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Friends and Enemies - The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Paperback, New edition)
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Friends and Enemies - The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Paperback, New edition)
Series: Modern America
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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A definitive study of America's China policy from Truman to Nixon,
based on declassified archival materials. To many readers, it will
come as no surprise that the public statements regarding China of
successive administrations over a period of 25 years differed
widely from their working assumptions - and that the White House
had ceased to believe in an "omnipotent, hydra-headed communist
horror" long before the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960's.
Although Chang's central thesis is the divergence between
Washington's actual strategy (to split China and the Soviet Union)
and public pronouncements (to contain Communism in general), the
real drama here is the flux and conflict of opinions among
policymakers as they reacted to such momentous events as the Quemoy
and Matsu crises and China's first nuclear explosion in 1964. Chang
finds the tendency of influential leaders (and even Presidents) to
change their minds to be even more remarkable than the demonstrated
lack of ideology as a motivating force. The only consistent pattern
that seems to emerge for the period is that the CIA was usually
right on target with its assessments of the Chinese threat (warning
in 1964 against further US involvement in Vietnam), whereas the
Pentagon was likely to come forward with nuclear solutions to
international conflicts. As a possible impediment to Sino-American
relations in the 1950's, Chang makes much of the manifest racism of
that decade's US policymakers who believed that, in comparison to
Western leaders, the Chinese leadership was prone to disregard the
lives of its citizens. Chang does not succeed, however, in
discrediting that belief. A major addition to the literature on US
foreign policy, likely to grip the attention of specialists and
nonspecialists alike. (Kirkus Reviews)
Winner of the 1991 Stuart L. Bernath Prize, sponsored by the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. ---------- "A
swift-paced, absorbing account of the dangerous political maneuvers
that engaged America with both China and the Soviet Union during
the years between 1948 and 1972...Chang's account is impressively
documented with once-classified records...This is a scrupulously
detailed history, scholarly and at the same time filled with
incident, insight, and personality...Chang paints a fascinating
picture."--San Francisco Chronicle
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