Asia First China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism

Mao explores the deep resonance American conservatives felt with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek and his exile to Taiwan, which they lamented as the loss of China to communism and the corrosion of traditional values. In response, they fomented aggressive anti-communist positions that urged greater action in the Pacific, a policy known as "Asia First." While this policy would do nothing to oust the communists from China, it was powerfully effective at home. Asia First provided American conservatives a set of ideals―American sovereignty, selective military intervention, strident anti-communism, and the promotion of a technological defense state―that would bring them into the global era with the positions that are now their hallmark.