Summary

The United States alliance with Nationalist China was a central feature of American strategy in East Asia during the cold war, but it has not previously received adequate scholarly attention. This study, based on Chinese and American archival sources, provides the first detailed analysis of the role the alliance with Nationalist China played in U.S. strategy to contain first the Sino-Soviet alliance and then China during the 1950’s and 1960’s. It surveys the important political, psychological, and military roles played by Nationalist China in the twenty-year long “political war” waged between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Garver makes a generally positive appraisal of the American link with Nationalist China, a link that served U.S. policy interests rather well. His book is the first forthright affirmation of the value of the U.S. relationship with Nationalist China to appear in the academic literature in many years, going against a dominant academic interpretation that the link was a colossal blunder for the United States.