Asia First – China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism - Hardcover

Mao, Joyce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022625271X ISBN 13: 9780226252711

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

After Japanese bombs hit Pearl Harbor, the American right stood at a cross-roads. Generally isolationist, conservatives needed to forge their own foreign policy agenda if they wanted to remain politically viable. When Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China in 1949 - with the Cold War just underway - they now had a new object of foreign policy, and as Joyce Mao reveals in this fascinating new look at twentieth-century Pacific affairs, that change would provide vital ingredients for American conservatism as we know it today. Mao explores the deep resonance American conservatives felt with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek and his exile to Taiwan, which they lamented as the loss of China to communism and the corrosion of traditional values. In response, they fomented aggressive anti-communist positions that urged greater action in the Pacific, a policy known as "Asia First." While this policy would do nothing to oust the communists from China, it was powerfully effective at home. Asia First provided American conservatives a set of ideals-American sovereignty, selective military intervention, strident anti-communism, and the promotion of a technological defense state-that would bring them into the global era with the positions that are now their hallmark.

About this title

Review:

""Asia First" is a terrific contribution to the literature on Sino-American relations, with its brilliant exploration of China's centrality to conservative American politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Mao is not only original but rather ingenious in how she takes characters, such as Alfred Kohlberg, Robert Welch, and Barry Goldwater, and uses them as lenses through which to view the larger phenomenon of China in American political culture in the decades after World War II."--Christopher Jespersen, University of North Georgia

"In this exceptional book, Mao provides a nuanced, persuasive analysis of how foreign policy issues symbolically linked familiar conservative positions to new concerns during the post-World War II period. Presenting the ideology of the Asia First movement in an effective and compelling manner, Mao seamlessly combines the "cultural turn" approach to studying international relations together with traditional questions and issues to demonstrate how conservative leaders in the 1950s and 1960s forged a unified view on China that infused new energy and ideas into postwar conservatism."--David F. Schmitz, Skotheim Chair of History, Whitman College

"Mao has produced a vivid roadmap that demonstrates how politicians and pundits stoking fears of China and Communism promoted the rise of American conservatism from the era of McCarthy through Reagan. Along the way, she demonstrates the crucial link between domestic and foreign policies."--Michael Schaller, University of Arizona

"With this exceptional book, Mao provides a nuanced, persuasive analysis of how foreign policy issues symbolically linked familiar conservative positions to new concerns during the post-World War II period. Presenting the ideology of the Asia First movement in an effective and compelling manner, Mao seamlessly combines the "cultural turn" approach to studying international relations together with traditional questions and issues to demonstrate how conservative leaders in the 1950s and 1960s forged a unified view on China that infused new energy and ideas into postwar conservatism."--David F. Schmitz, Skotheim Chair of History, Whitman College

"Asia First" is a terrific contribution to the literature on Sino-American relations, with its brilliant exploration of China s centrality to conservative American politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Mao is not only original but rather ingenious in how she takes characters, such as Alfred Kohlberg, Robert Welch, and Barry Goldwater, and uses them as lenses through which to view the larger phenomenon of China in American political culture in the decades after World War II. --Christopher Jespersen, University of North Georgia"

With this exceptional book, Mao provides a nuanced, persuasive analysis of how foreign policy issues symbolically linked familiar conservative positions to new concerns during the post-World War II period. Presenting the ideology of the Asia First movement in an effective and compelling manner, Mao seamlessly combines the cultural turn approach to studying international relations together with traditional questions and issues to demonstrate how conservative leaders in the 1950s and 1960s forged a unified view on China that infused new energy and ideas into postwar conservatism. --David F. Schmitz, Skotheim Chair of History, Whitman College"

"With "Asia First, "Mao has produced a vivid roadmap that demonstrates how politicians and pundits stoking fears of China and Communism promoted the rise of American conservatism from the era of McCarthy through Reagan. Along the way, she explores the crucial link between domestic and foreign policies. --Michael Schaller, University of Arizona"

About the Author:

Joyce Mao is assistant professor of US history at Middlebury College in Vermont.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 022625271X
• ISBN 13: 9780226252711
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232