In July–September 1958, the world faced the threat of war twice due to a revolution in Iraq and Mao's actions near China's shores. The Iraqi Revolution led to the landing of US Marines in Beirut, prompting the Kremlin to brandish the nuclear stick, though it is clear that Khrushchev was simply bluffing: he had no intention of starting a nuclear war over US actions in the Middle East. Elsewhere, Mao Zedong, leveraging his belief that the socialist camp held the upper hand in the historic struggle against capitalism, pushed the world to the brink by provoking a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Khrushchev's performance in these crises was mixed. The coup in Iraq weakened the Eisenhower doctrine and the Baghdad Pact, and Khrushchev claimed credit for these outcomes. However, his hopes for extending Soviet influence in the Middle East were left unfulfilled. The crisis off the Chinese coast forced Khrushchev to commit to defending an unpredictable ally in a nuclear war with the United States, undermining his faith in the alliance. In 1959, he cancelled an agreement to supply China with a prototype nuclear bomb. The Sino-Soviet alliance survived the tribulations of 1958, but the crises exposed their rivalry in the socialist camp, the third world, and their respective quests for America's recognition.

Throughout the 1950s, most mainlanders thought their stay in Taiwan would only be temporary. According to their shared recollections today, Chiang Kai-shek’s vow to retake China was the main reason for this wishful thinking. Based on the study of major newspapers and magazines published in 1950s Taiwan, this chapter identifies a different source for this unwarranted optimism. It argues that the mainlanders’ “sojourner mentality” should be understood in the longue durée of war/displacement that straddled the temporal boundary of 1949 and the geographical boundary of the Taiwan Strait. Many of the expellees had previously been refugees during Japan’s invasion of China. In 1950s Taiwan, their earlier displacement became a major source of consolation, inspiration, and optimism. This “sojourner mentality” and memory production was therapeutic. But it nevertheless contributed to the mainlanders’ “unholy alliance” with the authoritarian Nationalist regime and their continued estrangement from the local Taiwanese population, whom they looked down upon as “coachable compatriots.” The chapter ends with the shock of the Sino-American Joint Communiqué in 1958 during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. The event greatly reduced the mainlanders’ hope of return. It shifted the focus of their memory production from earlier wartime displacement to provincial native places.