Statement by the President Upon Signing the Joint Resolution on the Defense of Formosa.
I AM deeply gratified at the almost unanimous vote in the Congress of the United States on this joint resolution. To the members of the Congress and to their leaders with me here today I wish publicly to thank them for their great patriotic service.
By their vote, the American people through their elected representatives have made it clear to the world that we are united here at home in our determination to help a brave ally and to resist Communist armed aggression.
By so asserting this belief we are taking a step to preserve the peace in the Formosa area. We are ready to support a United Nations effort to end the present hostilities in the area, but we also are united in our determination to defend an area vital to the security of the United States and the free world.
Note: As adopted, the Joint Resolution is Public Law 4, 84th Congress (69 Stat. 7).
Two days earlier, on January 27, the White House announced that following a meeting of the National Security Council the President met with top Defense Department and military advisers to discuss the deployment of United States air and naval forces in the Formosa area. At that meeting, the release stated, the President made it clear that these forces were designed purely for defensive purposes and that any decision to use United States forces other than in immediate self-defense or in direct defense of Formosa and the Pescadores would be a decision which he would take and the responsibility for which he had not delegated.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Statement by the President Upon Signing the Joint Resolution on the Defense of Formosa. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233749