Double-Vision: American Intelligence and Competing Norms of Diplomatic Conduct in Wartime Chongqing 1941-1943

This thesis examines the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services in Chongqing from 1941 to 1943. It argues that OSS under William Donovan morphed from a civilian outfit that encouraged freedom of research and innovation into a narrow and militarized outfit by 1943. Intra-agency competition in Washington forced Donovan to focus OSS on the short-term war effort and anchor it in traditional norms of state-to-state diplomacy. These changes permitted OSS’s survival to the end of the war, but sidelined the visions of its civilian scholars, especially area experts John Fairbank and Charles Remer. Motivated by intellectual partnership and an idea of a China created in an American image, area experts ignored traditional norms of diplomacy in order to build individual relationships with Chinese intellectuals predicated on scholarship and shared values. The clash between scholars, bureaucrats, and soldiers demonstrated the problems with employing area expertise as a tool of diplomacy.