In Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, historian Bruce Elleman surveys the situation that has led to the current tensions between China and Taiwan. Starting in 1949, the final phase of the civil war in China, which ended with Communist rule of the mainland and nationalist control of Taiwan, this work explores how the 100-mile wide passage of water, known as the Taiwan Strait has served as the geographic flashpoint between the two nations.

Even though U.S. Navy destroyers have patrolled this body of water from 1950 to 1979, it has seen four crises—1954-55, 1958, 1962, and, after the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy, 1995-96—that threatened to push Taiwan and China to the brink of war. Notwithstanding the role of the United States in defusing cross-strait tensions for some three decades and the cold peace that has settled in since then, the Taiwan Strait continues to be a major source of anxiety for the region and the world.

Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy traces the evolution of this tension between the two nations, details the history of the crises between them, and brings this story forward into the present by considering continuing sources of conflict, present diplomatic efforts by the aggrieved nations, and other key interests—from the United States and Europe to other regional powers—and future possible outcomes in the ongoing struggle between China and Taiwan relations. Simply written and cogently argued, it is the ideal source for military personnel, diplomats, and scholars and student of the modern Far East.

This book provides an account of the strategies and tactics as well as the organization and conduct of the U.S. Navy’s Taiwan Patrol Force (TPF) in four confrontations between China and Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait. . . .The book recovers several valuable memos and maps from archival obscurity and recounts numerous anecdotes of the tension and tedium of naval operations in the strait. * International Journal of Maritime History *

Bruce A. Elleman is William V. Pratt Professor of International History in the Maritime History Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of twenty books and government reports, including "Diplomacy and Deception: The Secret History of Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917–1927 (1997); Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989 (2001, translatedintoChinese); Wilson and China: A Revised History of the Shandong Question (2002); Japanese–American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941–45 (2006); and Moscow and the Emergence of Communist Power in China, 1925–30: The Nanchang Uprising and the Birth of the Red Army (2009).