Asia First
The Asia First strategy was pushed for in the early 1950s by the powerful
Republican Party in the United States.[1]
The Asia First strategy called for the future concentration of American resources in the Far East, in a similar way to the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in Europe, to fight against the encroaching spread of Soviet communism.
The policy was suggested in a period of great anxiety in the US as
People's Republic of China, while his real concern, the Soviet Union
, would have a free hand in Europe.
Truman, however, made some attempts to strengthen the American position in the Far East but not at the expense of Europe. In 1950, the US promised military assistance to the French in the struggle against the
Chinese communists in mainland China.[3]
See also
- Europe first
- Island Chain Strategy
References
Further reading
- Graebner, Norman A. The New Isolationism (1956)
- Mao, Joyce. Asia First: China and the making of modern American conservatism (University Of Chicago Press, 2015)
- Westerfield, H. Bradford. Foreign Policy and Party Politics (1972), ch. 12