Thanks for the answer. I appreciate it. Welcome to the nyu bookstore. This is a first event of our fall season where happy all of you are here tonight. You probably notice the cameras. Cspans booktv is here tonight as also tell your friend who could not come up they can watch it on television later. Since we are filming, when opened the floor for questions, please hold the questions until you are given this microphone. Also please turn off your cell phone ringers. I appreciate that. Tonight were just love it the release of kevins new book, a force so swift mao, truman, and the birth of modern china, 1949, which was released today. Kevin peraino is a veteran and Foreign Correspondent was reported from around the world. He spent a decade as a Senior Writer and pure chief for newsweek magazine. He was a finalist for the livingston award for Foreign Affairs reporting and was part of a team that won the National Magazine award in 2004. His first book was titled lincoln in the world, the making of the statesman and the dawn of american power. It was named one of the daily beast best books on president lincoln. He has also written for the wall street journal, foreignpolicy and politico magazine. Mr. Peraino is a visiting scholar at the program in International Relations at new york university. Our other guests scott anderson. Mr. Anderson is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine. His most recent book is laurent in arabia, war, defeat and the making of the modern middle east. It was shortlisted for the National Book critics circle award. He was raised in east asia and attended the iowa writers workshop. In his 33 33 years as a war correspondent he is covered conflicts in chechnya, egypt, israel, lebanon, northern ireland, sri lanka and sedan. So clearly were in for an interesting event since its the release date of kevins about we want to make sure you have the complete other event tonight. Heres what im talking about. First you came to the store. Maybe you had a snack, socialized. Then you will sit through a very boring introduction thank you. After that you will hear these two incredibly insightful men have an interesting discussion. And after that we open the floor for questions, and you can get more directly involved by asking your questions. Sounds pretty good, yeah . One more thing. Theres a looming pile of books over here. To get the complete author event experience i recommend you pick up a a book, get it signed, purchased the book and then you done the whole thing. Cool . Lets get on with it. Have a good time, guys. [applause] on my weight in your tonight i was thinking its kind of a classic kind of cliche of when youre trying to promote a book and saying its like ripped from todays headlines. This is a first time i think literally that is true. How much of the book the u. N. , President Trump. I guess the first question of what to ask you is how you came to the subject . It was a long time before china and north korea were front and center of the world. How did you come to the . I wish i had that crystal ball when i started this four years ago and i dont get what would be going on today, but i started it. When i finished my last book a few years ago, the cia declassified it secret interval history of covert operations around the chinese periphery, and this is a couple copies of these things that one was kept in a vault in langley and one circulated as an education tool among covert operatives. For whatever reason it was in response to a freedom of information act request by a group of veterans of cia officers. They released this and some of the said trickled out over the years, but there was an immense amount of kind of new granular detail about these operations. They make for great reading the when youre writing history whenever you have new stuff like that, it makes for a good history. This is also, this is like 2011, 2012. 2012. Its also when Hillary Clinton wrote her essay about the pivot to asia. In beijing this on the pivot that age as containment, modernday containment. Im thinking at this point in time beijing what about containment. We have more information than ever before about what containment really was at its origins in 1949 and thats how, that was my original, and exchange of it. The book is, 1949 is the lead up to the korean war. And its also about how you deal with the rising china, do you engage, confront . The takeover happen rather rapidly. It seems at least to the outside world were not seeing a lot of attention seemed to come out of left field. Can you walk us through like how that all kind of unfolded . Sure. Just give us a sense of how it happened. My book starts the beginning of 1949, the chinese civil war is really over. Mao has won at this point and is doing kind of cleanup operations. Slowly over the course of the year he is taking over beijing and in shanghai. But mao and Chang Kaishek, the support been going on in one way or another for 20 years. These guys had been adversaries for 20 years going back to the 1920s. At one time they were both kind of, i i wouldnt say allies but they were kind of fellow travelers in this effort