The crises over the offshore islands along China’s south and southeast coast in the 1950s momentarily brought America closer to war with the Chinese Communist Party, while putting the relationship between Taipei and Washington to a serious test. These isles were embedded in the unfinished civil war between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, and were resolved in part by the United States asserting its interests vis-à-vis its new treaty ally. But ironically, the crises also provided an opportunity for secret communications and ultimately a kind of détente between the two supposedly deadly enemies across the Taiwan Strait, which proved surprisingly long-lived. As this chapter elucidates, the result of the crises over the Taiwan Straits was a surprising outcome: After intense offshore island crises the conflict essentially died down; shelling was ritualistic and both sides effectively restrained themselves in a way that led to a sort of long peace.