Korean War

"Democrat Harry Byrd of Virginia asked Omar Bradley about Russian strength in the vicinity of Manchuria and North Korea. Bradley responded forthrightly, “There are 35 Russian divisions in the Far East. Nine of them are in the Vladivostok area; four in the Port Arthur-Dairen area; three in Sakhalin; two in the Kurile Islands; one near Kamchatka; and 16 others scattered along the railway from Lake Baikal on east.” “About 500,000 in all?” asked Byrd. “Thirty-five divisions, plus supporting troops, run probably something like 500,000 or more,” Bradley replied. Bradley’s comments were deleted when the transcript was released. Another category of excisions revealed American vulnerabilities in a larger war. Byrd asked what would happen if those 500,000 troops were “thrown into action with enemy submarine attacks to prevent the evacuation of our troops should they be badly outnumbered and have to evacuate?” Bradley answered: “Should Russia come in with this army strength, her naval strength, which is quite strong in submarines, and her air power, which is quite strong in the Far East—if she should come in with all of those, we might have a hard time supplying our troops in Korea and would even, under certain circumstances, have difficulty evacuating them.” How many submarines did the Russians have in the vicinity of Korea? asked Byrd. “Approximately 85,” Bradley said. “If they went into action, could we then still evacuate our troops?” “Yes, to a certain extent because we have considerable naval forces there who could help us.” But it wouldn’t be easy, Byrd sensed. “It would be a very serious situation?” “It would be a very serious situation,” Bradley confirmed. Byrd asked about the broader consequences of Russian intervention. “What other areas in Asia is Russia likely to take over if there is war in Asia?” “Through the use of the Chinese they have the possibility of and even capability of taking over Indochina, Siam, Burma and maybe eventually India,” Bradley said. “In addition to that, they could take over Hong Kong and Malaya.”"

"Other excised testimony revealed a fundamental reason for the administration’s reluctance to escalate in northeast Asia: There was precious little for the United States to escalate with. American air power, in particular, was stretched very thin. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff, told the committee that Korea was already claiming a large part of America’s available air strength. “The Air Force part that is engaged in Korea is roughly 85 percent—80 to 85 percent—of the tactical capacity of the United States,” he said. “The strategic portion, which is used tactically, is roughly between one-fourth and one-fifth. The air defense forces are, I would judge, about 20 percent.”"

"Vandenberg wasn’t going to disabuse America’s enemies of such notions, but he needed for the senators to hear, behind closed doors, that this was far from the case. “I am sure Admiral Davis will take this off the record,” Vandenberg said, referring to the officer overseeing the excisions, who did indeed take his remarks off the record. “The air force of the United States, as I have said, is really a shoestring air force.” Vandenberg had used the phrase in open testimony; now he provided details. One small, intrinsically insignificant country—Korea—was absorbing an alarming portion of America’s air resources. “These groups that we have over there now doing this tactical job are really about a fourth of our total effort that we could muster today.” To escalate against China, even if only from the air, would be reckless in the extreme. “Four times that amount of groups in that area over that vast expanse of China would be a drop in the bucket.”"

"Democrat Walter George of Georgia, echoing MacArthur’s assertion that “China is using the maximum of her force against us,” said it was unfair that MacArthur had to fight a limited war while the Chinese fought all out. Omar Bradley responded that George was quite mistaken—and, by implication, that MacArthur was quite misleading. The Chinese were not fighting all out, not by a great deal. “They have not used air against our front line troops, against our lines of communication in Korea, our ports; they have not used air against our bases in Japan or against our naval air forces.” China’s restraint in these areas had been crucial to the survival of American and U.N. forces in Korea. On balance, Bradley said, the limited nature of the war benefited the United States at least as much as it did the Chinese. “We are fighting under rather favorable rules for ourselves.” Vandenberg amplified this point. “You made the statement, as I recall it, that we were operating against the Chinese in a limited fashion, and that the Chinese were operating against us in an unlimited fashion,” the air chief said to Republican Harry Cain of Washington. “Yes, sir,” Cain replied. “I would like to point out that that operates just as much a limitation, so far, for the Chinese as it has for the United Nations troops in that our main base of supply is the Japanese islands. The port of Pusan is very important to us.” “It is indeed.” “Our naval forces are operating on the flanks allowing us naval gunfire support, carrier aircraft strikes, and the landing of such formations as the Inchon landing, all without the Chinese air force projecting itself into the area,” Vandenberg said. “Therefore, the sanctuary business, as it is called, is operating on both sides, and is not completely a limited war on our part.”"

"[I]n the late 1940s most officials had a mixed, if not incoherent, view of the danger of war. Russia was seen as threatening but weak; expansionist but cautious. Korea led the former elements to dominate over the latter. As Secretary of Defense Johnson put it when testifying before Congress: The very fact of this aggression ... constitute[s] undeniable proof that the forces of international communism possess not only the willingness, but also the intention, of attacking and invading any free nation within their reach at any time that they think they can get away with it. The real significance of the North Korean aggression lies in this evidence that, even at the resultant risk of starting a third world war, communism is willing to resort to armed aggression, whenever it believes it can win [U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, 1950b: 272]."

