Appu K. Soman. Double-Edged Sword: Nuclear Diplomacy in Unequal Conflicts: The United
States and China, 1950-1958. Praeger Studies in Diplomacy and Strategic Thought. Westport,
Conn. and London: Praeger, 2000. x + 258 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-275-96623-2.
Reviewed by Thomas A. Breslin (Division of Sponsored Research and Training and Department of International Relations, Florida International University)
Published on H-Diplo (January, 2001)
Soman begins his work, “This is a study of the role of
nuclear weapons in the American policy toward China
in the 1950s. I have followed a traditionalist approach,
focusing exclusively on power as the determining factor in inter-state relations.” He frankly eschews factors
such as gender, race, and culture and laments that major gaps remain in archival sources, particularly where
nuclear weapons are concerned. [pp. vii, 11].
American policy in each of these crises. American nuclear diplomacy in its confrontation with China is, therefore, an important topic in the history of the Cold War
as well as the history of American foreign relations.” [p.
10]
Specialists might want to question whether the Taiwan Strait crises were as important as those involving
Berlin and whether they outweighed European affairs.
Buried in footnote 133 on p. 160 is an explanation that
the Eisenhower “administration’s principal concern during this period [of the 1954-1955 crisis] was the fate of
the treaty for the Western European Union and the admission of West Germany to NATO, due for ratification
by European nations. Dulles feared that a war with China
involving nuclear weapons would turn European opinion
away from the United States and thus jeopardize ratification of the treaty. See memo of 240th NSC meeting, 10
March 1955, FRUS 1955-1957, II, 347-348.”
This work is based on research into various holdings
of the Harry S Truman Library; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; the Public Records Office; the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University; the Columbia University Library; the Library of
Congress; and the National Archives. Additionally, the
author lists two pages of diaries, memoirs, and other
published primary sources and ten pages of secondary
sources.
In his introduction, Soman argues that every postWorld War II American administration has employed nuclear weapons in its diplomacy. While nuclear threats
carried heavy diplomatic costs for America, the top
American politicians benefitted at the polls from a gunslinger image. [pp. 5-6]. Only in the case of China, however, did American nuclear threats against a non- nuclear
state play anything more than a marginal role. [p. 7].
Those threats took place in the context of the Korean War
and the two Taiwan Strait crises of 1954-55 and 1958. He
argues that, apart from the Suez crisis of 1956 these were
the “most serious international crises in the period between the Korean War and the Cuban missile crisis of
1950s in which the United States was a principal participant. Nuclear diplomacy occupied a central role in the
Soman focuses on the “diplomatic and political utility”of nuclear weapons in the three confrontations. By
utility he means “how atomic capability enabled American presidents to make the choices that they desired
in critical situations in those episodes, but which they
would have been reluctant, or unable, to make in the absence of atomic weapons.” [p. 7]. Subsequently, he heavily tempers this by arguing, “The American atomic capability facilitated the US decision to oppose the North Korean invasion. This does not mean that Truman would
not have decided to intervene in the absence of atomic
weapons, just that atomic weapons made it easy for Truman to decide on intervention and to win public and congressional support.” [p. 98].
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Chapter 2 lays out the background of atomic diplomacy. It is based mainly on secondary sources but gems
drawn from the archives provide sparkle. Soman approvingly quotes Sherwin’s argument that Roosevelt’s and
Truman’s policy choices “were based on the assumption
that the bomb could be used effectively to secure postwar [diplomatic] goals; and this assumption was carried
over to Truman’s administration.” Truman toyed with
the idea of sharing atomic secrets. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff, however, supported a postwar US monopoly on
atomic weapons. Soman has dredged from the National
Archives a March 1946 warning from the Joint Chiefs of
Staff that even arms control was no protection against
the use of atomic weapons in war. Unless America had
atomic weapons and was willing to use them, they argued, “the absence of fear of immediate retaliation with
atomic weapons,” might “make a renegade nation less
hesitant to begin a war of aggression.” [p. 19]. Brushing
aside Truman’s doubts and orders, Secretary of Defense
Forrestal encouraged the outspoken military to include
atomic weapons in their war plans. Nonetheless Truman
successfully kept nuclear weapons under civilian control.
