Nuclear Weapons in the Taiwan Strait Part I

ABSTRACT

During the Taiwan Strait Crisis, which began in the fall of 1954 and ended in the fall of 1958, US President Dwight Eisenhower prepared to attack the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with nuclear weapons to protect the government of Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. This new examination of the crisis, which includes consideration of documentation from PRC and Soviet archives, demonstrates US threats to attack the PRC with nuclear weapons were not necessary to deter military escalation and were not effective in deterring PRC leaders from pursuing their objectives. Instead of dividing these events into a first and second crisis, this study ties together the earlier and later periods of military activity with the US-PRC negotiations that took place in between. Including the negotiations reveals the greatest danger of US nuclear use was in the spring of 1955 before Eisenhower understood the cause of the crisis. It also demonstrates it was Eisenhower’s willingness to negotiate with the PRC, and not US preparations for nuclear use, which he withdrew during the second period of military activity in 1958, that allowed Eisenhower to avoid military escalation and resolve the crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Taiwan Strait Crisis
• nuclear weapons
• nuclear deterrence
• nuclear diplomacy
• nuclear escalation
• nuclear war

Introduction

This two-part review of the Taiwan Strait Crisis provides a detailed and in-depth look at the historical record from the beginning of the crisis in the fall of 1954 to the end of the crisis in 1958. Part I, below, begins with a broad review of the history of the Cold War in Asia from the immediate post-war period through the Korean War to the 1954 Geneva Conference. That is followed by a granular account of what is commonly referred to as the “First Taiwan Strait Crisis” during the fall of 1954 and the spring of 1955. A final section describes the US-PRC negotiations that followed. Part II picks up the history with a step-by-step account of the period covered by the so-called “Second Taiwan Strait Crisis” in the fall of 1958. The paper closes with conclusions about the efficacy of US threats to use tactical nuclear weapons, suggestions for US decision-makers on how to handle the next Taiwan Strait Crisis and encouraging lessons for advocates of nuclear arms control and disarmament.

A Crisis Waiting to Happen Again

During the Taiwan Strait Crisis, which began in the fall of 1954 and ended in the fall of 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower prepared to attack the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan¹. Eisenhower believed he needed to use US nuclear weapons to prevent the collapse of the government of the Republic of China (ROC), which still rules Taiwan today. Thomas Schelling, a prominent national security expert since the 1940s, argued the probability of nuclear war during this period was greater than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Schelling, a Nobel Laureate in economics, said it was “the only time the United States really might have used nuclear weapons” since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II (Schelling 2013).

The historical record supports Schelling’s argument. Eisenhower sought and obtained the consent of ROC President Chiang Kai-Shek to use nuclear weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff selected targets and positioned munitions. The National Security Council and the State Department agreed that a nuclear attack would be necessary if PRC forces appeared to be preparing to attack the island of Taiwan or the Pescadores, one of several island groups still occupied by ROC forces today. Vice President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles publicly threatened to use nuclear weapons against the PRC, and President Eisenhower reinforced the credibility of those threats.

The imagined Chinese communist assault on Taiwan never came. US officials involved in the crisis believed US nuclear threats deterred it, and those beliefs played a formative role in US nuclear weapons policies that support the first use of tactical nuclear weapons in a military crisis when victory using conventional weapons is not assured. Those policies remain in place today, but we now know they were formed on the basis of incomplete and inaccurate assessments of Chinese capabilities and intentions.

The Taiwan Strait Crisis has not been studied as extensively as the Cuban Missile Crisis, especially for lessons about the consequences and effectiveness of US nuclear weapons policy. Materials newly available from Soviet and PRC archives demonstrate that US threats to attack the PRC with nuclear weapons during the Taiwan Strait Crisis were neither necessary nor effective in deterring PRC leaders from pursuing their objectives. PRC leaders never intended to attack Taiwan or the Pescadores during this period. They were also willing to suffer a US nuclear attack rather than capitulate to unacceptable US demands.

These materials show that the US defense and foreign policy establishment, after exhaustive analysis and discussion, brought East Asia to the brink of nuclear war by mistake. It misunderstood the language, behavior, capabilities, and intentions of the Chinese communist leadership.

Unfortunately, this could happen again as US experts and officials continue to draw the wrong lessons from the Taiwan Strait Crisis.

The issue that precipitated the nuclear crisis of the 1950s remains unresolved. The PRC still claims sovereignty over Taiwan, and it stands on defensible legal and diplomatic ground. The UN General Assembly stripped the ROC government of its UN membership in 1971 when it recognized the PRC as China’s sole legitimate government. A majority of UN member states agree that Taiwan is a part of China.

Nevertheless, some ROC political leaders, in accord with the hopes of an increasing number of their citizens, would like to seek recognition as an independent nation. The PRC says it will try to prevent independence for Taiwan with military force if necessary. Although the United States is not obliged by treaty or domestic law to defend the ROC, any PRC use of military force against Taiwan could trigger a US military response².

Why does this matter today? The Trump administration is developing new low-yield nuclear weapons it says it will use in a war with China. It intends to deploy those weapons in Asia and use them in a crisis if deemed necessary. The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review emphasizes that the United States is prepared to use nuclear weapons first in order to defeat China’s increasingly capable conventional military forces. In other words, the United States is telling China it will use nuclear weapons even if China does not (OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) 2018).

The PRC did not have nuclear weapons in the 1950s, but it was allied with the Soviet Union and shared much of its communist ideology. European and Asian leaders allied with the United States feared the Taiwan crisis could lead to nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. President Eisenhower believed the United States could use nuclear weapons against the PRC without much risk of Soviet nuclear retaliation. However, transcripts of conversations between Chinese and Soviet leaders, contained in Soviet and PRC archives, demonstrate that President Eisenhower was wrong.

Today, China has a small but modern nuclear force, medium-range missiles that can reach US military bases in Asia, and long-range missiles that can reach the United States. President Trump’s advisors are telling him that low-yield nuclear weapons would help the United States control the escalation of a military conflict with China. His advisors seem to believe the United States can use low-yield nuclear weapons first without risking Chinese nuclear retaliation against the United States or US military bases in Asia. China’s official position is that it will retaliate if attacked first.

US-China relations are deteriorating. The two nuclear-armed nations are at odds over the conduct of each other’s activities in the South China Sea, in outer space, and in cyberspace. Chinese officials characterize the Trump administration’s economic policies toward China as a form of economic warfare. In this general context, US statements and actions that appear to express support for Taiwan’s independence could precipitate a military conflict and result in a US decision to start a nuclear war.

As tensions continue to simmer, and before the United States redeploys low-yield nuclear weapons to East Asia, it is useful to look back at the Eisenhower administration’s decision to prepare to use nuclear weapons against the PRC. Lessons from that experience can help US decisionmakers assess whether increasing US nuclear capabilities and demonstrating the resolve to use them first in a war with China is a prudent or effective way to maintain regional peace and security.

The Cold War in Asia

Documents in Chinese and Soviet archives challenge longstanding US perceptions of the Cold War in Asia, calling into question US assessments of PRC intentions. They reveal that, from the very beginning of the Cold War, persistent and significant differences separated what US policymakers thought the Chinese communists intended from what they actually intended.

In August 1946, China was in the midst of an internal struggle over who would lead the country. President Truman sent General George C. Marshall to China to try to create a post-war government that would disarm the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and secure the increasingly shaky leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist Party (KMT) and president of Republic of China. Marshall’s mission did not go well despite support from Stalin, who also envisioned a KMT-led government for post-war China (Shen 2012)³.

The two Chinese political parties could not come to terms. They reluctantly established a “united front” to fight the invading Japanese in 1936, but the front collapsed in 1945 not long after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. President Truman sought to prevent renewed fighting between the rivals from erupting into a civil war. Marshall negotiated a ceasefire and obtained an agreement from both sides to write a new Chinese constitution and form a coalition government (Kurtz-Phelan 2018). However, the ceasefire broke down in the spring of 1946, and both parties scrambled to control Manchuria, China’s most industrialized region. The United States helped Chiang. The Soviets helped Mao. It was the beginning of the Cold War in Asia.

That same spring, US journalist Anna Louise Strong interviewed Mao Zedong, the enigmatic leader of the Chinese communists, about the future of his party. Strong asked Mao about the role of the atomic bomb. She worried the United States might use it in a war with the Soviet Union. Mao told her that although he recognized the bomb was “a weapon of mass slaughter,” it was also “a paper tiger, which the US reactionaries use to scare people.” Moreover, Mao believed a war between the United States and the Soviet Union was unlikely: “The United States and the Soviet Union are separated by a vast zone which includes many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa. Before the US reactionaries have subjugated these countries, an attack on the Soviet Union is out of the question” (Zedong 1946).

In other words, months before the “Truman Doctrine” of containing communism with military alliances was presented to the US Congress – a moment many historians use to mark the beginning of the Cold War – Mao anticipated how that doctrine would shape the Cold War. He told Strong the United States would use the fear of communism to set up military bases all over the world. The ulterior aim was “to turn all the countries that are targets of US external expansion into US dependencies” (Zedong 1946).

