Blundering Over the Parallel
O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.
Blundering Over the Parallel The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command By Burton I. Kaufman Temple. 390 pp. $34.95. Reviewed by Wiliam L. O'Neill Professor of History,...
...Kaufman disagrees with the argument...
...So did the then Western dominated United Nations...
...The proposition is an attractive one, since it makes fighting a limited war for limited ends sound better to Americans...
...Nonetheless, when South Korea was invaded Washington sprang to its aid...
...Hence it failed to apply pressure when truce talks broke down in the summer of 1951, giving the Communists space to make their lines practically impregnable and ruling out the military option in the future...
...Whether Vietnam resembled Korea, at least potentially, remains a moot point...
...Events soon vindicated Truman...
...Intervention was popular throughout the Western world...
...defense perimeter in the Far East that excluded South Korea...
...Accepting limits meant giving up any hope of victory, while at the same time ruling out defeat...
...they were troubled by the neglect of diplomacy in favor of military action...
...It was this mentality that made crossing the 38 th parallel a foregone conclusion...
...Invading North Korea extended the conflict almost three years, to July 1953...
...In addition, he feels the Korean War was not so well thought out as the Clausewitzian model requires...
...Matters went exceptionally well in the field, too...
...Kaufman provides the reason: "The credibility of the Administration's foreign policy was at issue in the Korean War, both abroad and at home, both among America's allies and its adversaries...
...Burtonl...
...Free Europe felt reassured when Truman stood up to Communist aggression, and it contributed significant moral and some military support to the war effort...
...It quickly endorsed Truman's decision, and its blue banner flew alongside the Stars and Stripes to the end...
...Even before China struck, though, America's allies were questioning the decision to invade North Korea...
...Given the small defense budgets of those years ($ 13 billion in 1949, the equivalent of $50-$60 billion today), nothing else made sense...
...Most of all, it guaranteed that Korea would not trigger a global holocaust...
...Having committed themselves to Korea the allies stuck it out, but henceforth they would rarely back U.S...
...Reviewed by Wiliam L. O'Neill Professor of History, Rutgers...
...The result was a UN advance to the Yalu River separating Korea from Manchuria, followed by a massive Chinese attack, another hasty retreat, and, after heavy fighting, a stabilized battle line corresponding roughly to the 38th parallel...
...To begin with, he thinks South Vietnam and South Korea were too unlike for a comparison between them to be valid...
...They succeeded, however, in keeping Truman from negotiating an armistice, because the Chinese would not give him terms acceptable to his enemies at home...
...military operations in the Third World...
...That both conflicts show how absolutely vital it is for the military and political dimensions of warfare to be thoroughly integrated seems undeniable...
...The Republic of Korea was saved from Communism and may someday actually become democratic, a possibility that otherwise would not exist...
...America was relieved to be drawing a line against Communist aggression at last, and rallied behind the President...
...personnel, leaving South Korea in the lurch...
...author, "A Better World: The Great Schism—Stalinism and the American Intellectuals" This book is not based on original scholarship and thus contains no surprises...
...Further, the Chinese entry taught Washington a valuable lesson...
...The war would be limited...
...The Joint Chiefs were certain, for no good reasons whatsoever, that neither the Soviet Union nor China would intervene...
...That he would do so was far from certain...
...The Truman Administration never appreciated the military consequences of its political decisions...
...Their assaults on Truman failed, in that the Administration wisely declined to take such an appalling risk...
...The argument defines victory in Clause-witzian terms—as the achievement of those political ends for which a war is fought...
...Allied unity similarly declined, in a sense for good...
...Kaufman has written a political history of the Korean War's effects upon America and the non-Communist world, assembling and condensing a vast amount of published material...
...His narrative is intelligent, comprehensive and compact...
...American unity collapsed during the subsequent long stalemate...
...anything less would have encouraged the nation's enemies and his own political foes...
...Consequently, the War dragged on and on, poisoning American politics and taking American lives, until President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who could not be Red-baited, put an end to it...
...Kaufman would have written a more useful work if he had explored these questions at greater length...
...On the other hand, the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed, too, in not making clear the probable military results of political decisions...
...It called for evacuating U.S...
...And it implies that if the same thinking had been applied to South Vietnam, that country could similarly have been saved...
...Given the atmosphere of crisis, Truman had to be bold and decisive...
...By that time the Cold War had been thoroughly militarized and small defense budgets were out the window forever...
...Afterward, doubts about American wisdom and maturity hardened...
...The treatment of the major controversies is as fair-minded as anyone could ask for, and more than might be expected...
...The most interesting part of Kaufman's book is his all too short conclusion...
...But once China came in Washington immediately decided to end the fighting through negotiations...
...Among high officials only George F. Kennan, chief ofthe Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, thought that occupying North Korea entailed too much risk for too little gain, and he left the government in August 1950 without having made any converts...
...It is also remarkably objective, considering the partisanship that affects so many histories of key events in the Cold War...
...Of course, Japan was a sanctuary too, so both sides benefited from restraint...
...The Pentagon did have a contingency plan in the event fighting broke out...
...The first question Kaufman must answer is why President Harry S. Truman intervened after Communist North Korea attacked its neighbor to the south on June 25,1950...
...Conservatives backed General MacArthur, who insisted there was no substitute for victory and that bombing and blockading China would not lead to a world war...
...Manchuria would remain, as conservatives said, a "privileged sanctuary...
...General Douglas Mac Arthur wanted total victory, as did President Truman...
...Recently it has been suggested that far from being a defeat or even a draw, the Korean War was a military victory...
...The United States therefore plunged into Korea, the sound logic for refusing to take the step nothwithstanding...
...The American occupation of South Korea had ended a year earlier...
...In a much analyzed speech six months before the invasion, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had outlined a U.S...
...Kaufman explains it in the usual way...
...That was the chief American blunder of the War and cost the nation dearly...
...Even so, there is food for thought in his book, making one regret all the more that it has been priced out of the market...
...Previously Americans had thought of the Cold War as something that was, in theory at least, winnable...
...Although none of what he tells us is new, by focusing on world as well as domestic politics Kaufman is able to show with particular clarity the harm done by provoking Chinese intervention...
...After a desperate UN stand before Pusan, the only port not taken by North Korea, the tide turned, South Korea was freed, and within three months of its start the War was virtually over...
...Or rather, the War would have ended had it not been decided to cross the 38th parallel and go on to liberate North Korea...
...Except for a few months in 1950, when Washington wanted to reunite the entire peninsula, that was the case in Korea...
...Still, all was not lost...
Vol. 69 • March 1986 • No. 6
