Getting Out: Learning from Past Exit Strategies

...There were attempts to get out of Korea even before the Korean War began...

...But more than any of these fac­tors, Truman's moral convictions carried the day...

...troop strength had in­creased by almost a third to 62,596, and five years later it increased again, to 66,531 . While there are some suggestive bench­marks-for example, the 20,000 United States troops withdrawn in 1971, under the Nixon Doctrine, or the adoption by Congress of the Nunn-Warner Amendment to the 1989 De­fense Appropriation Bill, which mandated a reduction in U.S...

...When the war began, South Korea was one of the poorest societies on earth, and when the war ended it was even poorer: in 1953, South Korean per capita gross national income was $67...

...Those were the choices that the United States came very close to facing in both 1950 and 1951, first when the DPRK almost effort­lessly shattered the ROK's army and drove a U.S . intervention force into the Pusan perim­eter, then again when the Chinese People's Lib­eration Army crossed the Yalu, advanced over a hundred miles, forced the naval evacuation of the survivors of the U.S...

...troop strength in Korea from 43,000 to 36,000 by the end of 1991-one can­not easily select a moment when the United States decided that it would never again have to fight in Korea...

...In early July, the United Kingdom linked DPRK withdrawal to the 38th parallel to U.S...

...Having agreed to forcible repatriation of Soviet POWs after the Second World War, he had come to detest returning unwilling men to vicious tyr­ annies, and his refusal to do something he thought odious was the deciding factor...

...The final result was much happier . The Western intervention force stabilized its lines, drove the Chinese back across the 38th paral­lel, and in several crucial, although now almost­forgotten battles crushed a series of subsequent Chinese offensives...

...The United States would have again been compelled to make an ugly choice be­tween acquiescence in a conquest, first use of nuclear weapons, or an immensely difficult re­invasion of the peninsula...

...By compari­son, the United States retains its obligation to defend South Korea in the event of a cross­border attack by DPRK forces, which are said to number around 1 .2 million troops, and which may now possess nuclear weapons . These considerations suggest that the question of how the United States got out of Korea has to mean how the United States secured the armistice of 1953, an agreement that at least suspended protracted and large-scale warfare on the peninsula...

...That year the United States and the Re­public of Korea (ROK) agreed to reduce the American deployment to 25,000 by 2008, so we are still in Korea, and likely to remain for some time . The reductions to date have never been intended to culminate in the withdrawal of all troops by a date certain, and their pace was for many years uneven . At the height of their wartime strength, American forces num­bered 326,363, in the year following the armi­stice 225,590, and in 1955 the United States maintained a garrison of 75,328 . After that, the numbers seesawed, in part according to the level of perceived threat, so that while in 1956 there were 46,024 American troops in the ROK,by 1964 U.S...

...He did not want North Korea con­quered, but once it became clear that the UN forces no longer meditated such an end, Stalin thought he had much to gain from protracting the war, which exacerbated strains between Americans and Europeans and tied down American forces that otherwise could have de­ployed to Europe, where they would have eroded the Soviet military advantage, bled the Americans, and bought time for Soviet and Eastern European rearmament . The armistice had other prerequisites...

...forces landed in Korea on September 8, 1945, but U.S...

...Fred Smoler: Korea ANY CLOSE ANALOGY between "getting out" of Korea and American withdrawal from Vietnam, French withdrawal from Algeria, or British withdrawal from India nec­essarily fails, because in the sense implied by those cases, the United States has not gotten out of Korea . As recently as 2004, the United States still deployed 37,500 United States troops in Ko­rea...

...The subsequent course of the war saw the DPRK offensive halted at the Pusan perimeter, and on October 15, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur's very risky but brilliantly success­ful invasion at Inchon, which in combination with a drive by the U.S...

...the United States intervened to preserve the ROK, and the ROK survived...

...combat troops are deployed there, there is a Philippine constitu­tional ban on foreign military bases, American troops are explicitly prohibited from joining Filipino troops on combat patrols or operations (although there are allegations that this prohi­bition has not been consistently enforced), and American naval and air power seem more than sufficient to discharge our obligations under the 1951 mutual defense treaty...

...When the war ended, South Korea was, with good reason, considered a corrupt and brutal authoritarian regime, and would remain so for decades . It is now a functioning democ­racy, in some important senses more demo­cratic than the United States was in the middle of the twentieth century...

...Stalin had armed both the Chinese and the Koreans, who were incapable of arming themselves on a scale adequate to contend with Western armies, while his MiGs (and some­times his pilots) had defended them against devastatingAmerican airpower...

...It was also very far from the last attempt to get the United States out of Korea . On June 27, 1950, immediately after the invasion, Presi­dent Harry Truman sent a message to Josef Stalin, hoping to secure North Korean with­drawal to the 38th parallel . This would have preempted American forces from getting back into Korea on the scale that subsequently oc­curred, but the offer was rebuffed...