Mao believed China was the most important US target and Chiang Kai-Shek an unwitting accomplice. He did not see his fight with the nationalists as a simple civil war but as a struggle to prevent China from becoming a US dependency. Mao’s anticipation of the Cold War informed his convictions about China’s place in global politics. Those convictions inspired him to create the crisis that led Eisenhower to prepare to attack Mao’s China with nuclear weapons.

How Taiwan Became a Front Line

After Marshall’s mission failed, Mao’s communists routed Chiang’s nationalists. The CCP established a new national government and expected international recognition since it governed almost all of China. The diplomatic winds were in its favor.

Chiang’s defeat was the latest in a long line of US disappointments in his leadership stretching back to the war with Japan. In January 1950, over the vociferous objections of Chiang’s many supporters in United States, Truman affirmed that the United States had “no intention to utilize its armed forces to interfere in the present situation” or “pursue a course which would lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China” (Truman 1950a).

Chiang relocated the rump of his government to Taiwan, which the ROC recovered from Japan with the consent of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union under the terms for Japanese surrender set out in the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, and the Instrument of Surrender that officially ended World War II. However, the local population resented Chiang’s arrival and resisted the impositions of his government (Chen 2008). Much of their land was confiscated and redistributed to ROC elites. Thousands of protesters were killed, tortured, and imprisoned in what came to be known as the “White Terror” (Wang 2017). Chiang’s nationalists ruled the island under martial law and forbade organized political opposition for decades afterwards. His policies created deep divisions between the local population and the new arrivals, and these continue to shape domestic politics on Taiwan today.

The Truman administration anticipated that the PRC would quickly seize the island and depose Chiang’s government (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States) 1949, 489). Those expectations increased as Mao’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mopped up the remaining ROC forces on the mainland (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States) 1950, 174). One of the largest mop-up operations was on Hainan island. The PLA defeated over 100,000 well-equipped ROC soldiers, sailors, and airmen in a 56-day battle in March and April 1950.

After the PRC victory in Hainan, US officials began to worry the PLA might advance into Southeast Asia. Less than a week after Hainan’s “liberation,” the Truman administration responded by announcing it would provide aid to the French forces trying to restore colonial rule in Indochina (OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) 2011a). This was the first US step into the conflict in Vietnam.

Despite the PLA’s success in Hainan, it failed to capture several other groups of much smaller ROC-held islands a bit farther removed from China’s eastern coast. Insufficient PLA air and naval capabilities were a significant factor (Shen 1998). The PLA’s limitations forced the PRC leadership to push back its timeline for an assault on Taiwan, which is more than 250 kilometers from the Chinese mainland (Shen 2012).

A few days after Truman announced the United States would no longer come to Chiang’s aid, PRC Vice-Chairman Liu Shaoqi traveled to Moscow to seek military assistance from Stalin. Liu cabled Mao with bad but not unexpected news based on joint Soviet-Chinese analyses of the failed PLA campaigns against the offshore islands. They indicated that a successful military assault on Taiwan would require significant improvements to PLA air and naval forces and could only be undertaken with large-scale Soviet assistance that Stalin wanted to spread over many years (Shen 2012).

As a result, the threat of an immediate PRC military assault on Taiwan was much smaller than the Truman administration believed.

Taiwan and Korea

US anxieties about the spread of communism in Asia increased dramatically in June 1950 when Kim Il Sung, the Korean communist leader, launched a military campaign to unify his country. Truman believed, incorrectly, that Kim was acting in consort with the PRC, leading the president to reverse course on intervening in the Chinese civil war. The day after Kim attacked the south Truman announced:

The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war …. In these circumstances the occupation of Formosa by Communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area. Accordingly, I have ordered the 7th Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa (Truman 1950b)⁴.

Truman’s statement identified “communism,” not Kim, as the aggressor. Documents in the Pentagon Papers make clear that this assessment was the product of a US defense and foreign policy establishment “dominated by the tendency to view communism in monolithic terms.” This tendency “had its origins at the time of the Nationalist withdrawal from mainland China” (OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) 2011a).

In fact, the Chinese communists vehemently opposed Kim’s plan to invade the south and unify Korea, as did Stalin. Neither of Kim’s communist allies were confident he could win. Both were worried the United States would intervene and eliminate the communist government in the North. Stalin, however, had a change of heart in January 1950; without Mao’s knowledge or consent, he green-lighted Kim’s plan to invade the south (Shen 2017)⁵. There is little evidence US analysts and decisionmakers were aware of Mao’s opposition to Kim’s decision to start a war that the Chinese communist leadership believed Kim would lose.

Truman reversed course on Taiwan because he was concerned Mao would open a second front in a wider war. To the contrary, Kim’s misadventure compelled Mao to move forces north to secure the PRC’s northeastern border. In response to Truman’s decision to defend the ROC, the PLA scrapped preparations for a Taiwan campaign, already delayed because of insufficient military capability (Shen 2012). Rather than being on the offensive, the PRC was forced into a defense posture. Stalin’s decision to send military aid and equipment to Kim’s Korea instead of Mao’s China made things worse.

Truman’s Nuclear Threats

The Chinese communists repeatedly warned the United States not to push north of the original dividing line between northern and southern Korea (Shen 2017). Had the United States taken those warnings seriously, the Chinese communists might not have entered the war. Unfortunately, General Douglas McArthur, commander of UN forces in Korea, convinced Truman the PRC leadership was bluffing.

While Mao was determined to intervene if that line was crossed, PRC military commanders were less certain. PLA General Lin Biao raised the possibility the United States would drop atomic bombs on Chinese cities. He argued against intervention and refused to command troops in Korea. The atomic bomb also intimidated the troops themselves, so much so that northeast regional commanders felt compelled to address their fears (Xiangli 2013).

The arguments used to console the troops echoed Mao’s 1946 comments to Strong. The PLA’s Political Department had local commanders tell the Chinese soldiers massing in the border region that the use of the atomic bomb would not be militarily decisive and that US threats to use it were not credible. They said the United States would risk harm to its own forces if it used atomic bombs on the battlefield and would suffer international condemnation if it used them against Chinese cities (Xiangli 2013).

Mao secured a promise of Soviet Air Force protection for the Chinese mainland and convinced his comrades they had to take the acceptably low risk they might be bombed. With the wholehearted support of the charismatic PLA general Peng Dehuai, Mao won over most of the Chinese military and political leaders who had reservations about intervening in Korea. The leadership united around an assessment that holding the line at the 38^th parallel and saving the North Korean communist government was vital to the PRC’s security (Shen 2017).

Truman did, in fact, threaten to use nuclear weapons against the PRC during a press conference shortly after the Chinese communists intervened in Korea (Leviero 1950). He had already sent the non-nuclear components for 10 atomic weapons to Guam during the early days of the conflict and informed MacArthur he would make the nuclear components available if necessary (JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) 1950). When Eisenhower inherited the war in 1953, he, too, prepared to use atomic bombs if China did not agree to US terms for an armistice. However, as Mao had anticipated, President Eisenhower found no practical way to use atomic weapons on the battlefield and was concerned about US public and allied opposition to using nuclear weapons (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953b).

The Chinese communist leadership’s experience of US nuclear threats during the Korean War encouraged more serious inquiries into the possibility of China’s developing its own nuclear weapons (Xiangli 2013). Perhaps more important, US attempts to deter Chinese military intervention with threats to use nuclear weapons that were not followed by actual nuclear attacks substantiated Mao’s original intuition about the psychological character of US nuclear threats and the limited military utility of nuclear weapons.

Eisenhower “Unleashes” Chiang Kai-Shek

In February 1953, in his first joint address to Congress, President Eisenhower flipped the script on the link between Taiwan and Korea and threatened to allow the ROC to open a second front in the war on Asian communism (Eisenhower 1953). Chiang used the forces he maintained on the small islands close to China’s coast to harass the mainland. While Truman tried to prevent such activity, Eisenhower hoped encouraging more of it would put additional military pressure on Chinese communists (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 65).

After Eisenhower’s address, the ROC, with substantial US military assistance, stepped up aerial bombing and naval shelling of the mainland, as well as attacks on PRC and foreign shipping along the southeastern Chinese coast. In July, 10 days before the signing of the Korean armistice, Chiang mobilized troops stationed on the island of Jinmen to launch a large but unsuccessful attempt to capture the PRC-held Dongshan Islands (Niu 2009)⁶.

Chiang never let go of the possibility he could use the offshore islands as footholds for a future military campaign to recover the Chinese mainland and depose the communists. He was encouraged in this by sympathetic voices in the Pentagon and Congress. Eisenhower sought to exploit Chiang’s ambitions but did not believe it was possible for Chiang to overthrow the PRC and discouraged him from trying.

