CHAPTER FIVE

The Korean War

War’s very object is victory—not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.

—General Douglas MacArthur’s farewell address to Congress, April 1951

THE KOREAN WAR IS A MONUMENT to the inefficiency of war. The war dragged on for three years after North Korea’s June 1950 invasion of South Korea, killing millions of people and ending essentially with the reestablishment of the status quo ante, a roughly even split of the Korean peninsula between a Communist North and a non-Communist South. Why did the war drag on for so long? How did the belligerents try to end it, and on what terms?

The war aims and war-termination behavior of the belligerents in the Korean War were fundamentally shaped by both commitment and information dynamics. Neither commitment nor information dynamics in isolation can account for the evolution of war-termination behavior across the war, but together they provide a powerful and comprehensive account. In the first phase of the war from the June 1950 North Korean invasion to the eve of the September 1950 U.S. amphibious landing at Inchon, United States and UN forces suffered a series of combat setbacks that left them on the brink of being swept off the peninsula. Yet before the tide turned the U.S. established very high war aims of seeking the destruction of the Communist regime in North Korea. This decision cannot be accounted for by the hypothesis that belligerents should reduce war aims in reaction to combat setbacks. Rather, the U.S. established high war aims because it feared that any limited settlement leaving North Korea intact would be unstable, tempting a future North Korean attack on South Korea. The U.S. government perceived that only the unification of the Korean peninsula under a single non-Communist government would solve this Communist commitment credibility problem.

In the second phase of the war from mid-September 1950 until spring 1951, American forces experienced initial success following the amphibious landing at Inchon but then catastrophe when in late October China intervened to aid North Korea. Although American fears of Communist postwar noncompliance were not assuaged during this time period, the UN nevertheless reduced its war aims to restoration of the status quo ante. This change reflected shifts in the information environment, namely the U.S. updating its assessments of the likelihood of victory given Chinese intervention, and also its assessment of the costs of victory, as the conquest of North Korea would now likely involve escalation to direct attacks on China and in turn the very costly consequence of involving the Soviet Union in the war directly. As the theory predicts, the key factor that causes the U.S. to abandon its pursuit of absolute victory in the second phase is a rise in the expected cost of pursuing a solution to the commitment problem. In the first phase, the cost of achieving absolute victory to solve the commitment problem, winning a conventional war against North Korea alone, was seen as a price worth paying to achieve the goal of long-term South Korean security. In the second phase, the cost of achieving absolute victory to solve the commitment problem, fighting a nuclear World War III against China and the Soviet Union, was seen as a price not worth paying to achieve the goal of long-term South Korean security.

In the third and final phase from spring 1951 to the end of the war in summer 1953, general stasis existed both on the battlefield, as neither side scored a major victory, and at the diplomatic table, as concessions were scant and relatively minor when they did come. The length of this phase demonstrates the inefficiency of combat as a source of information, since a steady flow of information from combat about capabilities did not create bargaining space for two years. During this third phase, enduring commitment concerns did help shape in particular UN war-termination negotiations, causing the UN to resist a one-for-one POW swap and to resist reestablishing the 38th parallel as the border between North and South Korea.

JUNE 1950–SEPTEMBER 1950

The Korean peninsula was under Japanese control during World War II, and at war’s end it was divided into two states, Communist-controlled North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and nonCommunist South Korea (Republic of Korea), divided by the 38th parallel (latitude) (see figure 5.1).

With the blessings of Moscow and Beijing, North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, with the goal of unifying the entire Korean peninsula under a single Communist government.¹ After the North Korean invasion, the initial United Nations demands were for the restoration of the prewar border at the 38th parallel, as expressed in UN Security Council Resolution 82 of June 25, 1950, supported in public statements by President Harry Truman on June 27 and Secretary of State Dean Acheson on June 29, and discussed by Truman and Acheson during a June 29 National Security Council (NSC) meeting.² In a June 28 meeting of the NSC, Truman specifically ruled out military action north of the 38th parallel.³ However, South Korean President Syngman Rhee had been discussing the possibility of overthrowing the North Korean government even before the June 25 invasion.⁴

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Establishing High U.S. War Aims

There was gradual movement among American policymakers from July to September 1950 towards establishing the American war aim of crossing the 38th parallel and eliminating the North Korean government in Pyongyang, and establishing a single Korean state under non-Communist rule. The foundations for such a move were perhaps ironically laid by a 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution calling for the peaceful reestablishment of national independence in Korea. A December 1948 UN General Assembly resolution also called for the unification of Korea.⁵ Although Truman’s initial stated political aims were for the restoration of the status quo ante, the Joint Client of Staff (JCS) did formally approve the use of force north of the 38th parallel as early as June 29, although their message implied that such actions would be taken for purposes of force protection and undermining North Korean logistics, and no mention is made of authorizing the capture of territory above the 38th parallel.⁶ The Air Force took a similar position around the same time.⁷ Other voices in the U.S. government were calling for broader war aims, however. Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs John M. Allison called for the armed unification of Korea on July 1, and continued to advocate such a goal within government circles for the next several weeks.⁸ Perhaps the first public call for crossing the 38th parallel made after the June 25 invasion was Senator Robert Taft’s July 6 declaration that United Nations forces should cross the parallel and seize at least a portion of North Korea.⁹ Within the U.S. government, debate began to stir between those advocating crossing the 38th parallel (principally at the Defense Department and eventually the State Department Policy Planning Staff), and those opposed to such a move (some at the State Department, such as George Kennan, and the CIA).¹⁰ General Douglas MacArthur, who on July 8 was officially named commander of UN forces in Korea, by mid-July was considering the possible necessity of crossing the 38th parallel to occupy and unite all of Korea.¹¹

Truman’s thinking was running roughly parallel to MacArthur’s in terms of timing and direction. On July 13, Truman declared in a press conference that the question of whether to cross the parallel was on the table, although that same day when South Korean President Syngman Rhee declared that his forces would cross the 38th parallel, a U.S. Army spokesman declared that the U.S. would “use force if necessary” to prevent South Korean forces from crossing the parallel.¹² Six days later, Truman perhaps edged a bit further towards supporting unification by force, declaring in a statement to Congress that his administration supported the UN resolutions, which called for providing “the people of Korea an opportunity to choose their own form of government free from coercion.” In a separate speech to the public the same day, though, his language shaded more towards accepting the existence of North Korea, as he declared the U.S. goal to be to “help the Koreans preserve their independence.”¹³ In mid-July, Acheson was beginning to think about the longer-term problems of maintaining South Korean security after the status quo ante had been restored, but he stopped short of recommending reuniting Korea by force.¹⁴ He, Charles Bohlen, and Paul Nitze concurred in a Cabinet meeting at this time that U.S. war aims, especially regarding the question of moving north of the 38th parallel, could not yet be publicly clarified.¹⁵