...FRED SMOLER teaches history and literature at Sarah Lawrence College . His writing has ap­peared in American Heritage Magazine, First of the Month, the Observer (UK), the Nation, and the New York Times...

...These are essential parts of the defense perimeter of the Pacific and they must and will be held . . . " South Korea was sup­posed to defend itself from a DPRK army per­haps thrice the size of its own force and also much better equipped and trained (DPRK ar­mor was not only technically superior but more than three times as numerous as the ROK'S tank force, while DPRK combat aircraft were more than ten times as numerous as the ROK'S, which numbered fourteen planes) . This two­fold attempt to "get out" of Korea (a refusal to station a deterrent force and a parallel refusal to promise aid in the event of invasion) was a catastrophic failure...

...A LTHOUGH SEVERAL issues separated the American and Chinese negotiators-for example, the question of whether the armistice line would be the (indefensible) 38th parallel or the much more defensible line be­tween the armies at the time of the truce, most of which was north of the parallel-the most contentious question separating the two sides was the repatriation of prisoners of war . Wars traditionally end with an exchange of all pris­oners held by all belligerents, and under nor­mal conditions prisoners are eager to be repatriated...

...Within a very short time, the armistice line became the defensible line the Americans had demanded, and it was agreed that there would be no forcible repatriation of prisoners . So while the armistice required many things, what it required above all was Soviet acquiescence, and Soviet acquiescence required Stalin's death...

...it is likely that had UN forces kept pushing north of the 38th par­allel in the summer of 1951 and then stopped on a defensible line, they would have been able to hold most of that line, just as they managed to hold most of the position where they in fact stopped in July...

...with­drawal from the Taiwan Strait and the People's Republic of China's admission to the UN, and India also proposed a deal (PRC admission to the UN, DPRK forces' withdrawal, and creation of a "united and independent" Korea under UN auspices) . These offers, which would have lim­ited the scale on which America got back into Korea, were also rebuffed...

...Last year it was $20,045, and South Ko­rea was the thirteenth largest economy in the world...

...The protracted war initially deepened and strengthened the ties between the PRC and the Soviet Union, but also produced strains within the communist bloc and the fore­shadowing of the Sino-Soviet split...

...Instead, it yielded one of the most startling successes of Amen­can foreign policy, achieved not only by stum­bling (with no exit strategy) into a fight in Korea, but by staying there for more than half a century...

...In the long run, fighting without Soviet support would have been impossible...

...X Corps, and ap­peared poised to drive the remainder of the U.S...

...At this point both sides be­gan to negotiate an armistice, although the ne­gotiations stretched out over two years . W HAT HAD To happen to achieve the armistice of July 1953...

...For the communist powers, the possible revelation that a significant number of their soldiers considered themselves prisoners within their own societies­who had made their escape by surrendering­was an enraging and threatening vision, and initially unacceptable, and the negotiations were clearly prolonged by Truman's stand . With recent information from Soviet ar­chives and Chinese memoirs, however, other factors have begun to seem more important than any of the issues that openly bedeviled the negotiators at Panmunjom . Stalin died on March 5, and within two weeks-on March 19-the new Soviet collective leadership seem to have told the Chinese and North Koreans to make the deal that was then swiftly struck...

...forces deployed far­they south destroyed the DPRK invasion force . Perhaps 25,000 out of an original invasion force of 415,000 managed to flee back across the 38th parallel in late October . At this point the United States probably could have secured partition at the 38th par­allel-there was renewed Soviet interest in this solution-and subsequently at the 39th or even 40th parallels, but this did not seem an entirely attractive prospect, because the DPRK would very likely have revived as a military threat to the ROK, thus pinning a significant number of American troops in Korea (which is what eventually happened) . In the fall and early win­ter of 1950, forcible reunification of almost all of Korea under an anticommunist government seemed more than feasible and possessed the (almost certainly illusory) appeal of possibly wedging the PRC away from a humiliated Stalin...

...In terms of current (and some older) catchphrases, this result is something of a puzzlement, for there is no historical and cul­tural tradition of democracy in South Korea . The North Koreans, by notorious contrast, live in a famine-wracked tyranny governed with extraordinary cruelty...

...This means that any analogy to American withdrawal from the Philippines also fails...

...The armistice also required, however, a demonstration of Chi­nese ability to defend most of what became North Korea, or at least to inflict serious casu­alties on any UN offensives that sought to re­cover any large amount of territory north of the parallel-or else the Americans might have con­sidered once again fighting their way north . The agreement of the Koreans on either side was not necessary, because it could not be with­held: South Korean president Syngman Rhee sought to sabotage the negotiations, and Kim I1 Sung was thought to be bitterly disappointed by their outcome, but when their backers agreed to stop the war, the war stopped...

