Time for Action?

Was there nothing else to be done in China but to wait, as the State Department urged, "until the dust settles?"

Impatient with the State Department's attitude (definable as doing nothing and trying to be proud of it), New Jersey's conscientious Senator H. Alexander Smith, one of the strongest Republican supporters of the bipartisan foreign policy, had boarded a troop ship last September and sailed for Yokohama. He conferred with Douglas MacArthur and spent three weeks (at his own expense) in eastern Asia. Last week he made public his recommendations, which had at least the merit of being a positive attempt to deal with a tragic situation while it could still be dealt with.

Gun Pointing Both Ways. Senator Smith would 1) turn over to a committee of generals and admirals the $75 million appropriated to oppose Communism's spread in China, 2) lend strong support to a Free China movement, 3) never recognize the Communist government of Mao Tse-tung. But chiefly he tried to fix U.S. attention on the island of Formosa, which the Nationalist government regards as its last redoubt.

Smith proposed in effect that the U.S. send troops to occupy the prosperous 235-mile-long island. Strategically the most important piece of real estate still outside Western democracy's Pacific Ocean frontier, Formosa lies on the line between three potential sea-air bastions: Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines (see map). In the hands of an Asia-based enemy it would menace U.S. communication lines. But it is a gun which can point both ways. The U.S. could point it at Communist China.

Could Formosa be held? The answer seemed to be that it could, and with a relatively small force. Ninety miles of water lie between Formosa and the mainland. Mao Tse-tung has no navy, no air power, no amphibious forces. Its occupation would demonstrate to all of Asia the determination of the U.S. to stand fast. So ran the argument.

Under the Dust. But there were difficulties. The legal right of the U.S. to move troops into Formosa was open to serious challenge. By the treaty of 1895, which followed the Sino-Japanese War, Formosa went to Japan.

The Cairo Conference (1943) promised Formosa to China; Chinese Communists could argue that Formosa, and its 6,400,000 people, belong to China. Instead of reassuring Asiatics, the sending of U.S. troops might provoke more enmity than friendliness for Western democracy; Asiatics might look upon it as a demonstration of white imperialism.

General Douglas MacArthur reportedly favored some kind of U.S. action to support Formosa, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed convinced that the move was neither an acceptable risk nor practically possible. In fact, if Senator Smith was to get anywhere with his suggestion for action, his first and most difficult task would be to convince the military, which seemed as ready as the diplomats to go on waiting for the dust to settle, no matter what was buried under it.

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