Avoiding “A Chain Reaction of Disaster”: A Reappraisal of the Eisenhower White House’s Handling of the 1954–1955 Quemoy Crisis

Abstract

The Quemoy crisis of 1954–1955 found the Eisenhower White House struggling to appear tough against Mao’s China and supportive of Chiang Kai‐shek’s Taiwan while not triggering World War III. When the initial rhetorical campaign of “fuzzing” failed, Eisenhower’s team switched to launching threats of imminent nuclear war—yet both strategies of deterrence were beside the point, for we now know that Mao had no intention of invading Quemoy or Taiwan. In this classic Cold War conundrum, what I call “the agony of sovereignty” left American leadership grasping at straws while misreading the trajectory of postcolonial nationalisms in Asia. Nonetheless, I demonstrate how, by the spring of 1955, Mao, Eisenhower, and Chiang all felt a sense of triumph, as they each evolved responses that left their main interests intact while avoiding what observers had feared might become “a chain reaction of disaster.”