...That never happened: MacArthur's subse­quent advance to very near the Chinese bor­der was followed by Chinese intervention culminating in a successful surprise counter­offensive that drove the UN forces back 120 miles and initially seemed likely to drive the Western intervention force (most of it Ameri­can) off the Korean peninsula . That would have gotten the Americans out of Korea, although probably into a nuclear war with China...

...American allies and neutrals also attempted to secure various terms for an American withdrawal, some of which, had they been accepted by the communist powers, would almost certainly have been rejected by the United States...

...Eighth Army into the sea . Only recently has the deterrent power of the ROK's military come to seem fairly persua­sive, and even now the United States will still command all forces in South Korea in wartime, although the ROK may take over that respon­sibility this year...

...In Korea, however, this was not the case: many of the prisoners held by the UN were former Nationalist Chinese soldiers un­willing to return to Mao Zedong's PRC and oth­ers were South Koreans conscripted into the North Korean army, similarly unwilling to re­turn to Kim I1 Sung's DPRK...

...But the UN's success in the smashing of the Chinese Spring Offensive, also known as the Fifth Phase Offensive, which had aimed to re­gain the initiative on the battlefield after the successful UN counter-offensive in March 1951, changed Mao's thinking...

...There is also evidence that the Chinese leadership had wearied of the war, while Stalin never did...

...NDEED, IT DID more than that...

...The willing­ness of Dwight D. Eisenhower, by then presi­dent, and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, to escalate the war if an armistice was not forthcoming may have mattered, but it is hard to measure the degree that it mattered on the evidence of the available documents . Stalin, who gave Kim I1 Sung permission to start the war, and several times kept the war going when he could very easily have stopped it, was acting on what in retrospect seems a de­batable conception of his strategic interest, since the consequences of the protracted war included massive American rearmament, German rear­mament, and the transformation of NATO from a meaningless paper coalition to a real and pow­erful military alliance . Mao also kept the war going for years-without Chinese intervention it would otherwise have ended in the winter of 1950-at least in part out of a calculation of strategic interest, and is sometimes assumed to have miscalculated less grossly than did Stalin . Mao did win the glory of having stalemated the Americans, but his policy also resulted in the death of a very considerable number of Chi­nese-and an American commitment to the in­dependence of Taiwan, an American military alliance with Japan, the denial of UN member­ship for the PRC for a generation, and the sur­vival of South Korea-again, the reverse of the intended results...

...While the war is often considered a strategic draw, the rea­sons for this judgment seem elusive ; even ignor­ing the resulting balance of advantage, the war was initiated to destroy the ROK...

...The terms finally agreed upon were recogniz­ably close to those the UN first proposed in July of 1951 . Documents released from former Soviet archives suggest that at some periods during the negotiations, time was lost because the Chinese and North Koreans were negoti­ating in bad faith: after the UN forces crushed the Chinese offensive, the Chinese needed time to stabilize their line and bring up new troops for renewed attacks . In this sense, the DISSENT IWinter 2009.45 halt to UN operations probably cost the future South Korea some territory...

...combat units had withdrawn by June 25, 44 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 1950, the date of the DPRK's invasion . On January 12 of that year, Secretary of State Dean Acheson seemed to exclude the ROK from the American defense perimeter : "The defense perimeter for the United States runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus...

...Above all, it required the crushing defeat of the People's Liberation Army on the battlefield in the sum­mer of 1951 ; there had been no serious com­munist interest in an armistice when either the 46 . DISSENT I Winter 2009 North Koreans or the Chinese were advancing...

...By the lessons often drawn from common convictions about how the United States ought to get out of wars (as quickly and completely as possible), and about which wars it should avoid (other people's civil wars or contests with antagonists who might be considered the postcolonial forces of na­tional liberation), the Korean War should have been an unmitigated disaster...

...For a number of reasons the United States refused to agree to forcible repatriation . Although not the most important factor, tactical and stra­tegic calculation did have a role in this refusal, for the UN held many more prisoners than did the Chinese and North Koreans (169,000 as op­posed to a claimed total of 11,559, one-sixth of the number the communists had previously claimed to have captured, and only one-ninth of the UN force missing in action) . Repatriation of all prisoners would have conferred a significant military advantage on the communist armies in the event that the armistice collapsed...

...While a few U.S...

...Leaving aside provocations­the occasional murder, kidnapping, and torture of American soldiers and sailors, any of which might have triggered renewed fighting-there were for many decades concerns that an inad­equate American garrison would expose South Korea to very rapid defeat by a North Korean (DPRK) military both more numerous and bet­ter equipped than the army theROKthen pos­sessed...

...Moreover, a considerable number of the soldiers the United States might face in any future European war might also be unwilling conscripts, and the pre­cedent that defectors would not be surrendered might confer a real advantage in a hypothetical future conflict...

...DISSENT I Winter 2009 . 47...