PREFACE
1. Richard Immerman makes a convincing case for examining the centrality of individuals and reviews the use of psychology in the analysis of foreign policy in a compelling essay, “Psychology,” in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 103–22. See also the classic Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), and the discussion of biography and history in the symposium published in 2009: Lois W. Banner, “Biography as History,” American Historical Review 114 (June 2009), 579–86; Alice Kessler-Harris, “Why Biography?” American Historical Review 114 (June 2009), 625–30; Kate Brown, “A Place in Biography for Oneself,” American Historical Review 114 (June 2009), 596–605.
INTRODUCTION
1. Those present at the meeting were Secretary of State Christian Herter, Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson, and White House chief of staff Wilton Persons on the Eisenhower side and their opposite numbers from the incoming administration, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, C. Douglas Dillon, and freelance adviser and lawyer Clark Clifford.
2. Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President (New York: Random House, 1991), 345. Dean Rusk asserted all had been present when Ike threatened JFK. Dean Rusk, As I Saw It (New York: Penguin, 1990), 428.
3. For instance see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 479–80. Kennedy foreign policy analyst Noam Kochavi calls the contradiction between this remark and Eisenhower’s record “a vexing riddle.” Noam Kochavi, A Conflict Perpetuated: China Policy During the Kennedy Years(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), 18n23.
4. Rusk, As I Saw It, 283.
5. According to David Ormsby-Gore, minister of state in the British Foreign Office, this exchange actually occurred on December 6, 1960, and severely disturbed Kennedy. Kennedy confided in Ormsby-Gore that he might nevertheless act on China in six to nine months if his political situation improved. Kennedy’s motives when confiding in Ormsby-Gore, however, could have had little to do with Eisenhower since (1) British pressure for a different U.S. policy on China had been constant, as Kennedy knew; (2) Kennedy consistently blamed others for his inaction on China; and (3) in 1961, a leak, allegedly from the British to an Associated Press reporter, claiming China policy had changed angered Kennedy and, according to the British Ambassador, damaged U.S.–U.K. relations. ﹟1525 Cable P. Dean, December 7, 1960, FO371/152108, provided to this author by Professor Matthew Jones, University of Nottingham; ﹟158446 Minute John W. Russell, April 13, 1961, FC2251/83, British Foreign Office Records, Public Records Office, Kew, Great Britain (hereafter PRO). Note also that Eisenhower’s diary entry for December 6, 1960, mentions the Far East in passing and does not suggest conversation about China. Robert Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 379–83.
6. Similar confusion surrounded a promise Eisenhower supposedly made to defend South Vietnam. Fred I. Greenstein and Richard H. Immerman, “What Did Eisenhower Tell Kennedy about Indochina? The Politics of Misperception,” Journal of American History 79 (September 1992), 569.
7. Telephone Call, Dwight D. Eisenhower with Ben Fairless, August 19, 1960, Box 52, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Presidential Papers, 1953–1961 Ann Whitman File, Diary Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas (hereafter DDEL).
8. Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power (New York: Touchstone, 1994), 22.
9. Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 640 (quote); Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 163.
10. Greenstein and Immerman, “What Did Eisenhower Tell Kennedy about Indochina?,” 576.
12. Declassified documents indicate just one mention of China in the general review of issues and that in conjunction with discussion of Laos. For instance, see Memorandum for the Record, January 19, 1961, Box 2, folder: Kennedy, John F., 1960–1961 (2), Eisenhower: Post-presidential Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston, Massachusetts (hereafter JFKL).
13. Jim F. Heath, Decade of Disillusionment (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 137.
14. Clifford seems to have been prone to interpreting situations to please the president he was serving at any given time. For instance, he probably misled Kennedy about Eisenhower’s changing impressions of the young senator, telling him that after the first, December 6th, session, Eisenhower was “overwhelmed” by JFK’s “understanding of world problems, the depth of his questions, the grasp of the issues, and the keenness of his mind.” Clifford, Counsel to the President, 342. Eisenhower’s skepticism about JFK, however, endured.
1. The significance of Eisenhower’s personality, experience, perceptions, beliefs, and assumptions is manifest in the discussion that follows. For a review of the various methods of analyzing the qualities of a leader’s thinking and decision making, see Richard H. Immerman, “Psychology,” in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 103–22.
2. Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower and Dulles: Who Made the Decisions?” Political Psychology 1 (Autumn 1979), 21–38; Fred I. Greenstein. The Hidden-Hand Presidency (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 80, 87–90; Robert Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 350; Roscoe Drummond and Gaston Coblentz, Duel at the Brink (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 20–22.
3. Traditional views of Eisenhower as largely incompetent in foreign affairs were written by Marquis Childs, Eisenhower: Captive Hero (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958), and Richard Rovere, The Eisenhower Years: Affairs of State (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956). Early revisionism appeared with Murray Kempton’s “The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Esquire 68 (September 1967), 108–9, 156, and Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970). Since then there have been influential books by Greenstein, Hidden-Hand; Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981); Robert Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Herbert S. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (New York: Macmillan, 1972); and Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984). For assessments of some of the revisionists, see Gary Reichard, “Eisenhower as President: The Changing View,” South Atlantic Quarterly 77 (Summer 1978), 265–81; Vincent P. DeSantis, “Eisenhower Revisionism,” Review of Politics 38 (April 1976), 190–207; Mary S. McAuliffe, “Eisenhower the President,” Journal of American History 68 (December 1981), 625–32; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “The Ike Age Revisited,” Reviews in American History 11 (March 1983), 1–11; Jeff Broadwater, “President Eisenhower and the Historians: Is the General in Retreat?” Canadian Review of American Studies 22 (Summer 1991), 47–59; Stephen G. Rabe, “Eisenhower Revisionism: The Scholarly Debate,” in Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 300–325.
4. Post-revisionism sees Eisenhower as neither inconsequential nor unusually wise but, rather, as a strong leader who was often wrong. For examples, see H. W. Brands, Jr., “The Age of Vulnerability: Eisenhower and the National Insecurity State,” American Historical Review 94 (October 1989); Robert J. McMahon, “Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism,” Political Science Quarterly 101 (1986), 453–73; Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns. The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
5. Eisenhower to Swede Hazlett, letter, October 23, 1954, in Robert Griffith, ed., Ike’s Letters to a Friend, 1941–1958 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984), 134.
6. William Manchester, American Caesar (New York: Dell, 1978), 68, 129; Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 12–13.
7. Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, 226. Apparently he took the presidency with several conditions, including that he not be involved in curriculum issues. David M. Kennedy, “Soldier President,” New York Times Book Review, October 24, 1999, 10.
8. Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power (New York: Dell, 1963), 18.
9. For instance, see Ira Chernus, Apocalypse Management (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 1–28.
10. Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, 43; Chris Tudda, The Truth Is Our Weapon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 31.
11. Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, 64–65; Jeff Broad water, Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 23.
12. Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, 40, 42–43
13. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945 (New York: Vintage, 1986), 82.
14. Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, 174.
15. Michael D. Pearlman, Truman and MacArthur (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 253–54; Steven Casey, Selling the Korean War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 335.
16. Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, 108; Broadwater, Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade, 24.
17. Formosa was the Portuguese name for the island that the Chinese called Taiwan. In the 1950s, the only politically acceptable term of reference was Formosa. To call it Taiwan was to identify as a Communist sympathizer.
18. Discussion of lifting the ban against significant Nationalist attacks on the mainland began under the Truman administration, but officials decided it would not be a good idea. 793.00/10-852 H. M. Holland (CA) to Martin (CA), Box 4202, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59 (hereafter RG 59), National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NA); 793.00/10=2052 Memorandum of conversation (Memcon), Acheson with McConaughy, in ibid.
19. Humphrey to Josiah Brill of Brill & Brill (legal firm), February 11, 1953, Hubert Humphrey Papers, Senatorial Files, 23 L9 2F, Box 93, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota (hereafter MHS); State Department Study of Reactions to Unleashing, drafted by Charlton Ogburn, February 11, 1953, General Records of the Department of State, Records of the Office of Chinese Affairs, Box 40, “410 Chinese Nationalist Armed Forces” (hereafter RG 59, CA); “Most of Europe’s Press Criticizes Formosa Step as New War Risk,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February3, 1953. The British had hoped to preserve neutralization but failed. FO371/105196 (FC1018/5) ﹟206, R. Makins, Washington, January 31, 1953, PRO. British diplomats doubted that the Chinese would feel compelled to shift large numbers of troops to the coast. FO371/105196 (FC 1018/25), F. S. Tomlinson, Washington, to R. H. Scott, London, February 2, 1953, PRO.
20. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953–56 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 139–40.
21. Greenstein, Hidden-Hand, 83–85. Eisenhower also was annoyed by Wilson’s public statements, which embarrassed the administration. Eisenhower Memo for the Files, March 12, 1955, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, Diary Series, Box 10, file: March 1955 (2), Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas (hereafter DDEL).
22. Wilson’s appointment was proposed by Ike’s search team of Lucius Clay and Hebert Brownell, but he selected Radford himself. Ambrose, Eisenhower, 23, 30.
23. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 464; Robert J. Donovan, Eisenhower: The Inside Story (New York: Harper, 1956), 19.
24. Ambrose, Eisenhower, 202–3.
26. Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Pocket Book, 1962), 172.
27. Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 321.
28. Wills, Nixon Agonistes, 31.
29. Kenneth A. Osgood., “Form before Substance: Eisenhower’s Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy,” Diplomatic History 24 (Summer 2000), 405–34.
30. Chernus, Apocalypse Management, 1–28.
31. Hughes, Ordeal of Power, 98.
32. 793.001/2853, Memcon, F. S. Tomlinson (British Counselor) with Assistant Secretary Allison, Box 4203, RG 59 NA; Major General William C. Chase, Chief MAAG, to General Chow Chih-jou, Chief of General Staff, Taipei, February 5, 1953, China Post Files, Record Group 84, Box 2, file: 11 Offensive Uses of Chinese Forces 1953–1956, NA (hereafter RG 84).
33. Robert J. Donovan, Confidential Secretary (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1988), 69.
34. Legislative Supplementary Notes, May 19, 1953, Eisenhower Papers, Box 4, file: Staff Notes, January–December, 1953, DDEL.
35. Memorandum of conversation with Nehru, December 19, 1956, Whitman File, Eisenhower Diary, Box 20, December 1956, Eisenhower Papers; Memorandum of discussion, 271st National Security Council (NSC) Meeting, December 23, 1955, Whitman File, NSC Series, Eisenhower Papers, DDEL.
36. Ambrose, Eisenhower, 333.
37. Anna K. Nelson, “John Foster Dulles and the Bipartisan Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 102 (Spring 1987), 43–44.
38. Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, 165; Ambrose, Eisenhower, 118.
39. Greenstein, Hidden-Hand, 28, 79–80; Ferrell, Eisenhower Diaries, 239.
40. Hughes, Ordeal of Power, 47.
41. Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 449.
42. Greenstein, Hidden-Hand, 120; Grose, Gentleman Spy, 449.
43. Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 614, 621.
44. Smith, Clay, 163, 173, 621.
45. Smith, Clay, 173–80 (quote 174).
46. H. W. Brands Jr., Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 40.
47. Robert Accinelli, Crisis and Commitment: United States Policy toward Taiwan, 1950–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 189; Anna K. Nelson, “The Importance of Foreign Policy Process: Eisenhower and the National Security Council,” in Stephen E. Ambrose and Gunter Bischoff, eds., Eisenhower: A Centenary Assessment (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1995), 120. Note that Cutler was not a national security adviser in the mode of Henry Kissinger, but rather an organizational and information coordinator.
48. Mark Perry, Partners in Command (New York: Penguin, 2007), 114.
49. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 62.
50. Brands, Cold Warriors, 76.
51. 751G.00/5–2354 Dulte 101 Memo Smith-Molotov Meeting, May 22, 1954, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS) 1952–1954, vol. 16: The Geneva Conference: Korea and Indochina (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), 897.
52. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 16, 23.
54. Manchester, American Caesar, 585.
55. Kai Bird, The Chairman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 429–30, 447, 477;John J. McCloy Oral History, DDEL and Columbia University, December 18, 1970, OH-221, 19.
56. Bird, The Chairman, 474–75; McCloy Oral History, 24.
57. Andrew J. Goodpaster Oral History, OH-544, DDEL, November 7, 1983, 5.
59. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 477; Goodpaster Oral History, OH-37, DDEL, September 7, 1967, 110.
60. Milton Eisenhower, The Wine Is Bitter (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 187–89.
61. Robert Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors (New York: Pyramid Books, 1965), 391–93; Letter, Murphy to Irwin, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, September 28, 1959, FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 19: China (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1996), 599.
62. Regarding nuclear threats, see Daniel Calingaert, “Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 11 (June 1988), 177–202; Rosemary Foot, “Nuclear Coercion and the Ending of the Korean Conflict,” International Security 13 (Winter 1988–1989), 92–112; Edward C. Keefer, “President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the End of the Korean War,” Diplomatic History 10 (Summer 1986), 267–89. Simultaneously, there were concerns that a Korean settlement coupled with the Communist peace offensive of 1953 would weaken the coherence and resolve of the free world and China’s isolation. Memo, Holland (CA) to Martin, Hope, and Jenkins (CA), May 11, 1953, Records of the Office of Chinese Affairs (hereafter CA Records), folder: 320 International Political Relations, RG 59, NA; Walter Robertson in oral history interview, “John Foster Dulles and the Far East,” July 17, 1964, 18, John Foster Dulles Papers, 1860–1988, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University (hereafter Mudd); Memcon, V. K. Wellington Koo, Chinese Ambassador, with Adlai Stevenson, February 15, 1953, Box 187, V. K. Wellington Koo Papers, Columbia University Manuscript Library, New York (hereafter Columbia).
63. He Di, “Paper or Real Tiger: America’s Nuclear Deterrence and Mao Zedong’s Response,” 6–10, paper prepared for the international conference “New Evidence on the Cold War in Asia,” Hong Kong, January 9–12, 1996. Zhang Shu Guang notes that the Chinese discounted the likelihood because of world opinion and Soviet support of China but nevertheless prepared for tactical strikes. Zhang Shu Guang, Mao’s Military Romanticism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 233–34, 238.
64. For a broader statement of this idea, see McMahon, “Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism,” 453–73.
65. Cook, Declassified Eisenhower, 183.
2. FIRE, BRIMSTONE, AND JOHN FOSTER DULLES
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953–56 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 23.
2. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), 365; Walter LaFeber, The American Age (New York: Norton, 1989), 510.
3. Hans-Jurgen Grabbe, “Konrad Adenauer, John Foster Dulles, and West German-American Relations,” in Richard Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 111.
4. LaFeber, American Age, 510.
5. H. W. Brands Jr., Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 123.
6. Memo, Dulles to Herter and Robertson, August 23, 1958, FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 19: China, 70.
7. Eisenhower to Dulles, June 15, 1957, “Eisenhower Dwight D., 1957,” John Foster Dulles Papers, Mudd; Ronald Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power (New York: Free Press, 1982), 11. Dulles’s grandfather John W. Foster had worked with the Chinese during negotiation of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 at the end of the Sino-Japanese War. He facilitated Foster Dulles’s exposure to prominent Chinese, including T. V. Soong and H. H. Kung, as well as Americans deeply involved with China, such as Arthur Young and Nelson Johnson.
8. Memcon, Dulles with Truman, October 3, 1951, John Foster Dulles Papers, Mudd; Ronald W. Pruessen, “John Foster Dulles and the Predicaments of Power,” in Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, 21.
9. John Foster Dulles, War or Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1950).
10. Gordon H. Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948–1972 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 172.
11. Pruessen, Dulles, 11.
12. Richard H. Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 31.
14. Miyasato Seigen, “John Foster Dulles and the Peace Settlement with Japan,” in Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, 189–212; Warren I. Cohen, “China as an Issue in Japanese-American Relations, 1950–1972,” in Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye, eds., The United States and Japan in the Postwar World (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989).
15. Jeff Broadwater, Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 135; Brands, Cold Warriors, 13; Pruessen, Dulles, 401.
16. The Chinese diplomat Wang Bingnan asserted in his memoirs released in 1985 that the confrontation never occurred. But in conversation with this author, both Pu Shan, Zhou’s aide, and U. Alexis Johnson insisted that they had witnessed the entire incident. Wang Bingnan, Zhong Mei Huitian Jiunian Huigu, “Nine Years of Sino-U.S. Talks in Retrospect,” JPRS-CPS-85–079, August 7, 1985 (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Chubanshe, 1985).
17. Dulles, War or Peace, 190–91.
18. Dulles to Luce, April 24, 1950, “Luce, Henry,” John Foster Dulles Papers, Mudd.
19. John Garver argues that Titoism was never an option and that U.S. policymakers did not take it seriously. John W. Garver, “Polemics, Paradigms, Responsibility, and the Origins of the U.S.-PRC Confrontation in the 1950s,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3 (Spring 1994), 7–12.
20. David Allan Mayers, Cracking the Monolith (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 118.
21. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 187.
22. 611.93/3-2853, Dulles to H. Freeman Matthews (G), April 4, 1953; Memo, Matthews to Dulles, March 31, 1953; and Memo, Charles C. Stelle to Matthews, March 28, 1953, Box 2861, RG 59, NA; NSC 139th Meeting, April 8, 1953, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14: China and Japan, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1985), 181; Dulles to Rankin, April 16, 1953, FRUS 14, p. 191.
23. Memcon, Dulles with Harold Macmillan, San Francisco, June 20, 1955, FO 371/115054 (FC 1041/943), PRO.
24. Steven M. Goldstein, “Dialogue of the Deaf? The Sino-American Ambassadorial-Level Talks, 1955–1970,” in Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 213–15.
25. U. Alexis Johnson, The Right Hand of Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 239. Johnson speculated that Dulles appointed him because “Dulles was interested in … lessening tensions with the Chinese … [and] he thought I could do that without raising the hackles of the powerful American ‘China Lobby.’” Ibid., 234.
26. Tucker, Patterns in the Dust, 200.
27. Report by the Secretary of State to the NSC, October 28, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 810.
28. Robertson to Philip C. Jessup, October 8, 1949, Box 25, file: Communism-China-Correspondence, Christopher Emmet Papers, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University (hereafter Hoover); 611.93/3-2053, Box2861, RG 59, NA; Lyman P. Van Slyke, ed., The China White Paper, August 1949(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 2:629–32.
29. Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 146; Norman A. Graebner, “Eisenhower and Communism: The Public Record of the 1950s,” in Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 69.
30. FRUS 1952–54, vol. 14, pt. 1, 399n4; Hoopes, The Devil and Dulles, 147.
31. FO371/110222 (FC10345/12), M. G. L. Joy to W. D. Allen, November 30, 1954, PRO; Brands, Cold Warriors, 83. Of course, that depended somewhat on which British official one spoke to. Others found him “ignorant and loathsome.” Matthew Jones, “The Geneva Conference of 1954: New Perspectives and Evidence on British Policy and Anglo-American Relations,” 30th international workshop on “The Geneva Conference and the Cold War in Asia: New Evidence and Perspectives,” Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., February 17, 2006.
32. Robertson to Marvin Liebman, February 5, 1960, Box 23, file: RC Lobby, Marvin Liebman Associates Papers, Hoover; Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., China Confidential (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 93–94: Marshall Brement is quoted on desk banging, and Marshall Green is quoted on balance.
33. 793.02/1-550, McConaughy, Shanghai, FRUS 1950, vol. 6: East Asia and the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976), 264–69; 793.02/1-650, in ibid., 268n9.
34. Mayers, Cracking the Monolith, 95; McConaughy speech to Richmond Public Forum, December 7, 1953, “China in the Shadow of Communism,” CA Records, Box 38, file: 060 McConaughy, RG 59, NA.
35. 793.00/9-450, Rankin to Rusk, Box 4196, RG 59, NA; Rankin to Perkins, June 23, 1952, Karl Lott Rankin Papers, Box 18, file: Chiang Kai-shek, Mudd; 793.5/9-3054, Rankin to McConaughy, Box 4220, RG 59, NA.
36. Karl Lott Rankin, China Assignment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), vii; Memorandum, Special Assistant to President Eisenhower, October 9, 1957, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3: China (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1986), 625. On the other hand, Rankin also wrote Drumright, on the eve of Drumright’s posting to Hong Kong, that at high levels where decision were made, few people read reports from the field. 793.00/0-2954, Rankin to Drumright, Box4209, RG 59, NA.
37. Despatch 610, June 6, 1955, Rankin papers, Box 14, file: Bangkok Conference, Mudd.
38. Rankin to Robertson, April 6, 1959, Rankin Papers, Box 36, file: China, People’s Republic of, Mudd.
39. Rankin, China Assignment, 185, 324.
40. Rankin to John M. Allison, Assistant Secretary, January 22, 1953, Rankin Papers, Box 20, file: China, People’s Republic of, Mudd.
41. E. J. Kahn Jr., The China Hands (New York: Viking, 1972), 38, 277–78.
42. Bennett C. Rushkoff, “Eisenhower, Dulles and the Quemor-Matsu Crisis, 1954–1955,” Political Science Quarterly 96 (Fall 1981), 467–68; Morton H. Halperin, “The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis: A Documented History,” RM-4900-ISA (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, December 1966), 146 and 201.
43. Brands, Cold Warriors, 166–67.
44. 310.2/6-1153, Dulles to Lodge, June 19, 1953, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 3: United Nations Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), 679–80; 310.2/3-3054, Dulles to Lodge, April 10, 1954, in ibid., 728–30; Brands, Cold Warriors, 175–77; Geoffrey Kabaservice, “Moderation and Courage; Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.,” available from http://www.frumforum.com/moderation-and-courage-henry-cabot-lodge-jr (accessed January 7, 2010).
45. Johnson, Right Hand of Power, 247. Roderic O’Connor, who may or may not have been part of the inner circle, recounted that Walter Robertson “annoyed [Dulles]terribly.” Hoopes, The Devil and Dulles, 147.
46. This is the list provided by MacArthur in his oral history recorded by the ADST. Richard Immerman also includes John Hanes, William Macomber, Robert Murphy, and Roderic O’Connor. See “Eisenhower and Dulles: Who Made the Decisions?” Political Psychology 1 (Autumn 1979), 32.
47. Hoopes, The Devil and Dulles, 147.
48. Tucker, China Confidential, 91.
49. Barry Rubin, Secrets of State (New York: Oxford, 1985), 279n11; Memcon, March 28, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2: China (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1986), 411. Others on the Policy Planning Staff went further to call for recognition. Memo, Robert McClintock to Bowie, February 8, 1957, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 470–73.
50. Memo, Bowie to Dulles, June 19, 1957, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 548.
51. “The No. 1 Objective,” Time, June 27, 1960, available from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,827656–1,00.html (accessed January 3, 2008); Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 333–34.
55. 793.5/2-2654, Merchant to Dulles, Box 4219, RG 59, NA.
56. 893.50 Recovery/5-449, ﹟141, Merchant, Taipei, FRUS 1949, vol. 9: The Far East: China (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), 324–26; 894A.00/5-2449, Merchant to Butterworth, ibid., 337–41.
57. Livingston Merchant Oral History, p. 1, John Foster Dulles Oral History Project, Mudd. Merchant also became a close associate of President Eisenhower as were others in this circle. After Foster Dulles’s death, Eisenhower considered Merchant for the secretary’s position.
58. Bowie Memo, November 26, 1954, FRUS 1952–54, vol. 14, pt. 1, 950–51; Hoopes, The Devil and Dulles, 147.
59. McConaughy to Johnson, Geneva, August 26, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 5.
60. Grose, Gentleman Spy, 341.
61. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993), 373.
62. Grose, Gentleman Spy, 88.
64. Ibid., 10, 258, 409–10, 562.
65. Anna K. Nelson, “John Foster Dulles and the Bipartisan Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 102 (Spring 1987), 46, 47, 64.
66. Richard Immerman, “Conclusion,” in Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, 267.
3. CONSTRAINTS
1. Thomas Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Relations: A History since 1865, 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 278.
2. Note Dulles’s decision to force John Carter Vincent into retirement though Acheson had recommended the opposite. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969), 712.
3. M. J. Heale. American Anticommunism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 169–70, 183; Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 140–41.
4. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 80–99; see also Ross Y. Koen, The China Lobby in American Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
5. Thomas G. Paterson and Les K. Adler, “Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930’s–1950’s,” American Historical Review 75 (1970).
6. Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 105.
7. John W. Dower, War without Mercy (New York: Pantheon, 1986).
8. Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 287.
9. Milton Leitenberg, “New Russian Evidence on the Korean War Biological Warfare Allegations: Background and Analysis,” CWIHP Bulletin 11 (Winter 1998), 185–99; Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 76.
10. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 213.
11. Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 120.
12. Letter, President Eisenhower to Ralph McGill, February 26, 1959, available from http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/Research/Digital_Documents/Civil_Rights_Eisenhower_Administration/New%20PDFs/1959_02_26_DDE_to_McGill.pdf (accessed May 3, 2009); Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 174–75; Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line, 86–92.
13. Qing Simei, From Allies to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1945–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 176, 178.
14. Gordon H. Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948–1972 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 171 (Anderson), 172 (Dulles to Koo).
15. Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line, 51, 88, 105.
16. Chang, Friends and Enemies, 172.
17. Yi Sun, “Militant Diplomacy: The Taiwan Strait Crises and Sino-American Relations, 1954–1958,” in Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns, eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 275.
18. John Prados, “The Central Intelligence Agency and the Face of Decolonization under the Eisenhower Administration,” in Statler and Johns, eds., The Eisenhower Administration, 30–31.
19. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 371.
20. Kenneth A. Osgood, “Words and Deeds: Race, Colonialism, and Eisenhower’s Propaganda War in the Third World,” in Statler and Johns, eds., The Eisenhower Administration, 11.
21. Kenneth A. Osgood, “Form before Substance: Eisenhower’s Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy,” Diplomatic History 24 (Summer 2000), 413.
22. Craig Allen, Eisenhower and the Mass Media (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1993), 14, 40.
23. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency, 105.
24. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 107; Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line, 87; Osgood, “Words and Deeds,” 12–15.
25. Ambrose, Eisenhower, 52–55; Robert Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 271.
26. Allen, Eisenhower and the Mass Media, 60; Nancy E. Bernhard, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 147.
27. Robert M. Eisinger, The Evolution of Presidential Polling (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 3–4, 48–49. When news of the NORC initiative broke, it triggered congressional hearings.
28. Allen, Eisenhower and the Mass Media, 15–16, 37–39.
29. Eisinger, The Evolution of Presidential Polling, 116.
30. Letter, H. Schuyler Foster to the author, February 24, 1979.
31. H. Schuyler Foster, Activism Replaces Isolationism: U.S. Public Attitudes, 1940–1975(Washington, D.C.: Foxhall Press, 1983), 10, 12.
32. Ralph B. Levering, The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918–1978 (New York: William Morrow, 1978), 113.
33. Leonard Kusnitz, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: America’s China Policy, 1949–1979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), 174.
34. See, for instance, Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).
35. John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 129.
37. John P. Burke, The Institutional Presidency (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 37, 64; Anna K. Nelson, “The Importance of Foreign Policy Process: Eisenhower and the National Security Council,” in Stephen Ambrose and Gunter Bischoff, eds., Eisenhower: A Centenary Assessment (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 125.
38. Ambrose, Eisenhower, 52.
39. “State Department Transcript of Remarks Made by Dulles at News Conference,” New York Times, October 1, 1958, 8.
40. Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 200.
4. FEAR OF COMMUNISM
1. NSC 166/1, “U.S. Policy toward Communist China,” FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 278–306; NIE 13–54, “Communist China’s Power Potential through 1957,” June 3, 1954, in ibid., 445–61.
2. They took similar steps regarding Eastern Europe in NSC 174 (“United States Policy toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe,” 1953) and NSC 5501 (“Exploitation of Soviet and European Satellite Vulnerabilities,” 1955).
3. Robert Accinelli, Crisis and Commitment: United States Policy toward Taiwan, 1950–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 180–81; Sarah-Jane Corke, U.S. Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA, 1945–53 (London: Routledge, 2008), 160–61; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 167.
4. Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 14.
5. Leonard Kusnitz, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: America’s China Policy, 1949–1979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), 63 (quote), 84n4.
6. Chen Jian, “Bridging Revolution and Decolonization: The ‘Bandung Discourse’ in China’s Early Cold War Experience,” in Christopher Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, eds., Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 153.
7. Xia Yafeng. Negotiating with the Enemy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 77.
8. Mao actually chastised Zhou for the “mistake of failing to raise the Taiwan issue” at Geneva. Chen, “Bridging Revolution,” 154.
9. Shu Guang Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence’: China’s Diplomacy toward the Geneva and Bandung Conferences, 1954–55,” Cold War History 7 (November 2007), 511.
10. Geoffrey Roberts, “A Chance for Peace? The Soviet Campaign to End the Cold War, 1953–1955,” Cold War International History Project Working Papers, ﹟57, December 2008, 63; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “A Chance for Peace,” speech made to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953, available from http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html (accessed June 14, 2009).
11. Kenneth A. Osgood, “Form before Substance: Eisenhower’s Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy,” Diplomatic History 24 (Summer 2000), 405–34; Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007), 95–113; Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 90.
12. John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 141.
13. Klaus Larres, “Eisenhower and the First Forty Days after Stalin’s Death: The Incompatibility of Detente and Political Warfare,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 6 (July 1995), 431–69; Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power, 53–55.
14. Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 137.
15. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), 114.
16. Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 105–6.
17. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, “John Foster Dulles and the Taiwan Roots of the ‘Two Chinas’ Policy,” in Richard Immermann, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 244–51; Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), 96, 99, 102–6, 120–25.
18. John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 137.
19. Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 12; John B. Roberts II and Elizabeth A. Roberts, Freeing Tibet: 50 Years of Struggle, Resilience, and Hope (New York: AMACOM Books, 2009), 18.
20. John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 139; Roberts and Roberts, Freeing Tibet, 24; Robert J. McMahon, ““U.S. Policy toward South Asia and Tibet during the Early Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 8 (Summer 2006), 140.
21. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 301.
22. Prados, Safe for Democracy, 199–200.
23. Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy (New York: New Press, 1995), 12–19; Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 492; Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957–1958 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 43, 60–61.
24. Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 75–76, 81, 186; Robert J. McMahon, “‘The Point of No Return’: The Eisenhower Administration and Indonesia, 1953–1960,” in Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns, eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 75–99.
25. John W. Garver, “Polemics, Paradigms, Responsibility, and the Origins of the U.S.-PRC Confrontation in the 1950s,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 3 (Spring 1994), 13.
26. Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 142.
27. 793.00/11–553, Rankin, Taipei, Box 4206, RG 59, NA; G. William Skinner, “Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 321 (January 1959), 136–47.
28. Although Rankin commended Nationalist accomplishments in bringing high school students to Taiwan, providing textbooks for primary schools overseas, and establishing anti-Communist organizations during 1953, most observers considered Beijing more vigorous and more productive in commanding the interest of overseas communities. 793.00/10–2753, Despatch 242, Rankin, Taipei, Box 4206, RG 59, NA. Analysis of PRC activities in 793.001/7–654, Despatch 19, Julian F. Harrington, Hong Kong, Box 4213, RG 59, NA.
29. Ena Chao, “U.S. Policy towards the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1953–57” (in Chinese), paper delivered at the 2nd Conference on the U.S. in the Cold War, Taipei, Taiwan, 1994, 2–4.
30. NSC 146/2, “United States Objectives and Courses of Action with Respect to Formosa and the Chinese National Government,” November 6, 1953, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 316–17; 793.00/4–3053, Despatch 479, Hendrick an Oss, Kuala Lumpur, Box 4204, RG 59, NA; Statement by Overseas Affairs Commission, Peiping, May 20, 1957, Lot 60D648, Box 1, file: 11P Indochina, RG 59, NA. In October 1958, the Indonesian government nationalized all overseas Nationalist Chinese enterprises, industries, and educational facilities, affecting some 20 percent of the countries’ commercial establishments, “which may be an effort to create a scapegoat for economic deterioration.” Staff Notes ﹟443, October 22, 1958, Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, Box 36, file: Staff Notes—October 1958, DDEL. The problem for overseas Chinese, of course, has continued. See Keith Richburg, “For Southeast Asia’s Chinese, Success Breeds Discrimination,” Washington Post, March 20, 1988, A25.
31. 793.08/9–254, Despatch 109, Howard L. Parsons, Bangkok, Box 4218, RG 59, NA; 793.00/10–454, Despatch 595, Harrington, Hong Kong, Box 4209, RG 59, NA; Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence,’” 519.
32. U.S. officials reported continued Chinese aid to local insurgent forces in Burma, Indonesia, and Nepal. NIE 13–57, March 19, 1957, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 504.
33. “The Overseas Chinese as an Instrument of U.S. Policy,” July 13, 1956, Declassified Documents Reference Service (DDRS) (1992), fiche 182 ﹟2619; “The Overseas Chinese and U.S. Policy,” Drafts August 7, 1956, and September 6, 1956, DDRS (1993), fiche 17 ﹟106 and fiche 73 ﹟717. Regarding plans from Taipei to deal with the overseas Chinese problem, see Memo, October 22, 1956, Lot 60D171, Box 19, file: 570.2 Overseas Chinese, RG 59, NA; Memo, November 23, 1956, in ibid.
34. Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 34.
35. Despatch 507, Jones, Taipei, May 8, 1952, Box 14, folder: 570.1, RG 84, NA; 793.00/7–1753, Despatch 164, McKillop, Hong Kong, Box 4205, RG59, NA; 793.00/7–953, Memcon, Radford with Chiang Kai-shek, Box 4205, RG 59, NA.
36. Eventually one State Department officer observed that in countries that recognized the PRC, it might not be in U.S. interests to have the overseas Chinese pledge their loyalties to the host government. Guidelines for U.S. Programs, October 17, 1957, Lot 60D648, Box 8, file: 570.2 Overseas Chinese, July–December, RG 59, NA. In August 1960, the National Security Council reaffirmed, in amendments to NSC 6012, the policy of encouraging allegiance to host countries when this would not conflict with other U.S. objectives. J. Graham Parsons to secretary, August 11, 1960, FRUS 1958–1960, vol. 15/16, pt. 1: East Asia, Pacific Region, microfiche supplement, 1993.
37. NIE-43–54, “Probable Developments in Taiwan through mid-1956,” September 14, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 634–35; Robert W. Barnett to Averell Harriman, March 3, 1964, James C. Thomson Papers, file: Far East: Taiwan 1958, 1962–1964, JFKL.
38. “John Foster Dulles and the Far East,” 16, Mudd. Dulles repeatedly asserted that Chiang did not have the capability of retaking the mainland; see 214th NSC Meeting, September 12, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 614; Dulles to Ike, May 16, 1956, White House Office Files, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, State Department Subseries, Box 1, file: State Dept. 1956 (April–June) (3), DDEL.
39. Despatch 320, Rankin, Taipei, November 30, 1953, Rankin Papers, Box 20, file: Chiang Ching-kuo, Mudd; 793.00/6–954, Despatch 690, Rankin, Taipei, Box 4208, RG 59, NA.
40. Robert O. Keohane, “The Big Influence of Small Allies,” Foreign Policy (Spring 1971), 172.
41. Karl Lott Rankin, China Assignment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 311.
42. Memo, Jenkins to McConaughy, July 7, 1953, CA Records, Box 41, file: 430.1 U.S. Aid to Nationalist China, RG 59, NA.
43. Taylor, The Generalissimo, 460.
44. Harrison M. Holland (CA) to Walter McConaughy (CA), October 29, 1953, CA Records, Box 40, file: 410 Chinese Nationalist Armed Forces, RG 59, NA; 794A.5 MSP/11–254, McConaughy to Robertson, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 1025–26.
45. Memcon, Koo, Dulles, and Allison, March 19, 1953, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 157. Taipei argued it should be included in SEATO, but the United States refused.﹟610, Rankin, Taipei, May/June 1954, Box 2, file: Pacific Pact, RG 84, NA; Memcon, Drumright, Acting Assistant Secretary, with Koo, July 16, 1954, Koo Papers, Box 191, Columbia.
46. Memcon, Koo, Dulles, and Allison, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 158; Bowie to Robertson, March 22, 1954, noted in ibid., 400n5; Memcon, Koo, Dulles, and McConaughy, May 19, 1954, in ibid., 422–25; Memo by Robertson, September 1, 1954, in ibid., 555; and 214th Meeting of the NSC, Memo of Discussion, September12, 1954, in ibid., 614; Memcon, Eisenhower, J. F. Dulles, A. W. Dulles, Anderson, Radford, and Cutler, May 22, 1954, in ibid., 428.
47. Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 22.
48. “Remarks of the Secretary Regarding Proposed U.S.-Chinese Security Pact,” February 27, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 368–70; Robertson to Dulles, March 31, 1954, in ibid., 399–401, particularly note 8.
49. 790.5/2–2454 ﹟476, Jones, Taipei, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 367.
50. Memcon, Koo and Judd, July 16, 1954, Box 191, Koo Papers, Columbia; Memcon, Koo and Knowland, July 14, 1954, and Koo and Nixon, July 15, 1954, in ibid.; Letter, George Yeh, Foreign Minister, to Nixon, December 18, 1953, Record Group 84, Box 3, file: KMT Troops in Burma, NA; O. Edmund Clubb, “Formosa and the Offshore Islands in American Policy, 1950–55,” Political Science Quarterly 74 (December 1959), 519–20.
51. Telegram, CCP Central Committee to Zhou Enlai, July 27, 1954, CWIHP Bulletin 16 (Fall 2007–Winter 2008), 83–84; He Di, “The Evolution of the People’s Republic of China’s Policy toward the Offshore Islands,” in Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye, eds., The Great Powers in East Asia, 1953–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 225.
52. Concern about the rise in China’s prestige was expressed in NIE 10–7-54, “Communist Courses of Action in Asia through 1957,” November 23, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 933, 940. The Chinese prepared arduously for the opportunity according to the secretary general of the delegation, Wang Bingnan, in his memoirs, Zhong Mei Huitian Jiunian Huigu (Nine Years of Sino-U.S. Talks in Retrospect), JPRS-CPS-85–079, August 7, 1985 (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Chubanshe, 1985), 4.
53. Wang Bingnan asserted that the incident never happened, but in conversations with this author, two other witnesses, U. Alexis Johnson and Zhou’s aide Pu Shan, both attested to the event. Wang, Zhong Mei Huitian Jiunian Huigu, 12–13; Interview with Pu Shan, Beijing, China, 1987; Interview with U. Alexis Johnson; U. Alexis Johnson, The Right Hand of Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 204; David Allan Mayers, Cracking the Monolith: U.S. Policy against the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 128–29.
54. Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence,’” 518.
55. Zhai Qiang, The Dragon, the Lion, and the Eagle (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994), 140.
56. Wang discusses the differences between Bedell Smith and Walter Robertson in Geneva. Wang, Zhong Mei Huitian Jiunian Huigu, 11–12. At a dinner with Alex Johnson in 1955, Wang recalled that Smith had initiated better Sino-American relations when he spoke to Zhou at a buffet at the Geneva meeting in 1954. 611.93/8–2355 ﹟589, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 4.
57. Gong Li, “Tension across the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s: Chinese Strategy and Tactics,” in Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 146.
58. Zhang Baijia and Jia Qingguo, “Steering Wheel and Shock Absorber, and Diplomatic Probe in Confrontation: Sino-American Ambassadorial Talks Seen from the Chinese Perspective,” in Ross and Jiang, eds., Re-Examining the Cold War, 177.
59. Zhang Baijia, “The Changing International Scene and Chinese Policy toward the United States, 1954–1970,” in Ross and Jiang, eds., Re-Examining the Cold War, 49.
60. FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 414–555 passim; Kenneth T. Young, Negotiating with the Chinese Communists (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 37–40; Johnson, Right Hand of Power, 204, 233–36; Wang, Zhong Mei Huitian Jiunian Huigu, 14–17.
5. NO INHERENT WORTH
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953–56 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 465–67.
2. Zhang Baijia and Jia Qingguo, “Steering Wheel and Shock Absorber, and Diplomatic Probe in Confrontation: Sino-American Ambassadorial Talks Seen from the Chinese Perspective,” in Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 179, 181.
3. According to Yao Xu, Zhou Enlai later came to call this “the concept of confronting the United States on three fronts.” Cong yalujiang dao banmendian [From the Yale River to Panmunjon] (Beijing: People’s Press, 1985), 21–22, cited in Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 94.
4. Gordon Chang and He Di, “The Absence of War in the U.S.-China Confrontation over Quemoy and Matsu in 1954–1955: Contingency, Luck, Deterrence?,” American Historical Review 98 (December 1993), 1504, 1507, 1512, 1514; Gong Li, “Tension across the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s,” in Ross and Jiang eds., Re-Examining the Cold War, 148; “Chinese Communist Capabilities and Intentions with Respect to Formosa,” October 12, 1954, CJCS 091 China, Chairman’s File, Admiral Radford, 1953–57, Box 7, file: (Oct.–Dec. 1954), Joint Chiefs of Staff Records, Record Group 218, Modern Military Records, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter JCS Records).
5. Niu Jun, “Chinese Decision Making in Three Military Actions Across the Taiwan Strait,” in Michael Swaine and Zhang Zuosheng, eds., Managing Sino-American Crises. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006), 309–311.
6. Robert Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 296.
7. “Navy’s Air Power Sharp off Hainan,” New York Times, July 31, 1954, 3. It should be noted that the United States had fueled tensions in the area by sending warships to the edge of Chinese territorial waters and encouraging Nationalist overflights of PRC territory during the summer of 1954.
8. Chen Xiaolu, “China’s Policy toward the United States, 1949–1955,” in Harry Harding and Yuan Ming, eds., Sino-American Relations, 1945–1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1989), 194. Chen notes that according to Nie Fengzhi et al., Sanjun Huige Zhan Donghai [The three armed services fight in the East China Sea] (Peking: People’s Liberation Army Publishing House, 1985), Chinese leaders began talking about seizure of coastal islands in July 1952, began executing plans in the spring of 1954, and agreed upon specific moves against Yijiangshan and Dachen on August 31, 1954. The British believed that the CIA in the guise of Western enterprises helped plan the ill-fated Dongshan operation. 040716z, August 4, 1953, FO 371/105198 (FC 1018/105), PRO; E. H. Jacobs-Larkcom, Tamsui, to R. S. H. Shattock, London, August 7, 1953, FO371/105198 (FC 1018/109), PRO.
9. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 62; Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976), 176.
10. Robert Suettinger, “Introduction,” in Tracking the Dragon: National Intelligence Estimates on China during the Era of Mao, 1948–1976 (Washington, D.C.: National Intelligence Council, 2004), xi (quote), xvi.
11. Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2009).
12. PSB D-35, “National Psychological Effort as of December 31, 1952,” January 5, 1953, FRUS 1950–1955: The Intelligence Community, 1950–1955 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2007), 393; Christopher J. Tudda, “Reenacting the Story of Tantalus: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Failed Rhetoric of Liberation,” Journal of Cold War Studies 7 (Fall 2005), 33.
13. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., China Confidential (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 109.
14. Matthew M. Aid, “The National Security Agency during the Cold War,” http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB260/index.htm. Signals intelligence hubs in Hong Kong run by Britain and Australia and in Taiwan by the ROC and United States produced details about troop deployments and modernization projects.
15. In 1954, for instance, they requested 30, 000 parachutes to drop teams of 100, which would incite uprisings among the estimated 650, 000 dissidents. The NSC projected just 50, 000, which itself was probably a greatly inflated figure. Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 38.
16. James Lilley, China Hands (New York: Public Affairs 2004), 78, 82 (quote).
17. Johannes R. Lombardo, “A Mission of Espionage, Intelligence and Psychological Operations: The American Consulate in Hong Kong, 1949–64,” in Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, eds., The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945–65 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 66–67, 69; Lilley, China Hands, 136–37.
18. 793.5/3–2054, Bowie to Robertson, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 552–53; 793.5/3–2054, Merchant to Robertson, in ibid., 553.
19. 793.5/8–2554, Robertson memo drafted by Martin, Box 4219, RG 59, NA.
20. NSC 146/2, “United States Objectives and Courses of Action with Respect to Formosa and the Chinese National Government,” November 6, 1953, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 308. Regarding encouragement to defend the islands in the Truman period, see JCS 2118/39, May 7, 1952, CCS 381 FE(11-28-50)sec 15, JCS Records, RG218, NA.
21. General C. J. Chow, Chief of General Staff, Ministry of National Defense, Taipei, to General William Chase, Chief, MAAG, February 13, 1953, China Post Files, Box 2, file: 11 Offensive Uses of Chinese Forces, 1953–1956, RG 84, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD (hereafter WNRC). Ambassador Rankin, who was avowedly in favor of an offensive stance, nevertheless worried about the provocative nature of raids encouraged by MAAG, which seemed to have no real purpose. Rankin to Drumright, February 20, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 362–64.
22. NSC 162/2, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 2 pt. 1, 593 (quote) and see 607–8.
23. 793.00/5–2454, W. R. Smedberg, U.S. Navy, Director International Affairs, Box 4208, RG 59, NA; SM-792–54, Memo for the Secretary of Defense (Draft—Navy, Marine Corps-Air Force view), September 7, 1954, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218, Chairman’s Files, Admiral Arthur N. Radford, Box 7, 091 China, file: September 1954, NA.
