{"product_id":"useful-adversaries-thomas-j-christensen-9780691026374","title":"Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-1958","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis book provides a new analysis of why relations between the United States and the Chinese Communists were so hostile in the first decade of the Cold War. Employing extensive documentation, it offers a fresh approach to long-debated questions such as why Truman refused to recognize the Chinese Communists, why the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek's KMT on Taiwan, why the Korean War escalated into a Sino-American conflict, and why Mao shelled islands in the Taiwan Straits in 1958, thus sparking a major crisis with the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eChristensen first develops a novel two-level approach that explains why leaders manipulate low-level conflicts to mobilize popular support for expensive, long-term security strategies. By linking \"grand strategy,\" domestic politics, and the manipulation of ideology and conflict, Christensen provides a nuanced and sophisticated link between domestic politics and foreign policy. He then applies the approach to Truman's policy toward the Chinese Communists in 1947-50 and to Mao's initiation of the 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis. In these cases the extension of short-term conflict was useful in gaining popular support for the overall grand strategy that each leader was promoting domestically: Truman's limited-containment strategy toward the USSR and Mao's self-strengthening programs during the Great Leap Forward. Christensen also explores how such low-level conflicts can escalate, as they did in Korea, despite leaders' desire to avoid actual warfare.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Thomas J. Christensen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0691026378\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780691026374\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Princeton University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/17\/1996\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 352\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.05lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.27h x 6.14w x 0.83d","brand":"Thomas J. Christensen","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43925602107647,"sku":"9780691026374","price":58.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_b7d2f1bc-3fcd-4702-b612-3f99fe23b46d.jpg?v=1681078244","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/useful-adversaries-thomas-j-christensen-9780691026374","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}