How to Lose a Country: America and the Civil War in China

During the Chinese civil war of 1946-1949 the United States supported the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek with billions of dollars in military and economic aid. This was despite the fact that the corrupt, undemocratic, and murderous nature of that regime was well known to American lawmakers. However, even with all this aid, the Nationalists were completely defeated and the Communists took over all of mainland China. This paper explores how America's China policy developed, why the Nationalists still managed to fail despite their overwhelmingly superior position at the start of the war, and the effect of that failure on the United States.