Joseph Stilwell’s career and campaigns in China present a counterexample to Samuel Griffith and unconventional war. Sunzi was essentialized into the Chinese way of fighting and used to encapsulate the problems facing Stilwell and excuse his inability to do more. One of the central messages of Barbara Tuchman’s account of Stilwell in China was that he accomplished what he did despite ferocious resistance from Chiang Kai-shek and the GMD. He was heroic because he achieved anything at all, defeating the Japanese Army at Myitkyina and building an impossible road through Burma. Yet Stilwell’s mission, like the American engagement with China more generally, was a failure. America could not overcome the reality of China under Chiang Kai-shek. China was “lost” to the Communists, who were also Chinese. Mao Zedong won by using Sunzi, but Chiang Kai-shek lost by using Sunzi. Chiang did not produce military writings validated by victory like Mao.

War service completed Kindleberger’s intellectual formation, establishing him as fundamentally an intelligence analyst. First in London as Chief of the Enemy Objectives Unit, then on the Continent as advisor to General Bradley, and then after the war at the State Department working first under William Clayton on the reconstruction of Germany and then under George Marshall on the reconstruction of Europe, Kindleberger’s government service career provides a staffer’s eye view of the dramatic events of war and reconstruction.

In response to events such as the Exodus affair, and to the UN Special Committee support for partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, American and British diplomatic and military officials met at the Pentagon in early fall 1947. Organized by Loy Henderson and George Kennan in the US State Department, the participants agreed that a “cornerstone” of US policy was to support continued British presence in the Middle East, including in Palestine both to preserve access to Arab oil resources and to prevent expanded Soviet influence in the region. As the participants thought a Jewish state in Palestine would enhance Soviet prospects and harm Western access to Arab oil, they concluded that the Zionist project undermined US national security interests.

With the second Bernadotte Report of September 1947, completed by Ralph Bunche following Bernadotte’s murder by Lehi terrorists, the State Department sought to use the UN Security Council to deprive Israel of the Negev desert and full control of the port of Haifa. Members of the Senate and House, again led by Emanuel Celler, urged lifting of the arms embargo but, as exchanges with under secretary of state Robert Lovett made clear, those efforts were not successful. Czechoslovakia remained the only government that sent weapons to the new Jewish state. Without any American military assistance, Israel repelled the Arab invasions, gained control of the Negev and the Galilee in northern Israel. As a result of its military victories, and with support from the Soviet bloc states, Israel successfully resisted American and British diplomatic efforts to use the Bernadotte Report as a basis for its boundaries.

This chapter examines the Jewish Agency’s Mossad’s Brichah, Hebrew for “escape,” for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Europe who wanted to go to Palestine, as well as efforts of the British foreign minister Ernest Bevin to enlist the assistance of the US State Department to discourage Americans from assisting that Jewish immigration. British and American diplomats and intelligence officials feared that Brichah would enhance Soviet efforts to infiltrate communist agents into Palestine. American liberals denounced efforts the “red scare” of associating Zionism with communism.

The chapter describes events surrounding the “Showdown in the Oval Office” between presidential adviser Clark Clifford and the secretary of state, George Marshall, about whether Truman should recognize the state of Israel. Though the president did so, in accord with the enormous enthusiasm Israel’s establishment aroused among in American public opinion, especially among liberals, he did not lift the arms embargo, even after the Arab states’ invasion of May 15, 1948. The chapter examines the unsuccessful effort waged by members of Congress, led by Emanuel Celler, voices in the liberal press, and by former under secretary of state Sumner Welles to urge Truman to lift the embargo. The US national security leadership continued to justify the embargo by referring to the danger of antagonizing the Arabs, and facilitating Soviet expansion which, they argued, the new Jewish state would advance.

The debates of the UN Security Council in the weeks of May and June 1948 illustrated the strong support given to the new state of Israel by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Ukrainian SSR, a support that was more emphatic than that offered by the United States. American and British truce resolutions tended to push back Israeli advances and diminish Arab defeats. The chapter documents this contrast in the UN statements of Andrei Gromyko (USSR), Vasyl Tarasenko (Ukrainian SSR), Warren Austin (USA), Moshe Shertok and Abba Eban (Israel), and representatives of the Arab Higher Committee and Syria. While Florimond Bonté, a leader of the French Communist Party, extolled Israel’s cause in the French National Assembly, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff continued to associate the new state of Israel with Soviet expansion, and damage to American strategic interests in the Middle East.

Partition of Palestine was also supported by the United States, which similarly came to a policy determination on the matter only shortly before the vote in the General Assembly on partition. The State Department opposed Jewish statehood on the basis of advocating self-determination for Palestine’s population, and because US strategic and energy interests were seen as requiring a close relationship with the wider Arab world. That position was opposed by President Harry Truman’s political advisors, who thought that his chances for being elected president in 1948 would be enhanced if he backed Jewish statehood. Through 1946 and 1947, the State Department and Truman’s political advisors vied to gain Truman’s support for their view. As the General Assembly neared its vote on recommendations, Truman instructed the US delegation to back partition. When partition did not work out, the State Department gained Truman’s assent to proposing a UN trusteeship. When a Jewish state was declared, the political advisors prevailed on Truman to give it diplomatic recognition, over the objection of Secretary of State George Marshall, who told Truman he would vote against him in the upcoming presidential election if Truman recognized the incipient Jewish state.