ABSTRACT
In September 1954, January-March 1955, and August-October 1958, it seemed as if the United States (US) of America and the People's Republic of China might go to war over a few small islands lying off the China coast. Though the 1954–55 Taiwan affair was one of the few post-World War II incidents to involve both American nuclear threats and the deployment of more than three US Navy carrier task forces, the affair does not meet the criteria of surprise, great danger, and short response time. The American tendency to think in crisis terms helped the Chinese generate pressures on the US government, but the Chinese did not suffer from this weakness themselves. In constructing a framework for the analysis of the events involved, one can usefully combine elements from the work of several scholars in the fields of international politics, foreign policy analysis, and Chinese foreign policy.
