The Taiwan Strait Crisis

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From December 1941 until August 1945, the U.S. Navy had fought and won the greatest sea war in history. In the aftermath of that titanic struggle—that ended with the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—some misguided individuals (including a serving Secretary of Defense) claimed there was no longer a need for a navy as part of the nation’s defense establishment. Yet five years later, the outbreak of the Korean War proved that contention false as the Navy played essential roles in that three-year conflict that ended on 27 July 1953.

And then, on 3 September of the following year, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet was again called on, this time to play an instrumental deterrent role during a major international crisis that might well have escalated into a third world war. That dangerous ratcheting of tensions—the First Taiwan Strait Crisis—cost two American lives, was the opening round of a struggle that continues to this day, and may yet end in superpower conflict. 

Escape from the Mainland

The Taiwan Strait is part of the South China Sea. Although it is a mere 110 miles long and only 81 miles wide at its narrowest point, it is disproportionately significant for two reasons. It has long been one of the most important bodies of water in terms of international trade—today, nearly half of the world’s container ships pass through this economically vital waterway—and for more than seven decades it has served as a buffer, a kind of DMZ, between the two Chinas: the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Nationalist Republic of China (ROC). 

While World War II ended in 1945, fighting continued in China as the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong fought a bloody civil war to determine the future of the huge Asian country.

Mao’s forces took the upper hand, but they were unable to defeat the Nationalists, driving them southward but unable to prevent them from escaping the mainland to many of the offshore islands—most significantly the largest island, Taiwan (formerly Formosa). 

The Nationalists had lost the land battle but were able to shift to a naval strategy. At the end of World War II, the U.S. Congress had passed Public Law 512 that resulted in the transfer to China of 130 ships, including six destroyer escorts (DEs) and many tank landing ships (LSTs) and medium landing ships (LSMs). Britain had also provided nine small ships as well as a light cruiser (the former HMS Aurora) that became the flagship of the ROC Navy. In addition, the Chinese inherited a number of ships from the defeated Japanese that gave China’s navy a total of 824 vessels. Because Chiang had controlled most of the ports during the war, he was able to keep control of these ships, giving him a significant naval superiority over Mao, who had no navy of his own. 

The ROC Navy continued to grow, acquiring a corvette, another DE, eight torpedo boats, and two submarines. In addition, it benefited from American assistance in the form of training and education at the U.S. Naval Academy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.    

This set up an asymmetric “elephant vs. whale” scenario that has occurred on several occasions in history (the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and the Napoleonic Wars between England and France, for examples), in which one side has a powerful army and the other a powerful navy, but neither side is able to bring its greatest strength to bear on its adversary. In this Chinese scenario, without an amphibious capability, Mao could not use his more powerful army to continue his pursuit of Chiang, and the best that Chiang could do was use his naval forces to maintain a blockade of mainland China that Mao could not counter. 

While the large island of Taiwan defended by a capable navy presented a significant challenge to Mao as he hungered for a complete victory over Chiang, the problem was exacerbated by Chiang’s further control of many of the smaller islands that served as bases for his blockading ships and for guerrilla operations. These islands were much closer to the mainland, begging the question of why Mao did not attack them even if he was not up to assaulting Taiwan. The answer is that water is water, whether it spans the 80 miles to Taiwan or the less than two miles to Quemoy, one of the islands fortified and used by the Nationalists. One need only recall from history the difficulties the English Channel presented to Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler to understand Mao’s problem. 

This did not mean Mao was willing to accept this dilemma as permanent. He remained determined to unify all of China under his rule, as did his adversary Chiang. Though forced to accept the reality of their limitations, both men never stopped striving to end their civil war on their terms—Mao to capture Taiwan and the other islands of the ROC, and Chiang to return to the mainland and take back what he had lost. Both sides prepared for the day when they could turn those hopes into realities. 

The problem with these aspirations is that they did not exist in a vacuum. This Chinese stalemate had a larger context in the bipolar world that had emerged in the aftermath of World War II, in which Communism and the Free World, East and West, were likewise stalemated in what had become known as the Cold War. With the Soviet Union—which had recently joined the previously exclusive club of atomic powers—backing the Communist PRC, and the United States and its allies supporting the ROC, a renewed Chinese clash came with a very real and present danger of flaring into a new world war—one that could have even greater consequences than the last.

‘Prevent Any Attack on Formosa’

In the fall of 1949, the PRC attempted to take Quemoy Island from the Nationalists but failed. But by the following spring, it had captured the much larger Hainan Island by using a fleet of small boats crossing at night. A U.S. Navy report acknowledged the Communist victory but noted that it came at “tremendous losses in men and boats.”

It was clear that the success of this operation would not translate to a similar one on Taiwan, but intelligence reports noted that the PRC had gathered thousands of junks in the ports facing the Taiwan Strait, an alarming indication that Mao was planning an attack on the smaller ROC islands if not Taiwan itself. 