PRC and Soviet archives show Eisenhower’s policy was counterproductive. They demonstrate the Chinese communist leadership concluded the conflict in Korea was a stalemate and was ready to negotiate an end to the fighting 19 months before Eisenhower assumed office. In May 1951, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee decided on a policy of “talking while fighting” to obtain an acceptable armistice through negotiation (Shen 2017). Eisenhower’s pressure tactics stiffened Mao’s resolve. He was determined to keep fighting until the United States demonstrated its willingness to negotiate in good faith rather than continuing to try to compel the PRC to come to the table with military force.

Kim opposed the “talking while fighting” policy because he held out hope for unifying Korea with a major offensive. But after Stalin agreed with Mao that victory was out of reach, Kim became anxious to end the war as soon as possible. US bombing was taking a very heavy toll on the civilian population in Korea, and Kim worried about the impact on his political legitimacy after the war (Shen 2017).

Mao refused to reach an agreement because he did not want the United States to think its repeated nuclear threats and the brutal strategic bombing of northern Korea were effective ways to manipulate the PRC. His approach to the negotiations became a point of contention between the PRC and North Korea. On 15 July 1952, Mao cabled an increasingly anxious Kim to explain that appearing to give in to US pressure would be extremely disadvantageous to both of their governments in the long run. Mao warned Kim, “Accepting these US terms under the present circumstances would inevitably inflate its ambitions and annihilate our own power and prestige” (Shen 2017).

There is little evidence Truman or Eisenhower understood this was why the Chinese communists were driving such a hard bargain on ending the fighting in Korea.

US encouragement of ROC military activity from the offshore islands continued after the Korean armistice was signed. On 23 June 1954, the ROC attacked a Soviet merchant vessel, precipitating a July 13 meeting of China’s senior military commanders to discuss how to address increasingly serious concerns about air and maritime security in the region (Niu 2009).

US-supported ROC military activity elevated tensions in the Taiwan Strait to a level that prompted UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to publicly suggest referring the matter to the United Nations (Eden 1960). However well intended, Eden’s recommendation was a significant factor in the creation of the nuclear crisis that was to follow.

US Rejects Dialogue with the PRC

Eden’s statement on Taiwan came during the final week of the 1954 Geneva Conference. The United States, the Soviet Union, France, and the United Kingdom convened the conference to consider “the establishment, by peaceful means, of a united and independent Korea” and “the problem of restoring peace in Indo-China” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 525). During the preceding three months of negotiations in Geneva focused on restoring peace in Asia, the United States had refused to engage in substantive discussions with the PRC delegation.

The Pentagon Papers make clear that the United States opposed participating in an international conference with the Chinese communists and relented only to placate the United Kingdom and France. Moreover, the Eisenhower administration took steps to undermine the talks, including providing high-profile support for ROC military activities from the offshore islands (OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) 2011b).

Eden blamed US domestic politics for the US refusal to talk to the PRC. Indeed, debates over how best to fight the war against the communist Chinese figured prominently in the 1952 presidential campaign. McCarthyism was just past its peak and still a popular subject of global reporting when the 1954 Geneva Conference began. US Secretary of State Dulles told Eden on multiple occasions that the US public and their representatives in Congress would not tolerate even the smallest gesture that might appear to accommodate the Chinese communists (Eden 1960).

However, the Pentagon Papers reveal a different set of US motivations. The difficulties of negotiating the Korean armistice led the United States to reject dialog with the Chinese communists. The experience convinced the Eisenhower administration the PRC would act in bad faith in Geneva. US policymakers believed the PRC’s primary goal was to prevent the United States from establishing military alliances in Southeast Asia that might thwart PRC plans “to consolidate gains and to extend their control.” They thought the PRC was using the negotiations to “cover its flanks” with “traditional vassal states” in Northern Korea and Indochina while helping Moscow “deny to the world generally surpluses which Indochina normally has available thus perpetuating conditions of disorder and shortages favorable to the growth of communism” (OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) 2011b).

The singular goal of the Eisenhower administration at the Geneva Conference was to avoid signing any agreement that would limit US “freedom of action” in Asia.

Chinese communist leaders left the negotiations on Korea with a newfound appreciation for the power of diplomacy. From their point of view, the long process of arriving at an armistice exposed major differences between the United States and its allies on questions related to war and peace in Asia (Shen 2012). Western European allies refused to aid the United States in Korea and were looking for diplomatic exits from Indochina. Most US allies, including Japan, were also eager to end the economic embargo of the PRC and supported its recognition as the legitimate government of China in the United Nations (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 753)⁷. The PRC leadership began to see diplomacy as a viable way to increase its international stature and solicit international support for domestic economic reconstruction (Shen 2012).

In a major internal address in June 1953, Premier Zhou Enlai articulated the concept of “peaceful coexistence” based on the principles of “non-interference” and “non-intervention” in the affairs of other sovereign states. He argued this approach would win friends in Asia, exploit differences between the United States and its allies, and expose an inherently interventionist United States as the malevolent actor the PRC believed it to be. The Geneva Conference presented what Zhou described to Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov as an unexpected opportunity “to express our positions and principles on all the issues and offer explanations on certain questions so as to resolve some disputes” (Shen 2012).

That is a dramatically different articulation of Chinese communist objectives than the description given by US officials in the Pentagon Papers. Had Dulles been willing to talk to Zhou in Geneva, the dangerous drama that was about to unfold might have been avoided.

The Nuclear Crisis

Asian peers and the Western press widely praised Zhou Enlai’s performance in Geneva (Hamilton 1954). He achieved many of the goals articulated in his internal June 1953 address, in particular cultivating the image that the PRC leadership was reasonable, open to diplomacy, and willing to compromise. But during a Politburo meeting in Beijing days before the Geneva Accords were signed, Mao Zedong scolded the absent premier for not giving enough attention to the status of Taiwan (Shen 2012). Zhou worked closely and constructively with Eden in Geneva (Eden 1960). He should have made Eden aware the PRC viewed Taiwan as a domestic matter and that international interference was unwelcome. The British foreign secretary’s call to put the Taiwan issue before the United Nations led Mao to conclude Zhao had committed a “serious political mistake,” one that Mao would now attempt to correct with far less diplomatic means (Shen 2012).

Two days after Eden’s unexpected comments on Taiwan in Geneva, a People’s Daily editorial lamented that Zhou’s diplomatic accomplishments had not halted US support for Chiang’s continued harassment from the offshore islands. The editorial claimed the United States was “afraid of the possibility of tensions easing in Asia and the elevation of our country’s international stature.” It argued that the continuing ROC and US military activities from the offshore island proved “the United States is using Taiwan as a military base to attack the PRC.” It warned that if the United States signed a bilateral security agreement with Chiang’s government, “then it is determined to become an enemy of six hundred million Chinese people for a long time and must accept responsibility for the long-term serious consequences this situation will create” (Bu 1954).

A few days later, a second People’s Daily editorial excoriated US officials for using “the constant threat of military force” to try to overthrow the PRC regime. It chastised the foreign affairs committees of the US House and Senate for opposing PRC admission to the United Nations as the legitimate government of China. Further, it suggested the US government was elevating tensions in Asia for the benefit of “Wall Street war profiteers” (Wu 1954).

The most problematic editorial – “We Will Definitely Liberate Taiwan” – appeared on July 23, one week after the first editorial and two days after the close of the Geneva Conference. It accused the United States of using Taiwan to attack the PRC with the aim of restoring Chiang’s control over all of China. It said there was a “US military conspiracy using aggressive and provocative behavior that was a serious threat to the peace in Asia and the world which the PRC will not tolerate.” It rejected Eden’s suggestion to turn the matter over to the United Nations and ended with a stern warning. “The Chinese people declare to the world yet again: Taiwan is a part of China’s sovereign territory and the Chinese people will liberate Taiwan” (People’s Daily 1954).

The three editorials were the beginning of a propaganda campaign meant to redress the serious political mistake Mao believed Zhou had made in Geneva. Mao hoped to elevate the status of Taiwan in the international discussion of Asian peace and security in the wake of the Geneva Conference. The propaganda campaign also targeted PRC citizens: neighborhoods were plastered with posters containing slogans similar to the title of the third editorial (Shen 2012).

It is not difficult to imagine how Mao’s propaganda might lead US and international audiences to anticipate a major PRC military mobilization, especially in the context of steadily increased military activity. The day of the last editorial, the New York Times reported that two PRC MIGs had shot down a civilian airliner in the waters off Hainan Island (United Press 1954). Not long after completing a military rescue effort in PRC territorial waters, the United States shot down two PRC fighter aircraft within PRC airspace and US naval vessels entered PRC territorial waters near Hainan island (New York Times 1954).

Despite this increased military pressure, the PRC had no intention to attack Taiwan in the foreseeable future, as Mao would later tell Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The objectives of the propaganda campaign were to focus international attention on the Taiwan problem and get the United States to the negotiating table (Shen 2012).

PRC Military Planning

As the propaganda campaign got underway, the PRC Central Military Commission (CMC) began to discuss measures to stop US-enabled ROC attacks from the offshore islands. General Peng Dehuai chaired a CMC meeting the day after the Geneva Conference concluded without a US signature on the accords⁸. The discussion was grounded in a 1952 CMC determination that US military involvement in Korea, the offshore islands, and southeast Asia “constituted the principle threat to New China’s security” (Niu 2009). To the PRC leadership, US behavior in Geneva validated that determination. The day before the conference ended, the Eisenhower administration announced it would either include the ROC in a proposed new military alliance covering southeast Asia or sign a separate agreement on military aid with Chiang’s government (Schmidt 1954).