to modernize china in their reaction to the ching regime, the ching dynasty which had been rolling china since it 17 century. Theyre both trying to modernize china and then beginning in the 1920s, they slowly began to kind of mao led to the mountains. Chang kaishek took over the nationals government. Then there was this time with the japanese, they were both occupied with the Japanese Occupation of china during the 1930s and world war ii. They never stop clashing or fighting, but their focus shifted to the japanese. Really after the collapse of japan, after hiroshima and nagasaki, after the end of world war ii this kind of civil conflict reignited and they had come the support that a been simmering for years and years came to in game and thats where my story starts, the beginning of that. And Chang Kaishek made blunders which may have hastened it alone. Can you talk about what his whole strategy in manchuria yeah, he went on the offensive in manchuria kind of a couple of different times, 1947, 1948 when he probably shouldve made some military errors. Theres this whole kind of debate about why Chang Kaishek loss of the chinese civil war. One of the main theories is that he made these errors at decisive points, so that was one reason. Another thing though was that he had a very difficult task in the wake of world war ii. World war ii devastated china. 15 Million People died in the fighting. There were like 80100 million refugees. The economy was completely devastated. He had a tough job. I grew up in taiwan as a kid. I will talk about that in a minute but one thing that is always struck me despite having grown up in taiwan is how little, and im just speaking for myself, how Little People know about what happened to mao taking over in china. If any of us were paying attention at all in school, you know knew quite a bit about the Russian Revolution but the Chinese Revolution seem to come and go. Even at the time it didnt get an awful lot of attention. Curious what you think that is. Is it because there are so many other things happening around the world . Was there a perception in this country and you just wasnt that important . Why do you think its always been the sort of talk in asterisk to history . It depends where, im not sure about taiwan but i think part of it might be just nationalism. Somebody said the essence of a nation is all the people have a lot of things in, everybody has forgotten the somethings. Theres this kind of process of forgetting that takes place in any nation, whether its on taiwan, Mainland China or even in the United States, that a think might be a play there. Sometimes people want to forget. Its helpful for nationalism. Ill tell you though, in Mainland China the revolution is very present. Theres a complex in beijing that i i walked past, its cald the 1949 complex and its got these numerals and theres a brewery inside and they sell a beer called airpark lips and the price is cheap for the beard spin on how bad the smart is but its in the 1949 complex. The beer. You can go back to southwest of beijing which was mao base camp and china. Tourists pay a couple of bucks to sit in a replicate of maos old chairs or pose with rifles standing beside sandbags. Theres an element of memory. Both remembering and forgetting that takes place in all these kinds of things. I was in taiwan from 196269, and one of my distinct memories of my childhood, i was very little, october 10, Chang Kaishek would take to the podium in the main square and give this rousing speech he. He always end with the line back to the mainland. It was decided upon to somehow go back to Mainland China and take over. Every childs child is normal to them. What a member of of childhood is how utterly militarize childhood was. It was an antiaircraft gun to the interests of white elementary school. Military anywhere. Part of it was there was an official statement sees in taiwan. As a kid you didnt realize part of what all this was about was to keep the americans supporting Chang Kaishek, so that no human, the americans were not going to fund transit through that human rights because it was a frontline state. I wonder if you talk about, so much of history is that different personalities. Could you talk about the man Chang Kaishek was and the man mao zedong was . Sure. In this book i follow, theres a million characters that you could make a russian novel of it. One of the problems i had is finding a few, year to focus on a few characters or you just get too many. I focused on mao, Chang Kaishek, madam Chang Kaishek was just a fascinating figure. She was the first lady of the republic of china an amazing character. No matter what you think politically, she was born in 1897 and she died and i think 2003 searches like 106. Her life span of the 20th century. She was a genuinely powerful, influential woman at the time when that wasnt always the case in china in the mid20th century. You go and you read, what are my favorite things is reading these letters that she wrote as come in her 20s which are in an archive at Wellesley College was she went to college. She grew up and get a lot of her u. S. Its