By August, the Truman administration began to move closer to calling for the unification of the Korean peninsula under a single, nonCommunist regime. On August 1, Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Warren Austin a draft statement which declared the importance of liberating all of Korea.¹⁶Nine days later, Austin gave a speech to the Security Council reflecting the main themes of Acheson’s note. Austin declared, “Shall only a part of the country be assured this freedom? I think not. This question has already been decided by the General Assembly resolutions of 1947, 1948, and 1949 . . . Korea’s prospects would be dark if any action of the United Nations were to condemn it to exist indefinitely as ‘half slave and half free,’ or even one-third slave and two-thirds free. . . . The General Assembly has decided that fair and free elections should be held throughout the whole of the Korean peninsula.”¹⁷ The speech was at this point just a political feeler. A week earlier, Truman declared in an NSC meeting that U.S. forces were not yet authorized to launch attacks above the 38th parallel.¹⁸

U.S. war aims became more ambitious by the end of August. U.S. officials met with British and French representatives, expressing the belief that “the unification and independence of Korea” would be desirable, so long as it avoided general war with the Soviet Union or China.¹⁹ On September 1, the Truman administration agreed to authorize the use of force above the 38th parallel, as long as such actions could be carried out without Chinese or Soviet intervention.²⁰ In a public speech on that day, Truman declared that U.S. war aims included helping the Koreans become “free, independent, and united.”²¹ The following day, in off-the-record remarks to the press, Acheson noted that the UN was on record supporting a united Korea.²² This decision was codified further in NSC 81/1 issued on September 9 (Truman signed the document on September 11), which formally supported using force to cross the 38th parallel and unify North Korea, with the principal caveat that such actions should not incur Soviet or Chinese intervention.²³ This marked an official and important increase in American war aims from the beginning of the war.

Some scholars have viewed U.S. war aims in this period differently. They see NSC 81/1 as a compromise rather than a genuine expansion in war aims, because of the stated condition that unification of the Korean peninsula would be pursued under the assumption that neither China nor the Soviet Union will intervene. The real expansion of U.S. war aims, the argument goes, came in late September, after the success of the Inchon landing, as U.S. fears of Chinese and Soviet intervention eased.²⁴ However, the decision-makers themselves viewed NSC 81/1 as having marked the real change in U.S. war aims.²⁵ Chief of Staff Omar Bradley sent a memo to the Secretary of Defense on September 7 stating that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and MacArthur understood U.S. strategy now to be to destroy North Korean military strength above and below the 38th parallel, as a precursor to the establishment of a single non-Communist government for all of Korea.²⁶ Decades later, Bradley remarked in his memoirs, “NSC 81/1 reflected a drastic change in our concept of the Korean War. Our initial intervention had been launched as an effort to ‘save’ South Korea. Now we had broadened our war aims to include complete destruction of the North Korean Army and political unification of the country.”²⁷ Truman himself made a similar point in his memoirs, as did Secretary of State Dean Acheson. JCS member General J. Lawton Collins also emphasized in his memoirs that the JCS views that MacArthur’s mission required destroying the North Korean military and the ability to move north of the 38th parallel were reflected in NSC 81/1.²⁸

Combat Outcomes and the Increase in American War Aims

The information proposition in chapter 2 predicts that combat successes encourage war aims to be raised, and combat defeats encourage war aims to be lowered. This proposition would suggest that the increase in American war aims in NSC 81/1 followed improving UN fortunes on the battlefield. Combat successes would encourage the political leadership to improve its assessment of the relative balance of capabilities, thereby seeking greater gains from the other side as a condition for ending the war.

However, the historical record reveals the opposite pattern: the increase in war aims followed battlefield setbacks. At the outset of the conflict, American decision-makers believed that South Korea had at least a fighting chance to repel a North Korean attack. North Korea enjoyed modest but not overwhelming advantages over the defending forces, as Pyongyang’s forces outnumbered South Korean forces 85,000 to 69,000 (there were about 500 American troops in South Korea at the time of the invasion), and enjoyed some other advantages, such as possessing about 150 tanks to none for South Korea and more combat experience among its troops. South Korea also did not have planes, mines, large mortars, recoilless rifles, or extensive ammunition stocks.²⁹ However, many were confident that South Korea could defend itself. General William L. Roberts, commander of the American Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG), told the U.S. ambassador to Japan before the invasion that the South Korean forces could “hold the Commies” in the event of war.³⁰ Elsewhere, he bragged that the South Korean military was “the best doggoned shooting army outside the United States.”³¹ Although the U.S. Ambassador to Korea had been requesting an increase in military aid, he did not indicate that South Korea faced military inferiority, and in fact claimed that the South Korean military enjoyed better training, small arms, morale, and leadership. U.S. intelligence agreed.³² Not all were so bullish, though. A lower-ranking KMAG officer was more pessimistic, reporting before the war to the U.S. ambassador to South Korea that the South Korean military faced serious deficiencies vis-a`-vis the North in terms of quality and quantity of military equipment, in areas such as artillery.³³

The battlefield disasters in the first weeks of the war provided new information that belied peacetime confidence in South Korean fighting power, and caused UN decision-makers to lower their estimates of the likelihood and ease of eventual victory. North Korean forces achieved great combat successes initially and pushed South Korean and American troops steadily southward. American intelligence reports on July 6 and 7 reported North Korean forces as enjoying “extremely high” morale, effective logistics, and tactical competence, while making progress against U.S. forces throughout the Korean peninsula.³⁴ MacArthur’s July 9 message to the Joint Chiefs of Staff begging for an additional four divisions is blunt: “The situation in Korea is critical. . . . to date our efforts against his armor and mechanized forces have been ineffective. His armored equipment is of the best and the service thereof, as reported by qualified veteran observers, as good as any seen at any time in the last year. They further state that the enemy’s infantry is of thoroughly first class quality.”³⁵ MacArthur repeated these concerns at a July 13 meeting with Generals Collins and Hoyt Vandenberg.³⁶ His July 19 communication to Truman was a bit more upbeat, extolling the successes of the Eighth Army at stemming the Communist advance, although stopping short of making definite predictions or discussing imminent victory.³⁷ At his August 6 meeting with Averell Harriman, MacArthur stressed the continuing need for more troops, even those just armed with small arms, or who were World War II veterans.³⁸

