Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Renown (review)

“Only God or the Government of the United States can keep me from the fulfillment of my mission” (p. 169), proclaimed General Douglas MacArthur. This one sentence perfectly reflects the hubris of this military figure during his period of fame from the Great Depression through the Korean War. That he linked himself to the highest powers speaks to the core problem President Harry Truman faced in firing him: MacArthur was above reproach. Fortunately, the heavens gave way to the state, to Truman’s credit.

Michael Pearlman’s definitive study sets the Truman-MacArthur conflict in the deepest political, diplomatic, and biographical frameworks so far undertaken by scholars. The result is a well-researched, familiar story which provides historians with a comprehensive look into the swirl of controversy surrounding Truman’s decision to remove MacArthur from command in Korea. With no pretense to reinvent the wheel, the author succeeds in joining together various strands of historiography, while biographical vignettes are strewn throughout this book of famous and lesser known players in the drama, such as Frank Lowe.

Pearlman digresses a bit into the U.S. diplomacy in Asia to build a case for MacArthur’s championing of Formosa, and his final chapter on the end of the war appears as if his editor wanted the book to be longer, but my criticism stems from his even-handed treatment of MacArthur. Truman had faults - he mishandled the public campaign for war, tiptoed around military brass, and his hot-headed temper got him in trouble. MacArthur, however, is simply unappealing, as Michael Schaller’s Douglas MacArthur: The Far Eastern General argues. One wonders, for instance, how he earned a reputation for genius in the first place. Clearly, his New Guinea campaign in World War II and the Inchon maneuver in 1950 were innovative, but what had he done before the wars to merit such deep respect that he could climb to a position of intimidating influence at home and abroad? By Korea, he was an old guy who should have retired, but simply could not stand being obsolete. More than that, Franklin Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, George Marshall, Truman, and Matthew Ridgeway, perhaps the only unsullied figure to emerge from the war, understood MacArthur as a supreme egotist, manipulator, and schizophrenic. As they did with Joe McCarthy, Republicans leapt at the chance to wield the General as a front for denigrating the Democrats, and thus demeaning U.S. foreign policy. MacArthur knew they would do so. In the end, Truman acted presidentially (and courageously, deciding to oust his nemesis essentially alone, and against the current of popular opinion), while MacArthur was petty.

Geniuses are ornery characters, but maybe less dangerous in laboratories than on battlefields. MacArthur was simply wrong about embracing Chiang Kai-shek, wrong about expanding the Korean War, wrong about threatening China and the Soviet Union, and wrong even about crusading for a return to the Philippines during World War II. He wasted diplomatic assets in doing so, and worse, he wasted lives. In the end, unlike Truman, he was just not decent.