amazingly you realize she is a very intelligent person, very dynamic, very forceful personality. She is one of the characters that i found totally fascinating. Some of the best sources, for a biographer on the right of history one of the gifts you can have is when he has been and wife are part of the time youre writing about because they write letters. And so madam Chiang Kaishek in 1949 was in the u. S. She was lobbying the u. S. For support. Chiang kaishek was in china. What about these telegrams backandforth and they are hilarious. They are like these kind of bickering husband and wife emails which are then she says you should really give the speech tomorrow. Im not going to the speech. I voted for you. Just dont change it. These kind of things back and forth. It gives you a window, theres like 120 of them over the course of this year. Four me its always about the people i love. Thats what draws me in. And mao, what do you think of him . So mao, we kind of think of mao i think we kind of have this image of mao as an elderly person that we think of them as kind of the nixon, even the very young revolutionary or kind of older obese kind of computer, somewhat senile figure of the nixon years. In 1949 hes like hes not particularly well. He had a condition that his doctors called and you know roses. Thats with a call in the 40s. Im not sure what it was but a a psychic constriction of the blood vessels. He would faint and swoon at times. He would stay up all hours of the night. He was one of these people would stay up all night on a high end crash in the morning. When my store opened at the beginning of 1949, these are heady days for mao because as were talking about, hed been fighting this war for a long time. He had to leave an infant daughter behind on the trail during the long march. One of his wife was executed by firing squad. For mao this was a long time coming. And when you read the sources from this time there were heavy times. Each day they would start with these kind of euphoric meetings. They would all gather in base camp and go over the latest victories. One of his biographers talked about how he would play records on a photograph that his wife had bought in shanghai of operas and sing along with the operas. You get a sense of the guy who is invited for a long time and hes come into his own. He had a heck of a task ahead of them. The same problems for Chiang Kaishek are now the problems are mao. So he is a big task after he takes over china of, you know, of making it work. Once mao took over, it fueled the whole we lost china debate here which played right into the growing red scare that was happening here. And when exeter and, of course, with the korean war in 1950. Who did lose china . Wasnt anything the americans could done or that Chiang Kaishek couldve done to prevent it . I dont think so. Its a bit of a false question. Thats the question who lost china, and i dont think the really was a whole lot. China was in the United States to lose. It was the chinese, of revolution, but that question, i mean as a political issue it became a huge political issue. Both starting in 1949 and going through, i think mccarthy gave his West Virginia speech at the beginning of 1950, kind of a leader. The very beginning of mccarthyism. One of the statistics i saw was that in 1949, onethird of, onethird of all the stories on the front page of american newspapers were about spying and infiltration. Theres this kind of tangible fear in the country during this time about, that there were spies within the United States. There was some spine to be honest. The u. S. Was doing some spying and others were doing some spine. One of the interesting kind of spy tangents during this year is that diverges was one of the cambridge spy ring, a british spy, was working in the British Foreign office on the asia desk during 1949. Its possible that he couldve passed information about some of these debates that were talking about two stallings operatives or whatever, so they mightve been some spine but the fear, of both the spy in the later in 1949 the soviet exploded their first atomic bomb. I think the combination of these spying fears and the Nuclear Fears led to a lot of insecurity and paranoia among americans. Had to the Administration First view maos china . Dbc mao as a puppet of stalin . Dbc or Chinese Revolution as engineered by the soviet union . Some did and some didnt. As far as the Truman Administration was concerned, by this point did want anything to do with china. Remember this is like, this was a few years after the end of world war ii, and so has really risen to level of global, rebuilding i mean, that was as much of an exaggeration. This was the origin of the international system. It had an enormous task of primarily rebuilding europe. This was just after the Marshall Plan and some of these, stalin was taking advantage in Eastern Europe. What they wanted to do was forget about china. They assume the of the problems that they try to forget about it. Dean acheson was not in east asia geico the secretary of state in 1949. He did want anything to do with it. Slowly over the course of 1949 