MacArthur’s reportage aside, the reality on the ground was undeniably grim. By mid-August, South Korean and United Nations forces had been driven into a small perimeter in the southeastern corner of South Korea, around the port city of Pusan (see figure 5.1). North Korean forces had performed better than the UN had anticipated, and it was not clear that the UN forces would be able to maintain even this perimeter. In midAugust, British military leaders estimated that UN forces had only an even chance of maintaining their toehold in Korea, and guessed that pushing back to the 38th parallel would take at least three to four months.³⁹ The Defense Department in Washington agreed. A Defense memo sent to Truman on August 30 claimed that a military stalemate was likely to develop around the Pusan Perimeter, and that such a stalemate “could last several months.”⁴⁰ Matters did not improve in early September, when North Korea launched a highly threatening offensive against the Pusan Perimeter, inflicting the highest casualties yet experienced in the war.⁴¹ The most dangerous breakthrough was parried only when a Marine unit, which had been assigned for the planned amphibious landing at Inchon, was redeployed to the front line. The attack was sufficiently threatening that the ground forces commander, General Walton Walker, at one point considered withdrawing from the Pusan Perimeter back to the last ditch “Davidson Line.”⁴² Walker did order on September 4 that UN military headquarters be moved from Taegu, located on the edge of the Pusan Perimeter and in danger of being overrun, to the town of Pusan itself, located deep inside the perimeter, away from the front lines.⁴³

In short, North Korea enjoyed combat successes from late June to early September, and the UN was forced to lower its assessments of the relative balance of power. America’s surprising decision to increase its demands of North Korea in the face of combat setbacks is in direct contrast to the predictions of the information proposition of chapter 2. The information proposition should instead predict that the UN ought to lower its aims, perhaps to requesting a ceasefire at the Pusan Perimeter line, or at the minimum to maintain its demand for the restoration of the status quo ante at the 38th parallel.

“I Wish I Had That Man’s Optimism”

Perhaps the UN did suffer these short-term defeats in summer 1950, but was confident that soon the tide would turn, so the increase in war aims was consistent with the UN expectations for the likely eventual outcome, if not recent combat outcomes. One might argue that MacArthur’s planned amphibious landing behind enemy lines, at the South Korean port of Inchon, created enough hope to inspire the increase in war aims. The September 15 landing was spearheaded by the First Marine Division, and did drastically turn the course of the UN war effort from teetering on the brink of suffering Communist conquest to a rout of North Korean forces. However, the landing occurred after the U.S. had officially raised its war aims by formally enacting NSC 81/1. The key question is, before the landing occurred, were American decision-makers highly confident that it would work, enough that they were willing to raise their war aims in the hope of future victory even in the face of recent battlefield failure?

Despite its ultimate success, many military and political decisionmakers had grave doubts about the landing’s chances. A number of objective factors indicated that the Inchon landing would be extremely risky. The tides at Inchon are the worst in East Asia and among the severest in the world, greatly limiting the amount of time a landing party would have to come ashore. There are no beaches; only piers, seawalls, and mudflats. The approach channel to Inchon is very difficult to navigate, and any invasion fleet would face mines and enemy gunfire in the channel. The channel is also narrow, meaning that if one vessel ran aground or was damaged by enemy fire, ships behind it would be unable to move. The tides also meant that there were only three possible days of landing in the fall of 1950 (and on each of these days the window for landing was narrow), worrisome because it would be easy for the North Koreans to also calculate when these windows of vulnerability were open, and to beef up defenses on those days and times. Securing two islands before the city, a necessity, would sacrifice the element of surprise. There was limited room for landing craft to come ashore to bring troops and supplies, and even once seized the port of Inchon had limited capacity for serving as a beachhead to supply a major UN offensive. The harbor itself enjoyed seawalls 12–14 feet high, requiring ladders to surmount, and while doing so assault forces would come under fire from well-concealed defenders. Further, the landing force would have to be assembled in Japan, an area crawling with Communist spies. Indeed, a North Korean spy was captured in Japan a week before the Inchon landing with the invasion plans in his possession. If North Korea had discovered the UN plans, then MacArthur’s crucial advantage of surprise would have been lost. One naval officer declared that, “We drew up a list of every conceivable and natural handicap, and Inchon had ‘em all.” Another declared, “Make up a list of amphibious ‘don’ts,’ and you have an exact description of the Inchon operation.”⁴⁴

Interestingly, MacArthur chose Inchon as a landing site because so many objective factors seemed to line up against the success of an assault. In his thinking, these difficulties made it the last place the North Koreans would expect a landing. The total surprise of such an attack would guarantee its success. MacArthur noted that such an approach of attacking a spot that seemed invulnerable was exactly what allowed forces under the British General James Wolfe to capture Quebec in 1759, climbing lightly guarded cliffs to surprise the French defenders.⁴⁵ Indeed, there are other historical examples of military strategies working because they are risky, causing target areas to be left undermanned by unsuspecting defenders. Roman forces conquered New Carthage in the Second Punic War when Hannibal’s brother Mago left a city wall unprotected because it adjoined a lagoon thought to be impassable. In December 1941, outnumbered Japanese forces entered and eventually conquered Singapore through mangrove swamps thought to be impassable, unmolested by British heavy artillery pointing seaward. German tanks conquered France in weeks in 1940 because French forces left the heavily forested Ardennes region undermanned. German forces made the same move in December 1944 during the Ardennes offensive when American forces repeated the French mistake and left only a small force to guard the region.⁴⁶

Most high-level decision-makers were not nearly as confident as MacArthur. Naval officers, generals, admirals, marines, fliers, and even MacArthur’s own staff expressed their opposition to the Inchon plan in August.⁴⁷ In late August, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) members General J. Lawton Collins and Admiral Forrest Sherman traveled from Washington to Korea to express their concerns about the plan, and perhaps to talk MacArthur out of it. MacArthur gave a briefing to Collins, Sherman, and other high-level officers, and all recognized MacArthur’s presentation to be highly persuasive, although MacArthur conceded (perhaps out of showmanship) that the odds for success were 5,000 to 1.⁴⁸ Doubts remained even after the briefing, however. Sherman, Admiral C. Turner Joy, Admiral Arthur Radford, and two Marine Corps generals agreed that Posung-Myon would be a better landing site, and tried to convince MacArthur to change the location of the landing. MacArthur refused.⁴⁹ Rear Admiral James Doyle would only allow that the operation was “not impossible.”⁵⁰ Only after a follow-up one-on-one meeting with MacArthur was Sherman eventually won over, although his lingering concerns are reflected in his remark after this last meeting, “I wish I had that man’s optimism.”⁵¹ After the August 1950 briefing, Collins and Sherman traveled back to Washington to brief Truman and the Joint Chiefs. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Omar Bradley, records that Collins was quite pessimistic, “expressing grave doubt that it would work.” Bradley himself was unpersuaded, declaring even in hindsight, after the landing had succeeded terrifically, that the proposed Inchon landing “was the riskiest military proposal I had ever heard of. At that time we were not certain MacArthur could even hold the Pusan perimeter. It seemed imprudent that a large portion of his staff be preoccupied with a blue sky scheme like Inchon rather than the immediate and grave threat to Pusan.”⁵²