But in June, any such plans were temporarily shelved when the Cold War turned hot as proxies of the two sides clashed on the Korean Peninsula. Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, causing the fledgling United Nations (UN, led by the United States) to come to the aid of the latter, while both the Soviet Union and the PRC supported the North. Recognizing that this conflict might embolden the PRC to take advantage of the distraction and commitment that the war in Korea provided, on 27 June—just two days after the commencement of hostilities in Korea—President Harry Truman warned:

The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war. . . . In these circumstances the occupation of Formosa [Taiwan] by Communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area.

Truman then proclaimed, “I have ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa [Taiwan].” But he also was aware that Chiang might be tempted to take advantage of the situation and compound the challenge faced by the UN by attacking the PRC. To prevent the widening of the war in this manner, he added: “As a corollary of this action, I am calling upon the Chinese Government on Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland.” And to add teeth to these proclamations, he declared, “The 7th Fleet will see that this is done.”

The very next day, the destroyer USS Brush (DD-745) pulled into Keelung, Taiwan, and the day after a task group consisting of the aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45), two destroyer divisions, two submarines, and several logistics ships entered the Taiwan Strait. This initial commitment eventually morphed into the Taiwan Patrol Force, which would maintain a constant Seventh Fleet presence in the Strait for the next three decades. 

Although the PRC decried this action as aggressive and Chiang saw it as undesirably restrictive, this U.S. naval presence in the Taiwan Strait did in fact keep both sides in check as war raged in Korea. This was no small achievement in an era when atomic bombs often were thought of as much like regular weapons and the late entry of the PRC into the war in Korea exacerbated the dangers of escalation. 

The election of President Dwight Eisenhower brought notable changes in policy. Believing it was absurd to be protecting the Communist Chinese from an attack by the ROC in the Taiwan Strait while the United States was at war with them in Korea, and wanting to put additional pressure on the PRC forces in Korea, Eisenhower used his first address to Congress to proclaim that the Seventh Fleet “would no longer be employed to shield Communist China,” although he added that this did not imply any “aggressive intent on our part.” This shift from neutrality raised tensions in this delicate part of the world, but it also served as a deterrent that kept the PRC at bay during the war in Korea.

‘Living Over a Volcano’

The change in U.S. presidential administrations and the death of Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union, coupled with the war weariness that accompanied the stalemate in Korea, resulted in the signing of an armistice on 27 July 1953. While the end of the war in Korea reduced superpower tensions somewhat, it also allowed the PRC to redeploy many of its troops to the southern part of mainland China that faced the Taiwan Strait. This move once again raised the specter of aggression against the ROC and a possible superpower conflagration, causing U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to describe the situation as “living over a volcano.”

A year after the end of hostilities in Korea, Mao’s subordinate Zhou Enlai proclaimed that the PRC had to “liberate” Taiwan, and three weeks later, the PRC made good on that declaration by taking the first step in what would become known as “the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.”

On 3 September 1954, the PRC began an artillery barrage on Quemoy (aka Kinmen) at 1500 and subsequently on Matsu (aka Mazu), two of the many islands controlled by the ROC. Control of these islands was considered essential before an invasion of Taiwan itself could be mounted, and they also were key components in the ongoing ROC blockade. 

Two U.S. Army officers, Lieutenant Colonels Alfred Medendorp and Frank Lynn, serving with the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) as advisers to the ROC, were on the Shuitou Wharf on Quemoy when the shelling began. Both Americans were killed in the barrage, the latest casualties in the growing list of sacrifices demanded by the so-called “Cold” War. 

Besides wanting to destroy the rival ROC, Mao had need of a distraction. As national leaders—especially tyrants—often do, he was using an external crisis to take his people’s attention away from internal problems. His misguided attempt to transform the PRC’s agrarian economy into an industrial one by forcing the people into massive communes—what he called “The Great Leap Forward”—would soon fail miserably, causing the greatest famine in Chinese history, with tens of millions starving to death. Telling his party members “to have an enemy in front of us, to have tension, is to our advantage,” he was hoping to galvanize the people by giving them an outside enemy to focus on. 

This shift from stalemate to open combat was fraught with danger disproportionate to the real estate involved. Anticommunist feeling in the United States—while certainly justified—had reached a fever pitch because of the attention-getting tactics of the demagogic Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was finding Communists under every rock and railing against government weakness in the face of the Communist threat. 

Both Truman and Eisenhower were sensitive to the latter, which magnified their reactions to challenges posed by Mao’s PRC. When the shelling began, Eisenhower met with Dulles and told him that he was willing to use “atomic weapons as interchangeable with conventional weapons” to defend Quemoy and Matsu. Dulles subsequently publicly confirmed that the United States was seriously considering a nuclear strike. The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert B. Carney, followed up with a warning that the President was planning to destroy the PRC’s military potential, and Eisenhower himself publicly confirmed that “A-bombs can be used . . . as you would use a bullet.” These threats were backed by the movement of B-29 bombers—the main means of atomic weapons delivery at the time—to the Pacific island of Guam.

Although at this time the PRC had no nuclear capability of its own, Mao told the Finnish ambassador to China that if the Americans used atomic bombs against the PRC, the Soviets “would retaliate by wiping out American cities.” This threat was seemingly confirmed by the Soviets when they informed that same ambassador that “if the Americans atomic bombed the Chinese mainland, the Soviet government would give the Chinese all possible support under the Sino-Soviet Agreement.”  

