Useful adversaries : grand strategy, domestic mobilization, and Sino-American conflict, 1947-1958 / Thomas J. Christensen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Christensen, Thomas J., 1962-

Contributor:

JSTOR (Online Service)

Series:

Princeton studies in international history and politics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Foreign relations--China.

United States.

International relations.

China.

China--Foreign relations--United States.

United States--Foreign relations--1945-1953.

United States--Foreign relations--1953-1961.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 319 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1996]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

This book provides a new analysis of why relations between the United States and the Chinese Communists were so hostile in the first decade of the Cold War. Employing extensive documentation, it offers a fresh approach to long-debated questions such as why Truman refused to recognize the Chinese Communists, why the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek's KMT on Taiwan, why the Korean War escalated into a Sino-American conflict, and why Mao shelled islands in the Taiwan Straits in 1958, thus sparking a major crisis with the United States.

Christensen first develops a novel two-level approach that explains why leaders manipulate low-level conflicts to mobilize popular support for expensive, long-term security strategies. By linking "grand strategy," domestic politics, and the manipulation of ideology and conflict, Christensen provides a nuanced and sophisticated link between domestic politics and foreign policy. He then applies the approach to Truman's policy toward the Chinese Communists in 1947-50 and to Mao's initiation of the 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis. In these cases the extension of short-term conflict was useful in gaining popular support for the overall grand strategy that each leader was promoting domestically: Truman's limited-containment strategy toward the USSR and Mao's self-strengthening programs during the Great Leap Forward. Christensen also explores how such low-level conflicts can escalate, as they did in Korea, despite leaders' desire to avoid actual warfare.

Contents:

Grand Strategy, National Political Power, and Two-Level Foreign Policy Analysis

Moderate Strategies and Crusading Rhetoric: Truman Mobilizes for a Bipolar World

Absent at the Creation: Acheson's Decision to Forgo Relations with the Chinese Communists

The Real Lost Chance in China: Nonrecognition, Taiwan, and the Disaster at the Yalu

Continuing Conflict over Taiwan: Mao, the Great Leap Forward, and the 1958 Quemoy Crisis

American Public Opinion Polls, 1947-1950

Mao's Korean War Telegrams.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-303) and index.

Electronic reproduction. New York Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691213323

0691213321

Publisher Number:

99989665448

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.