Diplomatic Black Hole: Conspiracy and Political Fear in Mid-20th Century America

Cassella-Blackburn and Langone provide an account of the ways in which the small group of zealots known as the China Lobby conspired to create a hysterical fear of the threat of Soviet imperialism and the dangers of communism in the minds of the American public and Western leaders. The China Lobby included business leaders, publishers, and members of the United States congress, state department, and military as well as Chinese nationalists. Their work led to a diplomatic black hole, a total failure in diplomacy between the United States and the other Western nations with first the Soviet Union, then China and eventually Korea, Vietnam and even the African nations engaged in decolonization. Their conspiracy was a fight against an insidious enemy that was both outside and inside America.

Through exploration of the speeches, congressional testimony, personal correspondence, and articles published in early mainstream publications such as in Henry Luce's Time and Life magazines as well as in the far-reaching Reader's Digest and The New York Times, the authors guide the reader through a large and interwoven ideological movement based on political fear and accusations of conspiracy. The China Lobby's diplomatic black hole, a distortion of reality, led the American public to believe the Soviet Communists' stated plan for world domination was viable and in so doing was able to justify multiple wars in the East Asia, the overthrow of democratically elected leaders, and the diversion and stunting of post-war leftist social and economic movements.

Auteur

Dr. Michael Cassella- Blackburn joined the Peninsula College faculty in 2003 as a history professor. Cassella-Blackburn received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University, and his latest field of study is Sino-Soviet-American relations. In 2004, Praeger published his book, The Donkey,
the Carrot and the Club: William C. Bullitt and Soviet American Relations, 1917-1948. In 2018, Mellon published his Radical Anti-Communism in Postwar America, 1945-1950: William C.
Bullitt and the Case for Saving China. Cassella-Blackburn lives in Port Townsend with his wife Lynne.

Darcie Hodgkins Langone has a BA in Sociology and an MA in Interdisciplinary Humanities from California State University. She has worked in publishing and research and was a reader and editorial assistant for The Donkey, the Carrot, and the Club and for Radical Anti-Communism in Postwar America. She has taught in several colleges. Currently she is teaching History and Humanities at Peninsula College and Central Texas College. Ms. Hodgkins Langone lives in Washington State with her husband Carl.