Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The China Mission
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
Former foreign policy advisor to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Yale University, graduated.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Editor and diplomat. Fellow at various institutions, including New America’s International Security program and the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi; senior adviser to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; U.S. State Department, member of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff, 2010-2012; speechwriter for Secretary Clinton; Foreign Affairs, executive editor, 2017–.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles and essays in various publications, including New York Times, Washington Post, and New Yorker.
SIDELIGHTS
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan is the executive editor of Foreign Affairs. He was previously a diplomat and speech writer working in the U.S. State Department as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff during the Obama Administration. He has also reported and written political analysis for such publications as New York Times, New Yorker, and Washington Post. He is a fellow with the New America’s International Security program and was a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a Senior Adviser to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
In 2018, Kurtz-Phelan published The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947, an examination of the immense diplomatic failure in China of negotiating the conflict between Mao Zedong’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists that threatened to bring the United States into a Chinese civil war. Retired Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (1880-1959), a contributor to the victory of World War II, was sent to China in 1945 by President Harry Truman to convince the two party leaders to cease fire, end one-party rule, form a coalition government, and create an integrated national military force. At first Marshall’s diplomacy was working, then all negotiations crashed. The move was considered an abject failure, and Marshall left China in 1947 after China’s civil war began and the eventual victory for Chinese communism. Marshall became a target of McCarthyism, was branded the man who “lost China,” and the entire debacle placed limits on American international intervention. “Kurtz-Phelan’s book is the beneficiary of new research on the civil war and the release of Chiang’s diaries by the Hoover Institution. The picture we get of Chiang is much better than the usual cartoonish baddie that most American histories of the era present,” noted Washington Post contributor John Pomfret.
In the book, Kurtz-Phelan described three flaws in America’s foreign policy at the time: America’s faith in the curative power of democracy, America’s impossibility of stopping other countries’ civil wars; and America being incapable of achieving consensus within itself. “The idealistic ambition behind his mission had triumphed over the isolationists. Today the loss of that idealism seems as poignant as Marshall’s failure,” explained an Economist reviewer. A Kirkus Reviews writer called the book an astute and surprisingly entertaining account, adding that Kurtz-Phelan “ably narrates an exasperating story featuring a genuinely peerless hero doing his best in a no-win situation. The definitive history of a failure from which the U.S. seemingly learned nothing,” evidenced by the subsequent Vietnam war.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Economist, May 5, 2018, review of The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947, p. 81.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of The China Mission.
Washington Post, April 20, 2018, John Pomfret, review of The China Mission.
ONLINE
Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com (March-April 2018), Andrew J. Nathan, review of The China Mission.
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan is the executive editor of Foreign Affairs. He previously served in the US State Department as a member of the secretary of state’s Policy Planning Staff. His reportage and analysis have appeared in publications including the New York Times and The New Yorker.
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan became Executive Editor of Foreign Affairs in October 2017. He previously served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and, before that, as a senior editor at the magazine. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker, and his narrative history of George Marshall’s post–World War II mission to China, The China Mission, was published by WW Norton in April 2018. For more on the book click here.
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan was a fellow with New America's International Security program. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a Senior Adviser to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 2010 to 2012, Kurtz-Phelan advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a member of her policy planning staff. He has also been a speechwriter for Secretary Clinton and a senior editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. He is a graduate of Yale University.
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan Executive Editor
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan became Executive Editor of Foreign Affairs in October 2017. He previously served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and, before that, as a senior editor at the magazine. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker, and his narrative history of George Marshall’s post–World War II mission to China, The China Mission, will be published by WW Norton in April 2018.
Kurtz-Phelan, Daniel: THE CHINA MISSION
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Kurtz-Phelan, Daniel THE CHINA MISSION Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $28.95 4, 10 ISBN: 978-0-393-24095-5
A comprehensive history of one of the United States government's greatest diplomatic failures, presided over by one of the country's greatest diplomats.
