 | The China Threat: Memories, Myths, and Realities in the 1950s Subjects: United States -- Foreign relations -- China; China -- Foreign relations -- United States; United States -- Foreign relations -- 1953—1961; Nancy Bernkopf Tucker confronts the coldest period of the Cold War--the moment in which personality, American political culture, public opinion, and high politics came together to define the Eisenhower administration's policy toward China. In her sophisticated account, she convincingly portrays Eisenhower's private belief that close relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China were inevitable and that careful consideration of the PRC should constitute a critical part of American diplomacy. Tucker provocatively argues that the Eisenhower administration's hostile rhetoric and tough actions toward China obscured the president's actual views, and she deftly explores the contradictions between Eisenhower and his advisors' public and private positions. Ultimately, Tucker finds Eisenhower's strategic thinking on Europe and his fear of anticommunist domestic politics constrained his leadership, making a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward China difficult, if not impossible. Nancy Bernkopf Tucker (1948-2012) was professor at the Department of History and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a former senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She wrote and edited several books, including the award-winning Uncertain Friendships: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945-1992 . |
