On September 3, 1954, Chinese artillery began shelling one of the Kuomintang-held islands, Quemoy (Jinmen). The Eisenhower administration ordered the 7th Fleet to recommence patrolling the Taiwan Strait. It was the beginning of the First Taiwan Strait Crisis. However the United States did not take a thoroughly pro-Taiwanese stand when the Crisis broke out. The U. S. faced, as Dulles put it, a “horrible dilemma” over the policy toward the Crisis. The Eisenhower administration felt that if the U. S. directly defended Quemoy and other offshore islands against China by force, it would have induced the outbreak of an US-China War, like the Korean War. On the other hand, if the U. S. overlooked Communist China's use of force in the Taiwan Strait, the so called anti-Communist countries defense line —which runs from the Aleutians through the Japanese Islands, South Korea, the Ryukyus, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, the Philippines, part of Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand— would have been broken down by China, and furthermore, by the Soviet Union. However at the beginning of the Taiwan Strait Crisis, no consensus existed in the U. S. Government about whether the offshore islands were substantially related to the defense of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands which the U. S. had made consistently clear to protect, after being informed of the deneutralization of Taiwan in 1950.
The Eisenhower administration decided to make a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. U. S. -Taiwan treaty negotiations began in November 1954. The U. S. considered that the purpose of the treaty was to bring about a cease fire, and to commit to the defense of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands and other related territories, so as to create a deterrent to Chinese military action in the Taiwan Strait. On the other hand, the U. S. exercised effective control over Kuomintang offensive military operations, formalizing the understanding that without mutual consent, the Kuomintang would not take any offensive action which might provoke retaliation by China, leading to the invocation of the treaty.
On December 2, 1954, the U. S. signed a Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan. The treaty required the U. S. and Taiwan to: (1) Maintain and develop “jointly by self-help and mutual aid” their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack and Communist subversion directed against them “from without, ” (2) Cooperate in economic development, (3) Consult on implementation of the treaty, and (4) Act to meet an armed attack “in the West Pacific area directed against the territories” of either the U. S. or the Republic of China, including Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, and “such other territories as may be determined by mutual agreement.”
Mutual Defense Treaty Article VI specified that, in addition to Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, the treaty would be applicable to “such other territories as may be determined by mutual consent.” In addition, Article VII gave the United States the right (by mutual consent) to deploy its armed forces in and about Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands for the purpose of their defense. In a word, the treaty did not obligate the United States to protect the offshore islands, while still leaving it free to do so.
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