ABSTRACT
The Middle East crisis had hardly subsided when a second, more serious crisis erupted in East Asia—the second crisis over the small islands in the Taiwan Strait off the coast of China. It was one result of the fact that the Chinese Civil War had never quite ended, and the awkward situation in which the United States had been left by measures taken in the Korean War. After the tacit cease-fire in 1955, the Chinese, as part of the general, if temporary shift toward a "peaceful" policy, publicized from the Bandung Conference, released the thirteen Americans convicted in 1954. On August 23, Communists began to heavily shell Jinmen. Some 20,000 rounds fell on a densely populated island of 153 square kilometers. Although John Foster Dulles was to be a bit "harder" in this crisis than the President, his first reaction was "If this seems really serious and critical there is perhaps room for good offices of some acceptable third power".