Regardless, the JCS officially approved the Inchon operation on August 28, although with some reservation, indicating their desire to continue to receive information about planning and preparation. Secretary of State Dean Acheson records in his memoirs that both the JCS and Truman approved the Inchon plan only “reluctantly.” In Truman’s handwritten notes of his briefing with Sherman and Collins after their return to Washington, he does not mention the Inchon operation, but does note that “MacArthur is acting up.” Years later, after the landing had of course succeeded, Truman wrote in his memoirs that he had had confidence in the plan.⁵³ Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson supported the plan.⁵⁴ On September 7, the JCS sent a second message to MacArthur more firmly expressing their reservations.⁵⁵ MacArthur felt the doubts creeping into the second message, later recounting that the message “chilled me to the marrow of my bones. The message expressed doubt of success and implied the whole movement should be abandoned.”⁵⁶

In short, the claim that war aims were raised in anticipation of great success at Inchon is unsustainable. The decision to increase American war aims was already well on its way towards adoption in late August, before Truman and the JCS had been persuaded to cross their fingers and approve the landing. Further, there were widespread doubts about the feasibility of the operation at the highest political and military levels, doubts that were based on operational realities. At most, one might expect that confidence in the Inchon landing might have inspired the U.S. to demand the restoration of the status quo ante, but it is unreasonable to propose that the increase in American war aims was driven by confidence in the Inchon landing.

Although most American decision-makers did not have great faith in the Inchon plan, perhaps they were spurred to increase American war aims by faith that a wave of American reinforcements would soon tip the balance decisively against North Korea and allow a successful ground offensive. The decision to conquer North Korea, the argument would run, was driven by confidence that such reinforcements were coming. The problem with this claim is that such a wave of reinforcements was at least several months off as of August 1950, and during August–September the ability of UN forces to maintain the Pusan Perimeter for such a period was in doubt. The shortage of manpower in the near and medium term was evident to all. In August, one congressman suggested to Secretary of Defense Johnson that American forces in Korea be equipped with bulletproof vests because of the limited pool of reinforcements.⁵⁷ As a matter of record, no American reinforcements arrived in Korea in 1950 after mid-September. By September, essentially all trained units in the American Army other than the 82nd Airborne Division had been sent to Korea.⁵⁸ These deployments to Korea strained American global conventional strength. Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall noted in an internal memo on September 26, 1950 that airlift capacity had been redeployed from Europe to Asia, threatening NATO’s ability to renew an airlift should the Soviet Union again blockade West Berlin.⁵⁹ The National Guard had been called into military service, but would not be ready for combat until March 1951.⁶⁰ The risk, therefore, was that by refusing to seek a limited war outcome of either the status quo ante or perhaps an armistice around the Pusan Perimeter, the U.S. and UN were running the risk that the Inchon landing would fail, and U.S./UN forces would be completely swept off the Korean peninsula before reinforcements could arrive in 1951. At that point, the U.S. would either have to concede the annexation of South Korea, or continue the war without a foothold on the Korean peninsula, the latter requiring a risky and costly amphibious landing somewhere in South Korea, launched from Japan.

Additionally, some thought that time was not on the side of UN forces, that the UN could not afford to wait until 1951 for reinforcements. MacArthur argued on August 8 that “a. Time works against us in the Korean situation. b. Early military victory is essential. c. Delay in achieving it increases the chance of direct military participation [by] Chinese Communist or Soviet forces, or both.”⁶¹ An August 24, 1950 Defense memo expressed the concern that should a military stalemate develop around the Pusan Perimeter, even if UN forces could eventually build up enough strength to launch a successful offensive, the combination of a Soviet peace offensive, pressure from non-aligned and other UN members, and growing public discontent over casualties might force the UN to accept a settlement rather than press for military victory.⁶²

In short, the expansion of American war aims to seek the liquidation of the North Korean government can not be attributed to (increased) American confidence in the balance of capabilities. North Korean forces had fought surprisingly well, up through early September. UN forces were pinned down in the Pusan Perimeter. Substantial reinforcements would not arrive for several months, and the ability of U.S. forces to maintain the Pusan Perimeter for that long was in doubt. The Inchon operation did break open the war, but American war aims expanded or had started to expand before it had been launched and indeed before concerns about the operation had been fully allayed. Many in the military and foreign policy establishment had grave doubts about the likely success of the operation before it was launched.

Reassurance about Soviet/Chinese Intentions?

Another possibility is that Truman became emboldened to conquer North Korea because he became reassured in the first few weeks following the June 25 invasion that doing so would not risk Soviet or Chinese involvement. That is, new information about possible third-party involvement encouraged the U.S. to establish high war aims. One historian argued that in the first few weeks of the war American decision-makers received a number of signals that the USSR and China would not become involved in the fighting (which at that point was all taking place south of the 38th parallel), and these signals helped the Americans consider “further bold steps.”⁶³

This interpretation has three problems, however. First, the American leadership was fairly confident that the Soviets and Chinese wished to stay out of the Korean conflict even from the very outset of the crisis, when Truman ruled out striking north of the 38th parallel. Several political and military leaders, including Acheson, Kennan, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, General James Burns, Admiral Sherman, and Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup all concluded in the four or five days after the June 25 invasion that the Soviets did not look at the Korean conflict as an opportunity for initiating a general war.⁶⁴ Second, even by early September, the American leadership was not completely reassured of Soviet/ Chinese noninvolvement, as NSC 81/1 allowed for military action north of the 38th parallel only under the condition of Soviet/Chinese noninvolvement. Third, the Soviets/Chinese started sending tougher, not weaker, signals as time passed. The Chinese foreign minister made a speech linking North Korean and Chinese security on August 20.⁶⁵ More ominously, an article published in China on August 26 proclaimed that “North Korea’s defense is our defense. North Korea’s victory is our victory.”⁶⁶

The Credibility of Communist Commitments

The expansion of American war aims in August–September 1950 is best explained by a focus on American concerns about the credibility of Communist commitments to abide by a peace settlement. Recall that the commitment proposition in chapter 3 forecasts that a belligerent may pursue the absolute defeat of the opponent, even in the face of combat setbacks, if it fears the adversary might renege on a war-ending settlement. It is especially likely to do so if the cost of solving the commitment problem is acceptable in relation to the severity of the threat posed if the warending commitment were to be broken.

