DEADLOCK OVER CHINA

...What we do know is that such a course would be welcomed by the great majority of the 8,000,000 Formosans who are innocent victims of a power struggle that has made them regimented subjects of an alien dictatorship...

...Three—As for Formosa, recent events strengthen our long-held conviction that that embattled island should become a neutralized, demilitarized, and autonomous territory under the guardianship of the United Nations...

...Kennedy complained to the electorate that the Republicans had done nothing to relieve tension in the Formosa Strait since the grave crisis of 1958 and conveyed the impression that, if elected, he would seek a negotiated settlement...

...Our country, under both Republicans and Democrats, has pursued a blind, inflexible course that has, so far, made a negotiated settlement impossible— and it must be added that the Chinese Communists have contributed more than their share toward freezing the ugly deadlock...

...But if the headlines had receded, for the moment anyway, the causes of conflict remained unresolved and the danger of fatal collision persisted as an ominous possibility...

...Here, we believe, are the ingredients of an affirmative policy that could halt the present drift toward disaster...

...But even as he was speaking, and while our ambassador to Poland, John Moore Cabot, was assuring the Chinese ambassador, Wang Ping-nan, that the United States rejects a policy of force in the Formosa Strait, Chiang's spokesmen were proclaiming their warlike purpose...

...Kennedy, of course, had inherited a nasty mess from his predecessor...

...and he must do so without a moment's delay...

...It was against this background that Mr...

...The military buildup, pointed at the heart of Communist China a few miles away, was a needless provocation that created perilous new tensions and precipitated a series of crises and armed conflicts that threatened to explode into all-out war...

...Kennedy pointed out in 1960, merely because an aging and stubborn dictator is determined to retain them...

...A public dialogue would, if it did nothing else, mark a measure of our emancipation from the iron insistence of the far Right that negotiation is equivalent to appeasement and agreement tantamount to surrender...

...President Kennedy has wisely asserted this country's refusal to seek a settlement "at the point of a gun...

...This, too, is not so radical as it may sound...

...Chiang's revived hopes of dragging the United States into a war with Communist China have brought the old China hands out in full battle regalia here at home...

...Columnist Joseph Alsop, for instance, fired off an essay to the newspapers that use his stuff summoning the President to battle stations...

...Communist China is hostile to the idea, as is Chiang Kai-shek, but the former might conceivably agree to it as part of a package settlement...

...On the contrary, he has made no move to break the China deadlock during the year and a half of his Presidency when the Chinese Communists were relatively restrained in their threats and attacks on the offshore islands...

...His biographer, Robert J. Donovan, who was given official permission to examine Mr...

...For example, at the time of the United States-China discussions in Warsaw, Chen Cheng, vice president and premier of Formosa, was speaking of "brightening prospects of fighting back to the lost mainland...

...It seems to us the most dangerous kind of playing at soldier-strategist to assume that conflict over the islands could be localized and a general war prevented...

...Recognition is not so radical as it may sound...

...But he regarded the islands as indefensible and expendable, and made no effort to fortify them...

...Now, eighteen months after taking office, his record of achievement—or even effort, for that matter—is as bleak and blank as his predecessor's...

...Deadlock over China The worldwide tensions generated earlier in the month by Communist China's military buildup in Fukien Province, only five miles from the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the hundred-mile-wide Formosa Strait, had subsided as we were going to press in mid-July...

...Kennedy militantly raised the issue in the 1960 campaign, only to retreat, after victory at the polls, to a curiously ambivalent position...

...The conflict over Quemoy and Matsu is, of course, only the surface manifestation of a far deeper crisis involving the whole tangled problem of relations between the United States and Communist China...

...In any event, we can't know unless we make the proposal...

...Dulles subsequently came to understand the enormity of the mischief he had done...

...At the very least, such a program, or something like it—or any creative alternative to our sterile China policy—should be discussed and debated in Congress and the country before it is too late...

...Several years later, however, the Dulles-Eisenhower policy of "unleashing" Chiang in the Formosa Strait resulted in a tremendous military buildup on the islands, and this, in turn, became a symbol of Chiang's dream to reconquer the mainland—with American help...

