Useful Adversaries - Softcover

Christensen, Thomas J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691026378 ISBN 13: 9780691026374

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1996

Synopsis

This book provides a new analysis of why relations between the United States and the Chinese Communists were so hostile in the first decade of the Cold War. Employing extensive documentation, it offers a fresh approach to long-debated questions such as why Truman refused to recognize the Chinese Communists, why the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek's KMT on Taiwan, why the Korean War escalated into a Sino-American conflict, and why Mao shelled islands in the Taiwan Straits in 1958, thus sparking a major crisis with the United States.

Christensen first develops a novel two-level approach that explains why leaders manipulate low-level conflicts to mobilize popular support for expensive, long-term security strategies. By linking "grand strategy," domestic politics, and the manipulation of ideology and conflict, Christensen provides a nuanced and sophisticated link between domestic politics and foreign policy. He then applies the approach to Truman's policy toward the Chinese Communists in 1947-50 and to Mao's initiation of the 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis. In these cases the extension of short-term conflict was useful in gaining popular support for the overall grand strategy that each leader was promoting domestically: Truman's limited-containment strategy toward the USSR and Mao's self-strengthening programs during the Great Leap Forward. Christensen also explores how such low-level conflicts can escalate, as they did in Korea, despite leaders' desire to avoid actual warfare.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilizations, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947 - 1958. Christensen superb book is based on extensive use of fresh Chinese sources. His 'two-level' model offers a powerful analytical tool to understand the relationship between a nation's external behavior and its domestic mobilization. This important book is a major contribution to the study of Sino-American relations.'

About the Author

Thomas J. Christensen is currently Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. He formerly held an SSRC/MacArthur Foundation fellowship in international peace and security and was an Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0691026378
• ISBN 13: 9780691026374
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352