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The
Korean Conflict & The Origins of
America's Commitment to Indo China
The
Korean War started as a Civil War between North and South
Korea that had been escalating since the end of Japanese occupation
in 1945. According to US policymakers at this time Korea was
not going to be lost to the communists like Poland and Manchuria.
Korea also marked the beginning phase of America's commitment
to military intervention in the Third World in upholding the
capitalist world order. To do this US American policy leaders
relied on the pillars of containment and commitment to intervention.
Roger Dingman asserts that the conflict is ended only due to
the deterrence factor of atomic diplomacy brought on
by the Eisenhower administration. (America in the World, 290)The
Korean conflict as Leffler will argue had been in place since
the inception of the Marshall Plan. Korea will also mark a trend
in which all Presidents' afterwards would use issues such as
international security, i.e., police actions to increase
Presidential power in Congress.
The Tehran conference
had specified the divisions of the two countries until such
time reunification could be achieved. The boundary of the two
Koreas was to serve as a check to Soviet influence in Asia.
A 6-month civil war had erupted and the Soviets installed Kim
Il Sung a former officer in the soviet army as the new head
of North Korea. The US wanted
democratically free elections and eventual reunification
between North and obviously this ran counter to Soviet ambitions
and North Korean nationalistic aims. Thus, the US installs Syngman
Rhee at the helm of the South Korean government. North Korea
responds by invading South Korea and Truman responds by moving
the UN Security Council to pass a resolution (with the soviets
conspicuously absent) to declare
that N. Korea make an immediate withdrawal, and cessation
of all hostile attempts at takeover.
Walter Lafaber argues that Truman viewed the conflict
in Korea in terms of a domino effect, that if the Soviet's were
not stopped in Korea then all of Asia would fall to Communism.
Lafeber in accord with McCormick
argues that Truman relied on memories of Nazi appeasement, Japanese
appeasement in Manchuria and now Appeasement of Stalin's expansionary
aims would set off another world war and thus intervention was
not necessary but self evident.
"US
interests everywhere seemed to be at stake. For if Stalin and
Kim won in Korea, Truman believed, the Soviets would hit more
pivotal interests, especially Japan and Western Europe. The
president reached these conclusions largely through his use
of history."(American Age, 513)
South Korea was out manned and outgunned
and it had to contend with a corrupt government. The US interpretation
of the Tehran
protocol required them to defend South Korea due to the
Soviet's sphere of influence being extended beyond North Korea.
The UN approves a military police action, and Truman appoints
General
Douglass Macarthur as head of the operation.  Truman
by virtue of declaring a "police action" sets a precedent
in American foreign policy later to be invoked by LBJ by committing
massive amounts of troops without requiring Congressional approval.
However, the reasons for this non-War declaration had to do
with North Korea's alliance with the USSR and in theory an overt
declaration of war would have caused the Soviet's to commit
their own troops to the conflict.
This also set off a trend of
events in which Taiwan was spared invasion by Communist
China due to Truman's desire of establishing a defensive perimeter
around Japan and the remaining portions of capitalist Asia.
It is important to note that Taiwan is recognized as the de
facto representative of China in the UN and would continue to
occupy that spot until China was formally recognized and admitted
to the UN Security Council in 1979. The Truman administration
also began the process of rebuilding the war racked Japanese
economy and permanently stationed US troops in Okinawa.
US officials had determined
that the Japanese economy was dependant on Indo-China's raw
markets. With the potential of these countries adopting closed
market systems under a soviet economic bloc would entice japan
to rebuild trade relations with China and possibly with the
Soviet's as well. This according to the Truman Domino theory
would cause Japan to become allied with this bloc in order to
garner access to Indo China's markets.
Secondly,
the US had to contend with Nationalism in Indo China. Vietnam
had begun to rise up against French colonial domination. The
US wanting NATO cooperation from France sided with them
instead of Ho Chi Minh's Vietmin despite their appeal for recognition.
Acheson was the principle player behind this affirmed that NATO's
interests were preeminent in containing the Soviet threat in
Europe then affirming nationalist aspirations in the periphery
due to the perceived power vacuum they would create.
Bruce Cummings argues that
the Korean War had to do with nationalism brought on by 35 years
of Japanese colonial occupation. Korea also became viewed as
a little China since historically it had acted as a satellite
state and trade intermediary between China and Japan, and
as such the region was to receive greater attention when China
became communist. To Truman this was an affirmation of the Domino
theory." Meanwhile events world wide and especially Communist
revolution in China pushed the US towards a formal policy of
resisting further Communist advances in Asia."(Major Problems
in American Foreign Relations, 387)
In
retrospect there was no doubt that the Chinese Communists were
exercising influence in Korea. China had fought along side North
Korea during the Korean Civil War. As far as Soviet and Chinese military support
the elements of collusion were there for Truman and Acheson
to see. The Soviets had provided the North Koreans with fighter
planes and Mao had provided experienced veteran Chinese ground
troops. Thus, Truman believed that if direct intervention
were not forthcoming he would lose all of the Third World to
nationalism. China the most populous country in the world had
become Communist, and now it was allying itself with Soviet's
in supplying aid to N. Korea.