The CMC dusted off plans to continue mop-up operations started before the Korean War. Those plans called for trying to seize control of the offshore islands, beginning with the Dachens off the coast of Zhejiang province (Niu 2009). They did not call for an assault on Taiwan island itself, which was deemed out of reach because of insufficient PRC air and naval capabilities – a judgment made even before Truman intervened to protect it in June 1950 (Shen 1998).

Mao signed off on the CMC plan on August 8, and the Politburo began to discuss it the next day. On August 19, the US Navy injected more urgency into PRC deliberations by conducting proximity operations in the Dachens. Twelve days later, the CMC finally gave the order to start implementing the plan. On September 3, the PRC started shelling ROC forces on Jinmen Island off the southern coast of Fujian province (Niu 2009).

The shelling was not a prelude to an attack on Jinmen, which contained the largest concentration of ROC forces in the offshore islands. The CMC plan called first for seizing the smallest, most vulnerable islands to the north (Niu 2009). But the shelling was a relatively low-cost and effective means to respond to recent US and ROC provocations. It also helped raise the profile of PRC concerns with international and domestic audiences (Shen 2012). As the shelling of Jinmen continued, the PLA prepared to launch an assault on the Dachens (Shen 1998).

United States Debates Next Steps

In a National Security Council (NSC) meeting six days into the shelling, Dulles told Eisenhower the situation presented “a horrible dilemma.” Neither Dulles nor Eisenhower wanted to go to war with the PRC over the offshore islands, which all the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) agreed were not necessary to the defense of Taiwan, but the island outposts were very important to Chiang Kai-shek. He not only refused to surrender them, but he also deployed a disproportional amount of military resources and his best-trained soldiers on the highly vulnerable islands close to the Chinese mainland (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1954b).

JCS Chair Admiral Arthur Radford made the case for defending the offshore islands. Radford, who spent most of his career fighting in the Pacific, argued that failing to defend the offshore islands would “commit the United States further to a negative policy which could result in a progressive loss of free world strength to local aggression until an all-out conflict is forced upon us” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 291). Dulles and Eisenhower were not convinced. They decided, as Eden had months earlier, to try to diffuse through the United Nations what they came to see as a crisis (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 293).

However, Chiang responded to Eden’s suggestion to refer Taiwan’s status to the United Nations with the same antipathy that Mao did (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 339). He immediately issued a scathing public rebuttal, repeating many of the same legal and historical justifications for Chinese claims to sovereignty over Taiwan that were articulated in the People’s Daily editorials (Rosenthal 1954). From Chiang’s point of view, the Chinese civil war was still being fought, the contest over Taiwan and the offshore islands was part of that war, and the United States should be all in on his side (FRUS 1955–1957, 112).

As intermittent PRC shelling of Jinmen continued throughout fall 1954, Eisenhower negotiated a new mutual defense pact with Chiang and made the ROC a priority recipient of US military supplies and equipment (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 459). The United States deployed new nuclear weapons, including warheads, to US-occupied Okinawa not long after signing the pact with the ROC in December (Norris, Arkin, and Burr 1999). Eisenhower considered deploying US nuclear weapons in Taiwan the following spring.

While Radford argued such deployment was essential to defend the offshore islands, the NSC recommended excluding nuclear weapons from the defense pact with the ROC. Eisenhower refused to take a public position (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1952–1954 1953a, 452). Privately, however, he pleaded with Chiang to halt all military activities against the PRC and to redeploy ROC military assets away from the offshore islands and back to Taiwan (FRUS 1955–1957, 189). Chiang refused and continued to lobby his many US supporters, including Radford, to get Eisenhower to help him return to the mainland and overthrow the PRC government.

The PRC Proceeds as Planned

On 10 January 1955, PRC air and naval forces attacked the ROC at sea and in the main harbor of Dachen island. Reports in the People’s Daily claimed five ROC naval vessels were destroyed (People’s Daily 1955a). The next day, PRC aircraft littered all of the Dachen Islands with “propaganda bombs” containing a declaration of intent to “liberate Taiwan” and encouragement to ROC forces to switch sides (People’s Daily 1955b). This combination of an initial attack followed by an appeal to cross over was effective in many of the battles of the Chinese civil war.

PRC domestic propaganda connected the struggle over the offshore islands to US alliance-building efforts in Europe and Asia. It linked the October 1954 Paris Agreement, which brought a sovereign West Germany into NATO, with the February 1955 establishment of the South East Asian Treaty Organization as parts of a “conspiracy” to make US allies dependent on US economic assistance and enlist them in “war preparations” against the socialist bloc (People’s Daily 1955c; Jiang 1955). The new US defense pact with the ROC was characterized as evidence of how these alliances would be used to attack the Chinese mainland (Jiang 1955).

While this propaganda narrative fit the general observations on the post-war world order Mao shared with Anna Louise Strong in 1946, Mao did not believe the PRC was under siege in 1955. In early March, at the height of the crisis, the Chinese leader told Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that the PRC had the initiative. The United States was in a bind, he argued, and rising tensions over the offshore islands worked to his advantage. The PRC military campaign was creating friction between the United States and its European allies, as well as raising the PRC’s stature among the nonaligned nations of Asia (Shen 2012).

Mao’s confidence may have been a product of Eisenhower’s response to the Dachen campaign. A mid-January PRC offensive put ROC troops on the Dachens in serious jeopardy. Publicly, Dulles tried to downplay the significance, but privately the NSC concluded the islands would fall without direct US military intervention (FRUS 1955–1957, 23). Eisenhower did not want to commit US forces. Instead, he pressed Chiang to withdraw (FRUS 1955–1957, 26). The ROC leader was furious and extracted a promise from Eisenhower to defend Jinmen and Mazu⁹ in return for capitulating (FRUS 1955-57, 30). Worse still, Eisenhower felt compelled to ask Khrushchev to get the PRC to halt its offensive so the United States could safely help Chiang evacuate his forces (FRUS 1955–1957, 27).

That conversation led Khrushchev to ask Mao where things were heading, especially after the focus of the offshore island campaign shifted south to Jinmen and Mazu. Mao told Khrushchev that military preparations for a campaign to take the two island groups could take three to four years, but that even when those preparations were complete, “starting a military campaign would depend on the disposition of US forces in the offshore island region.” Mao was in no hurry to take the two offshore islands because “maintaining a tense situation” gave the PRC the initiative and made it difficult for the United States over the longer term. For this reason, the United States might force Chiang to withdraw, either unilaterally, as he did in the Dachens, or through international negotiations (Shen 2012).

On the longer-term goal of liberating Taiwan, Mao assured the Soviet leader, “We understand, as long as US military forces are there, we are not about to launch military activities against Taiwan and the Penghu [Pescadores] islands.” But Mao also told Khrushchev he did not want things to quiet down. The offshore island campaign was creating international pressure on the Eisenhower administration to do what it refused to do in Geneva: negotiate in earnest with the PRC. Maintaining that pressure in the run-up to a meeting of Asian and African nations in Bandung in April, Mao argued, “might be beneficial to us in creating an opportunity to resolve the Taiwan problem” (Shen 2012).

After the initial shelling of Jinmen that started the crisis, the PRC shelled the island on six other occasions between October 1954 and the fall of the Dachen Islands in February 1955. All were shorter and less intense than the opening volley. The PRC stepped up the pace in March, shelling Jinmen six times that month. At the same time, it continued to build roads, railroads, airfields, artillery emplacements, and other militarily useful infrastructure in the adjacent region of the mainland. This activity created panic in Washington, London, and Paris.

The United States Prepares New Nuclear Options

The perceived need for more US military assistance to the ROC heightened Eisenhower’s concern that confronting communists in numerous localities around the world was generating expectations the United States could not meet and costs it could not afford. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in January 1954, Dulles said it was unwise “to become permanently committed to military expenditures so vast that they lead to practical bankruptcy.” At the same time, Dulles argued that “local power” could not contain communism (Dulles 1954).

The administration concluded that the only way to solve this problem was to reinforce the anticommunist struggles of allied foreign governments with “the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power.” Dulles told US foreign policy experts this strategy had succeeded in Korea, where “the fighting was stopped on honorable terms” because the administration confronted Mao “with the possibility that the fighting might, to his own great peril, soon spread beyond the limits and methods which he had selected” (Dulles 1954).

However, PRC archives, particularly Mao’s 12 July 1952, letter to Kim on the question of negotiations to end the war, indicate Dulles was mistaken (Shen 2017).

As the Dachens were being evacuated in mid-February, Eisenhower told the NSC he believed the surrender of Jinmen and Mazu could precipitate the collapse of Chiang’s government (FRUS 1955-57, 115). Dulles told the president he was now convinced the PRC was preparing to attack Taiwan. The Joint Chiefs warned that thwarting that attack would require large-scale US bombing of the Chinese mainland, which, they cautioned, could precipitate a wider war.