In the summer of 1950, this was the principle argument decisionmakers made in favor of the expansion of war aims, that North Korea would likely defect on any war-ending agreement, and the only true path to stability on the Korean peninsula was to eliminate the Communist government. The general context was a fear in the relative growth of Communist economic and nuclear power. In particular, it was feared that closing the nuclear gap might encourage Communist conventional aggression.⁶⁷ American decision-makers were not confident that North Korea would accept a peace settlement restoring the 38th parallel as the Korean– Korean border. The 38th parallel itself was an arbitrary political boundary, not possessing any unique geographic qualities that made the defense of South Korea easier. Any peace restored on the basis of the 38th parallel was likely to be unstable, inviting future Communist attack at a time of their choosing. As General Collins summarized, the JCS felt that “if you stopped at the 38th Parallel, then the North Koreans, supported by the Chinese and the Russians, could once again attack when they were ready to.”⁶⁸ This was also MacArthur’s understanding of the logic behind destroying the North Korean army and unifying the peninsula, and the reasoning behind MacArthur’s famous April 5, 1951 statement to Congress which serves as the epigraph for this chapter, that decisive victory should be sought to establish lasting peace: “War’s very object is victory—not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.”⁶⁹ Future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, then a State Department consultant to Secretary of State Acheson, argued as early as July 14, 1950 that “it would be folly to go back to the division of Korea at the 38th parallel,” as doing so would be giving “asylum to the aggressor” which would “allow the North Korean army to retire in good order with its armor and equipment and re-form behind the 38th Parallel from whence it could attack.”⁷⁰ Allison made similar points in the weeks preceding NSC 81/1.⁷¹ The Department of Defense concurred. A July 31 Defense memorandum stated that if UN forces stopped at the 38th parallel, “the former military instability would again obtain. The USSR could rearm a new striking force for a second attempt. Thus, a return to the status quo ante bellum would not promise security.”⁷²

Acheson was also thinking about the long-term postwar security of South Korea in the first half of July.⁷³ He understood that the South Korea question would not go away once this North Korean attack had been repelled, and that, “It seems too abstruse to ask the country to sacrifice men and money to retake Korea to support the UN, and then let it slip away by default. . . . I cannot see the end of it. In other words, as the Virginians say, we have bought a colt.” He also worried (again, in July 1950) about whether an indefinite American commitment to South Korean security would be a feasible solution to the long-term problem of the North Korean threat: “In the longer run, if we should succeed in reoccupying the South, the question of garrisoning it and supporting it would arise. This would be a hard task for us to take on, and yet it seems hardly sensible to repel the attack and then abandon the country.”⁷⁴ Indeed, as early as the first week of October 1950, the JCS began making plans for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Korea.⁷⁵

Even those opposing striking north of the 38th parallel recognized that Communist commitments to peace might not be credible. Kennan, who opposed crossing the 38th parallel, observed that the U.S. rejected the Indian peace proposal (accepted by China on July 10, 1950) of restoring the status quo ante in Korea in exchange for Chinese entry into the United Nations because the U.S. feared doing so would leave South Korea vulnerable to future North Korean attack.⁷⁶ He advocated a grander (and probably politically infeasible) approach, in which the U.S. and USSR would agree on several actions, including the restoration of the 38th parallel as the border as well as the American demilitarization of Japan. He speculated that such a multifaceted deal would be self-enforcing, for if one side defected on one part of the deal (for example, a new invasion of South Korea), the other could retaliate by reneging on another part of the deal (for example, the U.S. could remilitarize Japan). In an August 23 memo to Acheson, Kennan wrote that his proposed deal “does not imply any written agreement with the Russians. In fact, to try to negotiate anything of that sort would probably be disastrous. It implies only a general meeting of the minds, the sanction for which would lie in the readiness of either side to proceed with its part of the arrangement. Thus channels should be left open so that further Russian tactlessness in Korea could be followed by an immediate reintroduction of U.S. forces into Japan. If, on the other hand, we were to re-occupy Japan without provocation, the Russians could consider all bets off with respect to Korea.”⁷⁷

Why did Truman and other members of the American government doubt the credibility of a Communist commitment to end the war on terms that would respect South Korea’s existence? American trust of the Soviet Union had been spiraling downwards since the end of World War II due to a series of events including perceived Soviet reneging on elections in Poland, the blockade of West Berlin, and the Soviet-supported 1949 coup in Czechoslovakia. As one historian pithily put it, “Truman believed the worst about the Soviets by 1950.”⁷⁸ The invasion of South Korea solidified American mistrust of the Soviet Union and Communism more generally, entrenching the belief that Communism was fundamentally aggressive and opportunistic.⁷⁹ As Secretary of Defense Johnson stated in Senate testimony in summer 1950, “The very fact of this aggression . . . constitute[s] undeniable proof that the forces of international communism possess not only the willingness, but also the intention, of attacking and invading any free nation within their reach at any time that they think they can get away with it. The real significance of the North Korean aggression lies in this evidence that, even at the resultant risk of starting a third world war, communism is willing to resort to armed aggression, whenever it believes it can win.”⁸⁰ Acheson agreed: “The international Communist movement has shown that it does not hesitate to use force to conquer a sovereign and independent nation, where it can hope to do so successfully.”⁸¹ The invasion of South Korea was seen by Truman and others as part of an enduring and global Communist strategy, similar to Hitler’s strategy in the 1930s, to probe Western weakness at every opportunity.⁸² Any regime so deeply embracing opportunistic aggression would be likely to break any commitment to peace, attacking at its first chance, perhaps when the balance of forces had swung fortuitously, even if temporarily, in its direction.

The American decision to establish high war aims in September 1950 demonstrates the importance of expected costs as a crucial intervening factor determining whether commitment or information dynamics will predominate. When the information and commitment proposition make diverging predictions, as when a belligerent fears the adversary will violate a war-ending commitment but it is losing battles, then a relatively low cost of continued fighting in relation to the danger of a broken warending commitment can encourage the belligerent to eschew negotiations and press on for absolute victory. In this case, American expectations of the costs of continued fighting, even in pursuit of the conquest of North Korea, were low as long as China and the Soviet Union stayed out of the conflict. The U.S. was confident the Chinese and Soviets would not intervene to save North Korea not because the Yalu river (which forms the China–North Korea border) forms an impenetrable military barrier, but rather because the American assumption in August–September 1950 was that China and the Soviet Union wanted to avoid direct clashes with the forces of the U.S. or its allies, and instead use catspaws like North Korea to test Western resolve.⁸³

Some might question whether U.S. aims actually increased from late June to early September, or whether U.S. aims are better viewed as emerging over this time period, with initial statements about merely restoring the 38th parallel (in late June) reflecting immediate reactions, with later aims of overthrowing the North Korean government (by early September) evolving from more careful consideration. The evidence seems to be more consistent with the latter view. The initial decision not to strike north of the 38th parallel was secondary to the more important decision to send American and UN forces to South Korea’s defense. Debate unfolded in a relatively conventional manner across the summer, as the principal actors from different branches of government weighed in with their views, in meetings, public speeches, and memoranda. Notably, many key advocates within the administration maintained relatively stable views about striking north of the 38th parallel throughout the summer. MacArthur, Allison, Dean Rusk, and other hawks advocated striking above the 38th parallel from as early as mid-July, while Kennan, Chip Bohlen, Paul Nitze, and other doves advocated against striking above the 38th parallel from back around the same period. Ultimately, the debate coalesced with NSC81/1, a document that in some sense was a compromise between the two views, since it favored attacking north of the 38th parallel and overthrowing the North Korean government, although only under the conditions of Soviet/Chinese noninvolvement. It reflected not so much a change in the terms of debate since late June, but rather the outcome of the policymaking process, of the American desire to solve the Communist commitment problem, but only if the costs of such an accomplishment could be kept reasonable through the localization of the conflict.

