f reedom of a ction 187However, by early 1945 he was forced to acknowledge that he had no
alternative but to agree to make France the sole trustee over its erstwhile
colony. Th us the stage was set for the fi rst Indochina war. Meanwhile,
Chiang Kai-shek bided his time and husbanded his forces for the inev-
itable showdown with the communists. Roosevelt had counted on the
generalissimo to take a seat at the table as one of the postwar Big Four.
But, as he had throughout the war, Chiang would continue to disap-
point his American patrons. Incompetence, corruption, and indif-
ference to the suffering of the Chinese people contributed to the
collapse of the Nationalist regime and its ignominious retreat to
Formosa (Taiwan) in December 1949. Roosevelt proved no better
able to shape political outcomes where there were no American troops
than Wilson had been after the 1918 Armistice.
In one key respect, though, the lessons from the previous war had
been well learned. After victory, Roosevelt believed, the United States
could not retreat from its global responsibility to preserve peace. Central
to his vision for postwar security was a new international organization
that would not suff er from the liabilities that had crippled the League
of Nations. Th e president insisted that the United States not merely
belong to but also lead the organization. In October 1944, after several
years of planning by the State Department, American, British, and
Soviet diplomats agreed on the basic structure of a United Nations
organization, called the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals. Roosevelt had
observed Wilson’s failure to secure ratifi cation of the League of Nations
and resolved to avoid his predecessor’s errors, especially his assumption
that the Senate must follow presidential direction in postwar foreign
aff airs.
To secure American membership, then, the Roosevelt administration
mounted an organized campaign designed to generate strong popular
and U.S. Senate support for the United Nations. Isolationist (“unilater-
alist” might be more apt ) sentiment in the United States remained
strong if subdued, and critics of the Proposals worried that partici-
pation would compromise American independence. Leaving nothing to
chance, the State Department underwrote a concerted campaign
through which a wide range of private organizations urged Congress to
ratify the UN Charter. Roosevelt also studiously avoided Wilson’s
partisan approach by reaching out to isolationist Republican Senator