The “loss of China” to communism in 1949 was a pivotal moment in American foreign policy, for the fall of the Nationalist government (Kuomintang, KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong marked a significant shift in the geopolitical landscape of Asia. It was quickly followed by the outbreak of war in Korea, and indeed Washington’s calculations regarding the peninsula became closely entangled with their calculations regarding the new regime in Beijing. This article examines the Truman administration’s policies regarding China and Taiwan before the outbreak of the Korean War, the strategic calculations involved, the impact of domestic political pressures, particularly McCarthyism, on U.S. foreign policy, and their relevance to today.
Following World War II, the civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists, interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War, reignited. Despite substantial American support, the Nationalists were unable to maintain control. Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman, detailed the reasons for this failure in his statement on August 5, 1949. In it, Acheson pointed out that the Nationalist government’s collapse was due to internal decay, lack of popular support, and military ineptitude, not the inadequacy of American aid, writing: “The reasons for the failures of the Chinese National Government […] do not stem from any inadequacy of American aid […] The fact was that the decay which our observers had detected […] had fatally sapped the powers of resistance of the Kuomintang.”
Indeed. The United States had provided nearly $2 billion in grants and credits to the Nationalist government post-V-J Day, and this his aid was aimed at stabilizing China and curbing the spread of communism; however, the Nationalist forces were plagued by corruption and a lack of will to fight, resulting in large quantities of U.S.-supplied military equipment falling into Communist hands.
In the face of this early failure of what would become standard operating procedure, propping up an unpopular, corrupt, inefficient government that ultimately collapses, Acheson argued against American military intervention, which would have required commanding Nationalist armies and possibly deploying U.S. troops, stating: “A realistic appraisal of conditions in China […] leads to the conclusion that the only alternative open to the United States was full-scale intervention […] Such intervention […] would have been condemned by the American people.”
Here it is important to note that Acheson’s objection was not based on a geopolitical calculus but a domestic one: more on this familiar theme in a moment.
However, given the constraints in play Acheson saw another possibility: Mao Zedong as an Asian Tito. That is, similar to Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, who had shunned Stalin and so already fractured the supposedly monolithic communist bloc, Acheson believed that Mao might pursue a path of relative independence from the Soviet Union.
Hence, Dean’s memo from December 30, 1949: “The United States should exploit, through appropriate political, psychological, and economic means, any rifts between the Chinese Communists and the USSR and between the Stalinists and other elements in China.”
This idea, too, was stymied by domestic political considerations: the rise of the New Right in the United States, fueled in part by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s domestic anti-communist campaign, reshaped the political climate and transformed the American right. As Murray Rothbard observed, McCarthyism served as a pivotal catalyst for shifting the right-wing mass base from its earlier isolationist and quasi-libertarian stance to one centered on anti-communism and international intervention. While McCarthy initially targeted government officials and bureaucrats, this movement’s broader impact laid the groundwork for an increasingly hawkish foreign policy agenda.
The New Right forces behind McCarthy soon turned their focus from domestic anti-communism to promoting military interventions abroad, particularly in Asia. This shift stymied any potential diplomatic openings with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and entrenched a confrontational approach. It also set the stage for U.S. commitments in Korea, Vietnam, and continued support for the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, as domestic red-baiting transformed into international red-baiting. The political environment made even pragmatic approaches, such as Acheson’s notion of exploiting rifts between Mao and Stalin, politically untenable. The New Right’s influence thus locked U.S. foreign policy into a rigidly anti-communist framework, with disastrous consequences both domestically and abroad.
Indeed, fearing further recriminations for additional communist gains in east Asia, Truman plunged the country into Korea, just as, fearing the prospect of further gains, Truman and then Eisenhower would commit and then recommit to safeguarding the independence of the Republic of China based on Formosa (Taiwan).
The result of all this was disastrous: apart from the human toll, which is in the unknown millions, the Korean War led to military ties to states across east Asia, including Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines – and despite the Cold War’s end it is important to note that these treaties are still active and commit the United States to fighting conflicts on their behalf!
So, too, in Taiwan, where red baiting combined with intense pressure from the China lobby to prevent the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War with a mutual defense treaty – and despite the treaty having been ripped up when relations between Washington and Beijing were normalized in 1979, a de facto commitment to fight a war with mainland China on the Taipei’s behalf if it comes down to it is still a clear and present danger to Americans and America!
In the words of the late, great Justin Raimondo: “All foreign policy is domestic policy,” and this was never truer than of the events surrounding the “loss of China” and the plunging of the United States into war – I mean, uh, “police action” – in Korea. The applicable lessons for today are obvious, and perhaps nowhere more obvious than the failure of the Biden administration to reenter the Iran nuclear deal: fearing the political consequences at home, they stuck with Trump’s policy. The same could probably be argued about Trump’s economic war with China or his administration’s decision to rip up important treaties with the Russians.
Beyond this, Americans should be constantly reminded that their government has enlisted them to fight a war with China over some rocks and piles of sand in the South and East China Seas whenever anyone in Tokyo or Manila happens to push the line too far with their larger neighbor.
As a concluding note or disclaimer: none of the above should be seen as a defense of Dean Acheson, if for no other reason than that he, more than any other single person, was responsible for U.S. entry into Korea – an intervention that put the kibosh on his simultaneous plans to coup Chiang Kai-Shek and replace him with someone more amenable to his own plans for the future of Taiwan…perhaps an article for another day…
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/