[pp. 20-1]. Indeed, with little of his successor’s fanfare,
Truman foreshadowed Eisenhower’s reliance on atomic
weapons to avoid higher conventional arms costs while
pursuing ambitious foreign policy goals [pp. 23-4].
files in political courage in this book.
If indeed political factors were driving Truman willy
nilly into war, then how does the author come to argue in
his conclusions, “In the eight years covered by this study,
American presidents found themselves on several occasions in situations where nuclear weapons placed them in
invincible positions as they faced critical decisions that,
in the absence of nuclear weapons, they would have been
hard pressed to take. The first occurred when the Korean
War started and Truman faced the choice of intervening
or not intervening in the defense of South Korea.” [p.
215].
“Truman” Soman writes, “left his successor in the
White House a stalemated war in Korea, a costly military buildup, and armed forces that despite nearly three
years of massive conventional rearmament still left the
United States heavily dependent on its atomic arsenal.”
[p. 36]. Eisenhower was prepared to accept complete
nuclear disarmament without simultaneous arms limitation but fretted that verification would be difficult [p. 42].
Washington chose to reject a Soviet ban on use of nuclear
weapons in 1954. “Acceptance of this proposal would
have ruled out the kind of nuclear diplomacy the administration practiced during the Taiwan Strait crisis only a
few months later and again in 1958.” [p 43]. Soman completes his background treatment by describing the rise of
Soman picks up the U.S–China relationship in late
1949. He follows Nancy B. Tucker’s argument that Ache- the doctrine of flexible response initiated by John Foster
son brought the U. S. to the verge of extending diplomatic Dulles during the last years of Eisenhower’s presidency.
recognition to the People’s Republic of China. Then the
In Chapter Three, “The Limits of Nuclear Coercion:
China Lobby and the congressional China Bloc inter- Nuclear Diplomacy in the Korean War,” Soman follows
vened. Given such pressure, a dispute with the Commu- Dingman and Cumings in arguing that “the atom bomb
nists over US consular property, the Sino-Soviet friend- did figure prominently in the considerations of the Truship treaty, the emergence of Joseph McCarthy, and the man administration during the Korean War…” [p. 59].
desire to obtain Congressional support for the European But mere possession or even rattling of the atomic bomb
recovery program, Acheson was unable to defeat the co- did not make the Truman administration’s diplomacy efordinated moves of the Pentagon and the Chinese Na- ficacious. Soman is unsure that the Soviets even heard
tionalist government to have the administration defend the rattling, if that is what it was: “Until one has access
the island from the communists. [pp. 25-7]. The out- to the relevant Soviet documents, it is impossible to pass a
break of the Korean War saved the Chinese Nationalist definitive judgment on what lessons Soviet leaders drew
Party in its redoubts on Taiwan and the offshore islands. from Truman’s overseas movements of atomic bombers.
Soman argues that, “Irrespective of the strategic impor- One might, however, hazard a guess that Stalin did not
tance of South Korea or Taiwan, the Truman administra- consider the absence of an explicit’ atomic threat partiction had no choice but to intervene, not only in the Korea ularly reassuring.” [pp. 98- 9]. Despite American possespeninsula but in the Chinese civil war as well.” [p. 29] He sion of the atomic bomb, the Chinese entered the war and
later repeats this contention: “No American president in the North Koreans fought on. Against Chen Jian, who ar1950 could have withdrawn from Korea in the face of a gues that the Chinese entered the war out of an excess of
communist advance without using the atom bomb–either revolutionary zeal, and Zubock and Pleshkov, who armilitarily or diplomatically.” [p. 70]. It is arguable that gue that the Chinese did so under Stalin’s pressure, Sothis constitutes political determinism. There are no pro- man argues convincingly that Chinese intervention had
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to wait until Mao had overcome domestic opposition to
intervention.
Chapter 5 covers the offshore islands crisis of 1958.
