This chapter examines the mixed blessing of enhanced communist coordination during the mid-1950s. During this period, a relatively well-coordinated and organized communist alliance allowed for more moderation and clearer signaling during the negotiations that ended fighting in the Korean War and the conflict in Indochina. The chapter considers the United States' formation of regional alliances and how the Taiwan Strait crisis erupted in 1954. It shows how a relatively unified allied position on Southeast Asia in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) served as a restraint on the most aggressive members of the alliance, the local communists involved in civil wars: Kim Il-sung and Ho Chi Minh. Aside from Beijing's nationalistic reaction in the Taiwan Strait, Chinese foreign policy would be relatively moderate in the middle 1950s and fully in tune with Soviet designs for a breathing spell in the Cold War.