...We may not like that fact...

...Two—Admission of Communist China to the United Nations, where she can be under the surveillance of the world organization and perhaps, in time, become a partner in the world community rather than remain isolated as the world outlaw...

...Regretfully, however, he has said or done nothing to indicate that he would seek a peaceful solution if the gun were dropped...

...If the President wishes to stand up and be counted," he admonished the Commander-in-Chief, in commenting on our involvement with Chiang in protecting Quemoy and Matsu, "he must at least be ready to use American airpower to support the Nationalists if the need arises...

...Mr...

...This does not for a moment imply approval of her system of government or way of life, any more than our approval is involved in our recognition of Soviet Russia, Falangist Spain, feudal Saudi Arabia, or Fascist Haiti...

...As a consequence of the fear of being misunderstood and branded pro-Communist, there has been an oppressive silence on this critical issue for much too long...

...General-Admiral Alsop gave the President and the country his personal assurance that "unlike Korea, the situation in the Formosa Strait is such that we can be absolutely certain air and naval action will be enough to do the job...

...even the late John Foster Dulles supported that position for a time...

...Eisenhower's private papers, disclosed this in his book, Eisenhower: The Inside Story: "The President was not convinced that the vital interests of the United States were best served by prolonged non-recognition of China...

...As part of an overall agreement involving give-and-take on both sides, The Progressive believes, as it has said for more than eight years, that the United States should take the following steps: One—Recognition of Communist China as part of an over-all settlement...

...Although world peace and the prospect of American involvement in a hopeless war for a worthless cause were at stake, the Eisenhower Administration made no effort, as far as we know, to call Chiang to account by threatening him with reduction or withdrawal of United States military and financial support, without which he could hardly aspire to be a precinct captain in Formosa...

...In his press conference comments on the current crisis, President Kennedy rightly insisted that it must not be resolved by force...

...At a recent press conference following the newest crisis, President Kennedy hid behind the Dulles-Eisenhower policy, which he reaffirmed as the present American position, by recalling that he had promised in the campaign to "support the [Eisenhower] Administration's policy towards Quemoy and Matsu over the last five years...

...The only hope of cracking that deadlock, it seems to us, lies in a sweeping reexamination of our entire China policy, aimed at achieving a negotiated settlement...

...When Nationalist dictator Chiang Kai-shek, expelled from the mainland by the victorious Communist revolution, fled to Formosa in 1949, he retained possession of Quemoy and Matsu...

...But if we want to have a world organization, then it should be representative of the world as it is...

...The Nationalist dictator, egged on by the China Lobby in the United States, refused to budge...

...indeed, we do not like it at all...

...even Dwight D. Eisenhower, while President, seemed to be moving toward this position...

...What the President failed to mention was that he had also denounced his Republican opponent's unequivocal "commitment" to defend Quemoy and Matsu...

...Moreover, he sought both to reassure the Communists of our purely "defensive" role and to warn the Nationalists against a military attack on the mainland...

...Dulles then pleaded with Chiang to abandon the islands, but there was no closing the Pandora's Box...

...As a candidate, he had said of the two islands: "I will not risk American lives and a nuclear war by permitting any other nation to drag us into the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time through an unwise commitment that is unsound militarily, unnecessary to our security, and unsupported by our allies...

...Earlier this year, Chiang himself had announced that "our preparations for a counterattack are in full swing...

...In the 1950 edition of his book, War and Peace, subsequently revised, he wrote of Communist China's admission to the United Nations: "Communist governments today dominate more than thirty per cent of the population of the world...

...We remain trapped between two fires— potential aggression by Communist China and the insane ambition of Chiang Kai-shek to recapture the mainland even if it means putting the torch to the world...

...But even if it could be limited—although no one in his senses can be as "absolutely certain" as Alsop—it would not be worth the sacrifice of the life of one American boy or the expenditure of one American dollar to hold a couple of barren islands that are militarily useless and unnecessary to our security, as Mr...