Word: formosae
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Defensive Arm. "In June 1950, following the aggressive attack on the Republic of Korea," he said, "the U.S. Seventh Fleet was instructed both to prevent attack upon Formosa and also to insure that Formosa should not be used as a base of operations [by the Chinese Nationalists] against the Chinese Communist mainland. This has meant, in effect, that the U.S. Navy was required to serve as a defensive arm of Communist China ... There is no longer any logic or sense in a condition that required the U.S. Navy to assume defensive responsibilities on behalf of the Chinese Communists. This permitted...
...wasted no hand-wringing on fears that his Formosa action might bring a larger war. "There is but one sure way to avoid total war," said he, "and that is to win the cold war." By implication he acknowledged that the U.S. would have to take risks, no matter what its policies. "While retaliatory power is one strong deterrent to a would-be aggressor, another powerful deterrent is defensive power, [and] total defensive strength must include civil-defense preparedness. Because we have incontrovertible evidence that Soviet Russia possesses atomic weapons, this kind of protection becomes sheer necessity...
...Chinese Nationalists finished their withdrawal from the mainland across the 100-mile straits to Formosa in December 1949. (Four months earlier, Dean Acheson had tried to write off the Nationalists with the China white paper-an official attack on a friendly power without precedent in the history of international relations.) The island was important to the defense of the Pacific and doubly important as the base for what was still the best and largest anti-Communist army in Asia. But the State Department maintained a stiff anti-Formosa policy...
...General Douglas MacArthur objected. And so did Defense Secretary Louis Johnson. In January 1950, Johnson having gone off to sun himself in Florida, Dean Acheson fenced the military men back into their Pentagon dugouts, got Harry Truman to overrule a Joint Chiefs of Staff decision to strengthen Formosa. Said Truman: "The U.S. Government will not provide military aid or advice to the Chinese forces on Formosa." Acheson sealed the policy in his National Press Club speech of Jan. 12, 1950, which placed Formosa (along with Korea) beyond the "U.S. defensive perimeter...
There is a popular belief that the Truman Administration reversed its policies toward Chiang in June 1950, when the Korean war began. In one sense it did: by ordering the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Formosa straits, and by sending Chiang a new batch of U.S. military advisers, Harry Truman recognized that a Communist Formosa would be a military hazard at the rear of the U.N. forces in Korea...