24. Karl Lott Rankin, China Assignment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 205; 793.5/9–454, Robertson to Acting Secretary Smith, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 561–63. Nevertheless, Robertson opposed use of nuclear weapons. A British official reported Roberston remarking, “Everyone knew his feelings about the Communist Chinese. But this did not mean that he advocated a preventive war against them.” Letter, M. G. L. Joy (Micky) to W. D. Allen (Denis), November 30, 1954, FC10345/12, PRO.
25. JCS 967254, Acting Secretary of Defense to the President, September 3, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 556–57; Appendix B from Memo, Radford to Wilson, September 11, 1954, “Views of the Chief of Staff, United States Army (Ridgway),” in ibid., 605–66.
26. 213th NSC Meeting, September 9, 1954, in ibid., 588.
27. 93.00/9–354, Tedul 7, Smith to Dulles, in ibid., 557–58. On foreign opinion, see Special National Intelligence Estimate (hereafter SNIE) 100–4-54, ibid., 569; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 5, 1954, 1.
28. SNIE 100–4-54, “The Situation with respect to Certain Islands Off the Coast of Mainland China,” September 4, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 570. See also NIE 43–54, “Probable Developments in Taiwan through Mid-1956,” September 14, 1954, in ibid., 629.
29. Memo by Dulles, September 12, 1954, in ibid., 611–12.
30. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), 464;Letter, Eisenhower to Al Gruenther, February 1, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 192.
31. 221st NSC Meeting, Memo of discussion, November 2, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 837.
32. 214th NSC Meeting, Memorandum of discussion, September 12, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 617, 621–22.
33. 214th NSC Meeting, Memorandum of discussion, September 12, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 619–23.
34. On the approach to New Zealand, see Dulte 9, Dulles, London, September 29, 1954, DDRS (1989), fiche 155 ﹟2783. Dulles wrote Chiang that he was “not surprised that your initial reaction to the New Zealand proposal is negative. I have myself shared many of your doubts.” 793.00/10–1454 ﹟237, Hoover to Rankin, transmitting Dulles letter to Chiang, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 762; and see difficult discussion between Chiang and Robertson, 793.00/ 10–3154, Memcon, McConaughy, Taipei, in ibid., 728–53.
35. 214th NSC Meeting, Memorandum of discussion, September 12, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 613–24; 216th NSC Meeting, Memo of discussion, October 6, 1954, in ibid., 693; FO 371/110231 (FC01042/12G) ﹟1275 FONOFF to Dennis Allen, UN delegation, September 28, 1954, and ﹟1283, September 30, 1954, PRO;793.5/10–1854 ﹟247, Dulles to Taipei, Box 4220, and FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 775.
36. 214th NSC Meeting, Memorandum of discussion, September 12, 1954, in FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 622.
37. 216th NSC Meeting, Memo of discussion, October 6, 1954, in FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 695; Memo by Dulles, September 12, 1954, in ibid., p. 613. To the British, Dulles asserted that the creation of two Chinas could lead to relaxation of the trade embargo against Beijing and acceptance of both Chinas in the UN. ﹟5 Eden, Paris, October 21, 1954, FO 371/110235 (FC 1042/96G), PRO.
38. 793.00/10–2454, Memcon, Box 4209, RG 59, NA; 793.00/10–754, Robertson to Secretary, Box 4209 and 4220, RG 59, NA; ﹟4998 London to Embassy Washington, October 6, 1954, FO 371/110232 (FC 1042/32G), PRO.
39. Memcon between Yeh, Koo, and Robertson, November 4, 1954, Box 192, Koo Papers, Columbia. Taipei struggled to keep the notes secret because of opinion in Taiwan and because they did not want the British to know about the restrictions. In fact, the British were informed early in the process without Taipei’s knowledge, and the notes were revealed to Congress in February 1955 for U.S. domestic political reasons. Despatch 277, Rankin, Taipei, December 7, 1954, Box 2, file: Sino-American Bilateral Treaty 1954/55, RG 84, NA.
40. 611.94A/9–2654, Cutler to Secretary, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 661–62; Memo, JCS to Wilson, October 1, 1954, forwarded to Cutler, October 5, 1954, ibid., 684–87; JCS 1966/91 Notes, October 22, 1954, CCS 381 Formosa (11-8-48), sec. 15, JCS Records, RG 218, NA.
41. Memcon, JCS with Secretary, October 29, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1., 814–16.
42. 221st NSC Meeting, Memo of discussion, November 2, 1954, ibid., 832; Memo, Assistant Secretary of Defense for ISA to JCS, January 19, 1955, transmitting letter from Dulles to Wilson, January 5, 1955, CCS 381 Formosa (11-8-48), sec. 15, JCS Records, RG 218, NA.
43. Chang and He, “The Absence of War,” 1513.
44. Robert Accinelli, “Eisenhower, Congress, and the 1954–55 Offshore Island Crisis,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 20 (Spring 1990), 331. It is not entirely clear who was the main proponent of ambiguity—Eisenhower or Dulles. Those who attribute it to Ike include C. T. Crowe Minutes, August 25, 1954, FO 371/110257 (FC 1094/19)PRO; and Chang and He, “Absence of War,” 1511.
45. 221st NSC Meeting, November 2, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 837; 233rd NSC Meeting, January 21, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 91, 93.
46. Accinelli, “Eisenhower, Congress,” 331, 333, 337–38. The votes were 409 to 3 in the House and 85 to 3 in the Senate. Gary W. Reichard, “Divisions and Dissent: Democrats and Foreign Policy, 1952–1956,” Political Science Quarterly 93 (Spring 1978), 62–64.
47. Memcon, President with Dulles and Radford, January 19, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 42–43; 233rd NSC Meeting, January 21, 1955, in ibid., 92; Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 466–67. Ironically, Ambassador Rankin in July 1953 had pressed a resistant Chiang to hold these islands despite their vulnerability. 793.00/7–2453 ﹟50 Rankin, Taipei, Box 4205, RG 59, NA. Radford fruitlessly pointed this out:199th NSC Meeting, May 27, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 434. In September, the Office of Chinese Affairs declared the idea of evacuating the Dachens “unrealistic” given Nationalist determination to hold them. 793.5/902454, Martin to Drumright, Box 4220, RG 59, NA.
48. Document ﹟1398, Eisenhower to Lewis Williams Douglas, April 12, 1955, Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 16: The Presidency: The Middle Way, Part VII, January 1955 to May 1955, chap. 15, available from http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1398.cfm (accessed May 3, 2009).
49. 293.9332/1–3055 ﹟497, Rankin, Taipei, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 167–68; 293.9332/1–3055, Memcon, in ibid., 170–71; Memcon, Yeh and Koo with Dulles, Robertson, and McConaughy, January 28, 1955, in ibid., 156; V. K. Wellington Koo Diary, January 31, 1955, Box 220, Koo Papers, Columbia. Dulles did tell Foreign Minister Yeh that it made no sense to commit forces to a bunch of rocks and that they should abandon the Mazu islands. Memcon, Yeh and Koo with Dulles and Robertson, January 19, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 46–47.
50. 793.5/2–355, Memcon, Yeh with Robertson, in ibid., p. 205; Memcon, President with Hoover and Radford, February 5, 1955, in ibid., 221.
51. Transcript of first meeting between Hammarskjöld and Zhou, January 6, 1955, DAG-1/5.1.3, Box 3, file: China: Basic Documents visit to Peking 1954/55, United Nations Archives, New York (hereafter UN); Letter, UNUK to Denis Allen, Foreign Office, January 24, 1955, FO 371/115082 (FC 1041/281), PRO. Dulles expressed reservations about Hammarskjöld’s diplomacy and noted that when “dealing with Communists and Orientals it was important to keep the channels clear.” 793.00/ 2–755, Memcon, Dulles with Makins et al., FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 237.
52. Xue Mohong and Pei Jianzhang, eds., Diplomacy of Contemporary China (Hong Kong: New Horizon Press, 1990), 97. Also see Trevelyan message, Peking, January 28, 1955, Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, Dulles-Herter Series, Box 3, file: Dulles January 1955, Ike.
53. 793.00/2–1755, Memcon, Dulles with Munro, Laking, and Scott, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 286; Message, Eden to Dulles, March 25, 1955, in ibid., 397–98; NSC Briefing, February 3, 1955, in ibid., 199.
54. Chang and He, “Absence of War,” 1516–17.
55. 794A.5/2–2155 Dulte 2, Dulles, Manila, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 300; 793.5/2–2555Dulte 8, Dulles, Bangkok, in ibid., 308; 396.1 BA/2–2555 Dulte 10, Dulles, Bangkok, in ibid., 312. Chang and He note that intelligence and military sources provided conflicting reports regarding the magnitude of China’s buildup. Chang and He, “Absence of War,” 1519.
56. Paul Boyar, By the Bomb’s Early Light (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 334–51; 240th NSC Meeting, March 10, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 347.
57. Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 174–84. Sam Wells, “The Origins of Massive Retaliation,” Political Science Quarterly 96 (Spring 1981), 31–52.
59. Matthew Jones, “Targeting China U.S. Nuclear Planning and ‘Massive Retaliation’ in East Asia, 1953–1955,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10 (Fall 2008), 57.
60. Matthew Jones, “The Geneva Conference of 1954: New Perspectives and Evidence on British Policy and Anglo-American Relations,” presented at the international workshop “The Geneva Conference and the Cold War in Asia: New Evidence and Perspectives,” Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., February17, 2006, 13.
