July 27, 1953—More than three years after hostilities broke out, a ceasefire brought the Korean War to a standstill. An expected peace treaty was never formally concluded, leaving in place an unsettled state of affairs in which nuclear tensions have arisen, particularly over the last two decades.
One of the most popular nicknames of the conflict is “The Forgotten War,” but it could just as easily be titled “The Misunderstood War.” At the time it was fought, it was justified as a struggle to prevent another Munich-style appeasement of a totalitarian power. Twenty years later, after the film and TV series M*A*S*H, it was seen as a precursor of another treacherous Asian land conflict, Vietnam.
The war had its own unique challenges (notably the first postwar proxy battle between the superpowers; the first post-World War II conflict in which war was not formally declared; and the first postwar conflict in which limited war rather than unconditional surrender became Washington’s guiding policy).
But Korea did resemble these two seemingly sharply different wars—as well as the Iraq War, the war over Filipino independence, the Civil War, the War of 1812, and the American Revolution. All these conflicts flew in the face of the glorious military traditions celebrated in school texts, ending up being far more protracted and messy than many initially expected.
The war began on June 25, 1950, less than six months after Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, described an American “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific that ran through Japan, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines. Critics later charged that the exclusion of Korea gave Joseph Stalin the green light to aid North Korea in its push against the 38th Parallel.
By the time U.S. Lieutenant General William K. Harrison and his North Korean counterpart, General Nam Il, signed the ceasefire, the casualties and overall costs of the war were appalling, including the following (I am using median numbers, rounded to the nearest 100, from Twentieth Century Atlas’ list of death tolls for major wars and atrocities of the last century; precise counts, particularly at this late stage, are well-nigh impossible):
* North Korea: Military deaths 316,000, civilian deaths one million, with most of its industrial capacity devastated.
* South Korea: Military deaths 113,000; civilian deaths 547,000.
* China: 416,000, and threatened with a ruinous economic boycott by the U.N.
* United States: 54,000
* Other UN forces: 2,200
Notice the country missing: the Soviet Union. The closest I can find to any number for them—299—is contained on this Web site. I don’t see any reason not to accept this as true.
If that’s the case, it lends credence to a view I heard on a C-Span panel discussion held last year, following the publication of the late David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter. One panelist, diplomatic historian William Stueck, observed that for nearly two years, peace talks at Panmunjom got nowhere because of Stalin’s intransigence. Even Communist China, which had assisted the North, wanted a way out of the stalemate that had taken hold. Only Stalin’s death in March 1953 helped break the diplomatic impasse.
Now, if the U.S.S.R.’s low casualties do reflect the correct state of affairs, Stalin’s opposition makes perfect sense. Three hundred of his countrymen dead cut no ice with a paranoid madman who could have had that many purged in one night, if he wanted to. He was content to let everyone else pay the cost of the fight—even his ostensible allies, the North Koreans and the Chinese. The more they bled, the more they’d have to depend on him.
The other aspect of the war’s conclusion concerns the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who managed to do within eight months after taking office what had eluded his predecessor, Harry Truman, in two and a half years: settle the conflict.
Ike’s October 25, 1952 speech, in which he made the famous promise, “I shall go to Korea” in order to assess the situation—a vow on which he made good after his election, in early December—undoubtedly galled Truman, particularly with its sharp declaration that the war, “perhaps more than any other war in history, simply and swiftly followed the collapse of our political defenses.” The former President couldn’t have been made much happier with the successful conclusion of the conflict on the watch of the man who criticized him.
In light of what Stueck notes about Stalin’s death, the election of Eisenhower does not appear quite as decisive in bringing the war to a conclusion as it did before. In another way, however, it did.
As the leader of the “Crusade in Europe,” Ike had the credibility to make the ceasefire stick in a way that Harry Truman would never have been able to do, with a Gallup Poll approval-poll rating even lower than George W. Bush’s right now. (Though if—make that when—the current economic crisis worsens, that will undoubtedly change, to Dubya’s discomfort. The way popularity plunges in Presidencies—kind of like an out-of-control elevator—may it’s changed already!)
Against Truman, Ike’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, would have gone public vociferously with his opposition to a ceasefire that, for all intents and purposes, returned things to the status quo ante. Under Ike, Dulles had to swallow his misgivings or else, like William Jennings Bryan and Cyrus Vance, resign in protest and end his diplomatic career. As it was, only the lunatic fringe of the GOP was prepared to call the ceasefire appeasement. But the American people would have no part of calling its greatest World War II hero the second coming of Neville Chamberlain.
The ceasefire did create a Tale of Two Nations. One, South Korea, whose autocrat, Syngman Rhee, was forced to resign, went on to become an economic force in the East. The other, North Korea, saw untold misery after being brought to illegitimate birth by the totalitarian Soviet Union and Communist China.
While the U.S.S.R. has ceased to exist and China has taken with a vengeance to the advice of Deng Xiaoping that "To get rich is glorious," North Korea lives on as the Grendel of Marxism—isolated, resentful, yet still capable of inflicting massive, unexpected damage.
The last week-long vacation that I spent in DC, I felt profoundly moved during my visit to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. The image accompanying this posting (which I found on the Web) conveys some of what I’m talking about. Imagine this field of 19 poncho-clad, weary figures on patrol, trudging across rough terrain in freezing conditions.
It’s an image far removed from the equestrian glory of so many earlier wars, or even of Augustus St. Gaudens’ stalwart image of Admiral David Farragut in Madison Square Park in New York. But it’s certainly a reminder of the silent heroism needed to endure ambiguity and the political and military mistakes of those who send young men to war.
