Accidental State

by Hsiao-ting Lin

  Regardless of Chiang’s humble offer to surrender his authority, MacArthur seemed determined to keep him in power for the time being so as to preserve Taiwan’s strength as a useful base for possible military rollback in the future. In a meeting with members of the Foreign Service in early June, MacArthur argued that, rather than make things difficult, the State Department should assist Chiang in his fight against the Communists, and “we can try to reform him later.”81 As a result, in the eyes of the SCAP chief, a coup to remove Chiang was virtually out of the question. In a forceful memorandum delivered to Washington after meeting with Cooke, MacArthur advanced three major reasons for a more assertive approach: strategically, that Taiwan was an “integral part of the U.S. offshore island defense system”; morally, that the people of Taiwan deserved an “opportunity to develop their own political future”; and politically and psychologically, that Communist expansion must be hemmed in.82 In response to Chiang’s invitation to visit Taiwan, MacArthur concurred by suggesting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff an immediate survey of Taiwan’s economy, polity, and military so as to prevent a Communist takeover. In his conversation with John Foster Dulles and Louis Johnson on June 22, MacArthur further made it clear that he should personally conduct such a survey, to “accomplish the desired end in Taiwan.”83 The SCAP chief thereby laid the foundation for his controversial trip to Taiwan two months later.

  Faced with an insecure and unstable environment, both external and internal, KMT national security apparatus under Chiang Ching-kuo began campaigns of terror to root out communist networks and sympathizers on the island and to extend the reach of their surveillance and cells down to the grass roots. These campaigns reflect a “not-so-accidental” aspect of the accidental formation of the island state; they were intentional and relatively successful in stabilizing Nationalist rule domestically and reestablishing Chiang Kai-shek’s supremacy in the political hierarchy. Nevertheless, their implementation, dubbed “white terror,” became controversial as the KMT tried to rebuild its legitimacy among an island population that had every reason to despise its ruling elites in the decades to come.84

  THE STP VERSUS THE EMBASSY

  Given the unusual triangular relationship between Chiang Kai-shek, Charles Cooke, and Douglas MacArthur in the months before the Korean War, it may seem reasonable that Cooke would continue to play a crucial role in the SCAP-KMT interaction after the war broke out in Korea on June 25, 1950. Sensing that the tide had turned when President Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent a Communist invasion, Cooke and his STP staff on the island began to act more audaciously, even bypassing American diplomats in their business dealings. Without consulting either Washington or the American Embassy in Taipei, in late July 1950 Cooke promised Chiang Kai-shek that more than 180 Nationalist military officers and soldiers would be sent to each of the fifteen (unspecified) American ships for training purposes. This project, Cooke believed, would signify an important first step toward a comprehensive Taiwan-U.S. military cooperation.85

  During his two-day visit to Taiwan on July 31 and August 1, 1950, MacArthur totally ignored U.S. diplomats in Taipei, who were neither included nor made aware of the discussions being held there. Cooke and his core STP advisors, on the other hand, were invited to join every top-level conference between the Nationalist leaders and the SCAP chiefs. In a confidential report to Dean Acheson in early August, Robert Strong resentfully declared that Cooke and his men had undergone a “very definite change of attitude” after the outbreak of the Korean War and had even requested the use of the attaché’s communication system to maintain contact with the SCAP headquarters and the Seventh Fleet. Following MacArthur’s visit, as the report depicted, the sudden arrival of planes, people, and equipment without advance clearance from the embassy seriously undermined the position and usefulness of the attaché and liaison network that the embassy had built up. Strong deemed this a great humiliation for him, worrying that Cooke’s refusal to inform his military attachés of any policy formulation could only “result in thorough emasculation” of the attaché system.86