On March 6, Dulles returned from a long trip to Asia with a warning to Eisenhower that the “use of atomic missiles” might be necessary. The president agreed (FRUS 1955–1957, 141). There are indications the United States was already prepared to use them. The Soviets reported the United States had already deployed nuclear weapons in Taiwan (South China Morning Post 1955a). The US immediately denied those reports, although the nuclear-armed U.S.S. Midway, which carried nuclear bombs that could be delivered by fighter aircraft, was on patrol off the southern Chinese coast (Norris, Arkin, and Burr 1999). In a radio address the following evening, at Eisenhower’s direction, Dulles stated that United States “has sea and air forces now equipped with new and powerful weapons of precision which can utterly destroy military targets without endangering unrelated civilian centers.” Dulles mentioned “atomic missiles” that are “becoming conventional for war.” The New York Times, summarizing the address, referred to them as “tactical nuclear weapons” (Abel 1955a).

Dulles explained the administration’s position on the use of nuclear weapons to Walter George, who was president pro-tempore of the Senate and who, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arranged congressional hearings the afternoon before Dulles addressed the nation. In a memorandum recalling the conversation, Dulles noted:

I said that I felt that under present conditions it would be impossible for us to stand by and do nothing while the Chinese Communists took over Quemoy and Matsu by force. The psychological repercussion on Formosa and in Southeast Asia would, I thought, make it almost certain that most of Asia would be lost to us. I then said that an effective defense of these islands would require the use of atomic weapons because it would not be possible to knock out airfields and gun emplacements with conventional weapons in the face of Chinese manpower and the capacity to rebuild (FRUS 1955–1957, 142).

Dulles went on to say that the nuclear weapons they planned to use “had practically no radioactive fallout and were entirely local in effect.” However, a few weeks later, during a presidential luncheon with several members of Congress, Dulles warned, “The use of these weapons could well result in a fall out which in turn might kill many thousands of Chinese” (FRUS 1955–1957, 179). This discrepancy is hard to explain, but subsequent discussions indicate Dulles understood there would be significant fallout from the limited use of tactical nuclear weapons. As preparations to use nuclear weapons became more concrete in early April, Dulles drafted a policy memo stating the scale of the planned nuclear strikes was “so considerable” that “there would be risk of large civilian casualties through after-effects, and indeed the inhabitants of Jinmen and even Taiwan might not be immune under certain atmospheric and wind conditions” (FRUS 1955–1957, 194).

The administration was also concerned with the potential political fallout of using nuclear weapons to defend the offshore islands. At a March 10 NSC meeting, Dulles expressed concern: “We might wake up one day and discover we were inhibited in the use of these weapons by negative public opinion” (FRUS 1955-57, 146). Dulles had cause to be concerned. Radioactive rain from a 1 March 1954, US test of a thermonuclear weapon in the Bikini Atoll contaminated a Japanese tuna-fishing boat and sickened the 23 crew members who witnessed the blast. They returned to port with severe symptoms and were hospitalized. The incident generated considerable media attention and precipitated a worldwide backlash against nuclear weapons and their testing. The political effects were particularly dramatic in Asia. During the year between the test and Dulles’s comments to the NSC, over 32 million Japanese – a third of the entire population – signed a petition, started by a group of Japanese housewives, to ban atomic weapons (Wittner 2009).

As a result, Dulles attempted to mitigate the potential political fallout. He directed the NSC to take “urgent steps to create a better public climate for the use of atomic weapons” to defend Taiwan (FRUS 1955–1957, 146). At a March 15 press conference, the secretary said that “the likelihood of using city-destroying bombs in a war went down as the availability of smaller atomic weapons went up.” He went on to claim, “The new weapons offer a chance for victory on the battlefield without harming civilians” (Abel 1955b).

Two days later, in prepared remarks to the Executives Club of Chicago, Vice-President Richard Nixon made it clear that should war break out over the offshore islands, the United States would be forced to use nuclear weapons:

It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons that might be used if a war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. We are not prepared to fight that kind of war. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the targets of any aggressive force (Johnston 1955).

Nixon was articulating in public new administration guidance on the use of nuclear weapons approved by the president a week earlier. On March 11, Eisenhower met with National Security Adviser Robert Cutler to discuss revisions to US policy on the use of nuclear weapons. Cutler recommended, and Eisenhower agreed, they should eschew existing guidance that dictated much greater caution in the use of nuclear weapons than in the use of conventional weapons. They decided the “present situation” with the PRC required reverting to an earlier policy: “In the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons as available for use as other munitions” (FRUS 1955–1957, 150).

The New York Times ran a lengthy article on “limited atomic war” three days after Nixon’s speech. Paraphrasing Eisenhower’s remarks during a press conference the day after Nixon spoke, it said limited atomic war was a new strategy where “a whole new family of so-called tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons” could be “used like bullets.” The article contained a detailed list of new weapons, including several Dulles may have been thinking about when he used the term “atomic missiles:” the “Honest John free-flight artillery rocket,” the “Army’s Corporal guided missile,” and the “Matador and Regulus pilotless bombers” (Baldwin 1955).

The targets selected by the Joint Chiefs included roads, railroads, and airfields all along the southern Chinese coast from Ningbo to Guangzhou. Radford, Dulles, and Eisenhower believed aerial reconnaissance of PRC preparations indicated the Chinese communists would be ready to launch an assault on the offshore islands in late April. The commander-in-chief of the Pacific sent a memo on April 8 to the chief of the navy warning they would need to be able to respond quickly:

When they are ready, they will then strike with such a tremendous force that a most immediate and strong American retaliatory effort will be required, the decision for which must be made in Washington without delay. Under these conditions there is a much greater likelihood that success will depend upon the immediate use of atomic weapons (FRUS 1955–1957, 199).

Japanese Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama made statements to the Japanese press indicating he had been approached about stockpiling US nuclear munitions at US military bases in Japan (South China Morning Post 1955b). The Eisenhower administration authorized the delivery of the nonnuclear components of US nuclear bombs to US bases in Japan at the same time it deployed nuclear weapons in what was then US-occupied Okinawa (Norris, Arkin, and Burr 1999). Chief of Staff of the Army General Matthew Ridgeway informed Radford that up to six Honest John nuclear artillery batteries deployed in Europe and another scheduled for delivery to Japan could be diverted to Taiwan (FRUS 1955–1957, 192). As the plans for nuclear strikes against the PRC became more concrete, Dulles worried the United States did not have enough of these new tactical nuclear weapons. He warned his senior staff, “We cannot splurge our limited supply of atomic weapons without serious danger to the entire balance of power” (FRUS 1955-57, 175).

A Chance for Diplomacy

Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Joint Chiefs were increasingly worried about a sudden, massive PRC assault. In a telegram of April 8, General William Chase, commander of the US Military Assistance Group in Taiwan, expressed concern about the buildup of PRC airfields and aircraft along the southeastern coast. Chase’s ROC counterpart requested “early concurrence in our bombing of enemy airfields in Swatow, Foochow and Luchou.” Chase recommended green-lighting an ROC attack, saying it was “justified from a purely military view and from the viewpoint of psychological reaction upon East Asia” (FRUS 1955–1957, 196).

Nevertheless, the president and his secretary of state decided it was unlikely the PRC would attack before the conclusion of a conference of Asian and African nations in Bandung, Indonesia, scheduled for late April. The two men conferred on Chase’s request and agreed to wait until after the conference when, according to Dulles, they “might be able to see more clearly ahead and judge either that there would be war or peace in the area.” Eisenhower felt the proposed ROC bombing would undermine US Asian allies attending the conference. He defended taking the military risk to support diplomacy, arguing “it is oftentimes necessary to take heavy liabilities from a purely military standpoint in order to avoid being in the position of being an aggressor and the initiator of war” (FRUS 1955–1957, 201).

Chase, the Joint Chiefs, Dulles, and Eisenhower were wrong about the risks of an imminent PRC attack. In his March 5 response to Khrushchev’s inquiry about PRC intentions, Mao told the Soviet leader it would be several years before they were ready to try to take the offshore islands; even then it was unlikely as long as US military forces remained in the region (Shen 2012).

Mao also told Khrushchev he believed it was beneficial to maintain a state of tension over the offshore islands because it was responsible for the growing diplomatic pressure on the United States to negotiate the Taiwan issue with the PRC. Both the United Kingdom and India were actively trying to broker talks. Their concern was to prevent another major war in Asia in which the United States might use nuclear weapons. India agreed with both the PRC and Chiang’s ROC that Taiwan was an inseparable part of China. The United Kingdom supported the United States in offering to exchange control over the offshore islands for a PRC promise not to use military force to settle the Taiwan issue (Shen 2012).