It argues that the crisis highlighted the flaws in Eisenhower’s reliance on nuclear weapons. Soman credits
Soman is highly critical of Truman’s inability to end Dulles with defusing the situation. [p. 200]. Soman
the war in Korea through diplomacy. “In opting for a writes that the crisis led to a fundamental change in US
strategy of compelling China to capitulate in the negoti- East Asia policy. Under domestic and international presations, the Truman administration completely misjudged
sure, the US distanced itself publicly from Chiang’s amthe position of the adversary. New evidence now availbitions for a return to the Chinese mainland and clearly
able suggests that China was looking for a face-saving signaled its intention to end Nationalist guerrilla attacks
formula to compromise.” [p. 84].
on the mainland. This ended the threat to China from its
The armistice finally came from a tempering of U.S.- southern flank for the first time since the founding of the
Soviet relations. “There is no basis for the claim,” Soman PRC. By transforming the US-ROC equation, this crisis
concludes, “that nuclear diplomacy by the Eisenhower ultimately worked to China’s advantage.“ [p. 166].
administration ended the war. A change in Soviet polIn a realist framework this is an important claim only
icy after the death of Stalin and American moderation,
if Chiang posed a real threat to the mainland government.
not American nuclear threats, removed the last hurdle in One can reasonably disagree, however, that there ever
the way of an armistice agreement in the spring of 1953.” was a threat to the PRC from KMT guerrilla raids. So[p. 60] Indeed, the Eisenhower administration’s claims to man himself relates how the Nationalists were too weak
having used nuclear threats to get the Korea talks started to hold all the offshore islands they initially occupied.
again “might well have been” smoke screen to cover con[p. 119] Indeed, Soman himself portrays Mao as desircessions. [p. 100]. Soman’s argument on this point is
ing KMT possession of Quemoy and Matsu lest Taiwan
convincing enough to obviate the need for a subjunctive. be left in a de fact two-China situation. [p. 194]. Thus
Chapter 4 traces the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-1955
which John Foster Dulles, smarting over the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, hoped to develop into an atomic
war against China. But America’s allies were unwilling
to support a war over the offshore islands. So the US offered a defense treaty to the Nationalists in exchange for
taking the dispute to the UN. At the Nationalists’ insistence the treaty embraced “such other territories as may
be determined by mutual agreement’ in addition to Formosa and the Pescadores. Soman observes that, ”In reality, the administration lost the best opportunity it would
ever have to make a clean break with the offshore islands….The treaty left the Nationalists with enough of an
opening to manipulate American policy in the future.“[p.
127]
we must discount heavily Soman’s earlier claim, echoing the Chinese General Xiong Guangkai, that on three
occasions in the 1950s (the Korean War and the Taiwan
Straits crises of 1954-55 and 1958) the United States used
its possession of nuclear weapons to force its will upon
the People’s Republic of China. [p. 2].
Soman flays Eisenhower for poor leadership and the
Eisenhower revisionists along with him. Eisenhower and
Dulles had lost the initiative to the Nationalists. They
feared blame for losing the islands. “The picture [in his
memoirs of a president fully in command of the situation]
was far from true. Eisenhower set out to draw the line’
on more than one occasion. The line, however, kept shifting….This was hardly a hidden hand president’ in action.
The presidential hand was absent, not simply hidden, on
crucial occasions.” Eisenhower and his advisers seem to
have forgotten the lessons on limited war learned in Korea. [pp. 148-49].
The book ends on a sobering note, the revival of nuclear diplomacy under the Clinton administration and the
rise of China as a nuclear power. Marring the book are inconsistencies in the general argument, as noted above in
passing. The review of the literature is thorough but unfortunately did not include the Craig book noted above.
I found only one minor error in a footnote [171, p. 56].
Soman affirms that “At no point is there any evidence of the American leaders’ own moral scruples influencing any decision by the Eisenhower administration
on the use of atomic weapons.” Rabid anti-communism
was the decisive influence. [pp. 218-19] For another
view of Eisenhower’s thinking about the morality of nuclear warfare, readers might want to consult Campbell
Craig’s Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War[New York: Columbia University Press, 1998].
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Citation: Thomas A. Breslin. Review of Soman, Appu K., Double-Edged Sword: Nuclear Diplomacy in Unequal Conflicts: The United States and China, 1950-1958. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. January, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4815
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