61. Historian Appu Soman argues that “the goal of the American nuclear diplomacy in the spring of 1955 was to set the stage for employing nuclear weapons against China.” I clearly disagree. Appu K. Soman, Double-Edged Sword (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000), 116.
62. Memorandum for the Record by Cutler, March 11, 1955, ibid., 357.
63. NSC 240th Meeting, March 10, 1955, ibid., 348.
64. Document ﹟1369, Letter, Ike to George M. Humphrey, March 29, 1955, Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series, The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 16: The Presidency: The Middle Way, Part VII, January 1955 to May 1955, chap. 15, available from http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1369.cfm (accessed May 3, 2009).
65. Henry W. Brands Jr., “Testing Massive Retaliation: Credibility and Crisis Management in the Taiwan Strait,” International Security 12 (Spring 1988), 151; Dillon Anderson Oral History, 97–98, DDEL. Dulles biographer Fred Marks argues that Dulles never agreed with Ike’s view that nuclear weapons were no different morally from other weapons. Frederick W. Marks III, Power and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), 25, 178n9.
66. Soman, Double-Edged Sword, 116, 152
69. Tucker, China Confidential, 126–27.
70. Smith Oral History, DDEL, 6–8.
71. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 478–79; Memo, Goodpaster to Eisenhower, March 15, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 367; McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Vintage, 1988), 277–79.
72. Jones, “Targeting China,” 52, 54.
73. Jones, “Targeting China,” 60–61. Nina Tannenwald in Nuclear Taboo (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 140–42, argues that Ike and Dulles set out to undermine the growing inhibition against use of nuclear weapons, but a close reading of the record shows that although they wanted freedom of action that did not mean they favored using nuclear weapons.
74. Daniel J. Leab, “Canned Crisis: U.S. Magazines, Jinmen and the Mazus,” Journalism Quarterly 44 (1967), 340–44.
75. Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 69–71; Ernest T. Weir to Eisenhower, April 1, 1955, Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, Dulles-Herter Series, Box 4, file: Dulles April 1955 (1), Ike. In a reply to Weir, the president emphasized the importance of psychological factors. Eisenhower to Weir, April 6, 1955, Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, Eisenhower Diary, Box 10, file: DDE Diary, April 1955 (2), Ike.
76. Humphrey’s long-term interest in solving the China problem was probably reflected in the comment of his staff member Max Kapelman to a member of Senator Lehman’s office staff that “if you find anybody who has got a solution to the problem in China, you needn’t even wait to send it by mail. Call me on the telephone!” Kapelman to Julius C. C. Edelstein, March 24, 1953, Humphrey Papers 23L 9 2F, Box 93, file: Foreign Policy, China, MHS.
77. Soman, Double-Edged Sword, 145.
78. Accinelli, “Eisenhower, Congress,” 340.
79. 216th NSC Meeting, October 6, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 699; 793.00/ 9–1454, Eisenhower to Acting Secretary, in ibid., 577.
80. NIE 100–4-55, “Communist Capabilities and Intentions with Respect to the Offshore Islands and Taiwan through 1955, and Communist and Non-Communist Reactions with Respect to the Defense of Taiwan,” March 16, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 379. Townsend Hoopes noted the negative Asian reaction to America’s obsession with Communism and undue willingness to use military force. Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 280.
81. Memcon, March 28, 1955, in ibid., 411, 414. The British ambassador told Dulles in January that he assumed that both Washington and London were moving toward such a trade. Memcon, Dulles with Makins, January 20, 1955, in ibid., 86.
82. Tedul 6, Eisenhower to Dulles, February 21, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 301–2.
83. Letter, Eisenhower to Churchill, March 29, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 420.
84. Hagerty Diary Entry, February 24, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 305–6; 793.00/4–855 ﹟080814Z, Chase to Stump, in ibid., 465–66; 793.00/4–955 ﹟090359Z, Stump to Carney, in ibid., 471–73.
85. Ironically, Chiang confided to his diary that Robertson was “a son of a bitch” and that the Americans were “naïve and ignorant.” Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 481, 682n125.
86. Memo for the Record by Rankin, Taipei, April 29, 1955, ibid., 529–30.
87. Memcon, Eisenhower with Dulles, April 17, 1955, ibid., 491–95. Eisenhower continued to advocate his outpost strategy even after Robertson and Radford left for Taiwan. 711.5800/4–2155 ﹟2, Hoover to Robertson and Radford, Taipei, ibid., 501–2.
88. 711.5800/4–2155 ﹟4, Robertson to Secretary, April 25, 1955, ibid., 510–17; Memcon, Eisenhower with Dulles, April 25, 1955, ibid., 517.
89. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 352. The quote comes from a letter to Al Gruenther and actually pertains to intervention at Dien Bien Phu.
90. These include Brands, “Testing Massive Retaliation,” and Gordon H. Chang, “To the Nuclear Brink: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Quemoy-Matsu Crisis,” International Security 12 (Spring 1988), 96–123.
91. Document ﹟1406, Eisenhower to Dulles, April 26, 1955, Series: EM, AWF, International Series: Formosa (China), The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 16: The Presidency: The Middle Way, Part VII, January 1955 to May 1955, chap. 15, available from http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1406.cfm (accessed May 3, 2009).
92. Ronald W. Pruessen, “John Foster Dulles and the Predicaments of Power,” in Richard Immermann, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 27.
94. Shu Guang Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence’: China’s Diplomacy toward the Geneva and Bandung Conferences, 1954–55,” Cold War History 7 (November 2007), 520.
95. Gordon Chang in his book condemned Ike for a policy that he insisted, had it been carried out, would definitely have led to war with China. Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948–1972 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 135–37, 139–41. In a subsequent article based on new documents, he admits that he exaggerated the threat. Chang and He, “Absence of War,” 1520n55.
6. DIPLOMATIC COMPLEXITIES
1. Leonard Kusnitz, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: America’s China Policy, 1949–1979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984), 69.
2. Ambassador Karl Rankin considered it a “disastrous and defeatist” British scheme. Rankin to McConaughy, August 22, 1956 (quote from September 3, 1954), Rankin Papers, Box 29 file: “China, Republic of,” Mudd.
3. Dean Rusk, As I Saw It: A Secretary of State’s Memoirs (New York: Penguin, 1990), 285.
4. FO371/110235, Eden to Foreign Office, October 20, 1954, PRO.
5. Kusnitz, Public Opinion, 72.
6. Memcon, Dulles with Yeh and Koo, February 10, 1955, Box 195, Koo Papers, Columbia.
7. Report of the Secretary to the NSC, October 28, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 810.
8. Warren I. Cohen, Dean Rusk (Totowa, N.J.: Cooper Square, 1980), 85; Gary W. Reichard, “Divisions and Dissent: Democrats and Foreign Policy, 1952–1956,” Political Science Quarterly 93 (Spring 1978), 53, 61; Francis O. Wilcox Oral History, 146–48, Association of Former Members of Congress, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
9. Despatch ﹟268, Rankin, Taipei, November 1952, RG 84, NA.
10. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Strait Talk (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), discusses the problem of mistrust at length.
11. 793.00/1–3053, Rankin, Taipei, January 30, 1954, RG 59, NA; David Allan Mayers, Cracking the Monolith: U.S. Policy against the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 128.
12. Rankin to McConaughy, November 17, 1954, Rankin Papers, file: “China, Republic of,” Mudd.
13. United States, Consulate General, Hong Kong, Survey of China Mainland Press (SCMP) ﹟935, November 25, 1954, 7.
14. Jia Qingguo, “Searching for Peaceful Coexistence and Territorial Integrity,” in Harry Harding and Yuan Ming, eds., Sino-American Relations, 1945–1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1989), 280. Zhou Enlai later explained to Henry Kissinger that shelling of the offshore islands was meant to advise Chiang not to withdraw in order to maintain an existing relationship with the mainland. Richard Solomon, “Chinese Political Negotiating Behavior, 1967–1984,” report R-3299, (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, December 1985), 11.
15. Memo by Dulles, September 12, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 14, pt. 1, 611.
16. 793.00/2–655 ﹟447, Lodge, USUN, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 232–33; Kenneth T. Young, Negotiating with the Chinese Communists: The United States Experience, 1953–1967 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 43.
17. Xue Mouhong et al., eds., Dangdai Zhongguo Waijiao [Contemporary China’s diplomacy] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1990), 81–94. The Pancha Shila were included in a Sino-Indian agreement in 1954: mutual respect for territory integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.
18. Gordon Chang and He Di, “The Absence of War in the U.S.-China Confrontation over Quemoy and Matsu in 1954–1955: Contingency, Luck, Deterrence?,” American Historical Review 98 (December 1993), 1520. On the other hand, Jia Qingguo speaks of a secret meeting at Bandung in which Zhou declared that “China cannot claim it is an independent country,” until it reclaimed Taiwan. Jia, “Searching for Peaceful Coexistence and Territorial Integrity,” 268.
19. Jason Parker, “Cold War II: The Eisenhower Administration, the Bandung Conference, and the Reperiodization of the Postwar Era,” Diplomatic History 30 (November 2006), 871.
