Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973

Abstract

Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973, edited by Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. xv + 504 pp. US$60.00 (hardcover), US$25.00 (paperback). This compendium on Sino-American diplomacy during the two decades 1954-73 is the culmination of a five-year effort funded by the Ford Foundation that saw the convening of two conferences of notable Western and Chinese specialists. On the Chinese side, they were able to obtain access to otherwise closed archives and other historical materials in China. This volume is a follow-up of the very successful collaboration of American and Chinese scholars in dealing with the previous decade (Harry Harding and Yuan Ming, eds., Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade, 1989). The new 12-chapter book is equally successful and full of rich analysis, and should be required reading for specialists and students of US-China relations. Among its major contributions, the book clarifies the relative importance of domestic and international factors during this period in determining Maoist foreign policy, especially toward the United States. Ongoing scholarly debate has, on the one side, depicted Mao as confident in taking a variety of provocative initiatives against the US and its allies, notably in the Taiwan Strait crises of 1954 and 1958, mainly for the sake of domestic mobilization and ideological commitment. Such assessments fail to persuade other specialists, who stress the asymmetry of power between China and its superpower adversaries. These specialists see Mao carefully calibrating foreign policy moves in order to ensure China's survival and preserve its concrete foreign policy interests in an environment controlled by others. Assessments by the Chinese and Western scholars in this book give due attention to domestic determinants on both the Chinese and American sides. Nonetheless, they see China's foreign policy behaviour in the 1950s as heavily determined by international pressures. Mao Zedong is seen as reacting to US and other initiatives and carefully tailoring China's seemingly assertive foreign policy approach to avoid substantial confrontation with the US superpower. Because of a preoccupation with domestic issues, Mao's outlook is perceived to change by the early 1960s, leading to a more radical approach to foreign affairs that nonetheless carefully takes account of the realities of power facing China as it opposes both the United States and the USSR. The study shows the importance of pragmatism over ideology in both American and Chinese policies. Neither side is seen as driven by inflexible policies against an allegedly implacable foe; officials in both the United States and China are viewed as developing responsive and tactically adaptable foreign policies which they adjust in response to changing international circumstances and their own changing assessment of their counterparts' policies. Leaders on both sides assumed that the immediate policy objectives of their counterparts were similarly motivated by pragmatic national security considerations rather than ideological considerations. The volume's detailed assessments of US and Chinese decision-making in the Taiwan Strait crises of 1954 and 1958 and during the Vietnam War in the 1960s show repeated instances of US and Chinese caution, with neither country basing diplomacy on rigid ideological precepts. …