"Communist threat seemed more vivid and a great deal of money was needed to maintain the troops fighting in Korea. Furthermore, once the budget smashed through the old ceiling and the economy did not fall apart, much of the resistance collapsed. It was therefore possible to act on the heightened sense of threat. The second important change was the militarization of NATO; the transforming of a paper organization built on a symbolic American commitment to a force capable of resisting Soviet attack. Here, too, Korea resolved the ambivalence felt by many decision makers and permitted the adoption of a policy that some of them had already come to favor. NSC-68 argued that because the Russians were willing to run significant risks in order to expand, and because they would soon have a significant nuclear stockpile, the West needed the capability for conventional defense. Korea appeared to prove this point-the Russians had tried to gain a small prize in spite of America's atomic weapons and mobilization base; would they not be tempted to gain a much greater one unless the local imbalance were corrected? (See Stebbins, 1951: 244.) Furthermore, Korea was an unpleasant reminder of the deficiencies of having to mobilize an army after the war had started. Allied forces were nearly pushed off the peninsula before adequate reinforcements could arrive, and the same thing could happen in Europe."

"Korea showed that limited wars were possible. Conventional forces, either American or local, were needed if similar cases recurred. Of course, it is better to avoid limited wars than to have to fight them, and in this Korea provided important lessons. By strongly implying that it would not defend Korea (in large part because decision makers did not think an attack there would be an isolated one), the United States had invited attack. It would not make the same error in the future; it would extend commitments to threatened areas, stake its reputation on meeting force with force, and thereby deter adventurism. SEATO, CENTO, and permitting Greece and Turkey to join NATO thus followed."

"In the first evening after the attack on Korea, Truman decided to interpose the Seventh Fleet between Formosa and the mainland without paying much attention to how the Chinese Communists might react. With hindsight it is not surprising that they were enraged by the prospect of the indefinite continuation of an alternative regime which challenged their power and legitimacy, but the American leaders failed to understand the degree to which their actions harmed and threatened China. They saw the increase in Chinese hostility not as an understandable reaction to what the United States had done, but as evidence of underlying Chinese enmity springing from a desire to harm U.S. interests. It is important to note that this judgement, while incorrect is similar to those made by other decision makers under similar circumstances."

"The Chinese entry into the war completed the process started in June. Again, American leaders did not see the degree to which their drive to the Yalu threatened Chinese security because they thought China knew that the United States was not a menace. As Acheson put it: "no possible shred of evidence could have existed in the minds of the Chinese Communists about the non-threatening intentions of the forces of the United Nations" (quoted in Spanier, 1965: 97). Since the Chinese counterattack then could not be seen as self-defense, the explanation had to be unprovoked Chinese hostility. Furthermore, for Dean Rusk, John Davies, and Edmund Clubb, the Chinese intervention served only Soviet interests and so showed that that country was controlled by Russia (FRUS, 1950, VII: 1080, 1088). Even if the Soviet Union had not ordered China to fight, the two countries clearly had parallel objectives and so would work together in the future. They were a bloc, and accretions of power to one of them aided the other. This is not to argue that the United States would have had good relations with China had there been no Korean war. As we discussed above, by early 1950 the U.S. government saw China as a menace and was stiffening its position. Many wanted to prevent the fall of Formosa, and almost all sought to prevent Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. The administration was on the defensive, with the bulk of mobilized opinion against it, blaming it for the "loss of China" and wanting to take a stronger position against the new regime. Further more, Acheson's expectations of Sino-Soviet friction were premature."

"Finally, we should note that the traditional explanation of the cold war, which affirms the validity of Truman's view that Korea was a Soviet-designed test of American resolve, implies that there were several possible substitutes for Korea. In the absence of this war the Soviets would have picked another battleground. The United States would have had to fight and rebuild its position, as it did after Korea, if it was to prevent the Russians from dominating the globe. A full examination of this theory is beyond the scope of this article, but we should note that it is one that few historians now defend. Even if the war was planned by Russia-which is hotly disputed-the cause was linked to the local context. Had it not occurred, it is not likely that the Russians would have posed an armed challenge to the United States elsewhere."

"For if Korea produced such crucial aspects of the cold war as high defense budgets, a militarized NATO, and the spread of American commitments, and if Korea was an accident, then the imperatives of bipolarity or the U.S. domestic system are not a sufficient explanation for much of the cold war. The United States and the USSR may have been "enemies by position" (to use Aron's phrase), but this did not require much that we have come to associate with bipolarity, especially the globalization of commitments and the viewing of most local conflicts as tests of strength between the superpowers. Similar problems arise with those theories that stress the needs not of the international system but of the American internal politicoeconomic system. Thus, according to Ambrose, By June 1950, a series of desperate needs had come together. Truman had to have a crisis to sell the N.S.C. 68 program; Chiang could not hold on in Formosa nor Rhee in South Korea without an American commitment; the U.S. Air Force and Navy needed a justification to retain their bases in Japan; the Democrats had to prove to the McCarthyites that they could stand up to the communists in Asia as well as in Europe. The needs were met on 25 June 1950 [Ambrose, 1971: 195]."

"In the same vein, Kolko and Kolko argue, "A society's goals, in the last analysis, reflect its objective needs." Since America is capitalist, these goals have "always reflected the class structure and class needs." By the spring of 1950 the economy was faltering and American control over Western Europe was in danger. "Other means having failed, the only acceptable continuous government expenditure for an orthodox capitalist economist-and politically for Congress-was for armaments." "The artificial stimulus of rearmament needed as its rationale a crisis somewhere in the world if Washington was to resolve its ... dilemma" (Kolko and Kolko, 1972: 19, 473, 476). As we saw, LaFeber initially argued that NSC-68 "was being implemented" when the Korean war broke out. Were this to have been the case, the argument for revisionism or for the compelling nature of a bipolar system would be stronger. However, this was not the case, and without Korea such implementation was unlikely."