Avoiding “A Chain Reaction of Disaster”: A Reappraisal of the Eisenhower White House’s Handling of the 1954–1955 Quemoy Crisis

Abstract

The Quemoy crisis of 1954-1955 found the Eisenhower White House struggling to appear tough against Mao's China and supportive of Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan while not triggering World War III. When the initial rhetorical campaign of "fuzzing" failed, Eisenhower's team switched to launching threats of imminent nuclear war-yet both strategies of deterrence were beside the point, for we now know that Mao had no intention of invading Quemoy or Taiwan. In this classic Cold War conundrum, what I call "the agony of sovereignty" left American leadership grasping at straws while misreading the trajectory of postcolonial nationalisms in Asia. Nonetheless, I demonstrate how, by the spring of 1955, Mao, Eisenhower, and Chiang all felt a sense of triumph, as they each evolved responses that left their main interests intact while avoiding what observers had feared might become "a chain reaction of disaster."