[7]In the days after shelling began, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined to defend the islands even if the defense necessitated a nuclear response.

In a meeting on 2 September, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top officials to formulate an ongoing American strategy.

[3] Landing units with LVTs from the ROC Marine Corps spent the next few months delivering supplies to the Kinmen Islands, starting from 10 September.

[13] Also, under a secret effort called "Operation Black Magic", the U.S. Navy modified some of the F-86 Sabre fighters of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force with its newly developed early AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

The Nationalist Chinese pilots used the Sidewinder missiles to score numerous kills on People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) MiG aircraft.

A provisional Nike missile battalion was organized at Fort Bliss, TX, and sent via USMTS USS General J. C. Breckinridge to Nationalist China.

Soon, the Soviet Union dispatched its foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, to Beijing to discuss the actions of the PLA and the PLAAF, with advice of caution to the Communist Chinese.

On 24 September 1958 the Sidewinder missile was used for the first time in air-to-air combat as 32 Republic of China F-86s clashed with 100 PLAAF MiGs in a series of aerial engagements.

However, on 20 October the PLA resumed artillery fire on Kinmen because a U.S. Navy warship had breached the PRC-declared 3 nautical miles exclusive zone from the coast of China that they claimed was a stipulation for their unilateral ceasefire agreement.

Another more likely reason for the resumption of the PRC artillery bombardment was U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had arrived in Taipei to discuss the situation with the ROC government.

This strange informal arrangement continued until the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Communist People's Republic of China in 1979.

Sometimes during tense diplomatic moments PRC forces would revert to August/September 1958 levels of bombardment, temporarily breaking the normally scheduled non-lethal propaganda artillery shelling.

During Eisenhower's visit PRC forces fired over 100,000 artillery rounds onto Kinmen within a few days, killing 7 ROC soldiers and wounding 59, while 6 civilians perished and 15 were injured.

The PRC bombardment damaged 200 homes, five schools and a hospital on Kinmen, showing that during the 20-year period of mostly propaganda leaflets being fired by both sides it was still a very dangerous combat zone until 1979.

[22] On 23 August 2019, the sixty-first anniversary of the beginning of the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, President Tsai Ing-wen visited the Taiwushan martyrs' shrine (太武山忠烈祠) where she placed flowers and offered incense.

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that while the status quo result was a victory, the American government could not permit such a situation to arise again.