained master’s degrees in civil engineering and politics as well as an international relations doctorate at Princeton University after serving in North Africa and Italy during the war. He had been a favorite of Eisenhower’s at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe and at NATO, the general thinking the younger man brilliant and enjoying his loyalty and admiration. Goodpaster’s exposure to Asia began with service on the planning team for the occupation of Japan. In 1955 as the Taiwan Strait crisis unfolded, Eisenhower dispatched Goodpaster to the Pacific commander in chief, Admiral Felix Stump, to interrogate him on the defensibility of the offshore islands, Nationalist and Communist capabilities, and possible U.S. strategy. Goodpaster shared Eisenhower’s impression that the Chinese “were extremely cautious” so as not to provoke Washington.⁵⁹

Eisenhower, of course, turned to others as well, but they would have had less reason or opportunity to talk with Ike about Asia. His brother Milton spent the 8 years of the administration traveling in Latin America as the president’s personal representative, conveying administration views on developments there as well as seeking to inform the White House about policy changes that would promote prosperity, democracy, and cooperation.⁶⁰ William Robinson, the publisher of the New York Herald Tribune who became president of Coca-Cola during Ike’s first term, seemed ever present but was mostly a sounding board for domestic issues and politics. Diplomat Robert Murphy had no personal relationship with the president but repeatedly served him as a special envoy. Murphy met Chiang Kai-shek in 1943 and admired him, seeing his Taiwan regime as a crucial Cold War outpost against Red China for which Washington should show sympathy and support. By 1959, however, he urged a flexible policy on the offshore islands regarding the degree to which the United States would render Chiang support.⁶¹

Beyond these relationships, three other factors shaped Eisenhower’s judgments about China. First, Eisenhower entered office under great pressure to end combat on the Korean peninsula. The war continued to take lives, jeopardize regional stability, frighten Japan and Taiwan, complicate the French colonial campaign in Indochina, and drain resources available for the defense of Europe. To bring peace, Eisenhower visited Korea as president-elect and once inaugurated threatened Beijing with nuclear attack and a Nationalist Chinese assault on, or blockade of, China’s coast. Eisenhower privately thought the use of atomic bombs in China, as advocated by General Douglas MacArthur, among others, horrifying, but though he could not imagine dropping them, especially in Asia, he saw making nuclear threats as an effective tactic in pursuit of negotiations.⁶² The fact that the threats were not successful, that Beijing did not agree to talk as a result of nuclear coercion, is irrelevant.⁶³

Second, domestic politics played a formative as well as limiting role. Eisenhower pursued policies toward China that he did not believe in wholeheartedly because he thought public opinion demanded a hard-line stance toward Beijing. He did not explore the depth or breadth of opinion on China, and rather than educate Americans, Eisenhower allowed the right wing to sweep away reasoned public discussion and debate. In part this reflected his effort to protect his legislative agenda and in part to shield his Republican Party. But it also revealed the minimal emphasis he placed on China, which meant he had no interest in sacrificing a lot to change the relationship.

Finally, his Atlantic orientation sometimes led Ike to misread the power of nationalism in Asia.⁶⁴ He could write to Treasury Secretary Humphrey that “few individuals understand the intensity and force of the spirit of nationalism that is gripping all peoples of the world today.… It is my personal conviction that almost any one of the new-born states of the world would far rather embrace Communism… than to acknowledge the political domination of another government even though that brought to each citizen a far higher standard of living.”⁶⁵ He also recognized diversity within the Communist world and appreciated the importance of independence to people, such as the Chinese, who had been exploited by imperialist powers. Therefore, he believed that Mao maintained some freedom from strict Kremlin control. Nevertheless, when elites crossed the line to follow Communist precepts, Eisenhower thought they had abandoned their people. In the case of China, he could imagine conditions under which he might work with the leadership, and he sympathized with their anti-imperialism. At the same time, he failed to see why Beijing found his support for Chiang Kai-shek’s remnant regime intolerable.

He would also fail to see why the Chinese Nationalists grew increasingly unhappy with him. Chiang and his advisers took unleashing seriously. Their expectations of support from Eisenhower substantially exceeded what the new administration proposed to provide. They were puzzled when the parameters of Republican assistance proved more restrictive than Truman’s. Chiang found that a consensus existed in Washington that a free Chinese government must survive as an alternative to Beijing’s Communism and as affirmation of U.S. credibility. But many in the U.S. government had a jaundiced view of the Kuomintang and were divided on basic issues, such as the nature of Sino-Soviet relations and the durability of a trade embargo. In some of these contradictions, Eisenhower took positions that would have made the Chinese Nationalists very unhappy had they known the truth.