QUEMOY & MATSU

A Question Mark Has Answered Well

IN the fall of 1954, five years after the Chinese Communists seized the mainland, they first bombarded Quemoy. The resulting pressures on the U.S. from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek produced a Mutual Defense Treaty, committing the U.S. to aid in the defense of Formosa and the nearby Pescadores islands (see map). At President Eisenhower's behest, Congress in January 1955 passed the so-called Formosa Resolution authorizing the President to use American forces "as he deems necessary for the specific purpose of securing and protecting Formosa and the Pescadores against armed attack, this authority to include the securing and protection of such related positions and territories of that area now in friendly hands." (Around the same time, the U.S. pressured Chiang into evacuating the distant--200 miles north of Formosa--Tachen Islands, which were quickly occupied by the Chinese Communists.)

Though the "related positions and territories" clearly referred to Quemoy and Matsu, the names were deliberately omitted from the resolution in line with Secretary of State Dulles' policy of maintaining freedom of action; at the same time, the resolution was aimed at keeping the Chinese Communists at bay, since, presumably, they did not know whether the U.S. would attempt to deter an invasion of Quemoy. "I won't be pressed or pinned down," said Dulles at a press conference, "on whether an attack on Matsu and Quemoy would be an attack on Formosa."

To the Three-Mile Limit

Many critics, including NATO allies, wanted the matter pinned down; the tiny "real estate," said they, was not worth risking a war. Adlai Stevenson registered -his-'.'greatest misgivings." Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse and New York's Herbert Lehman offered a proposal to amend the resolution so as to cut the offshore islands out of the defense perimeter. The amendment was beaten down, 74-13 (Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, both absent, were paired: Kennedy for, Johnson against). In April 1955, Dulles told a press conference that "there is no commitment expressed or implied to defend Quemoy and Matsu." The President sent Admiral Arthur Radford, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the then Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robertson on a mission to Taipei to discuss Formosan defenses with their old friend Chiang, and, privately, to try to get Chiang to reduce his Quemoy forces. On that, Chiang turned them down.

Dulles' dogged policy of calculated ambiguity served to keep the Communists relatively quiet for three years. Then came crisis: in August 1958, the Communists opened a tremendous artillery attack on Quemoy from their positions seven miles away. Day after day, they lobbed thousands of shells onto the dreary islands, killing and maiming more than a thousand soldiers and civilians, disrupting the supply lines from Formosa.

The President sent a task force from the waiting Seventh Fleet into action. U.S. convoys escorted Chinese Nationalists toward the three-mile limit of Quemoy, and sent the Chinese the rest of the way in LSTs and LSMs. Overhead, Chinese Nationalist ace pilots, in U.S.-built planes, bloodied the Communist MIGs. Little by little, Quemoy was provisioned and armed to the beaches with 155-mm. howitzers, mortars and tanks. From Moscow, Khrushchev demanded the fleet's withdrawal on pain of an all-out war. But the U.S. naval escort, keeping carefully outside the international three-mile limit, maintained the needed umbrella for the Chinese Nationalists --and Khrushchev did nothing.

At home, the argument went on. Cried former Secretary of State Dean Acheson: "We seem to be drifting, either dazed or indifferent, toward war with China." Under Secretary of State Christian Herter claimed that the offshore islands were "not strategically defensible," labeled Chiang's preoccupation with Quemoy's fate "almost pathological." Into the State Department poured about 5,000 letters, 80% of them critical of Ike's policy. The President went on nationwide radio-TV, declared that the Quemoy attack was "part of an ambitious plan of armed conquest ... I assure you that no American boy will be asked by me to fight just for Quemoy. But . . . the American people as a whole do stand ready to defend the principle that armed force shall not be used for aggressive purposes."

The Cease-Fire Plan

While the U.S. joined Chinese Communist representatives in Warsaw for peace talks (at Chou En-lai's request), international and domestic criticism of U.S. risk-taking over Quemoy grew louder. Pressured mightily, Ike and Dulles hinted that the U.S. was softening its line. At a headline-making press conference in September 1958, Dulles called Chiang's dream of reconquering the mainland "problematical." The U.S. apparently hoped to neutralize both sides on the Quemoy issue by pressing for a cease-fire and large-scale withdrawal of Quemoy troops to Formosa. If there were a "dependable ceasefire" in the area, said Dulles pointedly, "I think it would be foolish to keep these large forces on these islands. We thought it was rather foolish to put them there, and, as I say, if there were a cease-fire ... it would not be wise or prudent to keep them there." Ike backed him up: "I believe, as a soldier, that was not a good thing to do, to have all those troops there."

Though the President advocated a reduction of Quemoy forces provided that the Communists pledged a ceasefire, he did not waver on the question of Communist expansion. "The basic issue, as we see it," he said in October, "is to avoid retreat in the face of force."

A Measure of Freedom

The Warsaw cease-fire talks came to nothing, and the Chinese Communists, who had left off their bombardment for a short period, resumed their shelling--but on a smaller scale. They pounded Quemoy on odd-numbered days, more as a nagging reminder of their presence than of their purpose. Over the months, their guns were heard less and less (Eisenhower's visit to Formosa last June occasioned the last big shelling). Though U.S. policy has at times been wobbly as well as ambiguous, Quemoy and Matsu, garrisoned with 100,000 Chinese Nationalist troops, are still free--a fair measure of the power of the bristling question mark that the U.S. has raised for the Communists to ponder.

Still, why does the U.S. refuse to make a flat yes-or-no statement on its intentions so that everybody knows clearly how things stand? Simply because, as one ranking Pentagon officer put it last week, there are "certain conditions" under which the U.S. would indeed be foolhardy to unlimber its guns for Quemoy's sake. So far, the Communists have hesitated to test U.S. intentions--a situation that Candidates Nixon and Kennedy themselves would have done better to let lie.

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