3. To loan China 130,000,000 dollars.
4. To help build two railroads across China.
5. To help China build 15 new heavy industrial projects.
6. To campaign for the seizure of Formosa.
7. To campaign for the inclusion of Japan in the Communist orbit.
It was apparent that even though Russia was talking “peaceful coexistence” the free world would have little relief from the war-making plans of Red China.
The Task of Isolating a World Aggressor
From the point of view of the United States, the Indo-China fiasco was a dismal political tragedy. The 100 Communists in the French Parliament (who even refused to stand in tribute to the French war dead) engineered the collapse of the seven-year war. As the U.S. Secretary of State addressed the armistice meeting at Geneva he lashed out at the cowardice and subversion which had sacrificed 12,000,000 more human beings to Red aggression: “Peace,” he said, “is always easy to achieve—by surrender. Unity is also easy to achieve—by surrender. The hard task, the task that confronts us, is to combine peace and unity with Freedom!”
Secretary Dulles left Geneva to carry out a feverish, round-the-world campaign to get all free nations to make an “agonizing reappraisal” of the ridiculous concessions which were being made to Communist imperialism. In 20 months he covered over 152,000 miles and when he was through the United States had become a party to (or strengthened its position in) a chain of regional compacts specifically designed to reinforce Communist containment. To the dismay of the Soviet strategists, Article 52 of the U.N. Charter contained a loophole which permitted this procedure. Therefore, the United States openly began to use NATO, SEATO and similar regional organizations as collective agencies for mutual security. To a large extent this nullified the paralyzing choke-hold which the Soviets had previously held on the West through its abusive use of the veto power in the U.N. Security Council.
The United States also announced that she did not intend to sit back and watch Russia construct its armada of long-range bombers which Communist press releases described as capable of dropping H-bombs on American cities. The U.S. answer to this was the rapid construction of a ring of U.S. defense bases on the fringe of the Iron Curtain. Immediately the roar of an injured bear came thundering out of Russia: “We are being threatened with annihilation!”
Secretary Dulles soberly reaffirmed a truth which he was well aware the Communists already knew—namely, that no nation need fear these bases except an aggressor. Then he expounded in clear-cut, hard-hitting terminology the new doctrine of “massive retaliation” which he warned would be triggered instantly in case the Soviet Empire dared fulfill its oft repeated threat of a surprise attack on the free world.
For awhile there was an ominous silence in Moscow.
Russia Tests the New U.S. “Get Tough” Policy
Toward the latter part of 1954 it became apparent that serious political adjustments were going on inside Russia. A bellicose, bullet-headed personality named Nikita S. Khrushchev and a punctilious party politician named Nikolai Bulganin began to appear more frequently in the news. An ex-Soviet official (Nikolai E. Khokhlov) declared this to be a bad sign. He described Khrushchev and Bulganin as promoters of world Communism, in contrast to Malenkov and Beria who wanted first to improve living conditions for Russians.
In the fall of 1954, Khrushchev and Bulganin led a delegation to Peiping. There the Chinese were given instructions to prepare for an assault on Formosa. From this, it became apparent that completely new lines of power had been drawn in Russia. Eventually it came out that Malenkov had deserted his partner, Beria, and joined forces with the new Khrushchev-Bulganin forces. In the latter part of December, Beria and three of his aides were shot. Malenkov was summarily demoted but he had switched sides in time to save his life. Bulganin took his place and Khrushchev hovered in the background setting policy and announcing the new slogans, “return to heavy industry—armaments” and “the growing of food by decree.”
Meanwhile the Chinese Communists had also caught the spirit of the new leadership and began fronting for Moscow by tantalizing the democracies with the shocking announcement that they had deliberately held back U.S. officers and men in violation of the prisoner-exchange agreement at the close of the Korean War.
The armistice agreement at Panmunjom had specifically provided that all U.N. prisoners who desired repatriation would be returned even though some of them might be charged with some crime. Now, however, the Chinese Communists were defiantly announcing that they had secretly held back a number of American prisoners because they were charged with espionage or some other type of crime. U.S. indignation reached a white heat as many Americans began to realize for the first time how completely impossible it is to depend on a Communist pledge.
In spite of public indignation, however, American feelings were somewhat compromised at this particular moment by a rapidly growing desire on the part of many citizens to forget the whole foreign “mess” and get on with home-front developments which promised to provide an all-time record of American free enterprise prosperity.
Mao Tse-tung accurately diagnosed this national feeling as an anti-war sentiment, and he therefore accelerated his campaign of propaganda throughout Asia by representing the United States as a “paper tiger.” He taunted the United States with additional disclosures of illegally-held American prisoners of war and by open implication boastfully defied the United States Government to try and do something about it.
He became so enthusiastic in his campaign that he finally decided to prove the impotency of American influence to the entire world by acting on Khrushchev’s fighting orders and strike at Formosa. In a matter of weeks the offshore islands in the hands of the Nationalists began to be bombed from the Chinese mainland. It was the preliminary phase of an all-out attack on Chiang Kai-shek’s last outpost.
This was a highly critical hour for the United States since she had committed herself to defend Formosa. If she wavered, the light of freedom could very easily go out in Southeast Asia. One-half billion “neutral” Asians also watched keenly as U.S. leaders measured the risk and fathomed the depths of their own moral convictions.
Early in February, 1955, the Chinese Reds and the other World Communists got their answer. It was a U.S. Congressional resolution supported by both parties which confirmed the authority of the President of the United States to throw the Seventh Fleet into the Formosa Straits and give orders to wage an all-out war if attacked. This would obviously include the use of nuclear weapons.
The “little nations” of South East Asia stood up and cheered. It was apparent that the U.S. not only had the will to talk “massive retaliation” but the will to wage it. At the Afro-Asian conference at Bandung several of the little nations boldly showed their colors. They badgered the Chinese Communist delegates with cries of “Communist colonialism” and “Communist aggression.” It was a severe blow to the prestige and propaganda of Mao Tse-tung and his Communist backers in Moscow.
Within a matter of weeks the “stand firm” policy of the U.S. and her Pacific Allies began bearing miraculous fruit. Orders went out from Moscow that coexistence was once more the sweet theme of the hour. The Chinese began releasing U.S. prisoners they had held illegally. The issue of Formosa was allowed to slip quietly into the background. Khrushchev extended an invitation to the United States to exchange visitors—editors, congressmen, farmers—he even said he might come himself sometime. All over the world the hard-knuckled tension of the ten post-war years began to subside. There seemed to be general satisfaction with the new and unexpected turn of events throughout the world and the democracies settled back once more to the pursuit of their own normal domestic affairs.