that became impossible. East asia took over the agenda. Dean acheson in general, we tk a lot about strategic patience. We hear that about people talk about an President Trump said the strategic patient is over. Dean acheson was he strategic patience guy, and he would tell us aboard at the state department dont just do something, stand there. He didnt want action for the sake of action. He felt like people did too much. And sometimes his line was he said with the Chinese Revolution we have to wait for the dust to settle and then maybe we can figure out what to do. He got killed for that politically. People just jumped all over it and said he was being too passive. So thats what treatment turning to the cia now and the documents you able to access, how quickly did the cia start carrying out covert operations in china . It was mid 1949. The driver for this is, yet help the nationalist and establish an early system in china. He was a very forceful personality. What he wanted to do is he said, mao is taking over china. What we need to do is establish what he called a belt of resistance around the periphery of china. What you wanted to do is file money and weapons to these provincial leaders and on the periphery of china and inside Mainland China on the areas around where mao control the he lobbied really hard. You can go to stanford in california and read the letters. You just realized you in the presence of a forceful personality as i was reading them, this is a great example of calm in washington, i just kind of force of will can sometimes get things done. He said letter after letter lobbying people to do this. One of the people whose attention he caught was frank wisner who, scott is now writing a book about, hes one of the characters in scotts new book, and he is the head of the Speedy Office of policy coordination. Which is basically the covert operation wing of the cia at this point. And frank with her like this idea. Sure he did. Because the czar, as nintendo bureaucratic battle, are battling for resources. Wisner see something he can do any jumped all over. He ended up getting at the state department oversaw, a little bit different structure than it is now, the ended up getting permission of truman to launch some of these covert operations. Thats what they did. They sent thank you operatives to hong kong, and they would bring these baskets, trade their u. S. Dollars for hong kong dollars on the exchanges, fill these wicker baskets with cash and then fly these big c46 or like his giant, you look like a big football and they would fly them from hong kong to Southern China and handout baskets of cash. An early reader in my book said they are slipping cash to the immigrant isnt it more formal . Its not. Theyre just slipping baskets of cash to maos enemies. There are some great kind of pails of the early cia. The first cia casually happen during this time, i guy in china name douglas mctiernan, and he was based in northwestern province. He had, as maos armies took over he was based he had to flee. He decided he would go to tibet and he regrouped in tibet. Its like something out of the movies. He strapped like these gold cubes, the size of sugar cubes on his body and packed the jeep with grenades and guns and yet these things called one time pads which i dont know, one time method things, coded messages. He takes off across the desert, 1500 miles to tibet, the tragedy of the story is he goes all the way on my camels and various things, 1500 miles to tibet, and when he gets to the vet by mistake a Tibetan Border guard shoots and kills the right when he gets there. Why couldnt you should be before . Before a a travel 1500 miles. Theres all these kind of great kind of spy stories. There was a group start in taiwan in the mid1960s. International Propaganda Group they got involved in all these shady operations around the world. Talking about the funding about these groups were started or have the cia was starting the operations. These counterpart funds. Counterpart funds, if there was a Development Project in the country that was being repaved, that local currency was used on the International Market so would sit in sacks of money in the American Embassy wherever the country was. The interesting thing, so i was talking to cia, i was doing a book years ago about have cia funded and i said who would generate the counterparty finds . He said that wouldve been to the food for peace programs because of the big agriculture products at the time. The food for peace officer in taiwan at the time was my father. So a little aside. I realize this is your book, and it goes right up to the korean war. Obviously, its almost 60, seven years later for this is coming back around. Walk us through how maos role in working to give the goahead, or if mao, how that all kind of played out. So i mean, the korean war was basically a civil war. After world war ii, the United States occupied south korea. Soviet union occupied north korea. I think soviet troops withdrew in 1948 from north korea. U. S. Troops withdrew from 1949 from south korea. The civil war was on again. Both the north and south were at least