Latest news with #JohnFosterDulles
Arab News
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: Cold War Civil Rights
Author: Mary L. Dudziak In 1958, an African American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Soon after World War II, American racism became a major concern of US allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Racial segregation undermined the American image, harming foreign relations in every administration from Truman to Johnson. Mary Dudziak shows how the Cold War helped to facilitate desegregation and other key social reforms at home as the US sought to polish its image abroad, yet how a focus on appearances over substance limited the nature and extent of progress.
South China Morning Post
16-06-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Can the island chain strategy contain China's blue-water naval ambitions?
China's navy is pushing past the strategic island chains that for decades have marked defensive boundaries for the United States and its allies in the Western Pacific. The deployment of two Chinese aircraft carrier groups in the open waters of the Pacific Ocean since late May has underscored a critical advance in Beijing's ambitions to become a blue-water navy by 2035. The Liaoning and Shandong have been on a routine training exercise to test their 'far-sea defences and joint operational capabilities', according to the PLA Navy. Notably, it is the first time a Chinese carrier has sailed beyond the second island chain. What is the island chain strategy? The strategy was proposed in 1951 by the then US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, as a way of using American-aligned island bases to contain the communist Soviet Union and China in the Western Pacific. Taiwan – famously described in 1950 by General Douglas MacArthur as an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' – was pivotal to the concept. While the strategy became less prominent after the Cold War, it re-emerged strongly post-1991 as a way to counter a rising Beijing. The first island chain runs along East Asia's coastline, from the Kuril Islands through Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines down to Borneo. This marks the Chinese mainland's near seas from the wider Pacific. The second island chain is further east and includes the major US base at Guam. It extends through the Marianas to Palau and New Guinea.
South China Morning Post
08-06-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Thanks to Trump, US threat of a ‘peaceful evolution' recedes for China
As someone born in the 1960s in China, one of the earliest lessons our generation learned in school was to be vigilant about the perceived dangers of American conspiracies and attempts aimed at subverting and overthrowing the Communist Party through peaceful means. Through classroom teachings, propaganda films and slogans plastered prominently along the streets, we were repeatedly exposed to Chairman Mao Zedong's warnings about the threat of 'peaceful evolution' , encapsulated in his assertion that American imperialists would never give up their desire to subjugate China. Mao began sounding the alarm about a peaceful evolution as early as 1959, responding to US policies advocated by John Foster Dulles, then the secretary of state, which marked the initial stages of the ideological Cold War. This strategy aimed to undermine socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China by promoting Western values and inciting dissent against the Communist Party's rule. Mao famously remarked that while there was little hope for the United States to incite change among the Chinese people within two generations, the outcome after three generations was uncertain. Interestingly, three generations later, China has emerged as one of the world's largest economies and a rising power increasingly viewed as a challenger to America's superpower status. Meanwhile, the US has shifted away from nation-building efforts and vowed to stop offering lectures on how others should live or govern.
