Following World War II, the civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists, interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War, reignited. Despite substantial American support, the Nationalists were unable to maintain control. Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman, detailed the reasons for this failure in his statement on August 5, 1949. In it, Acheson pointed out that the Nationalist government’s collapse was due to internal decay, lack of popular support, and military ineptitude, not the inadequacy of American aid, writing: “The reasons for the failures of the Chinese National Government […] do not stem from any inadequacy of American aid […] The fact was that the decay which our observers had detected […] had fatally sapped the powers of resistance of the Kuomintang.”

Indeed. The United States had provided nearly $2 billion in grants and credits to the Nationalist government post-V-J Day, and this his aid was aimed at stabilizing China and curbing the spread of communism; however, the Nationalist forces were plagued by corruption and a lack of will to fight, resulting in large quantities of U.S.-supplied military equipment falling into Communist hands.

In the face of this early failure of what would become standard operating procedure, propping up an unpopular, corrupt, inefficient government that ultimately collapses, Acheson argued against American military intervention, which would have required commanding Nationalist armies and possibly deploying U.S. troops, stating: “A realistic appraisal of conditions in China [...] leads to the conclusion that the only alternative open to the United States was full-scale intervention […] Such intervention […] would have been condemned by the American people.”