Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism by Joyce Mao (review)

Well-argued and thoroughly researched, Joyce Mao's Asia First underscores the significance of the Asia First movement in conservative circles throughout the Cold War. Mao explains how Asia Firsters, those who demanded that U.S. foreign policy emphasize the Pacific as much as (or more than) Europe and the Atlantic, were distinct from the broader China Lobby in seeing China as one possible avenue for pushing conservatism beyond isolationism and into internationalism. In the years following Chiang Kai-shek's escape from mainland China to Formosa, the Republic of China (ROC) had proven itself friendly to both capitalism and Christianity. Additionally, the loss of the Chinese mainland to the Communist People's Republic of China (PRC) proved to be an adequate motive to criticize the Truman administration on grounds that it had not done enough to save China from the Communists. Presenting the ROC as Free China would provide the catalyst needed to turn traditionally diplomatic isolationists into conservative internationalists focused on the defense of Free China. A perspective supported by staunch conservatives such as Senator William Knowland and Senator Robert Taft, the newly proposed breed of internationalism preyed on American fears of a free world quickly dissolving under the pressure of an expanding Communist menace. Only by protecting Free China, the primary obstruction deterring Red China's advancement, could U.S. national security and democratic ideals be preserved.

Sprinkled in between arguments about the defense of Free China and a turn to conservative internationalism in the Cold War, Mao carefully weaves in another underlying narrative: conservative criticisms of the United Nations (UN) and the loss of U.S. sovereignty. Over nearly two decades—from the First Taiwan Strait Crisis and the subsequent passing of the Formosa Resolution in 1955 to the induction of the PRC into the UN and the ousting of the ROC in 1971—Mao illustrates the UN's influence as it applies to the work of Asia Firsters. For instance, Mao shows how fears that China would gain control over the islands of Matsu and Quemoy through the UN during the crisis in 1954–1955 and suspicions that the Communist PRC would be admitted to the UN alongside the ROC led conservatives to frame the exclusion of the PRC in the UN as a matter of national security (p. 96). Ranging from arguments that included UN bylaws hampering the unilateral and "streamlined action" (p. 97) of the United States against Communism, to complaints that seating a Communist state in the organization would be detrimental to U.S sovereignty because of its compulsory compliance with UN measures, Mao shows how conservatives made their case opposing the UN. As she demonstrates, these claims were raised again after the ROC was removed from the UN, despite the urgings of President Richard Nixon and U.S. Ambassador to the UN George H. W. Bush that both of the Chinas should be represented.

Mao pays particular attention to the relationships that prominent Asia Firsters enjoyed with the leader of the ROC, Chiang Kai-shek, and documents how Chiang and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, sought U.S. protection for the ROC. Indeed, Mao asserts that a "hallmark of Asia First activism" (p. 54) included the general sentiment that Chiang should be allowed to continue leading not only the ROC but the whole of China, including the mainland, in spite of U.S. misgivings regarding Chiang's efficacy as a commander and lingering questions concerning corruption among the ranks of Chiang's Nationalist Kuomintang regime. Included among Chiang's collection of politically minded U.S. friends is Alfred Kohlberg, a textile importer and the man behind the so-called China lobby; Robert Welch, an author and founder of the pro ROC activist group the John Birch Society; and Barry Goldwater, U.S. Senator and 1964 Republican Party presidential nominee. Despite ebbs and flows in Goldwater's public support for Chiang and an independent Taiwan, including his choice to...