42613489.Pdf
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/73523 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. THE EVOLVING CONSENSUS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF U.S. CHINA POLICY BETWEEN 1959 AND 1972 AND THE DOMESTIC INFLUENCES ON IT By KEVIN QUIGLEY DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY JANUARY 2000 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: "TI-llS SI-llFT OF VIEW" CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND: U.S. CI-llNA POLICY UNTIL 1960 3 (i) Background 3 (ii) Truman, Acheson, and the "Fall" of China 7 (iii) The Development of a "China Lobby" 10 (iv) 1950: A Key Year 13 (v) Eisenhower and China 17 (vi) Conclusion 28 CHAPTER 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES IN THE UNITED STATES 29 (i) World War II 29 (ii) The Profession and McCarthyism 33 (iii) The Eisenhower Years 49 (iv) The Early Challenges to the Prevailing Policy 56 (v) 1958 -1960: A Period of Reflection 61 (vi) Conclusion 70 CHAPTER 3: A NEW BEGINNING; JOHN F. KENNEDY AND THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 72 (i) Introduction 72 (ii) 1961: Setting Down a Marker 73 (iii) 1962: A Year of Decisions 95 (iv) Conclusion 112 CHAPTER4: 1963: A TURNING POINT 114 (i) Introduction 114 (ii) W. Averell Harriman 115 (iii) The Military Option 117 (iv) Roger Hilsman and the Peace Track 125 (v) The December 1963 Speech: Preparations 130 (vi) The Text of the Speech 135 (vii) The Reaction to the Speech 139 (viii) The December Speech: Conclusions 141 (ix) Conclusions 143 CHAPTER 5: THE REAL QUESTION 148 (i) Introduction 148 (ii) Lyndon Johnson 149 (iii) China Policy 151 (iv) The Continuing Shift Within Government 159 (v) Travel Policy 167 (vi) The Interagency China Country Committee 168 (vii) Conclusions 169 CHAPTER 6: THE CONTEXT 170 (i) Introduction 170 (ii) Academics 170 (iii) Public Opinion 186 (iv) The Business Community 192 (v) U.S. Policy Towards the Soviet Union 195 (vi) Vietnam 198 (vii) The People's Republic of China 201 (viii) China's Policy Towards the United States 206 (ix) Conclusions 214 CHAPTER 7: THE COMING OF AGE: 1966 - 1968 216 (i) Introduction 216 (ii) The Academics and the Congressional Hearings 217 (iii) Shifts Within the U.S. Government: 1966 - 1968 230 (iv) The National Committee on U.S. - China Relations 245 (v) Conclusions 254 CHAPTER 8: THE GRAND OPENING 256 (i) Introduction 256 (ii) Richard Nixon 256 (iii) 1969:A Year of Opportunity 265 (iv) 1969: External Factors 272 (v) ]969: The Evolving Consensus 277 (vi) The Grand Opening 288 (vii) Conclusions 294 CONCLUSION 298 FOOTNOTES: INTRODUCTION 308 CHAPTER] 309 CHAPTER2 3]4 CHAPTER3 324 CHAPTER4 335 CHAPTERS 344 CHAPTER6 350 CHAPTER 7 364 CHAPTER8 376 CONCLUSION 39] BIBLIOGRAPHY 392 ABBREVIATIONS 409 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The work of a PhD is a long, tough but above all enjoyable process. There are a number of people to whom I would like to express my gratitude. Firstly, I would like to thank all of the students and staff at Warwick University for all of their support and encouragement over the years. Given that I have been at Warwick as an Undergraduate and Masters student as well as a Doctoral one means that I have been based there for over ten years. I especially would like to thank Sarah Richardson for her help over the last three years. I would like to thank the staff at the archives that I worked at who encouraged me, and made my travel in the United States so invigorating and rewarding. There are a number of friends of mine who have taken particular interest in my work and their advice and encouragement has been appreciated. Foremost, I would like to thank Mark Pittaway, Julie Jackson, Dave Ensor, Keith and Claire Brewster, Stephen Prince and Salvador Ortiz-Carboneres. I would like to particularly thank Bob Garson of Keele University who although not my formal tutor took up virtually all of the functions of a tutor in difficult circumstances and whose support was greatly appreciated. Nobody is happier to see the completion of this thesis than my family. I am eternally grateful to my wife Maggie and my two children Joanna and Adam for their patience, support and good humour throughout. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my tutor Professor Callum MacDonald, who introduced me to the joys of studying the foreign policy processes of the United States. I hope that the professionalism and clarity of thought and expression that he inculcated in me is expressed in the quality of this work. DECLARATION I am happy to state that the work contained herein is all of my own and that any sources used are indicated. I would like to draw attention to my unpublished Masters Thesis, which I have used as the basis of some of my thinking on the Nixon period and is reflected in Chapter Eight. My Masters was a study of Nixon's policy towards East Asia and attempted to marry and explain policy towards China, Vietnam and Japan as part of a revised regional approach on the part of the President. My understanding of Nixon 's strategy of extricating the US from the Vietnam War grew out of the Masters and elements of my understanding of Nixon's China policy also is based upon ideas I first explored in my Masters Thesis. Where that influence is present it has been fully recorded in the footnotes. ABSTRACT: This thesis is a study of the domestic influences that led to President Nixon's decision to seek a new US relationship with the People's Republic of China. In particular, it concentrates on the role of academics in forcing a policy debate on China policy and the crucial role that they played in creating the environment that led to eventual change. The thesis argues that during the 1960s a climate was created that made it necessary for Nixon to change policy and that traditional accounts of the subject have failed to fully appreciate the role of domestic factors in forcing a change of policy. This thesis throws light on three areas. Firstly, the development of US China policy in the post-war years leading up to 1971 and in particular the domestic influences placed on it. A notable argument of the piece is that many of the policies later adopted by Nixon were discussed and promoted during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy and that in the last year of his life active consideration was given to changing policy. Secondly, it is a study of Sino-American relations in the 1960s, which shows the extent to which it was subject to domestic politics. Finally, it is an exploration of the role of interested academics and the way that they were able to influence US policy in such a sensitive area and the different methods that they used to affect and alter policy. The study has made use of a number of primary archival source holdings in the United States as well as the transcripts of Congressional hearings and studies commissioned by the US Government during the period that informed its China policy. Also, it has made full use of the secondary sources available on Sino-American relations. INTRODUCTION: ''THIS SHIFT OF VIEW". On 24 February 1972 as President Richard Nixon enjoyed the hospitality of the leaders of the People's Republic of China, the famous Harvard based China scholar John King Fairbank wrote in the New York Review of Books that: A residual ambivalence underlies our post-cold-war view of China. How come these same Chinese could be such bad guys in the 1950s and such good guys today? This shift of view springs partly from our own capacity to spring from one to another interpretation of foreign reality. Our grip on reality in distant places beyond direct observation is of course weakened by the way we feel. At any given time the 'truth' about China is in our heads, a notoriously unsafe repository for so valuable a commodity.1 The nature of this shift in view is the topic of this thesis. The main focus of the work will be the slow shift in US policy towards China between 1960 and the election of President John F. Kennedy and February 1972. However, the thesis will also concern itself with the domestic determinants that brought about this change in policy. Consideration must and will be given to those individuals and groups who attempted to influence policy in the sixties and the extent to which their voices were heard. The conventional view of the famous 'China Opening' carried out by Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger places the focus on the years after Nixon's election. However, this dissertation will try to show the more subtle relationships that existed between government, academia, and other actors and how they affected the 2 change of policy that became so apparent during 1971. The structure of the dissertation will be to look at Sino- American relations between 1945 and 1972 although the work will focus on the period after 1960. This will allow a thorough understanding of the basis of the early attitudes of the US towards the newly created PRe in the 1950s and the manner in which the hostile policy of that time became established against so much potential opposition.