| As an alternative to both neorealist and domestic political explanations, the dissertation develops a two-level model of international conflict. The model helps explain why leaders manipulate low-level conflicts to mobilize support for expensive, long-term security strategies. I apply the model to two key chapters of the early Cold War tensions between the United States and the PRC: Truman's policy toward the Chinese Communists from 1947-1950, and Mao's policy toward the United States during the 1958 Quemoy Crisis.; From 1947-50, Truman adopted crusading anti-communist rhetoric in order to mobilize public support for the strongpoint containment strategy. The crusade provided an emotional rallying point for America's response to bipolarity: the European Recovery Program, NATO, the Military Assistance Program, and American peacetime rearmament. Privately, the administration believed that it should remove itself from the Chinese Civil War and establish direct contacts with the CCP. But, in order to maintain a degree of consistency between mobilizing rhetoric and foreign policy, Truman sustained a hostile posture toward the Chinese Communists. While truly friendly Sino-American relations were precluded by ideological differences, I argue that Truman's compromises on China Policy contributed significantly to the escalation of the Korean War in late 1950.; In 1958, Mao also manipulated conflict with the United States in order to gain public support for the Great Leap Forward. Mao believed that the Great Leap was a long-term answer to China's decline in comparison to both the West and the Soviets. Hoping to make China more self-sufficient and powerful, Mao militarized the society in order to achieve higher production goals and accumulation rates. For this purpose, Mao created a war siege mentality by shelling the KMT-held offshore islands and sparking a highly salient crisis with American and KMT forces in the region. While this crisis did not lead to war, it did reverse a warming trend toward the PRC in the West, particularly within the American public. |