Mao told Khrushchev the PRC hoped “to use India to pressure the UK to get the United States to yield.” The PRC would broaden its diplomatic strategy at the Bandung conference:

Our intention, during the period of the Asian-African conference, is to create opportunities to resolve the situation in the Taiwan area through engagement and discussions, possibly through the offices of the three countries of Indonesia, Myanmar and India. This may be beneficial to us. Doing it this way, of course, does not exclude engagement with England, especially because of the engagement between the Soviet Union and England that is primarily aimed at bringing about a resolution of the offshore island problem by connecting it with the Soviet proposal for the ten nation conference. We think the organization of the ten nation conference will require a relatively long period of multifaceted diplomatic activity” (Shen 2012).

Khrushchev was hoping to resolve the Taiwan problem in the context of a broader diplomatic effort that included working with the United Kingdom and France to resolve post-Geneva problems in Indochina. Mao’s remarks indicate he had little confidence Khrushchev’s efforts would succeed. It was the first of several disagreements on how to handle the Taiwan problem, and these would eventually play a significant role in the disintegration of Sino-Soviet relations.

The Bandung Conference

The Bandung Conference, a meeting of 29 African and Asian nations described in the opening speech as “the first intercontinental conference of colored peoples in the history of mankind,” was not sympathetic to the US view of China (Sukarno 1955). The organizing committee’s decision to invite the PRC and not the ROC to represent China, especially in light of the invitations extended to the governments of both North and South Vietnam, was an unambiguous statement of opposition to the Eisenhower administration’s approach to the offshore island crisis and the status of Taiwan.

Most of the delegates had personally suffered the indignity of European colonial rule. They sought to protect their hard-won independence from the politics and economics of the Cold War. President Sukarno of Indonesia expressed this in his opening address:

We are often told “Colonialism is dead.” Let us not be deceived or even soothed by that. I say to you, colonialism is not yet dead. How can we say it is dead, so long as vast areas of Asia and Africa are unfree. And, I beg of you do not think of colonialism only in the classic form which we of Indonesia, and our brothers in different parts of Asia and Africa, knew. Colonialism has also its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control and actual physical control by a small but alien community within a nation (Sukarno 1955).

The Eisenhower administration felt threatened by the hope of most delegates, including Sukarno, to create the group of nonaligned nations that eventually came to be called the “Third World.” Dulles could not abide what he saw as “neutralism” in a winner-take-all struggle against international communism where every nation and its leaders were either with the United States or against it (New York Times 1956). He worked with US Asian allies to get the others to align with the United States and reject engagement with the PRC (FRUS 1955–1957, 180).

Despite US efforts, the PRC delegation was very well-received. Premier Zhou Enlai was reported to be humble, accommodating, and ecumenical in his approach to other participants. He treated the minority of national delegations allied with the United States with the respect and attention he gave the majority who sought greater economic and cultural independence. At the same time, he directed attention to US behavior that deeply worried all the Asian delegations (Prashad 2007). Nothing in this behavior was more important than US nuclear weapons policy.

Sukarno devoted a significant portion of his opening address to the dangers of nuclear weapons:

Not so very long ago we argued that peace was necessary for us because an outbreak of fighting in our part of the world would imperil our precious independence, so recently won at such great cost. Today, the picture is more black. War would not only mean a threat to our independence, it may mean the end of civilization and even of human life. There is a force loose in the world whose potentiality for evil no man truly knows. Even in practice and rehearsal for war the effects may well be building up into something of unknown horror.

Not so long ago it was possible to take some little comfort from the idea that the clash, if it came, could perhaps be settled by what were called “conventional weapons” – bombs, tanks, cannon and men. Today that little grain of comfort is denied us for it has been made clear that the weapons of ultimate horror will certainly be used, and the military planning of nations is on that basis. The unconventional has become the conventional, and who knows what other examples of misguided and diabolical scientific skill have been discovered as a plague on humanity.

And do not think that the oceans and the seas will protect us. The food that we eat, the water that we drink, yes, even the very air that we breathe can be contaminated by poisons originating from thousands of miles away. And it could be that, even if we ourselves escaped lightly, the unborn generations of our children would bear on their distorted bodies the marks of our failure to control the forces which have been released on the world (Sukarno 1955).

The Indonesian president borrowed language the Eisenhower administration used to argue that there was no difference between nuclear and conventional weapons and to prepare the US public to accept the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Asia. But Sukarno presented it in a context that undermined the diplomatic and moral standing of the United States and increased sympathy for the PRC.

Zhou Enlai reciprocated with official PRC expressions of sympathy for the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as for the Japanese fisherman who died due to the radioactive fallout from a US nuclear weapons test. He pointed to growing public opposition to the nuclear arms race and popular support for the elimination of nuclear weapons. And he reminded delegates who obtained their independence by standing up to foreign intimidation that threats to use nuclear weapons “can frighten into submission no one who is determined to resist.” To the contrary, Zhou argued, it “can only place the threat-makers in a more isolated and confused position” (Zhou 1955).

Many of the delegates, as well as representatives of the governments of Japan, England, and France, criticized the Eisenhower administration’s approach to the offshore island crisis (Prashad 2007).

Zhou, however, was not honest with the delegates about how PRC leaders were planning to express their determination to stand up to what they called US “nuclear blackmail” (Xiangli 2013). In the months before the conference, the Chinese Communist Party collected signatures on a petition to abolish nuclear weapons. The PRC government-initiated petition copied nongovernmental antinuclear signature campaigns in Japan and other nations. In a series of editorials, the People’s Daily supported all of them (Hsieh 1962). But on March 5, a few days before Dulles threatened to use nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Morning Post quoted two PRC scientists who said nuclear weapons were “not as horrible as the Americans claimed” and that “underground shelters could protect humans from the original thrust, heat and radiation of the atomic blast” (South China Morning Post 1955a). More important, at a CCP Central Committee meeting in Beijing on January 15 – four months before Zhou took the podium in Bandung – Mao Zedong officially green-lighted China’s own nuclear weapons program (Xiangli 2013).

Throughout the conference, Zhou let it be known the PRC was willing to talk with the United States. US allies communicated this to Dulles. On the last day of the conference, Zhou stated it publicly:

As to relations between China and the United States, the Chinese people do not want to have war with the United States. We are willing to settle international disputes by peaceful means. If those of you here would like to facilitate the settlement of disputes between China and the United States by peaceful means it would be most beneficial to the relaxation of tensions in the Far East and also to the postponement and prevention of a world war (Chou 1955).

Dulles’ aides immediately discounted the significance of Zhou’s offer. Undersecretary of State Herbert Hoover, Jr., derisively described Zhou’s lengthy statement at the end of the conference as “merely a press release” (FRUS 1955–1957, 217). He warned Eisenhower not to respond directly for fear of lending Zhou’s offer greater international credibility. Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asia William Sebald argued the offer “was designed, as were the Chinese Communist tactics at Geneva, to establish a basis for throwing the onus for Far Eastern tensions on the United States” (FRUS 1955–57, 217). But Dulles told Eisenhower they should “be prepared to indicate receptivity to any ceasefire proposal” and credited the PRC’s “apparently more pacific mood” to the efforts of US allies at the conference. Eisenhower agreed and directed Dulles to take that line at an upcoming press conference (FRUS 1955–1957, 220).

Many US reporters focused on the positive impact of US Asian allies, who were believed to have prevented the communists from making Bandung an anti-American affair (Durdin 1955a). The New York Times, however, also printed the full text of Zhou’s statements, accompanied by several stories that favorably assessed his performance in Bandung (Durdin 1955b).

The PRC achieved its most important objective. At the end of the conference, a broader coalition of US allies tried to persuade the United States to talk to the PRC, including nations like Ceylon and the Philippines that, at Dulles’ request, delivered the scathing assessments of international communism that drove US reporting. However, war now seemed far less likely and the tension Mao believed worked to the PRC’s advantage was suddenly relieved.

The Interregnum

International anticipation of PRC-US negotiations, which played a role in bringing them about, removed the crisis atmosphere but did not stop either side from continuing to prepare for conflict. The PRC continued to shell the island of Jinmen and to construct the regional infrastructure that worried the Joint Chiefs and the ROC. The United States continued a military buildup in Taiwan that included deploying US nuclear weapons on the island (Norris, Arkin, and Burr 1999). Despite these preparations, after Zhou’s statement the offshore-island issue gradually dropped out of the headlines and off the diplomatic agendas of the nations that had expressed so much concern prior to Bandung.

The Eisenhower administration’s top priority after the conference was not opening talks with Mao but assuaging Chiang Kai-shek. The Bandung Conference demonstrated the ROC had little support in Asia, even among US allies. Favorable comments from British government officials on Ceylon’s proposal to dissolve Chiang’s government and hold a vote on self-determination for the island appeared in the Hong Kong press (FRUS 1955–1957, 209). Chiang’s supporters in Washington warned him that Eisenhower was dispatching Admiral Radford to Taipei to discuss withdrawing from the offshore islands and negotiating a ceasefire with the PRC. Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson cabled Dulles from Taipei on April 25, the day Radford arrived, to warn the secretary that Chiang was “visibly shaken” when he discovered those rumors were true (FRUS 1955–1957, 218).

