Invasion Season

May, June, July and August are the best months for an invasion of Formosa. During the rest of the year weather conditions, including typhoons, protect the island. This summer, then, may bring an event to which the U.S. has already officially resigned itself--the Communist conquest of Formosa. When the Reds attack, there will undoubtedly be a great clatter in the U.S., a sudden recognition that Formosa's fall may touch off a chain of reactions throughout Asia and change basically the U.S. position in the cold war.

Big strategic decisions, such as the one to abandon Formosa, are the responsibility of the President of the U.S. To advise him on these matters, the President has the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council composed of the Vice President, Secretaries of State and Defense, and the chairman of the National Security Resources Board. Last year when the Communists had conquered all of the Chinese mainland, the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided that the U.S. should not help the Chinese government hold Formosa. Later, persuaded by the views of General MacArthur, the Joint Chiefs reversed themselves, decided that the U.S. should at least send a military mission to advise the Chinese Nationalists.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson objected to this position and the matter was put on the agenda of a National Security Council meeting Dec. 29, 1949. General Omar Bradley stated the case for holding Formosa. He made a bad job of it. Acheson dominated the meeting with a few well-chosen questions. Example: Were the armed forces ready & willing to commit the necessary forces to hold Formosa?

Representatives of the armed forces answered that they were not willing to commit major portions of U.S. strength to the island. Nobody asked the pertinent question: Would it cost the U.S. more in terms of commitment of armed strength to hold Formosa or to lose Formosa? The discussion degenerated into fuzzy agreement with Acheson that nothing could or should be done. When Truman looked around the room for dissenters to the Acheson view, he did not hear any, although several of the officials went away muttering that the wrong policy had been adopted.

In Washington today, responsible people will agree on the following points:

1) The U.S. could hold Formosa. 2) The Chinese Nationalists cannot hold Formosa without U.S. help. 3) The fall of Formosa will make much less difficult the Communist conquest of Indo-China and the Philippines. 4) A Communist Formosa may call for a 20-40% increase of U.S. strength in the Pacific. 5) This increase will cost a great deal more than the cost of holding Formosa.

In spite of the implications of these five propositions, there is no serious move in Washington to reverse the December Formosa decision. Any effort to revive the issue gets lost in the old argument about whether the U.S. can cooperate with Chiang Kaishek. Chiang said last week that he would be willing to see General MacArthur assume responsibility for the integrity of Formosa. If the U.S. through MacArthur did assume responsibility, such questions as Chiang's personality would recede into proper perspective. Formosa could then be weighed in terms of future peril to the free world rather than in terms of past U.S. and Chinese mistakes. So weighed, Formosa could and would be defended.

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