One of the most popular nicknames of the conflict is “The Forgotten War,” but it could just as easily be titled “The Misunderstood War.” At the time it was fought, it was justified as a struggle to prevent another Munich-style appeasement of a totalitarian power. Twenty years later, after the film and TV series M*A*S*H, it was seen as a precursor of another treacherous Asian land conflict, Vietnam.
The war had its own unique challenges (notably the first postwar proxy battle between the superpowers; the first post-World War II conflict in which war was not formally declared; and the first postwar conflict in which limited war rather than unconditional surrender became Washington’s guiding policy).
But Korea did resemble these two seemingly sharply different wars—as well as the Iraq War, the war over Filipino independence, the Civil War, the War of 1812, and the American Revolution. All these conflicts flew in the face of the glorious military traditions celebrated in school texts, ending up being far more protracted and messy than many initially expected.
The war began on June 25, 1950, less than six months after Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, described an American “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific that ran through Japan, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines. Critics later charged that the exclusion of Korea gave Joseph Stalin the green light to aid North Korea in its push against the 38th Parallel.
By the time U.S. Lieutenant General William K. Harrison and his North Korean counterpart, General Nam Il, signed the ceasefire, the casualties and overall costs of the war were appalling, including the following (I am using median numbers, rounded to the nearest 100, from Twentieth Century Atlas’ list of death tolls for major wars and atrocities of the last century; precise counts, particularly at this late stage, are well-nigh impossible):
* North Korea: Military deaths 316,000, civilian deaths one million, with most of its industrial capacity devastated.
* South Korea: Military deaths 113,000; civilian deaths 547,000.
* China: 416,000, and threatened with a ruinous economic boycott by the U.N.
* United States: 54,000
* Other UN forces: 2,200
Notice the country missing: the Soviet Union. The closest I can find to any number for them—299—is contained on this Web site. I don’t see any reason not to accept this as true.
If that’s the case, it lends credence to a view I heard on a C-Span panel discussion held last year, following the publication of the late David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter. One panelist, diplomatic historian William Stueck, observed that for nearly two years, peace talks at Panmunjom got nowhere because of Stalin’s intransigence. Even Communist China, which had assisted the North, wanted a way out of the stalemate that had taken hold. Only Stalin’s death in March 1953 helped break the diplomatic impasse.
Now, if the U.S.S.R.’s low casualties do reflect the correct state of affairs, Stalin’s opposition makes perfect sense. Three hundred of his countrymen dead cut no ice with a paranoid madman who could have had that many purged in one night, if he wanted to. He was content to let everyone else pay the cost of the fight—even his ostensible allies, the North Koreans and the Chinese. The more they bled, the more they’d have to depend on him.
The other aspect of the war’s conclusion concerns the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who managed to do within eight months after taking office what had eluded his predecessor, Harry Truman, in two and a half years: settle the conflict.
Ike’s October 25, 1952 speech, in which he made the famous promise, “I shall go to Korea” in order to assess the situation—a vow on which he made good after his election, in early December—undoubtedly galled Truman, particularly with its sharp declaration that the war, “perhaps more than any other war in history, simply and swiftly followed the collapse of our political defenses.” The former President couldn’t have been made much happier with the successful conclusion of the conflict on the watch of the man who criticized him.
In light of what Stueck notes about Stalin’s death, the election of Eisenhower does not appear quite as decisive in bringing the war to a conclusion as it did before. In another way, however, it did.
As the leader of the “Crusade in Europe,” Ike had the credibility to make the ceasefire stick in a way that Harry Truman would never have been able to do, with a Gallup Poll approval-poll rating even lower than George W. Bush’s right now. (Though if—make that when—the current economic crisis worsens, that will undoubtedly change, to Dubya’s discomfort. The way popularity plunges in Presidencies—kind of like an out-of-control elevator—may it’s changed already!)
Against Truman, Ike’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, would have gone public vociferously with his opposition to a ceasefire that, for all intents and purposes, returned things to the status quo ante. Under Ike, Dulles had to swallow his misgivings or else, like William Jennings Bryan and Cyrus Vance, resign in protest and end his diplomatic career. As it was, only the lunatic fringe of the GOP was prepared to call the ceasefire appeasement. But the American people would have no part of calling its greatest World War II hero the second coming of Neville Chamberlain.
The ceasefire did create a Tale of Two Nations. One, South Korea, whose autocrat, Syngman Rhee, was forced to resign, went on to become an economic force in the East. The other, North Korea, saw untold misery after being brought to illegitimate birth by the totalitarian Soviet Union and Communist China.
While the U.S.S.R. has ceased to exist and China has taken with a vengeance to the advice of Deng Xiaoping that "To get rich is glorious," North Korea lives on as the Grendel of Marxism—isolated, resentful, yet still capable of inflicting massive, unexpected damage.
The last week-long vacation that I spent in DC, I felt profoundly moved during my visit to the Korean War Veterans Memorial. The image accompanying this posting (which I found on the Web) conveys some of what I’m talking about. Imagine this field of 19 poncho-clad, weary figures on patrol, trudging across rough terrain in freezing conditions.
It’s an image far removed from the equestrian glory of so many earlier wars, or even of Augustus St. Gaudens’ stalwart image of Admiral David Farragut in Madison Square Park in New York. But it’s certainly a reminder of the silent heroism needed to endure ambiguity and the political and military mistakes of those who send young men to war.
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