The China Threat by Tucker Nancy Bernkopf;

Author:Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS003000, History/Asia/General, POL011000, Political Science/International Relations/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 10.1 “Oh, that obstacle again,” by Frits Behrendt

Courtesy of Renate Behrendt.

The 1958 Taiwan crisis had drained American officials and made those who stridently advocated the Nationalist cause less outspoken. Director of the Office of Chinese Affairs Marshall Green recalled that Dulles appeared increasingly “moderate and reasonable” on Chinese issues.13 Kenneth Young, diplomat and author, suggested that Dulles would have been ready to meet with Zhou Enlai, as Beijing had long wanted, but that the Chinese did not grasp the opportunity.14 Early in 1959, Gordon Gray, special assistant to the president, called upon the State Department to prepare a new country paper on China, as NSC 5429/5 of 1954 was now out of date. He sought to explore the possibilities of furthering the Sino-Soviet rift and the likelihood of upheaval in China. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson similarly thought that new opportunities to drive Moscow and Beijing apart might arise and that Washington should be in position to exploit them.15 In fact, Herter’s decision to act on journalist visas followed a Dulles turnabout shortly before his resignation.16

Administrations almost always face a measure of disarray and decline in cordiality in their last years. That became obvious in Eisenhower’s second term. The president would miss Foster Dulles after he resigned, but long before that the president’s patience with the secretary had diminished substantially, complaining that he “was apt to forget that he had [already explained something] and, within a day or so, [would] tell it over again.”17 As for Allen Dulles, the president became sufficiently disenchanted by his increasingly rigid anti-Communism and delight in covert operations that “he did not want to meet with Allen unless at least one other person was also present.”18 Two of Eisenhower’s inner circle, General Lucius Clay and Treasury Secretary Humphrey, left Washington for other assignments. Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson departed, having not had much success in controlling the Pentagon’s appetites. He was replaced by businessman Neil McElroy, who similarly deferred to others on strategic vision, and later by Thomas Gates. McElroy, though new to government and to Chinese affairs, came quickly to resent Chiang Kai-shek’s stubborn endangerment of the United States in the 1958 Strait crisis.

Changes also occurred at the State Department. Herter critics, such as New York Times columnist and reporter Arthur Krock, insisted that the department stopped functioning effectively in Dulles’s wake, lacking leadership and an agenda. Historian Frederick Marks has blamed Herter for botching Cuba policy and facilitating Khrushchev’s U.S. visit even though Moscow had not met administration preconditions.19 But Herter has also received praise from many historians, especially for consulting more broadly than Dulles ever thought to do.

Herter did not bring in his own team or purge Dulles’s intimates, but there were some personnel shifts toward the end of the administration. Ambassador Karl Rankin left Taipei to be replaced by experienced China diplomat Everett F. Drumright, who continued the hard line “in defense of the ROC position” at the U.S. embassy in Taipei. As Drumright later noted, his was “an unusually strong line,” and others thought “I was inflexible; perhaps I was.

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