[.ca] Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 (ISBN 0802138527)

Tuchman is the best:
While you are reading this, you are there. Somehow Tuchman manages to make all of her historical explorations very readable and personal to the reader, not a small feat considering her subject matter. Excellent.

The Bafflement and the Allure:
Is this book quite as good as I think it is? I suspect not. Tuchman combines an impressive learning with a knack for catching you up in her narrative. She also has what comes very close to being a schoolgirl crush on General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the somewhat equivocal protagonist of her story, and betrays her own share of that complex love-hate relationship with modern China which has served as so strong a force in modern world politics. Taken together, these qualities make for a compulsive read, but they perhaps lend themselves to a certain suspension of disbelief. Stilwell came into World War II as an acknowledged leader among his military peers. He had been scheduled to command the first American offensive of the War, when he was sen instead for the job which became the definition of his career -- the task of making China into an effective military partner. Even with all critical receptors on stun, one does sense that Stilwell embodied many of the virtues you would want in the job. He appears to be decent, high-principled, hard-working, with a keen sense of public order - but in the last analysis a fighter which is, after all, the one thing a general is supposed to be (he reminds me a bit of William Tecumseh Sherman). Moreover by just about anybody's account, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, as the leader of wartime China, was a piece of business. Perhaps even more than Stalin, Chiang was an accidental man - a smalltime thug who got caught in the updraft and found himself at least the titular head of a world power. But Stalin coupled his good fortune with an unparalleled ruthlessness and peasant savvy. It is probably an empty question whether, in the end, the Chinese were tougher to dominate than the Russians, or whether by contrast Stalin was simply better at the task of domination than Chiang. Still, Chiang in retrospect seems far more the passive object of events than the active subject. It is easy, then, to understand all of Stilwell's frustration, and to appreciate his sense of lost possibilities. Yet the fact remains that Stilwell missed futon the one item that would have made his case most convincingly, and that is success. He may have helped to fend of disaster in Asia, and he may have done a bit to make the Chinese army more effective (and the life of the Chinese soldier more bearable). Yet in the end, Stilwell's record in China survives as a chronicle of lost possibilities. What if Chiang had been a bit more forceful as a leader, or at least receptive to Western help? Yes, but what if Stilwell had been a bit more sly and ingratiating in trying to meet the Generalissimo on his own terms. It is surely a virtue of Tuchman's narrative if you can read this kind of ambiguity into it, even if it was not what she intended. This doesn't pretend to be a definitive introduction to modern China (Jonathan Spence's In Search of Modern China probably stands as canonical for the moment). But for capturing the allure and the bafflement with which the West approaches China - and for painting an attractive picture of an attractive guy - Tuchman deserves full credit.

Reads like a novel.:
Stillwell and the American Experience, is everything it claims to be a well written and an interesting story, told by one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century. It has a captavating introduction which draws the reader; however, about half-way through the book it begins to become somewhat repetitive and laggy, one almost feels as if he is experiencing this agonizing political war with Chaing Kia-Shek. But overall a good book about a trying time.

Excellent History of the China-India-Burma Theater:
Tuchman wrote "Stillwell and the American Experience in China" during the waning years of the Vietnam war, and it is difficult not to draw a straight line between Stillwell's frustrations with Chiang Hai-Shek and the Johnson/Nixon administrations' later projects in Indochina. Stillwell was in charge of the China relationship, with coordinating mainland China operations against the Japanese Imperial Army with the more fruitful (if almost just as frustrating) campaigns in Burma. Much is made of Eisenhower's career as a diplomat-general but Stillwell was even more the proconsular figure; constantly shuttling between the Nationalist court and the other allies. Not only is Tuchman scathing on the subject of Chaing and his Lady MacBeth wife, she is also deeply skeptical of British motives throughout the Burma campaign. Of all the fronts in World War Two, the Chinese theater is easily the most complicated, and this is the best work, in English, on the topic.

Another Tuchman Masterpiece:
This book was published in 1972 during the middle of US involvement in Vietnam. It must have been tough for many of the politicians of that time (and many other observers) to see the parallels to the mistakes the US made in pouring money into Chaing Kai Shek (Jiang Jieshi) and what we had done and were doing with the Diem/Thieu regimes in South Vietnam. The books is important today, not only for the perspective it provides into the evolution of American paranoia of Communism in the late 40's, 50's nd 60's, but we still have a propensity for pouring money into questionable regimes that do not have popular support simply because we are afraid of what the popular support might produce. But as Tuchman clearly demonstrates, sooner or later it happens anyway, no matter what we do.