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Reviews of Books
short, Kingseed credits Eisenhower with "a splendid
performance" (p. 148).
To his credit, Kingseed bases his assessment on the
holdings of the Eisenhower Library, interviews with
former officials, and previously untapped Navy
records. On the other hand, he apparently did not
consult the vast documentation declassified since the
completion of his dissertation on this topic in 1983,
most noticeably State Department records including
the pertinent Foreign Relations of the United States
volumes published in the early 1990s. Kingseed also
fails to incorporate the contributions of numerous
monographs and articles on the Suez crisis that have
appeared in the last decade (although he lists some of
these works in the bibliography).
Consulting such records and publications might have
enabled Kingseed better to analyze Eisenhower's
broad policy objectives in the Middle East. As it
stands, he overlooks the Alpha peace plan, the Anderson mission, and the Omega initiative, and he only
superficially analyzes the Baghdad Pact and Aswan
Dam aid offer, all of which created the background
and context of Eisenhower's policy during the Suez
Crisis. Moreover, he attributes Eisenhower's failure to
reach longterm objectives to his "misconception of the
Soviet threat to the Middle East, and his failure to
comprehend the realities of Arab nationalism and
pan-Arabism" (p. 144). Thus Kingseed repeats, but
does not confirm, traditional criticisms of the president
that are not fully verified by the newly available
evidence. Finally, the tight chronological focus on the
tactics of crisis management might leave some readers
hungry for more analysis of the reasons behind the
decisions Eisenhower made.
PETER L. HAHN
Ohio State University
ROBERT S. Ross. Negotiating Cooperation: The United
States and China, 1969-1989. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1995. Pp. xii, 349. $39.50.
For nearly twenty years, virtually all scholarly analyses
of Chinese-American rapprochement have utilized as
their foundation Henry Kissinger's account of his own
and President Richard Nixon's diplomacy. In his elegant history of these events, (The White House Years
[1979]), Kissinger took understandable credit for facilitating a fundamental change in America's China
diplomacy and gave short shrift to critics. The "wellmeaning but wooly efforts" by Americans interested in
"Chinese friendship," he wrote dismissively, had hindered, not helped rapprochement (p. 685). These and
others who claimed that Washington's support for
Taiwan would impede Sino-American ties, Kissinger
added, were blinded to the fact that "Chinese leaders
stressed ... that Taiwan was a subordinate problem"
and that Beijing cared only about security from a
growing Soviet threat (p. 1092).
It has been difficult for scholars to assess the
accuracy of Kissinger's so-called geopolitical interpre-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
tation, because both he and Nixon have blocked nearly
all efforts to gain access to the diplomatic records of
their activities. One of the several virtues of Robert S.
Ross's penetrating analysis is his enterprise in ferreting
out evidence that challenges, if not refutes, Kissinger's
self-congratulatory interpretation. Utilizing a broad
array of Chinese and American printed sources, interviews, and other data, Ross argues persuasively that
Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and their successors never,
as Nixon and Kissinger asserted, agreed to "shelve" or
ignore the question of Taiwan's status or U.S. support
for the "renegade" province. In fact, periodic tensions,
disagreements, and disappointments between the
United States and China have revolved largely around
the unresolved status of Taiwan. Despite the palliative
language of the Shanghai Communique of February
1972, China never accepted the American government's stand on Taiwan. Ross maintains that the
foundational document in the new Sino-American
relationship, the Shanghai Communique, was only
agreed to by Mao and Zhou because Nixon promised,
in fact, to break relations with thc Taiwan regime
during his second presidential term (p. 53).
During the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, Taiwan remained a sore point between Washington and Beijing. Because Taiwan was a relatively
minor factor in the overall balance of American security policy, few American policy makers took the time
to recognize how central a question the existence of a
rival regime remained to the leaders of the People's
Republic of China. The Soviet threat to China and
Chinese desires for Western and Japanese strategic
and economic cooperation often muted Beijing's concern but never dissipated it.
In a subtle, articulate, and clearly argued fashion,
Ross explains why, over time. the two sides sometimes
compromised and often clashed. It is a marvelous
narrative history of a critical period in Sino-American
relations as well as a nuanced account of how changing
political balances within each country affected their
bilateral relations.
MICHAEL SCHALLER
University of Arizona
JOHN R. NORDELL, JR. The Undetected Enemy: French
and American Miscalculations at Dien Bien Phu, 1953.
College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 1995.
Pp. xvi, 217. $39.50.
This study deals with the French military campaign at
Dien Bien Phu. Using recently published documents
on Indochina, John R. Nordell, Jr. provides a nearly
complete analysis of Frcnch operational miscalculations that one would be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
Nordell argues that the French miscalculated the
impact of their initial victory at Dien Bien Phu and the
scope of the Communist counterattack. Similarly, he
argues that the United States was largely misinformed
about the event. The purpose of the attack, Nordell
argues, was to provide assistance to the Thai tribesmen
APRIL 1997