Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949-1950 - Softcover

Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231053630 ISBN 13: 9780231053631

Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr, 1983

Synopsis

Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist government collapsed in 1949 despite United States support for the regime during the anti-Communist civil war. American policymakers were then forced to choose between rescuing the Nationalists or coming to terms with China's Communist government.The Truman Administration, caught up in the calculations of cold war diplomacy, refused to make a rash decision. Secretary of State Dean Acheson likened the Nationalist collapse to a tree falling in the forest--the United States would have to wait for the dust settled before it could see ahead clearly."Patterns in the Dust" is a fresh look at a period overwhelmed by later events. Drawing on many previously unavailable sources, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker assesses the factors that influenced Washington policymakers during the critical few months in which the thirty-year estrangement between the two countries began. She examines the government's assessment of the chances for accommodation with the Chinese Communists, the careful efforts to ascertain American public opinion, and the effects of the Korean War which brought reasoned dialogue to an abrupt end."Patterns in the Dust" highlights the flexibility that Dean Acheson retained in American policy toward China. Acheson emerges as a highly pragmatic man determined to preserve contacts with China simply because, as events have proved, that was the realistic way to conduct international relations.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker is professor of history at Georgetown University and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is an American diplomatic historian specializing in American-East Asian relations, particularly relations with China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and has written and edited several books, including Strait Talk: United States-Taiwan Relations and the Crisis with China and the award-winning Uncertain Friendships: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992.

Review

This is some piece of work. Nothing else like it on the subject. At a very early stage of her career [Nancy Bernkopf Tucker] may have the definitive book on the China-America watershed of 1949-1950. (Robert J. Donovan, Author of Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948)

This is a first-rate and important study, particularly impressive in terms of its research.... I enjoyed reading it and learned a great deal from it. (George C. Herring, Author of Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Origins of the Cold War)

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0231053630
• ISBN 13: 9780231053631
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 396