Thomas J. Christensen

Useful Adversaries (eBook, ePUB)

Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bonnier Books UK
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Mai 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780691213323
• Artikelnr.: 59192771

Autorenporträt

Thomas J. Christensen

Inhaltsangabe

List of Figures and Tables
Preface
Note on Translation and Romanization
Ch. 1
Introduction
3
Ch. 2
Grand Strategy, National Political Power, and Two-Level Foreign
Policy Analysis
11
Ch. 3
Moderate Strategies and Crusading Rhetoric: Truman Mobilizes for a
Bipolar World
32
Ch. 4
Absent at the Creation: Acheson's Decision to Forgo Relations with
the Chinese Communists
77
Ch. 5
The Real Lost Chance in China: Nonrecognition, Taiwan, and the
Disaster at the Yalu
138
Ch. 6
Continuing Conflict over Taiwan: Mao, the Great Leap Forward, and
the 1958 Quemoy Crisis
194
Ch. 7
Conclusion
242
App. A
American Public Opinion Polls, 1947-1950
263
App. B
Mao's Korean War Telegrams
271
Bibliography
277
Index
305

Rezensionen

[Christensen] makes a convincing and original argument that political leaders, in order to secure public support for their fundamental grand strategy, may have to adopt a more hostile foreign policy than they would prefer . . . This volume is indispensable for anyone interested in Sino-American relations.