claimed Taiwan as part of China, the US contin-
ued to give aid to Chiang Kai-shek, though no
American combat units were sent to support him.
In a conciliatory speech on 5 January 1950
Truman publicly declared that the US would
not intervene in the Chinese Civil War and that
Taiwan was Chinese. If Mao had been strong
enough to invade the island, the Americans would
not have prevented it, but they knew that he was
not. To emphasise that the US was not about to
embark on an appeasement policy, Dean Acheson
delivered an important and trenchant speech a
week later on 12 January, intended both for
Moscow’s ears and for public opinion at home.
The US would defend its vital interests in the
Pacific, its essential line of defence running from
the Aleutians to Japan, to the Ryukus and the
Philippines; mainland China, Acheson pointed
out, had been lost by Chiang’s defeat, not by the
Americans themselves, who could have done
nothing to prevent Mao’s victory.
It was notable that South Korea and Taiwan
were both omitted from Dean Acheson’s state-
ment. The assumptions behind his and Truman’s
policies in 1949 and early 1950 were half right
and half wrong. The view that the Chinese com-
munists had national interests not identical with
Russia’s and should not be driven into Russia’s
arms was a sophisticated perception that was soon
lost, not to be revived until the Nixon–Kissinger
initiatives three decades later. Wrong was the
belief that the speeches would bring about a
reduction of tension. US support for the Kuom-
intang on Taiwan was too obvious for Mao not
to be indignant that America was protecting his
arch-enemy. The non-recognition of communist
China by the US also denied to the People’s
Republic its rightful seat on the UN Security
Council. To add insult to injury, the rump
Chinese government in Taiwan continued as per-
manent member of the Security Council until
1971, with all the power accorded to this status.
In the US the signature of the Chinese–Soviet
Friendship treaty in February 1950 seemed to
prove that Acheson was wrong, and pressure
against the Truman administration, which was
accused of having ‘lost’ China, overcame attempts
to formulate more subtle policies. The decisive
shift in America’s Red China policy occurred on
25 June 1950, the day the North Koreans
launched their invasion. In response to aggression
by ‘the communists’, the Chinese being included
in the general global conspiracy, Truman ordered
the US Seventh Fleet to the Formosan Straits to
prevent a communist Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
In a show of ostensible even-handedness Truman
declared that the US fleet would also prevent any
attempt by Chiang (highly improbable) to invade
the mainland again. In contravention of his earlier
pronouncement, Truman had now intervened in
the Chinese Civil War. Communist Chinese and
Americans were to remain frozen in mutual hos-
tility. There were no further US attempts to nor-
malise relations with the new China, and the
communist Chinese for their part now regarded
the US as their principal enemy. The formation
of NATO, in 1949, though confined to Europe,
led them to conclude that this Western alliance
signified the coming of a global struggle between
communism and imperialism.It is against this background of the developing
Cold War that the reactions of both the US and
China to the North Korean attack on South
Korea on 25 June 1950 become intelligible.
Acheson’s omission of South Korea as vital to the
defence of the US encouraged Kim Il Sung. Kim’s
invasion of the South was approved in Moscow,
but Stalin had no intention of risking a war with
the US. His support was secret; Soviet officers
assisted in the military planning of the aggression,
thinly disguised as a defensive counter to an
alleged attack from the south. Though Beijing
knew of Kim’s ambitions, the Chinese were not
in on the final plans. They came as a total surprise
to Washington, whose intelligence services had
failed to provide any warning. The reaction of the
Truman administration was nonetheless swift and
decisive. Because of the world time difference, the
news of the North Korean invasion reached
Washington at 10 p.m. on the evening of
Saturday, 24 June. The president had just finished
a quiet family dinner hundreds of miles away at
his home in Independence, Missouri, where he
had gone for the weekend. There he received
Acheson’s urgent telephone call telling him about