  A previously unstudied aspect of the STP is its role in the creation of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Taiwan. In the months following the outbreak of the Korean War, there was serious debate, if not a power struggle, between the State and Defense departments over whether the American military advisory aid to Taiwan should be rendered through the use of an expanded attaché staff in Taiwan, or through a separate MAAG outside the existing embassy structure. The State Department advocated placing MAAG under the supervisory authority of the chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission so that decision makers in Washington would have a thorough comprehension of its aims. This, they insisted, was of vital importance to the success of a positive China policy.87 As an alternative, they proposed that military advice might also be channeled to the Nationalist government through U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force officers not on active duty, and through other nonofficial personnel, acting in an ostensibly private capacity while on the payroll of the Nationalist government.88 The military establishment brushed aside such suggestions, arguing that a direct chain of command in Taiwan through SCAP to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was necessary and should be a priority. The State Department was quick to realize that, in line with General MacArthur’s stance, the joint chiefs had already considered and discarded the customary concept of a MAAG, in which the ambassador would have major responsibilities, for a more complicated arrangement that would give the SCAP virtually complete freedom of action in the field.89

  Significantly, both departments used Charles Cooke and the implementation of the STP to strengthen their rationale. The State Department argued that the STP, including numerous technicians and mechanics at operational levels in various branches of the Nationalist Ministry of National Defense, as well as several retired generals and flag officers of the U.S. armed forces, was a perfect model for its proposed MAAG in Taiwan.90 The military establishment argued conversely that the established connection between the SCAP in Japan and the STP in Taiwan, which was operating outside the U.S. embassy in Taipei, laid a solid foundation for military liaison. With guidance from the SCAP and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Cooke and his STP team would transform themselves from a private military advisory body to a formal MAAG.91

  Since Charles Cooke stood out as the most likely candidate to head up any official U.S. MAAG in Taiwan, he and the CIC and STP affiliated with him now inevitably came in for bitter criticism by his potential rivals. One widely circulated denunciation was that Cooke’s men were greatly concerned that U.S. military aid to Taiwan would cut the CIC out of its role as Chiang Kai-shek’s main purchasing agent. The corresponding decrease in income would necessitate reducing the payroll of Cooke’s STP advisers.92 Such criticism might be true, but apart from worrying about the future profit of the STP and CIC, Cooke continued to have a very active role to play in Nationalist’s policy-making following the outbreak of the Korean War. For example, the issue of abandoning Quemoy off the Fujian provincial coast, now physically the largest offshore island still under Nationalist control, demonstrated Cooke’s strong influence in Chiang Kai-shek’s military and security policy planning. As the war erupted in Korea, MacArthur contemplated using Nationalist forces to assist the South Koreans. Chiang first learned about this from Cooke, and viewed it as an opportunity to cement a new U.S.-Nationalist Chinese military alliance. Taipei also anticipated that the Korean conflict would develop into a third world war in which the U.S. would eventually welcome all elements hostile to communism to join its side. And, by participating in the imagined world war, the Nationalists expected a full return of their international prestige and visibility in the world politics.93

  Therefore, in early July 1950, Chiang Kai-shek was seriously considering withdrawing Nationalist troops from Quemoy and other tiny coastal possessions off Southeast China in order to bolster Taiwan’s defense, thereby freeing 33,000 combat troops for the Korean theater. Anoth
er reason to support this idea was Washington’s earlier announcement that the Nationalist-held offshore islands would remain outside the Seventh Fleet’s protection.94 Cooke thoroughly supported the Nationalist government’s participation in the Korean War, but he vehemently opposed the evacuation of Nationalist forces from Quemoy, as this move would not only look like weakness to the Chinese Communists, but would produce a negative psychological effect on Taiwan as well as the entire free world.95 Although not wholly convinced, a usually peremptory Chiang once again followed Cooke’s advice. This was a decisive moment; had the proposed withdrawal from Quemoy ever come to pass, it would have removed the principal focal point of the later Sino-American military crisis.