in rhetoric, as by the way kim jongun regime is today, paying lip service to reunification and the fact that they wanted to resolve this civil conflict and unified. So the driver, the driving force was kim ilsung. He really wanted to launch invasion, and none of the great powers really wanted the war. I mean, as were talking about before, theres been so much going on in europe. And that could harm his revolution at home. Stalin, he convinced stalin to intervene and as he was a bit wary, he said at one point he told kim il song you should get them now for all the help. He gave him a reluctant lesson to kims invasion but he wasnt wild about it although he eventually sent troops. Not troops butadvisers and weapons. Knowing the region the way you do, what advice would you give the Current Administration about how to confront china and north korea . Im not sure i would say confront. Deal with. One of the lessons of 1949 is theres a debate about the you engage china or do you confront china . Do you hold talks with mouse new government or contain and confront . One of the lessons of 1949 is neither of thosethings work. The American Ambassador , john lane stewart was interested in holding talks with now during 1949. He made some progress, they didnt pan out. Wasnt interested in holding talks, now isnt interested in holding talks, now we know from the cold war the internal documents so talking is kind of a nonstarter. Confrontation was kind of a disaster too. It ended up, containment, you can draw a Straight Line from the logic of containment to the vietnam war to the korean war to all kinds of things. Containment wasnt a Great Success either in some ways. So i always say admins and had a lot of great turns of phrase but he said people always think of Foreign Policy prior problems as headaches. Foreign policy problems on that kind of pain, they are more like the pain of earning a living, it stays with us until death. I think thats true. All these problems are that kind of pain, there are things that you are going to have to resolve over time. Theyre not going to be resolved over time. You cant take a pill and they would go away. Im going to turn to audience questions but because when you are talking about the cia operations, as a coda, one of the people in my book is a cia officer whos 95 years old. Incredibly lucid and he was a station chief in hong kong in the late 50s. Prior to that he been in Eastern Europe at a time when the cia was doing air drops in Eastern Europe and the kgb, they nailed these guys as soon as they landed. Every program was corrupt and i asked him about a month ago , he quit the cia in 1960 and i asked him why . He had all these Amazing Stories and in 1960, he was the Deputy Director of the cia, emailed ramallah and he had all this station chiefs in the region at a meeting and he announced this new program, less than 100 million, in 19 60, to draw anticommunist chinese partisans into Mainland China. This guy asked to talk in the hall and he said the guy in the hall and he said wed save so much time and money if we would just do them ourselves. He said undone, he handed in his resident letter of resignation that day. Thats a program that did this, it was a disaster. So the last question ill turn over, earlier this morning, earlier today, trump at the General Assembly vowed to totally destroy north korea if we have to. If necessary to defend its allies. Smart move, dumb move . [laughter] no answer to that. I watched the speech this morning and it was, there was a lot of that. They been talking about north korea, there was a lot of America First but when i thought was odd was he quoted truman and he quoted, he was talking about the Marshall Plan. And he attributed that quote to truman but trump is kind of the antitruman. Truman was the founder in this First World War international system. Trump is vocal about wanting to tear that system down in a lot of ways, although one similarity to edmonson, some of these guys from these era, i feel like people like that dont exist anymore, they kind of have a way with words and edmonson used to say about truman he was like a little kid who was always taking peanuts of his nose. You tell him not to and the next minute there he is taking peanuts of his nose. Thank you. [applause]. [inaudible] just regarding now, what do you think was this genesis of picking up. [inaudible] which is one of the ways we became fearful of china in the late 40s. Mal wanted to restore chinas place of greatness after a very difficult period. There was Huge Population growth in china in the 19th century. Economics was changing quite a bit during this period and china had had a rough series of decades and now believed that one of his quotes is he said he was talking about the importance of force. He said the greatest force is the union of the popular masses. Part of the appeal of communism to mouth is he felt like the population boom in china, mao felt this was a force that could be harnessed and communism was for him a way to harness that force and energy happening in china. So part of it, its this internal dynamic in china but mao wasnt always