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Korea:
The Right War? At What Price?
The Vietnam war was not the first
war in Southeast Asia in which the United States lost over 50,000
men. Earlier, America fought a bitter war in Korea--a struggle
that most Americans know mainly from the television show MASH.
There was nothing funny, however, about the real Korean War.
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At
6 a.m., June 25, 1950, the army of Communist North Korea invaded
non-communist South Korea, allegedly repelling an invasion
from the South. President Harry S. Truman was at dinner at
his home in Independence, Mo., when Secretary of State Dean
Acheson called from Washington and told him, "Mr President,
I have very serious news." Within a week, American air,
sea and ground forces had been committed. Over the next three
years, in a conflict that would soon engage us with China,
almost six million Americans served and 54,000 died. |
Ironically, just months before,
the National Security Council, with Truman as chair, endorsed
a recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Korea was "of
little strategic value to the United States and that commitment
to United States use of military forces in Korea would be ill-advised."
Why had the war begun? Who was
responsible? President Truman took the position that the North
Koreans invaded the South on direct orders from Joseph Stalin
(in fact, Stalin apparently reluctantly consented to the North
Korean plan for a campaign that would conquer the South before
the Americans could react). "The attack upon Korea,"
Truman declared, "makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism
has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent
nations and will now used armed invasion and war." An American
advisor to South Korea's President Syngman Rhee, Robert T. Oliver,
claimed, in contrast, that the United States itself had unwittingly
provoked the attack, by declaring that South Korea lay outside
our defense perimeter.
It must be noted, however, that
armed struggle between North and South Korea had been going on
since 1945, part of a Korean civil war, in which both the North
and South were trying to unify the nation on their own terms.
Why did the United States become
involved in the war? Domestic politics doubtless contributed to
Truman's decision to intervene in Korea. His popularity had fallen
sharply in the polls, and Republicans accused him of losing China
to the communists.
Above all, Truman and other policy
makers were motivated by what they took to be the lessons of the
1930s: that the failure to take a firm stand against totalitarian
aggression early on had simply invited a largely war later on.
Convinced that the communist invasion of Korea was merely the
first step in a broad plan of global domination, Truman began
a massive program of military rearmament for the U.S. and its
North Atlantic Treaty allies. The president tripled the U.S. defense
budget, dispatched four divisions to Europe, and authorized the
rearming of Germany.
Initially, America's objective
in the war was to restore South Korea's border at the 38th parallel.
But after a series of military victories over the North Koreans,
an overconfident Truman launched a drive forward to liberate North
Korea. Suddenly, a defensive war was transformed into an offensive
war. The decision to carry the war into the North had momentous
consequences. As Americans approached the Yalu River, Chinese
intervened to prevent a perceived threat to Chinese security and
proceeded to push Americans back to the 38th parallel.
The Korean war dragged on until
1952. The number of Americans killed in Korea - 54,246 - was nearly
the same as in Vietnam, 56,146, but total casualties were actually
higher in Korea: a million soldiers and two to three million civilians
killed, compared to about one million in Vietnam.
| What was the war's legacy?
Truman's critics charge that one consequence of the war was
to provide an important precedent for the abuse of the President's
war making powers by committing American troops to what he
termed a police action in defense of common security without
formal Congressional approval. Critics also contend that the
Korean war committed the United States to the military containment
of communism not just in Europe but throughout the world. |
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The war carried a number of other
important lessons for the future--lessons largely ignored at the
time. The Korean war revealed the difficulty of defeating determined
adversaries, even with the staunch support of our allies and a
virtual monopoly of sophisticated weaponry. Korea also revealed
the difficulty of fighting a limited war, in which our objectives
are unclear and there is a threat of intervention by other major
powers. And finally, Korea revealed how difficult it is for the
United States to extricate from a war. Today, over four decades
after the war began, American troops and materiel remain in Korea,
and the Korean peninsula remains the most heavily armed area in
the world.
Questions to
think about:
1. Was American
involvement in Korea necessary to meet the challenge of the
Soviet Union which was attempting to enlarge its Asian sphere
of influence?
2. Was American
intervention in what could be considered a Korean civil war
unnecessary?
3. Did the
war preserve a degree of stability in Asia, permitting other
Asian countries to develop economic vitality and close ties
to the West?
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