Series: A Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Warren I. Cohen Book on American–East Asian Relations

In 1952, John T. "Jack" Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard "Dick" Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next twenty years, they were tortured, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps,...

In the late 1970s, with relations between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China strained, the Carter administration saw an opening. The United States and its allies embarked on military and dual-use technology transfers to China as a counterweight to the USSR, transforming rapprochement into full-blown cooperation. Carter's decision to pivot away from the United States's traditional ally,...

Soon after the American Revolution, certain of the founders began to recognise the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the centre of the continent,...