Word: matsu
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...whole globe there can hardly be two more intrinsically negligible pieces of real estate than Quemoy and Matsu, a pair of barren islands off the China coast. Yet history has an old trick of throwing its spotlight on obscure spots and thereby illuminating vast, half-hidden conflicts...
...speech last week (see below), Secretary of State Dulles, without naming the islands, clarified the U.S. position on Quemoy and Matsu. What he said was simple, almost trite: he warned the Communists again that if they persisted in regarding these islands as stepping stones to Formosa, and if they attacked them, the U.S., committed to defend Formosa, might accept the Communist definition of such an assault as the beginning of an attack on Formosa and retaliate accordingly...
...Dulles sentence that most impressed Asians: "If the non-Communist Asians ever come to feel that their Western allies are disposed to retreat wherever Communism threatens the peace, then the entire area could quickly become indefensible." This, as Asians knew best, was the real significance of Quemoy and Matsu...
...British want the Chinese Communists to have Quemoy and Matsu because they think the transfer of these islands will lessen the danger of a war of encounter. They want blue water between the Communists and what the U.S. is committed to defend. Actually, they would not be sorry to see Formosa fall because that would put still more blue water between the U.S. and the Communists...
Three times the U.S. was on the point of announcing that it would defend Quemoy and Matsu, but at the last moment Dwight Eisenhower, to soothe British fears, vetoed it. He thought U.S. intentions were already clear enough "to make certain that no conflict occurs through mistaken calculations on the other side . . . We have been as exact as it seems possible...