Thus, the World's largest countries were now principle
allies and were beginning to exert hegemonic control throughout
Asia, and consequently that whole market would be lost to the
West. This would undermine all of American foreign policy goals
as that generation of policymakers interpreted the events in
Korea.
***
Another
important factor of consideration is the domestic nature
of American politics in relationship to America's foreign policy.
Historian Gary Kaufman maintains that there were domestic factors
driving American foreign policy of which McCarthyism and the
polarized anti-Communist purge of American government and media
was wracking a state of frenzied paranoia and destroyed many
talented peoples careers. "McCarthy was at the height
of his power during the war years and his impact on the administrations'
ability to govern and
on overseas perceptions of the United States was clearly enormous."(American
Age, 525)
However, more than just McCarthy
was at stake an ideology of historical interpratation governed
the process as well. The Third World became became the battlefields
of the Cold War and as such the two main superpowers excercised
hegemony in these regions. For the Third World colonialism
had ended but nationalism and the call to economic selfsuffiency
remained. Nationalism came to be identified under Truman as
Communist infilitration and memories of appeasing Hitler's expansionist
tendencies in Truman's mind could not be repeated with the Soviets.
***
Meanwhile all is not quiet on
the Western front. In supporting the French in Europe there
was a call to rearm West Germany and reincorporate it into the
NATO alliance to have them bear some of the costs of defending
Europe from a Soviet attack. Early attempts at containment and
commitment to intervention had become expensive. However, in
1950 Truman increases US troops to four more divisions with
General Dwight D. Eisenhower as commander of NATO.
Truman manages to send some
600,000 troops to Korea and with Macarthur's amphibious landing
at Inchon managed to push the North Koreans back to the Yalu
river, 90 miles from the Chinese border. The anti Communist
fervor and paranoia cooked up by McCarthyism at home overwhelmingly
favored immediate occupation and reunification of all Korea.
The Truman administration initially agreed with this plan until
intelligence sources reported large numbers of Chinese troops
amassing near the border, and he ordered Macarthur to withdrawal
his troops. General Macarthur refused and ventured North with
the intention of invading China. That action would cost Macarthur
his job as Chinese troops engulfed Macarthur's army forcing
him into a hurried retreat, to small province far south of the
38th parallel. Macarthur and UN troops manage to
restore the former border and the two sides stalemated until
a UN brokered ceasefire was agreed. However, theoretically the
two Koreas never rescinded their declaration of war. In 1953
the Korean war was over.
***
The Korean conflict and subsequent
Chinese intervention caused Sino-Soviet
relations to deteriorate as well as establishing permanent
US commitments to the stability of the balance of power in Asia,
by containing Soviet influence and preserving market access
to keep Japan afloat in the Bretton woods system. This was a
major discontinuity in American foreign policy as Walter Lafeber
states, "The nation made its first significant military commitments
to both Vietnam and Taiwan." The Korean war gave new meaning
to the ideology of NSC 68 and the US defense budget skyrocketed
in response. In 1952 Harry Truman loses the election to Eisenhower
and Joseph Stalin died, and so a new era of American foreign
policy began.
The Korean conflict involved
an exercise of all four major pillars of American foreign policy,
and although historians have challenged the strategic significance
of the war it was a test of American resolve. The Truman administration
however focused primarily on three of the pillars, containment,
and commitment to intervention as well as safeguarding the international
market system. The first pillar deterrence was mainly used as
a check to Soviet expansion and somewhat quarantined Soviet
Power in the third world and E. Europe as a result of the NATO
alliance. However, soon Eisenhower would usher in a new age
of Atomic Diplomacy, and a doctrine of deterrence, based upon,
MAD,
mutually assured destruction, and strategic long range bombers.
Leffler maintains that actions
in Korea were the result of the US providing for its national
security interests in a global sense. All the containment alliances
in both the political and economic map of europe point to this.
America had almost complete control over the UN Security Council,
which made joint police action a virtual rubber stamp in Korea.
American troops were stationed in Japan and Japan's economy
became dependant upon the war machine as well. It was also percieved
that America's economy had now become tied to the war machine
as well.
The New Deal had only been
successful with moblizing the economy for the war effort.
It also provided the apparatus for the Marshall plan.
"American offcials sought to
cope with an array of challenges by implementing their own concepts
of national security… the mode of thinking about national security
that subsequently accellerated the arms race and made military
intervention in Asia possible was already in place."(America
in the World, 297)
The bureaucracy would continue
to perpetuate itself. It would change form with each successive
presidential doctrine and yet in no way did it decrease. Everything
was geared toward containment and this would be the last time
in the Cold War that America would enjoy such total power. The
definition of nationalism would remain unchanged for the next
several administrations and the Third world loomed large in
presidential imaginations, and of the potential for economic
stagnation and soviet hegemony, despite overall American hegemony
in the world. The next section will be an analysis of the Eisenhower
Administration in specific regards to his use of Deterrence
and the approaching era of nuclear parody between the US and
the Soviets.
Next Chapter:
Eisenhower,
the NSA & the 3rd World
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