  As the war in the Korean Peninsula heated up at the end of 1950 and into 1951, Cooke went on to increase his influence over Taiwan’s military and political affairs frequently, without regard for American diplomats and military attachés posted there. His STP advisors were all over the island, engaging in critical inspections and supervising military training programs aimed at restoring the Nationalist force to strong, combat-ready status.96 Cooke was equally zealous in helping Chiang Kai-shek launch effective institutional reforms within the Nationalist military hierarchy. In a personal memorandum to Chiang, Cooke criticized the division of command between the two commanders in chief of the Nationalist ground forces and the Ministry of National Defense. His advice was that authority and responsibility for the administration and operation of the ground forces should be vested in a single commander with complete authority within the limits of his command. Cooke also suggested the creation of a commander and command staff for planning, organizing, and moving an expeditionary force as the first step toward reforming the whole army command structure.97 Using his naval expertise and background, Cooke gave further advice on a possible institutional reorganization of the Nationalist Navy. Viewing the confusion in Nationalist naval commands and operations, Cooke urged a division of the functions performed by the navy headquarters and its chief of staff. The former would be responsible for administration, whereas the latter would conduct operations. The navy’s confusing planning staff, like that of the army, gave Cooke cause for concern.98

  Expecting that he would soon become the head of the official American military mission to Taiwan, Cooke was even keener to recruit more of his own men from all around the world than when the STP was first initiated.99 With equal enthusiasm, he proposed that more ammunition be procured via the CIC on behalf of the Nationalist government. On September 14, 1950, Cooke advised Chiang of Taiwan’s four “most urgently needed military items” that the CIC could help to obtain: 93 LVTs, 25 P-51 fighter planes, 10 early-warning radars, and 117 jeeps.100 However, when compiling this list, Cooke did not realize that the purchase of these items would cause an insolvable headache, marking the beginning of the end of his enterprise in Taiwan.

  THE END OF AN EXTRAORDINARY EPISODE

  In April 1950, when Charles Cooke recommended the withdrawal of Nationalist troops from Zhoushan, the absence of an adequate early-warning radar system on the islands was one of his main reasons. Consequently, when the Nationalist military authorities proposed in early July 1950 purchasing new radar equipment through the CIC to strengthen Taiwan’s air defense, Cooke was glad to offer his help. Chiang Kai-shek and his military personnel relied solely on Cooke, as they understood well that only the CIC and its contacts in Washington’s upper circle could obtain the required ammunition export licenses from the Munitions Division of the State Department.101 In mid-July, a CIC-related field radar engineer arrived in Taiwan and conducted a topographical survey of the island. The survey report recommended the purchase of 10 radar sets of LGR-1 or TPS-1 type to be used as a basis for the future radar network around Taiwan. Cooke and the CIC staff planned that, following the purchase of these ten early-warning radar sets, nine radar technicians would join the STP program via the CIC and establish a new training program for the Nationalist Chinese Air Force.102

  Chiang Kai-shek’s military men in Washington bitterly resented Chiang’s decision to procure Taiwan’s urgently needed munitions through Charles Cooke and the CIC, feeling that they had been bypassed and slighted, and perhaps also because they may have been eager to profit personally from the arms purchases. Around mid-September 1950, General Mao Bangchu, chief of Nationalist China’s aviation procurement mission in Washington, instructed his executive aide Colonel Xiang Weixuan to meet CIC personnel in New York and express his concern about the radar procurement in progress. Both Mao and Xiang were upset that Taipei circumvented the mission in Washington and gave the CIC a green light to purchase the radar systems on Taiwan’s behalf. Believing that Bendix, the radar export dealer, was passing a commission to the CIC, Xiang warned that the CIC should halt the radar procurement immediately and transfer the whole transaction to the Chinese aviation mission in the United States.103