20. NIE 100–57, “Sino-Soviet Foreign Economic Policies and Their Probable Effects in Underdeveloped Areas,” March 26, 1957, DDRS (1990), fiche 55, ﹟632.
21. NIE 13–57, “Communist China through 1961,” March 19, 1957, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 503–4.
22. Minutes of a Meeting, January 9, 1955, U.S. Department of State. FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. 21: East Asian Security; Laos, Cambodia (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990), 14; Cary Fraser, “An American Dilemma: Race and Realpolitik in the American Response to the Bandung Conference, 1955,” in Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2003), 118–22.
23. Memo, K. T. Young (PSA) to Robertson, Sebald, and Baldwin, January 4, 1955, Lot 56D679, Box 1, file: Afro-Asian Conference, January 1955, RG 59, NA; Memo, Max W. Bishop to Hoover, January 6, 1955, in ibid.; Draft Circular ﹟340, January 7, 1955, in ibid.
24. Memcon, Dulles with Makins, April 7, 1955. FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 21, 80.
25. Wang Tao, “Isolating the Enemy—The Bandung Conference and Sino-American Relations,” paper prepared for national conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Washington D.C., 2009.
26. Parker, “Cold War II,” 874.
27. Robertson congressional testimony, January 26, 1954, U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Hearings, Department of State Appropriations, 83rd Cong., 2d sess., 1954, 125; AA(WG)D-7, “Afro-Asian Conference Propaganda,” prepared by Busick (USIA), February 10, 1955, Lot 56D679, Box 1, file: Afro-Asian Conference, RG 59, NA.
28. U. Alexis. Johnson, The Right Hand of Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 236–37.
29. Memo from Sebald to Dulles, April 25, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 508.
30. 611.93/9–1255 ﹟163, Hoover, Acting Secretary, to all posts, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 6; Karl Lott Rankin, China Assignment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 254; 611.93/2–956, McConaughy to Robertson, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 16; Rankin to McConaughy, August 3, 1956, Rankin Papers, Box 29, file: “China, Republic of,” Mudd.
31. Draft letter, Dulles to Zhou, May 24, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 571–72.
32. Young, Negotiating, 45; Robertson to Marvin Liebman, May 25, 1955, Box 22: Committee of One Million—Correspondence, Emmet Papers, Hoover; Frederick McKee to Dulles, April 16, 1955, William Knowland Papers, Box 274: McKee, 1953–1955, Bancroft Manuscript Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Bancroft); Robert Accinelli, “Eisenhower, Congress, and the 1954–55 Offshore Island Crisis,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 20 (Spring 1990), 342–44; George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–71 (New York: Random House, 1972), 1329 (May 1, 1955). Seventy four percent favored the proposition, 16 percent opposed, it and 10 percent had no opinion.
33. ﹟1805 Makins, Washington, August 3, 1955, FO 371/115009 (FC 10345/50), PRO.
34. Walter George wanted to go further and see a foreign ministers meeting. Meet the Press transcript, NBC Television, July 24, 1955, FO 371/115009 (FC 10346/44), PRO. Memcon, Dulles with Congressman Richards (D-SC), chairman, HFAC, August2, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 10–11; Makins, Washington, August 7, 1955, FO371/115009 (FC 1034/57), PRO.
35. Joy to Crowe, August 26, 1955, FO 371/115010 (FC 10345/73), PRO.
36. McConaughy to Johnson, August 8, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 2.
37. Dulles to Robertson with copies to Hoover, MacArthur, Murphy, and Phleger, July 5, 1955, Dulles Papers, Subject Series, Box 10, file: Wang-Johnson Talks (55)(4), Mudd.
38. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, ed., China Confidential (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 98.
39. 793.00/2–455 ﹟1241, Bohlen, Moscow, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 2, 217n2; 793.00/5–1755, Memcon, Dulles with Molotov, May 14, 1955, ibid., 563.
40. Dulles suggested that Johnson “intimate” that once all American prisoners were released, civilian as well as military, barriers against American travel to China would likely be dropped and their reports might paint a more favorable picture of China in the United States. 611.93/8–1655 ﹟526, Dulles to Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 4. Wang made clear the Chinese desire for visitors—for example, proposing an exchange of a Chinese opera company for a troupe performing Porgy and Bess. 611.93/8–2355 ﹟585, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 4.
41. Johnson to McConaughy, November 1, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 10.
42. Steven M. Goldstein, “Dialogue of the Deaf? The Sino-American Ambassadorial Level Talks, 1955–1970,” in Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 209
43. There is reason to believe they may have anticipated relaxation of the trade embargo as a quid pro quo for the prisoner release. Johnson, Geneva, August 2, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 3; Zhang Baijia and Jia Qingguo, “Steering Wheel, Shock Absorber, and Diplomatic Probe in Confrontation: Sino-American Ambassadorial Talks Seen from the Chinese Prespective,” in Ross and Jiang, Re-Examining the Cold War, 183.
44. Wang Bingnan, Zhong Mei Huitian Jiunian Huigu [Nine years of Sino-U.S. talks in retrospect], JPRS-CPS-85–079, August 7, 1985 (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Chubanshe, 1985), 19–23; Interview with Wang Bingnan, Beijing, September, 1988.
45. Robertson and Wang actually knew one another from the Marshall Mission negotiations in the 1940s. Beam, Multiple Exposure, 126. McConaughy indicated skepticism in Washington: “I believe there is a tendency here to read less significance into his conciliatory approach. … The semblance of reasonableness and willingness to go part way may be recognizable, but when his draft agreement is taken apart there is really nothing in the way of tangible concession at all.” McConaughy to Johnson, August 12, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 31n2.
46. 611.93/8–2955 ﹟642, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 5.
47. Memcon, Dulles and Congressman James P. Richards, August 2, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 10–11; Young, Negotiating, 54.
48. Johnson anticipated Chinese fury if the United States did not follow an agreement on repatriation with constructive dialogue about other issues. Johnson to McConaughy, September 7, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 5. McConaughy suggested keeping Wang so busy discussing implementation of repatriation that there would be no opportunity to raise other agenda items. McConaughy to Johnson, September 9, 1955, in ibid. At the first post-agreement session of the talks, Wang proposed discussion of the trade embargo and a foreign ministers meeting.611.93/9–1455 ﹟726, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 6.
49. Goldstein, “Dialogue of the Deaf,” 211–13.
50. Zhou Enlai, “The Present International Situation and China’s Foreign Policy,” delivered July 30, 1955, printed in People’s China, August 16, 1955, 7. According to the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, China would not use force if the United States recognized China’s peaceful claim to Formosa. 611.93/8–255 ﹟249, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 2. Wang Bingnan also remarked upon China’s willingness to settle the Taiwan issue by peaceful means. 611.93/12–155 ﹟1235, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 11. Skepticism was apparent in611.93/8–555 ﹟384, Dulles to Johnson, and 611.93/8–655 ﹟399, Dulles to Johnson, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 2.
51. ﹟1240, Johnson, Geneva, December 1, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 193n4; 611.93/11–2955 ﹟1329, Dulles/McConaughy to Johnson, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 11; Goldstein, “Dialogue of the Deaf,” 213.
52. This included Chiang Ching-kuo’s former secretary Cao Juren and Chiang Kai-shek’s personal representative Song Yishan, who had been a personnel chief of the KMT’s Organization Department. Qing Simei, From Allies to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1945–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 283.
53. Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 48.
54. 611.93/1–1956 ﹟1398, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 14.
55. Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 311
56. Tucker, China Confidential, 99.
57. McConaughy to Johnson, Geneva, August 26, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 5; Rosemary Foot, “The Search for a Modus Vivendi: Anglo-American Relations and China Policy in the Eisenhower Era,” in Warren I. Cohen and Akira Iriye, eds., The Great Powers in East Asia, 1953–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 149; Robert Boardman, Britain and the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1974 (London: Macmillan, 1976), 127–29.
58. The Chinese were quite open about this, seeing the early release of prisoners as a political favor. 611.93/8–2955 ﹟642, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 3, 70–71. On speculation over the determination to keep talks going, see 611.93/10–2155 ﹟924, Johnson, Geneva, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 9; Johnson to McConaughy, December 22, 1955, FRUS 1955–1957, supplement, fiche 12.
59. Zhang and Jia, “Steering Wheel, Shock Absorber,” 186.
60. Zhang Baijia, “The Changing International Scene and Chinese Policy toward the United States, 1954-1970,” in Ross and Jiang, Re-Examining the Cold War, 52.
61. Rosemary Foot, “The Eisenhower Administration’s Fear of Empowering the Chinese,” Political Science Quarterly 111 (Autumn 1996), 509-510.
62. Tucker, China Confidential, 99–100.
63. For example, see James Shepley, “How Dulles Averted War,” Life, January 16, 1956, 70–72.
64. Roger Dingman, “Alliance in Crisis: The Lucky Dragon Incident and Japanese-American Relations,” in Cohen and Iriye, eds., Great Powers, 187–214.
65. Chinese scholar Wang Tao argues in his manuscript “Isolating the Enemy” that the key to China’s decision to move forward in January 1955 was Moscow’s offer to provide the requisite resources. PhD dissertation in progress, Georgetown University, Washington D.C..
66. John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 16–18, 36–40; Zhang Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 220–22.
67. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Vintage, 1990), 529.