Asia First
China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism
After Japanese bombs hit Pearl Harbor, the American right stood at a crossroads. Generally isolationist, conservatives needed to forge their own foreign policy agenda if they wanted to remain politically viable. When Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China in 1949 – with the Cold War just underway – they had a new object of foreign policy, and as Joyce Mao reveals in this fascinating new look at twentieth-century Pacific affairs, that change would provide vital ingredients for American conservatism as we know it today.
Mao explores the deep resonance American conservatives felt with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek and his exile to Taiwan, which they lamented as the loss of China to communism and the corrosion of traditional values. In response, they fomented aggressive anti-communist positions that urged greater action in the Pacific, a policy known as "Asia First". While this policy would do nothing to oust the communists from China, it was powerfully effective at home".Asia First" provided American conservatives a set of ideals – American sovereignty, selective military intervention, strident anti-communism, and the promotion of a technological defense state – that would bring them into the global era with the positions that are now their hallmark.
Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Up from Isolationism: The Conservative Dilemma and the Chinese Solution
2. No Such Thing: The China Lobby
3. Firefights: China's Meanings after the Korean War
4. Onward, Christian Soldiers: The John Birch Society
5. The New Normal: Asia First Realpolitik
Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the Author
Joyce Mao is assistant professor of US history at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Reviews
"'Asia First' is a terrific contribution to the literature on Sino-American relations, with its brilliant exploration of China's centrality to conservative American politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Mao is not only original but rather ingenious in how she takes characters, such as Alfred Kohlberg, Robert Welch, and Barry Goldwater, and uses them as lenses through which to view the larger phenomenon of China in American political culture in the decades after World War II" – Christopher Jespersen, University of North Georgia
"With this exceptional book, Mao provides a nuanced, persuasive analysis of how foreign policy issues symbolically linked familiar conservative positions to new concerns during the post-World War II period. Presenting the ideology of the 'Asia First' movement in an effective and compelling manner, Mao seamlessly combines the 'cultural turn' approach to studying international relations together with traditional questions and issues to demonstrate how conservative leaders in the 1950s and 1960s forged a unified view on China that infused new energy and ideas into postwar conservatism" – David F. Schmitz, Skotheim Chair of History, Whitman College
"With 'Asia First', Mao has produced a vivid roadmap that demonstrates how politicians and pundits stoking fears of China and Communism promoted the rise of American conservatism from the era of McCarthy through Reagan. Along the way, she explores the crucial link between domestic and foreign policies" – Michael Schaller, University of Arizona
"Mao offers an important new study of post-1945 American conservatism. Whereas most writers have characterized Cold War era conservatives as unilateralists or isolationists, Mao suggests that many of them were willing to embrace internationalism in Asia. The reason, she suggests, is because conservative politicians and publicists had embraced a vision of U. S. -China cooperation that appeared threatened by the rise of Communist China. China thus served as the key to the shift in conservatism from isolationism to internationalism (what the author calls 'Asia First internationalism'). This is an intriguing thesis, which the author buttresses on the basis of massive research. 'Asia First' is a critical contribution to the study of Cold-War era American opinion" – Akira Iriye, Harvard University
"How did conservatives move from isolationism after World War II to militant anti-communist internationalism through the Cold War era? The 'China Question' had lots to do with the shift, according to this original look at the underpinnings and politics of modern conservative foreign policy. Partisanship, ideology, geopolitical calculation, and personality all played roles. 'Asia First' is a valuable and long-overdue study of the rise of conservative internationalism" – Gordon H. Chang, Stanford University