In December 1945, with China dissolving into civil war between Mao Zedong's Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, President Harry Truman sent retired Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (1880-1959) to fix matters. Unfortunately, his efforts failed miserably, and "many Americans would give Marshall and his mission a bitter share of the blame" for "losing" China, writes journalist Kurtz-Phelan, executive editor of Foreign Affairs, in this astute and surprisingly entertaining account. Everyone believed that if anyone could succeed, it was Marshall, who had overseen the largest military expansion in U.S. history, emerging from World War II as perhaps America's most admired public figure. Most experts knew that Chiang's government was a mess, but no one wanted American troops to become involved. Furthermore, "regime change" did not become the preferred policy for another 60 years, so the administration hoped to persuade Chiang to reform and the Communists to join a coalition government. To universal amazement, within weeks of arriving, Marshall achieved a cease-fire, followed by Chiang agreeing to end one-party rule and the Communists agreeing to dissolve their army and integrate troops into a national military force. Then progress stopped. Chiang and his party refused to share power. At first, Stalin supported Marshall because he believed the Communists would lose a civil war. As East-West hostility grew throughout 1946, he changed his mind. Although Marshall remained for another frustrating year, on his departure in January 1947, civil war was underway. A superb researcher, Kurtz-Phelan ably narrates an exasperating story featuring a genuinely peerless hero doing his best in a no-win situation.
The definitive history of a failure from which the U.S. seemingly learned nothing (civil war in Vietnam was already heating up).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Kurtz-Phelan, Daniel: THE CHINA MISSION." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461544/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b5d3cb87. Accessed 6 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461544
Feet of clay; America and the Chinese civil war
The Economist. 427.9090 (May 5, 2018): p81(US).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
http://store.eiu.com/
Full Text:
GEORGE MARSHALL'S name is immortal, for ever attached to the visionary plan for rebuilding Europe that he oversaw as America's secretary of state in 1947-49. By then, as chief of staff of the army, he had already been, in Winston Churchill's estimation, the true "organiser of victory" in the second world war. A new book recounts what he did between winning the war and securing the peace: he spent a year in China, trying to save it.
He failed, leaving behind a bloody civil war followed by communist dictatorship. "The China Mission", an account of the debacle by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, a former diplomat, is both a compelling portrait of a remarkable soldier and statesman, and an instructive lesson in the limits of American power, even at its zenith.
As Allied victory curdled into cold war, this was a pivotal if little-known episode. The question of "Who lost China?" fed McCarthyite conspiracy theories, which smeared even towering war heroes like Marshall. Yet, as Mr Kurtz-Phelan makes clear, his embassy started in late 1945 in a mood of great optimism, founded largely on veneration of the man himself. It is 200 pages into the story before any of its characters voice anything other than awe for its hero. Harry Truman called him the "greatest military man" ever.
Even his main Chinese interlocutors respected him. They were Chiang Kai-shek, China's prickly and reserved leader (that page-200 critic) and Zhou Enlai, the urbane but two-faced Communist representative. The Communists and Chiang's Nationalists had formed a fractious front against the Japanese occupation. At first, Marshall's efforts to maintain that unity and prepare for elections and multiparty democracy went well. He even secured Zhou's agreement to aborted plans for an "elementary school" for Communist soldiers, to train them for a merger with American-supplied Nationalist forces. As much as losing the country to the Communists, America may have wasted the chance offered by this incipient detente for a different relationship with "Red China".
The book hints at reasons for the grim outcome. One is that, for once, Marshall was not up to the job. He made blunders. In May 1946 he lent Chiang his own aircraft to fly from Nanjing to north-eastern China for four days, to stop Nationalist troops fighting the Communists. Chiang stayed 11 days, leading the offensive himself. Communist propaganda saw proof of America's duplicity and imperialism.
But Marshall's mission, probably impossible anyway, also exhibited three habitual flaws of American foreign policy. First, he was not immune to "the great American faith in the curative power of his country's form of government and persuasive power of his country's example". In China, this meant an inability to grasp its sheer complexity and the aims of the two big parties. Second--and as later wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have attested--America has been slow to accept "the near-impossibility of resolving somebody else's civil war".