SEPTEMBER 1950–SPRING 1951

A very important caveat to the desire to push beyond the 38th parallel was concern about the possibility of Chinese or Soviet intervention into the Korean War. American consideration of this risk is very much in line with the theoretical structure of this book, as a fearful belligerent will seek to solve a credible commitment problem only when doing so is seen as bearing acceptable costs. This condition cropped up repeatedly in discussions of crossing the parallel, was expressed explicitly in NSC-81/1, and was the main criticism of crossing the parallel from people like Kennan. Allison was perhaps the only individual who supported crossing the parallel even if it meant World War III, writing on July 24, “That this may mean war on a global scale is true—the American people should be told and told why and what it will mean to them. When all legal and moral right is on our side why should we hesitate?”⁸⁴

Unfortunately, the presumption that Chinese intervention could be avoided proved to be incorrect, as Chinese military forces began entering North Korea in October, and within a few weeks the wave of American successes since Inchon had been completely reversed. Since the war, scholars have debated as to whether the Chinese might have intervened anyway if the 38th parallel had not been crossed or if UN forces had crossed the parallel but stayed away from the Sino–North Korean border.⁸⁵ Regardless, the combat situation in Korea took a disastrous turn in November 1950 with the commencement of the first major Chinese offensive. The true extent of Chinese involvement emerged slowly, although by the end of November it was evident that Chinese intervention was significant and threatening to UN forces. MacArthur reported on November 28 that “we face an entirely new war,” and that the possibility of quickly ending the war and unifying Korea was now gone. He later said UN forces would have to be evacuated absent a ceasefire or some radical change in UN military strategy, such as air attacks on—and a blockade of—China, the use of nuclear weapons, and/or the procurement of Nationalist Chinese reinforcements from Taiwan.⁸⁶ That same day, Truman met with the NSC. Talk had already begun about finding some way to end the war soon, perhaps with a ceasefire, as a means of avoiding further escalation and long-term commitment.⁸⁷ The military situation was bad enough in early December that Washington considered the possibility that UN forces might have to retreat to beachheads around Inchon, Wonsan, and Pusan, and even these beachheads might not be tenable in the face of Chinese and Russian bombing.⁸⁸ There was opposition at this point to offering a ceasefire, because it was seen that doing so after defeat would communicate weakness to the Communists.⁸⁹ This view persisted until April, when it was thought that no new peace proposals could be offered until after the spring offensive, for fear of showing weakness.⁹⁰ Note that this unwillingness to offer concessions in the face of battlefield setbacks is inconsistent with the chapter 2 information proposition that combat defeats make concessions more likely. It is arguably consistent with a broader information outlook, as American decision-makers feared that the very act of making a concession itself would send a credible signal of weakness.

Even past January 1951 when the military environment began to stabilize, Chinese intervention completely changed the UN decision calculus. The UN had at this point three choices: keep the fighting within Korea, escalate the fighting to include (possibly nuclear) attacks on China, or escalate the fighting to include (most likely nuclear) attacks against China and the Soviet Union. These three options are progressively more costly and risky, but also progressively offered more decisive solutions to the fear of an adversary reneging on a war-ending agreement. Specifically, if conquest, destruction, or foreign-imposed regime change could be visited on North Korea, China, and the USSR, then this of course would offer the most complete solution to the possible Communist noncompliance problem.

The third of these options was dismissed quickly, if for no other reason than American military weakness in relation to the Soviet Union at the time.⁹¹ Indeed, the government exiled the occasional official who called for preventive war against the USSR, such as Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews, who was made ambassador to Ireland, and General Orville Anderson, who “decided” to retire.⁹² When members of Congress in a private August 14, 1950 meeting informed Acheson that public interest in preventive war was growing, Acheson quickly dismissed it as out of the question.⁹³ The second of these options, attacking China, attracted closer consideration. It, however, was ultimately dismissed. There was fear that attacking China directly might incur Soviet intervention, in part because of the Sino–Soviet alliance. Also, American allies, and Britain in particular, were deeply opposed to risking a general war, and American decision-makers did not want to risk alienating allies, especially because UN forces were highly dependent on the contributions of British forces.⁹⁴ As JCS Chairman Bradley memorably put it in 1951, war with China would involve America “in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”⁹⁵

This left the first option, keeping the fighting contained within the Korean peninsula. Given its unwillingness to expand the war to the Chinese mainland or to the Soviet Union itself, the administration had at least informally abandoned thoughts of reunifying Korea by force and instead was committed to seeking a ceasefire soon after the front stabilized in January 1951.⁹⁶ Indeed, in a frank February 2 conversation between then Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk and representatives of nations contributing to the UN military coalition in Korea, Rusk indicated that military action beyond the 38th parallel was now essentially off the table, and that the current goal was to achieve a stable ceasefire.⁹⁷ On February 7, Acheson said in a confidential memo that unification of Korea by force was “no longer feasible,” given Chinese intervention.⁹⁸ These views received more formal description in mid-February memos from the State Department.⁹⁹

This reduction in war aims was formally expressed in NSC 48/5, approved by Truman on May 17. While this document retained as a theoretical goal the political (but not military) unification of Korea, it set out as minimum U.S. goals the restoration of the status quo ante—that is, recognition of the authority of the Republic of Korea over all territory south of the 38th parallel.¹⁰⁰ Retired General George Marshall (soon to be Secretary of Defense) expressed these views in a secret meeting with a Chinese contact in Kowloon on the same day, that the U.S. was now interested not in conquering North Korea but rather in restoring as much of the status quo ante as possible.¹⁰¹ These changes in U.S. war aims were made public by Acheson during public hearings in early June 1951. He stated that the U.S. stood for the political unification of Korea, but that the U.S. would be willing to accept a ceasefire that recognized a political division at the 38th parallel.¹⁰²

American goals were reduced despite enduring American fears that North Korea might violate any war-ending agreement. The credible commitment fears of 1950 certainly did not disappear by 1951. Why, then, did the U.S. reduce its war-termination demands? U.S. concerns about Communist commitment credibility had not diminished. As discussed in chapter 3, information dynamics are more likely to override commitment dynamics, as they did here, when the expected costs of continued war go up and the threat posed by post-agreement defection is less than catastrophic. In this case, the Chinese intervention substantially increased American assessments of pursuing increments of the good beyond the 38th parallel. Further, the defense of South Korea was important but not critical to American national security interests, in relation to goals like defending Western Europe or America itself. If South Korea were completely overrun after peace was struck, this would damage but not severely threaten American national security. This combination of escalating estimates of the costs of continued war, coupled with the lack of a direct and dire threat to national security made the solution of the credible commitment problem prohibitively expensive for the United States.

