Rethinking Diplomatic and Strategic History

William Stueck. Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xiv + 285 pp. Illustrations, maps, photographs, notes, and index. $29.95.

Fifty years after the Korean War ended with the 1953 armistice, its legacy still shapes international relations. The war substantially contributed to the diplomatic and strategic pattern of the Cold War that persisted over the next four decades. Even with the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War elsewhere, Korea remained a divided country. The danger that war might resume on the Korean peninsula and might engulf the region in another tragedy has endured. Now, as in 1950, global implications of even a "limited war" in Korea are potentially quite serious. Rethinking the Korean War is therefore a major contribution to understanding current affairs as well as international history.

William Stueck established himself as one of the leading historians of the early Cold War with the publication of The Korean War: An International History (1995). That book, as its subtitle suggested, placed the war in the context of international history. Rather than focusing on Korea or on American involvement in the war, Stueck demonstrated how the events within that divided nation related to other aspects of the emerging Cold War throughout the world. He revealed the involvement of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China in North Korea's decision to launch the military offensive against South Korea on June 25, 1950. Kim Il-sung, North Korea's communist leader, wanted to destroy Syngman Rhee's southern government and unite the entire nation under his leadership. He could not do that without the blessing and subsequent support of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. By approving the attack, these Soviet and Chinese communist leaders turned an internal conflict within Korea into an international war that involved the United States and the United Nations. President Harry S. Truman and his top advisers immediately perceived that Kim had not acted alone. They understood North Korea's attack against South Korea as communist aggression and reacted accordingly within the context of the Cold War. The threat, in their judgment, was global. To avoid what they saw as the mistakes of the 1930s, when unchecked military aggression by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and I626mperial Japan had culminated in World War II, they decided to defend South Korea. Stopping communist aggression here, they hoped, would prevent another world war.

Both sides in the Korean War wanted more than a continuing division of the peninsula, but neither attained its goal. Kim and Rhee each wanted to unite the country under his own leadership. Their partners in Moscow and Beijing and in Washington, DC, respectively, also favored that outcome if it could be achieved at bearable costs. The communist leaders miscalculated in their assessment that North Korea could conquer the South without evoking an American response, or at least before the United States and its allies could deploy sufficient troops to Korea to prevent this victory. Contrary to their expectations, Truman quickly made and the United Nations subsequently endorsed the decision to appoint General Douglas MacArthur as commander of U.S. military forces, and then of the UN coalition, to halt the communist aggression. After his phenomenal success with the Inchon landing in mid-September, the general moved U.S. and other UN troops across of the 38^th parallel, which had marked the division between North and South Korea, and proceeded northward toward China. American leaders now escalated their aims, hoping to unite Korea under a pro-western, "democratic" government. The United Nations also succumbed to this temptation. They all miscalculated. Mao sent Chinese troops into Korea to stop the South Korean and UN forces from reaching the Yalu river and defeating North Korea. By 1951, both sides had failed to achieve victory and unification. For the next two years, the war settled into a stalemate along a line not far from the 38^th...