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The War against North Korea: From Commitment to the Pusan Perimeter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The Reds [were] using their now familiar tactics. The battalions were hit with a massive frontal attack by numerically superior forces. Then, after all American elements were engaged, large numbers of North Koreans moved around both flanks. Medical company captain, Korea, mid-July 19501 One military theory proposes that war occurs when a rival seems too weak to prevent a contestant from working its will without much risk. Another holds that it happens when an adversary fears that if it doesn’t act now, its opponent will amass enough power to win a future war at its convenience. Both concepts have validity for both sides in the case of Korea. Stalin thought the North Korean army should have little trouble overrunning the South but feared that a revitalized Japan, now allied with the United States, might reoccupy its old Korean springboard into continental Asia. The Truman administration thought the North Koreans were just a bunch of bandits, easy to defeat, but feared damage to its credibility if unwilling to commit its armed forces to this place in Asia where it had no plans to fight at all. Far better, from President Truman’s perspective, to wage a limited conflict in Korea than an all-out war in Europe, where the West had yet to amass the strength to defend this primary prize. Washington might ensure the military standing to deter World War III, provided it was not defeated The War against North Korea ✪ 57 by the KPA, which proved far more formidable than first perceived. It therefore had to shift naval forces from patrol of the Taiwan Strait, a related commitment the White House also made late in June 1950 lest supporters of Chiang Kai-shek not rally behind a “police action” for Korea. Truman avoided use of the word “war” lest it lead toward escalation into direct confrontation with the Kremlin, thought to be probing U.S. resolve through its proxy in Pyongyang. Pawn or not, this opponent seemed on the brink of victory in August 1950, a blessing for Douglas MacArthur, who was looking for leverage to extract consent for the type of operation he long had wished to execute. He promised that a giant pincer movement would crush the enemy between a “hammer and an anvil.” By seeming to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, it covered the theater commander in the grandeur of military genius. That mystique would prove more dangerous to the U.S. Army than the actual landing at Inchon.2 The American Decision to Fight You did everything you could to tell us you were not interested in Korea, but when the North Koreans went in, you put your troops there. We just can’t trust you Americans. Andrei Vyshinsky, Soviet Foreign Minister3 U.S. defense policy regarding Korea had been clear and virtually unanimous before the onset of the war. Democrats, Republicans, Congress, and the Defense Department wrote off the southern half of the peninsula, as did General MacArthur , who told the Joint Chiefs of Staff in January 1949 that it was “not within the capabilities of the United States to establish Korean security forces capable of meeting a full-scale invasion.” The State Department was the only agency to have registered dissent. It maintained that South Korean exports, primarily food and fuels, were vital to Japanese prosperity and that the former Korean ward of American occupation had become “an ideological battleground upon which our entire success in Asia may depend.” Still, as Dean Acheson would testify: “We cannot scatter our shots equally all over the world. We just haven’t got enough shots to do that.” The best he could do was delay departure until 1949 of a 7,000-man regimental combat team large enough to be a target but too small to be a shield. The U.S. ambassador would bluntly summarize the de facto plan: “Turn the problem over to the U.N. and get out of the way in case of trouble.”4 South Korean intelligence agencies had been monitoring Soviet delivery of heavy weapons to its North Korean ally. They predicted an invasion was likely to occur in June 1950, a prediction not accepted by Americans because no such danger registered in their own electronic and photo reconnaissance. Charles 58 ✪ Truman and MacArthur Willoughby, MacArthur’s chief of intelligence, was paying far more attention to...

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