The third lesson concerns the difficulty of achieving consensus in America itself. Marshall had to contend with a "very large group…opposed to practically anything outside of the United States". The idealistic ambition behind his mission had triumphed over the isolationists. Today the loss of that idealism seems as poignant as Marshall's failure.
The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947.
By Daniel Kurtz-Phelan.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Feet of clay; America and the Chinese civil war." The Economist, 5 May 2018, p. 81(US). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537178286/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=286194e8. Accessed 6 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537178286
Book World: For a U.S. general in China, failure was the best option
John Pomfret
The Washington Post. (Apr. 20, 2018): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: John Pomfret
The China Mission: George C. Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947
By Daniel Kurtz-Phelan
Norton. 476 pp. $28.95
---
The telling of George C. Marshall's failed mission from 1945 to 1947 to end China's civil war has always been a hostage to history. As China descended into communist rule in the 1950s, it was used by some Americans such as Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy, and even an ambitious Democratic congressman from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy, as an example of America's "moral retreat" from its responsibilities to save China. Marshall's loss of China, McCarthy thundered in a speech in 1951, "must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man."
Undergirding these charges was the belief that no problem was beyond the capacity of America, which stood astride the world following World War II, to solve. Marshall's failure to unite China's Nationalist and Communist parties, which had been at war since 1927, into one government and one army must have been part of a communist plot, the charges went, because if it had wanted to, America could have accomplished anything.
On the other side of the ledger were those Americans, such as the historian Barbara Tuchman, who argued that Marshall and America failed to recognize that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists were a spent force and that the ineluctable logic of history was going to propel Mao Zedong's Communists to victory. The United States suffered a "lost chance" in China, their argument went, by not tempting Mao, like it had the independent-minded Yugoslav revolutionary Josip Broz Tito, to distance himself from Moscow.
Again, this view was deeply paternalistic because at root it denied the Chinese responsibility for their affairs. Ignored were Mao's decisions to side with the U.S.S.R. and gin up hatred of America. Tuchman's lost chance in China held that China was America's to lose.
These days, however, instead of standing astride the globe, Americans are far more conscious of the limits of their power to build nations, win wars and even manage their own affairs. Against this historical backdrop, diplomat and journalist Daniel Kurtz-Phelan has written an engaging book, "The China Mission: George C. Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947," that stresses the unavoidability at times of "a kind of failure ultimately accepted as the best of terrible options."
With an eye perhaps on the tragedy in Syria, or the emerging nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, or relations with autocrats from Moscow to Beijing, Kurtz-Phelan has written a story "not of possibility and ambition, but of limit and restraint." This is history as allegory. Foreign policy "is made by analogy," he writes. "The stories we tell matter. How we tell them matters."
The story Kurtz-Phelan tells is a gripping one. On Nov. 27, 1945, the day after he retired following more than four decades in the U.S. Army, George C. Marshall was directed by President Harry Truman to go to China to stop its Communists and Nationalists from resuming their civil war. The idea was to force the warring parties into a coalition government and to absorb Mao's army into Chiang's, with the dangling carrot of billions of dollars of American military and financial aid to smooth the way.
Kurtz-Phelan paints a textured portrait of Marshall, whom Truman called "the greatest military man this country ever produced - or any other country, for that matter." Indeed, if anyone could fix the mess in China, it was Marshall, who was widely credited for masterminding the Allied victory in World War II. Kurtz-Phelan describes the wave of initial optimism when Marshall, after just a few weeks in China, seemingly persuaded Chiang and Mao to agree to a cease-fire and to the terms of a coalition government. And then Kurtz-Phelan painstakingly charts China's descent into civil war as both sides used the negotiations not to lay the foundations for peace but to set the parameters for conflict.