Chiang rejected Eisenhower’s proposal to withdraw, telling Radford that if he did “even a child would not believe that his government would be assisted by the US in holding Taiwan itself” (FRUS 1955–57, 219). Robertson told Dulles that Chiang believed evacuating the offshore islands “would be a surrender to the communists which would endanger support of overseas Chinese and his own people.” He was unmoved by Radford’s warning that the United States could not defend the offshore islands without the use of nuclear weapons, which would alienate and endanger US allies while inviting the risk of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume II. Document 219). ROC Foreign Minister Yeh told Ambassador Rankin that Chiang and his advisers were disturbed by Radford’s visit and it would “require a great deal of effort to repair the damage to Chinese confidence in the United States” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955c).

Secretary Dulles did more damage at a press conference on April 26 when he indicated the United States would be willing to negotiate a ceasefire with the PRC without ROC participation (Dulles 1955). Three days later, Eisenhower reinforced this message in his first public remarks on Zhou’s offer (Eisenhower 1955). ROC Ambassador to the United States Wellington Koo quickly confronted Dulles with ROC objections that complicated further US consideration of direct negotiations with the PRC.

Ambassador Koo asked Dulles about the efforts of Britain, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and other nations to broker talks and wanted to know if the United States had taken any action in response to Zhou’s statement. Dulles told Koo the United States was trying to get the PRC to agree to a ceasefire. Koo told Dulles it was his understanding that “a ceasefire agreement is usually considered to require more than one party.” Koo did not understand how that could happen “when there would be only one contesting party involved in the talks.” Koo told Dulles the ROC had no intention of talking to the PRC about a ceasefire and that “his government, and not the United States, was the other party in the hostilities.” Dulles told Koo, “What the United States wants in effect is a unilateral renunciation of the use of force by the Communist Chinese.” Dulles confessed that he did not think this was possible, and did not expect to sign a formal agreement with the PRC, but that a de-facto ceasefire was possible (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955c).

The expectations of the PRC leadership were not much different. Mao told Khrushchev he did not think the Taiwan issue would be settled by negotiations in the foreseeable future, but they could “allow the Americans to occupy Taiwan for a period of time and not attack Taiwan” (Shen 2012). That said, Mao emphasized that during such a period, the PRC “cannot recognize the legality of US occupation, cannot abandon the slogan of liberating Taiwan and cannot recognize ‘two Chinas.’ If the Americans are satisfied with this situation, perhaps they would be willing to exchange the offshore islands for an illegal temporary period of stability” (Shen 2012).

Unfortunately, the two sides would have to wait another 17 years before agreeing to a similar arrangement. During President Nixon’s visit to the PRC in 1972, they concluded an agreement that has kept the peace in the Taiwan Strait for almost 50 years.

Deputy Undersecretary of State Robert Murphy wrote a memo suggesting Eisenhower authorize the same kind of “direct secret contact” with the PRC leadership that Nixon eventually used to arrange his visit to China (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955c). Murphy even suggested Pakistan, which helped Kissinger arrange Nixon’s visit, as one of the nations Eisenhower might use as a go-between. But Dulles, who read Murphy’s memo, never acted on it. Instead, Dulles sent a message to the US Embassy in Pakistan informing the US ambassador to tell Prime Minister Ali the United States would prefer that Pakistan defer on Zhou’s invitation to go to China because it would “elicit public evidence of Peiping’s acceptance in the community of nations” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955c).

The United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, NATO, and the UN Secretary General all urged Dulles to talk to the PRC. At a NATO ministerial meeting in Paris in early May, Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak raised concerns about continuing US deference to the ROC. The Europeans, Spaak asserted, “differed with the United States view of Chiang Kai-shek, considering that his role in Asia was over and his statements were frequently dangerous.” He argued that “recognition of the People’s Republic of China was inevitable” and essential to any resolution of the Taiwan problem (FRUS 1955–1957, 246).

The ROC government knew it was isolated and worried that US support would waiver. But Dulles defended Chiang in Paris as an ardent anticommunist and “a man of personal integrity” who “made a formal agreement not to attack the mainland except in the case of imminent necessity” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume II. Document 246). Dulles also did everything he could to reassure ROC officials. Ambassador Karl Rankin promised Chiang the United States would rebuff all third-party offers to broker talks and that the US view of the PRC would not change. Rankin added that the Eisenhower administration still believed “[n]o one could be entirely sure of Communist intentions, except that they were always bad” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955c).

Dulles conveyed his disinterest in talks with the PRC to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in a conversation in Vienna following the NATO meeting. When his Soviet counterpart “facetiously brought up the question of Formosa” and suggested including the PRC in upcoming four-party talks among the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and France, Dulles told him “there need be no great hurry” to resolve it (FRUS 1955–1957, 249):

It has been 60 years since China had held Formosa and the fact that Formosa was not still Japanese was wholly due to the fact that the US had had the power to take Formosa away from Japan. Indeed the control of China over Formosa before the Treaty of 1895 had been tenuous for centuries. Surely the situation could continue another decade or longer if the alternative was the risk of war within a year (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume II. Document 249 1955).

Dulles warned Molotov about the “build-up of airfields on the Mainland opposite Formosa.” He added that the United States “used its influence with the Chinese Nationalists to restrain them from attacking these positions.” But, he continued, “It was difficult to keep this situation from breaking out into war.” He asked Molotov to reciprocate by limiting military assistance to the PRC and using Soviet influence to restrain PRC leaders. Dulles suggested the United States and the Soviet Union work together to get the PRC and the ROC to renounce the use of force “without prejudice to conflicting claims” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume II. Document 249 1955).

Molotov may have seemed flippant because he knew the PRC had no intention of trying to capture the offshore islands or Taiwan at that time. Mao had told the Soviets that as long as the United States and the ROC restrained themselves, the de facto ceasefire Dulles sought already existed and would remain in place (Shen 2012). Molotov was silent on the question of Soviet assistance, but a month later the Soviet ambassador to China told the US ambassador to the Soviet Union they had given the PRC “scientific and technical know-how in the atomic field which would eventually enable them, if they so desired, to produce nuclear weapons.” He warned that “in another one to five years China would be so strong that no other country would be able to tell her what to do” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955d).

On May 13, Dulles pointed Eisenhower to a speech Zhou gave to the Standing Committee of the PRC’s National People’s Congress (NPC) in which he said, “The Chinese people are willing to strive for the liberation of Taiwan by peaceful means as far as this is possible.” Dulles wrote, “It may be a response to the statements we have often made that just as in the case of divided Germany, Korea and Vietnam, unification must be sought only by peaceful means and not by force.” Ten days later, Dulles drafted a letter to Zhou saying his remarks on Taiwan to the NPC were an acceptable basis “to arrange for mutually agreeable negotiations” aimed not only at obtaining a ceasefire but “on the larger question of relaxing and eliminating tension in the Taiwan Area” with “more permanent arrangements to insure peace” (FRUS 1955–1957, 256).

The letter was never sent. There is no documentation in the files of the Department of State or the Eisenhower Library indicating why. It was the closest Dulles came to seriously considering high-level talks with the PRC leadership.

US allies continued to try to broker talks. On May 26, the UK ambassador to the United States delivered a message from their ambassador in Beijing recalling a meeting in which Zhou agreed to talk directly with Chiang Kai-shek. His only condition was that the talks could not take place in the context of any international diplomatic contact, although they could be held “in parallel or in succession” to talks with the United States or other nations so long as the international and domestic tracks did not become “mixed up” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955d).

Instead, Dulles authorized contact at the ambassadorial level with PRC representatives in Geneva. The initial focus was to be on the release of US airmen shot down during the Korean War who were still held by the PRC (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957 1955d). Immediately after Zhou’s closing speech in Bandung, the State Department announced that the immediate release of the US airmen was a test of PRC sincerity. In late May, Dulles told the Indian government the UN Secretary General’s failed efforts to facilitate the release of the airmen indicated a level of PRC “recalcitrance” that was “not encouraging” (FRUS 1955–1957, 257).

Dulles told the president the United States should not make the release of the airmen a precondition (FRUS, 1955–1957, 296). Nevertheless, the issue seriously undermined prospects for substantive talks on the offshore islands and Taiwan. The negotiations on the return of the airmen eventually became a major source of acrimony and suspicion on both sides. Even after an agreement on the airmen, arguments over implementation continued to inhibit progress on resolving the offshore island crisis.

An agreement on the airmen was announced on September 10 (FRUS 1955–1957, 53). PRC diplomats then suggested they discuss the economic embargo and the elimination of tensions in the Taiwan area. The United States demurred, suggesting the next items on the agenda should be US servicemen missing in action from the Korean War and a general renunciation of the use of force. The PRC appears to have been annoyed and confused by the US suggestion they focus on topics that could have been resolved during the Geneva Conference in 1954 (FRUS 1955–1957, 56). Nevertheless, it accepted the US proposal to discuss a mutual renunciation of the use of force between the PRC and the United States.

