Upcoming Episodes!

Episode 209 - "White Paper to Red Scare" (coming April 15!): Marshall, Blake, and Mike engage in a wide-ranging discussion of American policy disputes over what to do about China after World War II. President Truman, Secretaries of State George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, Madame Chiang and her family, General Claire Chennault, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, the CIA, the domino theory, the American idea of monolithic “international communism,” and anti-colonial nationalist movements in Southeast Asia all play roles as Marshall lays out three options U.S. policymakers debated between 1945 and 1950: Should the United States follow the advice of the “China hands” by turning its back on the corrupt Nationalist government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek and instead recognize the Communist government of the People’s Republic of China as China’s legitimate government? Or should America take the view of policy realists that China had little strategic value to the United States and was a sociopolitical mess not worth being involved in? Or should America do what the “China lobby” — the supporters of Chiang Kai-shek — wanted and go all in with continued support to Chiang? When Communist Chinese “volunteers” intervene in the Korean War in 1950, the American idea that Communism is monolithic solidifies, leading to consequences in the United States that, ironically, give events in China far more influence over the United States than America ever had in China.