The End of the Korean War: Some Reflections on Contingency and Structure

IO Historically Speaking · June 2003 The End of the Korean War: Some Reflections on Contingency and Structure William Stueck In the February 2003 issue ofHistorically SpeakinglyWinikdiscusses the end and immediate aftermath of the American Civil War in the context of "the contingent nature ofevents and the different paths that history could have taken." "Comparatively speaking," he argues, the Civil War ended well; the war's conclusion set the stage for a relativelypeaceful and quickreturn to stability and enduring national unity. It did not have to be so, he claims, as the alteration of individual decisions, sometimes apparently trivial ones, could have set in motion a very different pattern ofevents.1 Winik, it appears, has a predisposition to see glasses as halffull rather than halfempty, as he might easily have reasoned the other way and speculated on how much better things might have been had Abraham Lincoln decided not to attend the Ford Theater on the fateful night of April 14, 1865. More important, though, he is a proponent of the notion that small decisions frequently have big and enduring results. Thus it is a task of those who study the past to grapple not only with what was but what might have been—to engage, in other words, in counterfactual analysis. I will follow in Winik's footsteps here in examining another ending, that of the Korean War. In doing so, I intend at once to support his views and to qualify them. Like the conclusion ofthe American Civil War, with the tumultuous and in manyways disappointing period ofReconstruction that followed, the Korean War's end invites a numberofnegativejudgments. The armistice ofJuly 27, 1953 left the peninsula divided, with the forces of hostile regimes and their allies facing each other ominously across a four-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone. Weapons inspections and arms control broke down in less than five years, foreshadowing the current crisis over North Korea's development of weapons of mass destruction. South Korean President Syngman Rhee's refusal to sign the armistice eventually provided North Koreawith a rationale for ignoring its southern counterpart in initiatives to revise the cease-fire orreplace itwith a peace treaty. One victoryfor the United Stateswas the armistice's settlementonprisoners ofwar, which forbade "forced repatriation"; tens of thousands ofNorth Korean captives on the UN side opted not to return. But the armistice leftlarge numbers ofmissingAmerican combatants unaccounted for, a tragedy not fullyrectified to diis day. To say die least, whether from the U.S. perspective of 1953 ortoday, the end offightingin Korea leftfarfrom -ideal conditions. Yet, as with the end ofdie American Civil War, there was a brighter side. In fact, four postwar conditions made another full-scale bloodletting an unlikely occurrence. First, in contrast to the thirty-eighth parallel, a mere line on a map, the boundarybetween the two sides was now defensible. In the early stages ofarmistice talks, the communists pressed for a reversion to the old boundary, but the United States resisted and eventuallywon its point in favor ofthe line ofcontact. The new boundarydiscouraged die beliefonbothsides that a surprise attack could produce a major breakthrough. A second change was that the United States now stood willing to conclude a security treaty with South Korea, which it did quickly after the armistice. The Americans had been reluctantto take this step, butthey ultimately did so as a price for President Rhee's accession to, ifnot signature of, the armistice. The formalization of security arrangements between the two governments solidified the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense—a third postwar development , one manifested bythe continuingpresence of American forces. Even in the late 1970s, when the withdrawal ofU.S. ground troopswas high on PresidentJimmyCarter's agenda, there was no intention to remove American air power from the peninsula. A fourth change was that North Korea and its allies were aware ofdie potential damage to their interests that might derive from an aggressive military posture. North Korea had seen much ofits homeland leveled by American bombing, China had lost hundreds of thousands of troops and postponed development ofits first five-yearplan, and die Soviet Union had so distorted the economies of its Eastern European allies to keep up with theWest's global militarybuildup...