Along the way, Kurtz-Phelan does a splendid job of delineating Marshall's evolving relationships with Chiang and the Communists' main negotiator, Zhou Enlai, who would figure mightily later on when the United States and China resumed their ties in the 1970s. At one point, Kurtz-Phelan writes that Marshall returned to Zhou a notebook, apparently untouched. That was lucky for the Communists, as it contained the names of Communist spies at the heart of the U.S. diplomatic mission and the Nationalist regime. More than most books on American statecraft, Kurtz-Phelan's also gives the reader a deep appreciation of how the diplomatic sausage is made, describing Marshall's trips up to Chiang's summer mountain redoubt in a sedan chair, endless games of bridge and checkers with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and the useful role played by Marshall's wife, Katherine, in the cultivation of warmer ties with Chiang.
But key to Kurtz-Phelan's book is the thesis that Marshall was right not to involve America further in China's plight. As negotiations collapsed and the civil war raged, Kurtz-Phelan argues, Marshall was correct to wash his hands of China and leave Chiang to his fate. The alternative, Marshall told Congress, would be for America to "take over the Chinese government, practically, and administer its economic, military, and government affairs." Such a move, Marshall feared, could have led the United States into war with the Soviet Union. Walking away from China, Kurtz-Phelan argues, was, indeed, "the best of terrible options."
Kurtz-Phelan's book is the beneficiary of new research on the civil war and the release of Chiang's diaries by the Hoover Institution. The picture we get of Chiang is much better than the usual cartoonish baddie that most American histories of the era present. Still, the Communist side of the story is limited by the continued unwillingness of the government of Beijing to open the party's archives.
Kurtz-Phelan's work also constitutes an enormous contribution to our understanding of Marshall. Most biographers have treated the failure of his mission to China as a blip in a career of untarnished success. But Kurtz-Phelan argues convincingly that Marshall's defeat in China had a deep effect on his later work in Europe with the Marshall Plan and in fashioning a strategy to confront communism. After China, never again would the general advocate a negotiated power-sharing agreement with a communist regime. With diplomat George Kennan, he would become an architect of a containment strategy that involved massive support for anti-communist governments and that endured for more than 30 years.
Another lesson of Marshall's mission that Kurtz-Phelan clearly believes remains relevant is that American will alone is not sufficient to save the world. A capable partner is a necessary part of any solution. In China, Marshall could not find a partner able to rise to the demands of history, and so when he left to become secretary of state in January 1947, he criticized both Communist and Nationalist alike. Marshall failed in China, Kurtz-Phelan argues, first and foremost because the Chinese failed themselves. To Kurtz-Phelan, who worked in the State Department during America's troubled occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, a lesson lies therein. As he observes at the end of his book, even "in its moment of greatest leadership, America did not have to solve every problem to show that it was strong."
---
Pomfret, a former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, is the author of "The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pomfret, John. "Book World: For a U.S. general in China, failure was the best option." Washington Post, 20 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A535554146/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6093db3a. Accessed 6 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A535554146
March/April 2018 Issue
AsiaChina
The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945–1947
by Dan Kurtz-Phelan
Reviewed by Andrew J. Nathan
In the 1940s, China was filled with towering personalities who left behind highly quotable archives. Kurtz-Phelan, the executive editor of this magazine, has produced an intimate portrait of U.S. General George Marshall’s year-long mediation effort, launched in 1946, to stave off civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. The book is at once a character study of the charismatic and dedicated Marshall; a narrative account of the mission’s miraculous early successes and prolonged, painful collapse; and a meditation on the impossibility of reconciling parties that are determined to remain enemies. In Kurtz-Phelan’s telling, most of the blame for the peace effort’s failure falls on the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who refused to remedy the misrule that ultimately doomed his regime. But a deeper obstacle was Washington’s inability to uphold the mediator’s core requirement of neutrality. Both Chiang and the Chinese Communist Party chief, Mao Zedong, could see that Marshall’s true purpose was to get the Communists to accept continued Nationalist rule so that China would remain aligned with the United States. This might have been a reasonable goal if one believed the Communists could not win the civil war. But Mao did not accept that premise—and he turned out to be right.