  Instead of heeding Colonel Xiang’s threat, the CIC continued to procure ammunition on behalf of the Nationalist government, particularly the radar sets and the twenty-five P-51 fighter planes that had been added in September 1950 to Cooke’s recommended list.104 Sensing that General Mao and his aides might actually be interested in lining their own pockets, the CIC hinted that the P-47 fighters, although not on Taipei’s priority list, were more easily available and therefore requested a new power of attorney from Taipei to cover the P-47 aircraft.105 This proposal was unacceptable to Mao and Xiang, who decided to act against the CIC and secure their position as the sole procurement agency of the Nationalist government. On January 3, 1951, Xiang went to the FBI and to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, accusing the CIC of illegally procuring ammunition on behalf of the Nationalists in Taiwan. Xiang also accused several State Department officials of having inappropriate relations with the CIC and unfairly helping it obtain export licenses.106 The FBI and the U.S. Air Force initiated an investigation into the CIC. Pending the conclusions of their investigations, Taiwan received neither radar nor aircraft licenses, nor clearance for the new STP radar technicians.107

  On hearing Mao and Xiang’s allegations, Chiang Kai-shek was extremely angered. At the suggestion of Cooke, Chiang recalled the two officers to Taipei and planned to replace them with men who would collaborate with the CIC. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also instructed its officials in Washington to stop criticizing the CIC or even speculating about it, and announced that a new committee would soon take charge of arms procurement in the United States.108 Fearing for their political careers, Mao and Xiang decided to open fire against their own government. They publicly accused the Nationalist military establishment of corruption and misappropriation of public funds. They also wrote to some of Chiang’s supporters in Congress. Their strategy worked briefly. In March 1951, Senator Walter Judd expressed his grave concern regarding the alleged corruption to Chiang, stating that it would be very difficult for him to continue his support for the Nationalists in Taiwan, unless the case was concluded immediately.109 In the meantime, the mass media began to portray this case as a return to the factional squabbling that was the Chinese Nationalists’ gravest weakness.110

  Taipei responded by suspending its two “incapable and disloyal” military subordinates from all their official posts and instituting legal proceedings in the United States for “inappropriate behaviors” that had seriously undermined the prestige of the Nationalist government.111 However, the damage to Charles Cooke, the CIC, and the STP was already done. General MacArthur was dismissed in April 1951; thus the CIC lost its patron. General William Chase was appointed the first chief of U.S. MAAG in Taipei, which numbered the days of the STP. Two months later, Cooke proposed to Chiang that it was time to terminate the STP, to which Chiang agreed. In September, after transferring most of the advisory and training activities to the MAAG recently instituted under General Chase, the STP was abolished.112 This also ended a unique military and security relationship between Nationalist China and the United States.

  8

  The
Island Redoubt Reinvigorated

  WHILE CHARLES M. COOKE was actively playing a unique role in influencing Nationalist China’s military and security policy formulation in the months surrounding the outbreak of the Korean War, a comprehensive reevaluation of U.S. policy toward Taiwan was being undertaken in Washington. In January 1950, when Harry Truman and Dean Acheson publicly announced their apparent abandonment of the Nationalists in Taiwan and continued pursuing a nonmilitary settlement of the Chinese civil war, their rationale largely stemmed from the NSC 48 issued one month prior, the main theme of which was to draw Mao Zedong’s Communist China away from Soviet Russia. The Sino-Soviet treaty of February 1950, however, virtually eliminated prospects for “Chinese Titoism” for the foreseeable future. The new alliance between Moscow and Beijing accordingly prompted Washington to make a fundamental policy reassessment.1 The result of this reevaluation was the completion of NSC 68 in April 1950, a document that would greatly influence Truman and the presidents who succeeded him, leading them into an Asian morass they never learned how to escape. The document portrayed communism as a coordinated global movement, thereby abandoning the distinction between vital and peripheral interests that George Kennan’s famous containment strategy had emphasized. Instead, the paper, prompted chiefly by the success of a Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949 and the Soviets’ probable capability of producing hydrogen bombs, called for a “tripling” of the U.S. defense budget for the purpose of frustrating what it repeatedly characterized as “the Soviet designs” for the world.2