National Affairs: Drawing a Line

All along, among the nation’s top military men, there had been two conflicting theories about the threatened island of Formosa, 100 miles off the Asiatic coast and the last defendable anti-Communist remnant of China. Douglas MacArthur and Louis Johnson wanted to go to Formosa’s aid. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have consistently low-rated Asia, argued that the risks weren’t worth the gain. Last week, in a day-long meeting at the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs took second thought.

The recent visit to Japan by Army Under Secretary Tracy Voorhees and Lieut. General Al Gruenther turned the trick. They reported to the Joint Chiefs, as MacArthur had urged, that it simply made no sense to turn Formosa over to the Communists by default.

The Joint Chiefs do not regard Formosa of prime strategic importance to the U.S. as a military base. They believe that Japan, the Philippines and particularly Okinawa, with their war-built airfields, are better for that. But in friendly hands, Formosa could be a valuable irritant against the Communist-held mainland, if the U.S. showed its determination to hold it.

It would require no U.S. expeditionary force to hold Formosa, the Joint Chiefs were assured. The Chinese themselves have enough arms & men to hold the fort: 250 planes and twelve well-equipped divisions (although lacking in some such items as tank ammunition) under V.M.I.-trained General Sun Li-jen.

Some pilots on Formosa have already flown their planes across Formosa Strait and surrendered to the Communists; the Nationalist commanders had to consider which pilots they could trust with gasoline. But the simple act of indicating a U.S. interest in saving Formosa could be expected to buck up Chinese fighting spirit immeasurably.

The Joint Chiefs recommended the dispatch of a small military mission, possibly no more than 20 officers, along the line of Lieut. General James Alward Van Fleet’s mission to Greece. Some time early in the year the Navy would probably dispatch an aircraft carrier into Western Pacific waters. Whether this would be enough to repel the expected all-out assault by the Communists next spring was up to the Nationalists themselves. What was more important, the U.S. was finally drawing a line in Asia, along which it would say to the spreading Communists: this far and no further.