There was also the first recognition of an alternative approach to alleviating the Communist commitment problem, now that eliminating the Communist government in Pyongyang was off the table. The fear in 1950 had been that after war’s end, eventual U.S. force withdrawal from South Korea would shift the balance of power towards the Communist side, creating an opportunity for a second try to conquer South Korea. South Korea might be overrun before U.S. forces could be reintroduced. American decision-makers began to recognize as early as summer 1951 that absent regime change, a long-term solution to South Korean security would be an enduring deployment of U.S. and UN forces there to deter a North Korean attack. In the summer 1951 MacArthur hearings, Republican Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin posed this leading question to Acheson: “And isn’t it true, too, that if we were to have some kind of a peace or some kind of armistice with the Reds in Korea, that it would necessitate, in view of our knowledge of Red tactics and the way that they have acted in the past, it would necessitate a large standing force of the United Nations to remain in Southern Korea in order to stabilize it, would it not?” After some hemming and hawing, Acheson conceded that troops would have to remain for “some time” after an armistice.¹⁰³

On the Communist side, there was a significant shift in war-termination goals by around June 1951, away from a demand for unifying the Korean peninsula under Communist leadership and towards some sort of restoration of the status quo ante. Publicly, the Chinese in late June gave indications of their willingness to accept a ceasefire, and North Korea around the same time changed its propaganda demands from driving “the enemy into the sea” to driving “the enemy to the 38th parallel.”¹⁰⁴ In internal Chinese deliberations, Peng Dehuai, commander of Chinese forces in Korea, advised Mao on July 1 that “it should be acceptable to both sides to restore the demarcation at the 38th parallel.”¹⁰⁵ This reduction in demands probably reflected Chinese recognition of the failure of the Communist offensives of the first half of 1951, meaning that this change is also evidence in support of the information proposition of chapter 2.¹⁰⁶

SPRING 1951–JULY 1953

The remainder of the war, from mid-1951 to mid-1953, can be characterized straightforwardly. On the military front, a general stalemate held at a front line that ran across the middle of the peninsula, near the 38th parallel. On the diplomatic front, a slow dribble of concessions emanated from both sides, eventually culminating in an armistice in July 1953. In June 1951, the Communists agreed to delink a Korean ceasefire from other issues, including Taiwan, a withdrawal of foreign forces from Korea, and China’s representation at the UN. China also proposed a ceasefire and a return to the 38th parallel as border.¹⁰⁷ Formal negotiations began on July 27. In August, the Communists conceded that the armistice line would be the line of contact between the two forces rather than the 38th parallel itself, the latter of which was viewed by the UN as militarily indefensible. In October, the Communists made small concessions regarding the location of the talks. Later that month, the Communists dropped their demand for inspection beyond the to-be-established demilitarized zone. In December and January, the Communists made two further concessions, on Soviet representation on the neutral supervisory organ (in exchange for UN concessions on airfields), and on replenishment—in other words, the right of outside actors to replenish the war equipment of foreign forces remaining in Korea after the war.¹⁰⁸

The lingering unresolved issue in the negotiations was the postwar repatriation of prisoners of war (POWs). China favored an all-for-all exchange of POWs, although the UN was opposed to forced repatriation of POWs who did want to return to North Korea or China. Since the UN held more Communist POWs than vice versa, it was feared that an all-for-all exchange would provide a substantial manpower boost to the Communist side, potentially shifting the balance of power.¹⁰⁹ Notable POW concessions weren’t made until April 1953, when the Communists conceded that all POWs who did not desire repatriation be sent to a neutral state. The specifics were hammered out over the following several weeks.¹¹⁰ The final armistice line is shown in figure 5.1.

In this last long phase, the UN had already abandoned an absolute war outcome as a solution to the commitment problem. However, commitment concerns persisted, namely that the Communists might reattack after a war-ending deal had been struck. In the summer 1951 MacArthur hearings, one of the central conclusions of a group of influential senators was that North Korea would reattack “on any flimsy pretext at any convenient opportunity.”¹¹¹ Truman worried in December 1951 that “the Communists would build up after an armistice and then come right down the peninsula to Pusan.”¹¹² The following month, he complained bitterly in his diary that Moscow had violated commitments made at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, and that, “Dealing with Communist Governments is like an honest man trying to deal with a numbers racket ring or the head of a dope ring. The Communist Government, the heads of numbers and dope rackets have no sense of honor and no moral code.”¹¹³ Four months later, he again vented in his diary that any agreement signed with the Communists “would not be worth the paper it is written on. You’ve broken every agreement you made at Yalta and Potsdam. You have no morals [and] no honor.”¹¹⁴ These commitment concerns were not empty paranoia. A few weeks after the 1953 armistice was signed, Mao remarked to an official in the Soviet embassy in Beijing that “from a purely military point of view it would not be bad to continue to strike the Americans for approximately another year in order to occupy more favorable borders along the Changan River.”¹¹⁵

These commitment concerns shaped the negotiating positions of the UN during this period in at least two ways. First, as noted, the UN was concerned that an open POW exchange might exacerbate the commitment problem by shifting the balance of power in favor of the Communists. Some in the U.S. government, such as Bradley and Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, went farther. They feared that if the U.S. forcibly repatriated unwilling POWs now, this would make Communist soldiers less likely to defect in inevitable future conflicts with Communist states.¹¹⁶ Conversely, refusal to repatriate POWs in the future would increase U.S. power in the future because, as Dulles argued in 1953, “soldiers in these armies who want freedom will be more apt to desert and surrender . . . the Red Armies [will] become less dependable and there is far less risk that the Communists will be tempted to use these armies for aggression.”¹¹⁷ Therefore, it is conceivable (although we do not have evidence from the Chinese side) that the POW issue created a commitment problem for the Chinese, in that if repatriation were made voluntary this would have the effect of increasing U.S. power after an armistice, thereby diminishing (from the Chinese perspective) the credibility of the American commitment to adhere to the terms of the agreement.

