This is John Batchelor, conversation with the author Nick Bunker, his new book in the Shadow of Fear,

America and the World in 1950. Here, Nick Bunker introduces us to the important details about Robert

A. Taff, very powerful Ohio senator, son of a president, William Howard Taft,

a man who becomes Mr. Conservative and is seen as the easy favorite to win the nomination for the presidency in 1952.

That does not happen.

Nevertheless, Mr. Taft is extremely effective in converting from isolationism, as Nick explains,

to aggressive anti-communism, especially in Asia. Asia first, not Europe, Asia,

worries about the red menace.

Proven correct now that it's all these decades later.

Korea unsolved, China, very aggressive.

Here's Robert A. Taft, Mr. Conservative, as Nick explains, the lead voice in defending Taiwan,

1949, 1950, that long ago. More of this to know.

Against him he was, from him he was very seriously estranged. But also, of course, he was to think about foreign policy.

Now, prior to World War II, Taft had been an isolationist.

And when people wanted to criticize Taft, when his opponents wanted to throw mud at him,

they used to dredge up a lot of the rather silly things he'd said in 1939 and 1940 and 1941

about how there was really

no danger of, for example, an attack by the Japanese. By 1949 and 1950, he had developed his

ideas considerably more, and he had become very much an Asia first man. He wasn't an isolationist

by 1940, 1990, but he was somebody who believed that Asia was where the great struggles of the future were going to be fought.

And that was why he indeed did become one of the staunchest advocates of the defense of Taiwan.

If you think of this as the period when the Taiwan question, if you like, entered American politics.

...