a dogmatic communist. There what tensions certainly among communist dictators between mao and stalin. Stalin called mao a marxist at one point. He wasnt necessarily always dogmatic in his communism but he was a committed communist. He understood the issues also so i think ideologically, he was committed to the cause and also practical, pragmatic. You think looking at the nationalist relationship with american communist that chang was a positive or negative force in that . Problematic. Its a tense period youre talking about and it depends what you mean by positive. Ill talk in terms of effective or ineffective. I think he was effective during world war ii. She case to the United States in 1943 to give a speech and she spoke before both houses of congress and she was received like a movie star. She spoke at the Hollywood Bowl during this trip in 1943 and bob hope said, he was smitten by her. She basically toured the country giving speeches and i think she was effective during that period. She generated a lot of interest in china and made some successful appeals. The us, im not sure , its through the world war ii period in 1949 the us sent Something Like 19 billion to the National Economy so her appeals had some effect. In the period that im writing about in 1949 she failed. She had gone dust as the national was collapsing she flew to the United States as we were talking about before and lobbied very hard for additional aid as kind of a lastditch effort to save the regime. She spent a year in the us. She tried everything. She was, she tried to create what she called a propaganda institution. She was getting funds from Chang Kaishek and through lobbying, she was calling from the congress trying to get them to make statements of support and she succeeded in getting them to do that stuff but in the end she failed and she knew it and she left at the end of the year for taiwan. Im from taiwan and so this topic is interesting to me. Before i mentioned my question i want to bring out one historical fact. In 1947 truman ordered a. [inaudible]. China, india their service for dctente. And here the community is practically china and she suggested the United States for the nationalist government being financing an army so president truman from the outset her opinion with this approach to president truman, general George Marshall ordered the Us Government to impose an embargo for almost one year to nationalist china so the result was that the mao army taking arms and rifles from russia while nationalist armies were done in the us. So my question is that president truman should take a lot of responsibility for losing china and also how the us handled the relationship with nondemocratic china its a great question and truman was, he said its like standout a rathole in 1947 as she pointed out. You was done by this point and there is a legitimate question to be asked that the Truman Administration said basically as i was saying before, there was nothing that you could do. The outcome of the chinese resolution was beyond the ability of the United States to control. Its basically true. I think it was, that but there was a column i came across by Walter Lipman whose , one of the greatest columnists now and you wish you could do that impression is a journalist and lipman in 1949 wrote, he said okay, addison and truman are entitled to say we couldnt control the outcome of the Chinese Revolution but what they are not entitled to say is that we couldnt control our own actions. There is a legitimate question if you cant control the Chinese Revolution, why did you spend 3. 5 billion over the course of world war ii and after two taiwan . There are legitimate questions of accountability that truman and addison would like to have dodged that we are talking about in this debate. At this time the Truman Administration, they were worried about greece, italy, france and austria. That was the real frontline in the containment of communism which at that point was still synonymous with the soviet union. Its weird that in the larger view, that was more important than Mainland China but at that point that was the view in washington so i think china, this is going to the question i was asking earlier, why is that whole period a little bit of an afterthought in Historical Records . I think in the geopolitical scheme of things that was at the time were seemed to be. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you all, we will have a book signing up hereif anyone wants to get their book signed and buy a book, thank you for coming out. Heres a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals around the country. We are live from the southern festival of books in nashville with talks from the citys central library. Later in the month, the boston book festival and louisiana festival in baton rouge will happen on the same day, october 28. We will be live from to state capitals, look for us at the texas book festival in austin and the wisconsin book festival in madison and later we will be live from Miamidade College for the miami book fair. Authors will include alfred can, bestselling for walter isaacson, nbc