Ideal illusions: China, globalism, and the national security world, 1947-1968

This thesis examines the ways U.S. global objectives from 1947 to 1968 shaped Washington's policies and attitudes towards China. It shows how the U.S. was ideologically already at war with China by 1949, and explores how prior to the Korean War Washington lacked effective means to contain China. While Russia could be contained without being isolated, Washington concluded that China had to be isolated to be contained. The thesis looks at why isolating China and a U.S. led reshaping of the geo-political and economic order of Asia went hand in hand in the 1950s, and why the former came to constitute the most effective ideological justification for the latter. In the 1960s, the emphasis on isolating China began to shift, and this thesis examines how an escalating war in vietnam was complemented by a long term change in U.S. strategies for dealing with China.; The thesis focuses on particular ideological ways the Chinese revolution was portrayed--as Russian satellite and "puppet" in the Truman years, as "Junior partner" in the Eisenhower years, and as a "revolutionary China" in the Kennedy/Johnson administrations. It examines the ways such "misperceptions" served fundamental U.S. objectives, why they changed over the years, and how they reflected a pervasive U.S. hostility to China's efforts to become a great power.