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250 chapter fifteen “Till the Dust Settles” It was mid-afternoon on December 22, 1949. Laidler Mackall, who had been a World War II bomber pilot and was then a young associate at Steptoe & Johnson, had “borrowed” a military DC-3 transport from the Air National Guard at Andrews Air Force Base and was ¶ying a handful of Steptoe associates to the ¤rm’s conference in Clarksburg. As he was landing at the small airport nestled in the mountains, Mackall could see that another olive-drab DC-3 had landed just ahead of him so he knew that “the Colonel,” who would preside over the ¤rm’s conference, had already arrived. Mackall quickly taxied up to the tiny airport terminal and the young lawyers piled out of the DC-3 to greet the secretary of defense, who stood on the tarmac chatting with his pilot and Mrs. Johnson.1 One of the Steptoe associates, Dick Whiting, fresh out of the army and Yale Law School, good looking, cocky, and full of mischief, was eager to meet the Colonel. He walked up to him, thrust out his hand and said, “Hi, Colonel Johnson. I’m Dick Whiting, your replacement at the ¤rm.” The Colonel’s face darkened, the muscles of his jaw tightened, and he ¤xed a cold stare at Whiting. Louis Johnson saw no humor in the young lawyer’s ¶ippant remark.2 Whiting and the rest of the associates had no reason to know it, but Johnson was not in a good mood. Just a few hours before, he had had lunch with President Truman at Blair House. For months, Johnson had been battling with the secretary of state and others over the issue of providing military assistance to the Nationalist Chinese who had been defeated on the mainland and were holding out against the Red Chinese on the island of Formosa (now called Taiwan). At lunch that day, Truman told his secretary of defense that he had lost his battle. The president said that he was siding with Johnson’s nemesis, “till the dust settles” 251 Dean Acheson, and that there would be no support for the beleaguered Nationalists.3 This was a setback for Johnson, but there would be other battles to ¤ght and he knew he would bounce back. More than anything, he was disheartened by the president’s lack of an overall policy—a thoughtful vision—for dealing proactively with the rapidly changing strategic situation in the Far East. And he believed that the president, who admittedly knew little about the history, politics, and culture of Asia, was not being served well by his secretary of state. Policy Vacuum While the United States had a readily understood and widely supported European defense policy which the Truman administration had formulated with great care and then sold to Congress and the American public, this was not the case when it came to Asia. As 1949 dawned and President Truman turned to pressing foreign and military affairs problems, he did so with a new secretary of state, Dean Acheson, and a new secretary of defense, Louis Johnson, and virtually no guidelines about national goals or objectives in Asia and the Western Paci¤c. As one quali¤ed observer of the political scene put it, “That the United States lacked a ‘policy’ for the Far East was a favorite commonplace of American political conversation during 1949, uttered with every shade of cynicism, exasperation and concern.”4 The complete absence of a Far Eastern policy in the late 1940s was due to several factors, of which remoteness from America was one. Because of sheer distance and huge cultural differences, U.S. public and policymakers had a dif¤cult time relating to the Far East. The Orient continued to be a kind of mystic, exotic land that seemed to exist more in the mind than in the real world. The problems of Europe, on the other hand, always seemed closer and more real to Americans.5 Anotherobstacleto thedevelopmentofa comprehensive andcoordinated policy was the limited funds available for foreign and military aid. As Congress and the executive branch moved to meet the domestic and foreign affairs problems in the Cold War era, they came face to face with the reality that they could not afford to do everything they wanted to. It was a matter of priorities and it was the consensus of the Truman administration that long-standing domestic government services, a host of Fair Deal programs, the Marshall Plan, and...

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