US negotiators rejected the PRC’s initial draft of a proposed joint statement. However, after several constructive sessions, the lead US negotiator, U. Alexis Johnson, cabled Dulles to report the “PRC has now presented a draft which very closely follows line of argument I have been taking in meetings. They therefore have grounds for anticipating its acceptance with little modification” (FRUS 1955–1957, 111).

Dulles cabled back expressing “general agreement” that “both sides appear to making progress in arriving at an appropriate announcement.” However, he instructed Johnson to tell the PRC they needed to show “good faith” on the implementation of the agreement on the airmen before the United States could agree to move forward. He also added new language requiring the PRC to “renounce the use of force in general, and with particular reference to the Taiwan area, except in individual and collective self defense” (FRUS 1955–1957, 114).

Wang Bingnan, the lead PRC negotiator, told Johnson the PRC agreed that the “heart of the Sino-American dispute is precisely centered on Taiwan so it goes without saying the new draft covers this question.” But he also said, “[T]he present situation in the Taiwan area is that the US side has initiated use of force and is threatening use of force in interfering with the liberation of Taiwan and the coastal islands.” The PRC initially insisted the United States remove its military forces from Taiwan but dropped that as a talking point as talks on the renunciation of force continued to progress (FRUS 1955–1957, 118).

The principle sticking point became US insistence on the inclusion of the language on “individual and collective self defense.” In early November, Dulles told Johnson he felt the PRC’s refusal to include the language indicated it was “obviously seeking meaningless wording that would not tie their hands” (FRUS 1955–1957, 92). Johnson told Dulles he believed the PRC’s “genuine position” was that accepting the language would amount to “abandoning their overall position” that the dispute with the ROC was a domestic matter (FRUS 1955–1957, 100). The quality of the negotiations began to deteriorate after months of fruitless conversations on what constituted self-defense in US-PRC relations. On 12 January 1957, a frustrated Wang told Johnson that if the United States could claim a right to self-defense in Taiwan, “there is no more justice in the world.” He then asked Johnson if the United States would concede a Chinese right to self-defense in San Francisco if it were occupied by PRC forces (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume III. Document 129 1956).

Dulles, perhaps inadvertently, put a stake through the heart of the negotiations in an interview with Life magazine published a week later. He repeated the claim that US threats to bomb targets in the PRC with nuclear weapons brought its leaders to the negotiating table in Korea. He also claimed the administration prevented the PRC from sending troops into Vietnam by sending two US aircraft carriers armed with tactical nuclear weapons into the South China Sea in 1954. Finally, Dulles said similar threats to attack the PRC with nuclear weapons “finally stopped them in Formosa” (Shepley 1956).

Wang opened the following meeting with a “long and strong attack” on the statements in the Life article, which he described as “clamor for atomic war against China.” He told Johnson this “blackmail” would impede their discussions because it raised questions about US sincerity to “peacefully settle questions between China and the United States.” Johnson accused Wang of “entirely uncalled for and gross libel” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume III. Document 132 1956).

Despite another several months of genuine efforts by both lead negotiators to restore mutual confidence, they never resumed the steady progress the two sides had been making toward a joint statement on the renunciation of the use of force. On March 2, Zhou told the Indian ambassador, “We see in present American tactics a hidden conspiracy on the part of the USA to cheat and deceive China” (FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States). 1955–1957. China, Volume III. Document 155 1956). On May 15, Dulles told Johnson the latest PRC language on the renunciation of force was “by all odds the shrewdest and most dangerous proposal to date.” He instructed Johnson to “be careful that while rejecting Communist proposal we do so in such a way as not to furnish grounds for break” (FRUS 1955–1957, 175).

Over the course of the following year, Johnson routinely started his increasingly less frequent cables to Dulles on the talks in Geneva with words like “uneventful” or “no progress made.” Wang would complain to Johnson about his “general repetition of worn-out arguments” (FRUS 1955–1957, 283). The only matters of substance discussed were the implementation of the agreement on the release of the Americans still held by the PRC and arrangements for US correspondents to visit the PRC. Occasionally, the two would talk about the US trade embargo. The discussion of the renunciation of the use of force never resumed in earnest.

In November 1957, Johnson was moving on. He advised Dulles his replacement should be “another officer of ambassador rank,” even if that meant shifting the talks to Warsaw because of the Department of State’s staffing difficulties in Europe at the time (FRUS 1955–1957, 298). Instead, Dulles decided to continue the talks with First Secretary Edwin Martin, who had been attending the talks as an assistant to Johnson. Wang took it as a sign the United States was changing the nature of the talks (FRUS 1955–1957, 304). The PRC waited months before sending a letter to Martin on 25 March 1958, stating that the PRC could not consent to a “unilateral change in the level of the Sino-American ambassadorial talks” or “to leave the talks in a protracted suspension.” The letter was not signed by Wang but by his assistant, Lai Yali, who was of the same diplomatic rank as Martin. Several weeks later, the PRC Foreign Ministry issued a public statement charging, “For the past four months, the United States has been using fraudulent tricks to stall the Sino-American talks” (FRUS 1958–1960, 8).

On June 30, the PRC issued a statement claiming the United States had broken “the agreement between China and the United States on holding talks at the ambassadorial level” and demanded a resumption within 15 days (FRUS 1958–1960, 15). A few weeks earlier, Ralph Clough, director of the Office of Chinese Affairs, had told the consulate in Geneva there was “little eagerness here” to resume what “has been for the past two years a sterile exercise” (FRUS 1958–1960, 14). On July 1, Dulles told the press he would not be bullied by the PRC’s deadline. Yet two days after it passed, on July 17, Dulles directed Martin to tell Wang that the US Ambassador to Poland, Jacob Beam, would resume the talks (FRUS 1958–1960, 18). Unfortunately, military activity would replace diplomatic discussion for the next several months.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory Kulacki

Gregory Kulacki the China Project Manager of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a Visiting Fellow at RECNA, Nagasaki University. His research focuses on China’s nuclear arms control policy and US extended nuclear deterrence policy in East Asia, where Gregory has lived and worked for the better part of the last thirty years.

Notes

¹ Historians tend to split the crisis into two discrete events, a “first crisis” lasting from September 1954 to May 1955 and a second one in August and September 1958. This description excludes the lengthy period of US-PRC negotiations that took place in between these two short periods of heightened military activity. Because forcing negotiations with the United States was an important PRC objective in initiating the first crisis and the breakdown of those negotiations led to the second crisis, they should be joined in a general description of what was, in fact, a single Taiwan Strait Crisis.

² The language of the Taiwan Relations Act, enacted when the United States recognized the PRC government in 1979, scrupulously avoids obligating the United States to defend Taiwan in the event of the use of force by the PRC. It only requires the United States to “maintain the capacity” to respond.

³ Shen Zhihua is a prominent Chinese scholar of Sino-Soviet Relations who assembled a large archive of Soviet diplomatic cables and other documents related to its relationship with the PRC that is now housed at East China Normal University in Shanghai. This paper draws heavily on the original Soviet and PRC sources Shen used to write Wunai de Xuanze, which is a cable by cable account of Sino-Soviet relations from 1945 to 1959.

⁴ Formosa is the name Portuguese traders gave Taiwan. It was commonly used in the United States at the time.

⁵ During their first meeting, on 16 December 1949, Mao told Stalin, “The most important thing right now is to protect the peace. China needs three to five years of peace and respite we can use to restore pre-war economic levels and stabilize the national situation. Resolving China’s most important problems depends on the prospect of peace.” Stalin assured Mao that “if we make a concerted effort we should be able to preserve the peace not only for 5–10 years but possibly for 20 years or longer.” Yet on 30 January 1950, while Mao was still in Moscow, Stalin responded positively to another request from Kim Il-sung to launch a major military campaign to reunify Korea, reversing the existing Sino-Soviet policy of rejecting Kim’s repeated requests to support such a campaign. Moreover, in a February 2 cable, Stalin instructed Terenty Shtykov, the Soviet Ambassador to North Korea, to tell Kim not to mention this reversal to other North Korean leaders or Chinese comrades (Shen 2017).

⁶ Jinmen is known in the United States as Quemoy.

⁷ President Truman imposed a total trade embargo in June 1950 at the outset of the Korean War. The United Nations followed suit in 1951 and US allies initially honored the embargo. However, US efforts to maintain the embargo after the Korean armistice failed to prevent US allies from resuming trade with the PRC (Chen 2006). President Nixon finally lifted the embargo in June 1971 in anticipation of a vote in the UN General Assembly to recognize the PRC government as the sole legitimate representative of China and to expel the ROC government.

⁸ The Geneva Conference attempted to end military hostilities in Indo-China and Korea. US unwillingness to talk to the PRC made discussions on Korea impossible. British, French, and Soviet willingness to work together with the PRC led to formal agreements on the cessation of hostilities in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. US unwillingness to be bound by those agreements was a decisive factor in their ultimate collapse and the resumption of large-scale military conflict in Vietnam (DOS 1957).

⁹ The islands of Jinmen and Mazu were more commonly known by their Western names, Quemoy and Matsu, at the time.