RE: Should we have fought harder in the Korean War?
January 10, 2016 at 2:44 pm
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2016 at 3:05 pm by Anomalocaris.)
The Korean War as it turned out to be was in a large part due to miscalculations on both sides. But the enlargement of the war to directly involve China, thus leading to a stalemate and a permanently partitioned Korea is due to our miscalculation, in particular, those of the state department and Douglas MacArthur.
After the allied landing at incheon, North Korean forces were quickly routed, and allied forces occupied most of North Korea. It was clear the North Korean regime would not last as it is without direct Chinese intervention. China issued repeated warnings to the allied forces to not approach to within 100km of the Chinese border, and implied they would let the situation stand so long as allied forces do not directly push up against their borders. The war would have concluded as a conclusive allied victory, with a more or less unified Korea under western influence, Kim dead or in exile, and perhaps a narrow strip of neutral zone on the Korean side of Yalu River between China and Korea, had that warning been heeded.
But the state department and MacArthur completely neglected to possibilities that the Chinese were not bluffing, and either overlooked, or ignored, how serious a direct military threat this would appear from the other side of Yalu. So the US neither heeded the Chinese warning, nor prepared for Chinese intervention, and pushed blindly on towards the Chinese border, unprepared to meet serious military challenge. As a result the allied forces suffered a crushing defeat and were driven back out of North Korea within a few weeks of Chinese intervention, which happened exactly like the Chinese said it would happen. This is what set up the stalemate and the subsequent partition of Korea.
This was one alarmingly clear instances of courting diseaster by looking at the world through ideological lenses rather than through clear appreciation of the interests of all parties effected by our actions.
In this way, Korean War is a foreshadowing of the cause and manner of the diseaster in the middleeast and Afghanistan 50 years later.
After the allied landing at incheon, North Korean forces were quickly routed, and allied forces occupied most of North Korea. It was clear the North Korean regime would not last as it is without direct Chinese intervention. China issued repeated warnings to the allied forces to not approach to within 100km of the Chinese border, and implied they would let the situation stand so long as allied forces do not directly push up against their borders. The war would have concluded as a conclusive allied victory, with a more or less unified Korea under western influence, Kim dead or in exile, and perhaps a narrow strip of neutral zone on the Korean side of Yalu River between China and Korea, had that warning been heeded.
But the state department and MacArthur completely neglected to possibilities that the Chinese were not bluffing, and either overlooked, or ignored, how serious a direct military threat this would appear from the other side of Yalu. So the US neither heeded the Chinese warning, nor prepared for Chinese intervention, and pushed blindly on towards the Chinese border, unprepared to meet serious military challenge. As a result the allied forces suffered a crushing defeat and were driven back out of North Korea within a few weeks of Chinese intervention, which happened exactly like the Chinese said it would happen. This is what set up the stalemate and the subsequent partition of Korea.
This was one alarmingly clear instances of courting diseaster by looking at the world through ideological lenses rather than through clear appreciation of the interests of all parties effected by our actions.
In this way, Korean War is a foreshadowing of the cause and manner of the diseaster in the middleeast and Afghanistan 50 years later.
