Taiwan’s Offshore Islands, Pathway or Barrier?

This Newport Paper will examine the role of offshore islands in twentieth-century East Asian history, in particular those islands in the Taiwan Strait that were disputed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) during the 1950s and afterward, and how these apparently insignificant islands impacted Cold War history.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1042/thumbnail.jp

High Seas Buffer

Following its defeat on the mainland in 1949, the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. Although the Nationalist navy was comparatively large, to many it seemed almost certain that the People\u27s Republic of China (PRC) would attack and take Taiwan, perhaps as early as summer 1950. The Korean War began on 25 June 1950, however, and the possibility of a PRC invasion of Taiwan was countered when on 27 June President Harry S. Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet to neutralize the Taiwan Strait. Mao Zedong at first postponed and eventually canceled altogether his planned invasion of Taiwan.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1037/thumbnail.jp

Waves of Hope

In Newport Paper 28, Waves of Hope: The U.S. Navy’s Response to the Tsunami in Northern Indonesia, historian Bruce A. Elleman provides the first comprehensive history and analysis of what would become known as Operation UNIFIED ASSISTANCE.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1029/thumbnail.jp

Navies and Soft Power

Navies and Soft Power: Historical Case Studies of Naval Power and the Nonuse of Military Force, edited by Bruce A. Elleman and S. C. M. Paine, presents nine historical cases of the use of navies in nonmilitary missions. These studies, by established and emerging scholars in a wide variety of fields, support current U.S. Navy attempts to balance war fighting with an ever broader array of nonmilitary missions. They remind us that naval soft power concerns date from antiquity and that those facing the U.S. Navy have now become remarkably diverse.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1041/thumbnail.jp

Commerce Raiding

The sixteen case studies in this book reflect the extraordinary diversity of experience of navies attempting to carry out, and also to eliminate, commerce raiding. Because the cases emphasize conflicts in which commerce raiding had major repercussions, they shed light on when, how, and in what manner it is most likely to be effective. The authors have been asked to examine the international context, the belligerents, the distribution of costs and benefits, the logistical requirements, enemy countermeasures, and the operational and strategic effectiveness of these campaigns.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1039/thumbnail.jp

Piracy and Maritime Crime

As modern nation-states emerged from feudalism, privateering for both profit and war supplemented piracy at the margins of national sovereignty. More recently, an ocean enclosure movement under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 has granted states access to maritime resources far beyond their territorial limits.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1034/thumbnail.jp