Whether influenced by these “diplomatic” exchanges or not, subsequent events proved there were limits to the U.S. commitment to the ROC. With attention focused on the shelling of Quemoy and Matsu, the PRC expanded the crisis on 1 November by launching air attacks on the Dachens [aka Tachens], the most northerly group of islands controlled by the ROC. The Nationalists asked for help from the Seventh Fleet, but Secretary Dulles convinced Eisenhower that the Dachens were “too far from Formosa [Taiwan], too vulnerable, and insufficiently important from the strategic point of view to justify an American commitment to defend them.” It was estimated that supporting the Dachens would require the commitment of two aircraft carriers and their supporting ships. The Dachens were of no value to the PRC should Mao decide to invade Taiwan, but this was not the case for Quemoy and Matsu, so Chiang was told that defending the Dachens could not be done without jeopardizing Quemoy and Matsu. Recognizing the strategic importance of those two islands, Chiang reluctantly agreed to evacuate the Dachens. 

While Eisenhower was not willing to commit the U.S. to combat over the Dachens, he was willing to have the Seventh Fleet assist in the orderly evacuation of the islands. With the PRC having been duly warned not to interfere, from 8 to 12 February 1955, sailors and Marines of the Seventh Fleet carried out Operation King Kong, safely removing more than 25,000 Nationalists along with many weapons, much ammunition, and an impressive array of combat equipment. The LSTs and other ships and craft carrying out the evacuation were protected by 70 warships, including seven aircraft carriers. There were no American or Nationalist Chinese casualties during the successful evacuation. 

Despite the loss of the Dachens (and perhaps because of it), U.S. support of the Nationalists was confirmed on 2 December 1954, when the United States and ROC agreed to the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which promised to defend Taiwan. For reasons not entirely clear—perhaps because of their perceived vulnerability—the other islands along the PRC coast were not included in the agreement. 

The combination of this agreement, the nuclear saber-rattling, and the operations of the Seventh Fleet served to defuse the crisis. On 1 May 1955, the shelling of Quemoy and Matsu ceased, shortly after PRC Premier Zhou Enlai had declared at the April Bandung Conference “the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” and stated that “the Chinese people do not want to have a war with the United States. The Chinese government is willing to sit down to discuss the question of relaxing tension in the Far East, and especially the question of relaxing tension in the Taiwan area.” The crisis was over, disaster having been averted largely by the deterrent actions of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. But it would prove to be only the first such crisis, the next one coming within three years, with others to follow. 

Origins of a Stalemate

This first crisis is so-called because it was only the beginning of a long series of crises punctuating a simmering stalemate among the PRC, ROC, and United States that continues today. If Mao’s primary motivation for provoking the crisis was to distract his people from internal problems, only he could determine whether it succeeded. If he was testing American resolve in the region, he got his answer. 

Although the PRC could claim a victory in taking the Dachens from the ROC, those islands were of no strategic value for an attack on Taiwan. Quemoy and Matsu—which were of value in the defense of Taiwan—remained part of the ROC, a clear victory for the Nationalists. 

There is some evidence that nuclear brinksmanship may have helped end the crisis—albeit quite dangerously—but it also may have caused Mao to prioritize his quest for nuclear weapons of his own, something he achieved a decade later.  

The previously nebulous relationship between the ROC and the United States was clarified somewhat by the shift from neutrality to mutual defense that occurred as a result of this crisis, although some ambiguities remained (the non-inclusion of the offshore islands in the defense pact, for example) and continue today. President Richard Nixon’s visit to Communist China in 1972 significantly altered but did not end the relationship between the United States and the ROC. Confusion remains, as U.S. officials send conflicting messages that often are contained in what has become known as a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” 

The deterrent role of the Seventh Fleet in the First Taiwan Strait Crisis cannot be overemphasized. That role did not end as the situation calmed in 1955. The Seventh Fleet Taiwan Patrol Force that began at the start of the Korean War continued for three decades, becoming one of the longest naval operations in modern history. Often maintained by small destroyer escorts, the patrol could do little except serve as a “trip-wire” in the event the PRC moved against the ROC, but its presence served as a real deterrent to such adventures. While the Patrol Force was formally disbanded in 1979, its legacy and mission continue to this day with the frequent “message-sending” Seventh Fleet transits of the strait. 

The future of Taiwan remains unclear. Conflict between the PRC and U.S. superpowers over Taiwan seems very possible if not probable. Communist China has made it clear it intends to take Taiwan but has not made it clear when. If somewhat vague, the U.S. government’s commitment to Taiwan’s defense seems likely, but what is less clear is whether the American people will support it. 

The First Taiwan Crisis of 1954–55 was only the first chapter in a very long story that has yet to end. That ending may be near, or the saga may continue to cast a formidable shadow over that dangerous corner of the world for decades more. Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet will undoubtedly continue to play a vital role, hopefully living up to its motto: Nan Demo Dekimasu—“We can do anything.”