Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, learned of the self-imposed Strait aversion and directed the Navy to resume normal operational transits.īut it was not until two years later that a carrier battle group made the passage, after Beijing abruptly cancelled a Thanksgiving port visit to Hong Kong by the Kitty Hawk. The carriers avoided the Strait for another dozen years, as did all other Navy ships. Beijing said they would face “a sea of fire” if they entered the Strait. Clinton sent two carriers this time, the Nimitz and the Independence. Months later, as Taiwan’s first direct presidential election approached, China again fired missiles across the Strait. Beijing protested the incursion into “Chinese waters” and the Clinton administration “explained” the transit as a “weather diversion.” President Bill Clinton dispatched the USS Nimitz through the Taiwan Strait. In 1995, China showed its displeasure at then-President Lee Teng-hui’s reunion visit to Cornell by firing missiles toward Taiwan.
The carriers stayed out of the Strait for 23 years. Nixon complied, setting the stage for his historic trip. Since Mao understood the strategic significance of the Seventh Fleet and those carrier strike groups, he demanded their removal from the Taiwan Strait before talks could begin. Nixon and his national security adviser, Kissinger, decided that preemptive concessions were the way to win Mao Zedong’s trust. The lifelong anti-communist would open relations with a hostile “Red China” because “e simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. The Navy carriers and their supporting complements were, again, the designated enforcers.Īlmost two decades later, President Richard Nixon, who had been Eisenhower’s vice president, decided to shake things up. In 1954, his administration executed identical Mutual Defense Treaties with the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China. Henry Kissinger wrote of the reciprocal strategic miscalculations that precipitated the war: “We didn’t expect the invasion China did not expect our reply.”Īfter the “Korean Conflict” ended with an armistice, President Dwight Eisenhower dispelled further confusion over America’s security commitment to both South Korea and Taiwan. The 7th Fleet will see that this is done.” As a corollary of this action, I am calling upon the Chinese Government on Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland. Accordingly, I have ordered the 7th Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa. President Harry Truman, rueing his administration’s grievous mistake, announced, “he occupation of Formosa by Communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area. The communist dictators in Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang welcomed what they saw as a green light for aggression, and the Korean War was on. Douglas MacArthur - conveyed that lack of strategic concern by pointing out lines on a map and backing up the perverse decision by withdrawing the Navy from the Taiwan Strait and the immediate environs. Washington’s civilian and military leaders then - Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Gen. In the immediate post-war period, Washington’s strategic planners in the Truman administration shockingly determined that America’s Pacific security perimeter could exclude Taiwan and South Korea. The presence or absence of the Seventh Fleet - the configuration of Navy ships and aircraft in the Indo-Pacific built around the carriers - generally determines whether war or peace prevails in the region.
They were critical to winning World War II in the Pacific and they have since been deployed in the Indo-Pacific to communicate U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier battle groups are the most dramatic symbol of American military and geopolitical power.
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