Second, commitment concerns affected UN demands for the location of the border at the end of war. The U.S. resisted the Chinese recommendation to return to the 38th parallel as the North–South border, because it was deemed to be militarily indefensible.¹¹⁸ After the war, Acheson related that he felt no need to respect a “surveyor’s line” that might interfere with military prerogatives.¹¹⁹ Relatedly, U.S. budgetary constraints would have made it difficult to keep a sufficiently large American force deployed in South Korea over the long term to protect as indefensible a border as the 38th parallel.¹²⁰ In terms of the theoretical framework of this book, the U.S. was concerned that a Chinese commitment to a war-ending settlement at the 38th parallel would be less credible than a war-ending settlement at the existing battle line, viewed to be more defensible. Therefore, not all increments of the disputed good were equally valuable, as gaining territory up to the 38th parallel was not as valuable as gaining territory that would create a militarily defensible frontier. The U.S. was strongly motivated to hold out for a more defensible border that would make future Communist attacks less likely, and less motivated to gain territory beyond a defensible border.

Information had a sophisticated connection to American wartermination behavior during this period. The negotiators on both sides understood that negotiations were closely connected to battlefield events. The Chinese delegation was directly instructed that “the truce talks could not be separated for even one second from the situation on the battlefield,” whereas one member of the UN negotiating team expressed the opinion that battlefield events “had much more results at the conference table than anything said at the conference.”¹²¹ However, what is striking is the inability of the accumulation of combat experience to make much impact on war-termination diplomacy. The 1951–53 period saw continuous combat between the two sides as tens of thousands of casualties accumulated. Yet this steady flow of information about relative capabilities was unaccompanied by significant changes in war-termination offers. In other words, combat during this period appeared to be an inefficient means of creating bargaining space. Strangely, battlefield defeats sometimes made the belligerents less likely to make concessions, as it was feared that offering concessions after defeat would send a signal of weakness. For example, when the Communists walked out of peace talks on August 23, 1951, it may have been in reaction to a string of real and perceived weaknesses, including the commencement of UN offensives on the central and eastern fronts, logistical failures in a Communist offensive, and reports in the Western media of Communist military failures.¹²² Observers also speculated that a Communist POW proposal put forth in June 1952 was withdrawn after UN forces bombed Yalu power stations, as the Communists feared appearing weak.¹²³ One scholar noted that the Chinese leadership in 1952 allowed that “Chinese policy could change after that time [Spring 1953] because the military situation in Korea would by then certainly have turned in their favor.”¹²⁴

COMPETING EXPLANATIONS

Information and commitment factors played a large role in determining war-termination behavior during the Korean War. Were other forces also relevant? A number of arguments linking domestic politics to war termination behavior in the Korean War have been made. One explanation for the expansion of U.S. war aims to cross the 38th parallel was that Truman saw it as a means to justify to domestic audiences a massive increase in the U.S. defense budget.¹²⁵ The evidence that Truman expanded the war in order to achieve an expanded defense budget is weak, however. The only direct piece of evidence is the notation from a November 24, 1950 NSC meeting that “if the Chinese threat evaporates, the President doubts that you could go ahead with a $45 billion program.¹²⁶ However, this comment does not speak to Truman’s original motivation for expanding the war, and was made after Chinese intervention had occurred. Further, the argument implies that Truman wanted Chinese intervention in order to justify the expansion of the defense budget, a view at odds with all his other statements and actions which indicated a strong desire to keep China out of the war, including allowing for crossing the 38th parallel only if it would not bring China into the war. There is no evidence either that Truman crossed the 38th parallel in order to increase defense spending, or that he hoped China would enter the war.

There are other possible domestic politics connections. Some argue that domestic political pressures in 1950 pushed Truman to approve conquering North Korea.¹²⁷ Late July State Department reports indicated the popularity of crossing the 38th parallel and unifying Korea.¹²⁸ Truman did see the initial U.S. intervention on South Korea’s behalf as a means of boosting his anti-Communist credentials and refuting accusations from Senator Joseph McCarthy and others that his administration was soft on Communism.¹²⁹ However, Truman was no slave to the shifting winds of public opinion, and was willing to take unpopular stances in the Korean War. Many congressional Republicans attacked the Truman administration and Secretary of State Acheson in particular for having directly caused the North Korean invasion of Korea. Republicans from both houses demanded Acheson’s dismissal, some calling him a traitor.¹³⁰ More significantly, Truman knew he was making a deeply unpopular move when he fired MacArthur in 1951 for the latter’s public deviation from White House policy.¹³¹ Seven million people lined the streets of New York City to welcome MacArthur back when he returned from Asia. A joint session of Congress gave MacArthur a standing ovation. Many were outraged at MacArthur’s dismissal and declared it to be a great victory for Communism. Some, including the Chicago Tribune, openly called for Truman’s impeachment. The then-popular McCarthy declared of Truman to reporters, “The son of a bitch should be impeached.”¹³² For both men, Truman defied public outrage and stuck to his guns, keeping Acheson and dumping MacArthur.

More generally, the Korean War does not demonstrate well the hypothesis that escalating casualties in a democracy erode support for a war, and push the leadership to offer concessions to end the war.¹³³ The pattern of opinion on the war was fairly straightforward, with very high support for the war at the outset, including high public and media support for crossing the 38th parallel in September–October 1950,¹³⁴ followed by a steep drop in support after Chinese intervention, and from then on support that maintained roughly the same moderate level until the end of the war, even in the face of escalating casualties.¹³⁵ Public support across the breadth of the Korean War is described in figure 5.2. John Mueller, the original proponent of the thesis that rising casualties erode public support for war, noted the unexpected lack of a falloff in public support for the war as casualties mounted: “More striking than the drop in support caused by the Chinese entry is the near-absence of further decline for the remaining 2 years of war. From early 1951 until the end of the war in the summer of 1953, basic support for the war . . . remained largely constant—this despite the continually mounting casualties and despite a number of important events.”¹³⁶

Neither changes in public opinion nor the occurrence of the 1952 presidential election seems to have had much real effect on American decisions to make war-termination concessions. One might expect that by 1952, escalating domestic concerns about casualties—there were more than 22,000 American dead by the end of 1951¹³⁷—coupled with a Chinese willingness to restore essentially the status quo ante and an impending presidential election (in which admittedly Truman was not a candidate) might have been enough to push Truman to make concessions on POWs and on other issues (notably, even under the Chinese POWs offer all UN POWs would be returned). Perhaps Truman might have launched an October surprise, making a couple of key concessions in autumn 1952 to achieve peace by the November election and aid Adlai Stevenson’s Democratic presidential campaign and the campaigns of congressional Democratic candidates. However, Truman did not make concessions, and perhaps not surprisingly the Democrats suffered losses in the 1952 elections, losing control of the White House and both houses of Congress.¹³⁸ This outcome is at variance with the view that the escalation of casualties steadily erodes public support for a war and forces an elected leader to make greater concessions in order to stop the fighting.

The end of the war is also not easily explained by U.S. domestic politics—that is, the election was not a vehicle for a new party taking control of the White House in January 1953 to make swift concessions to end an unpopular and bloody war. As a candidate, Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign emphasized the need to end the war in Korea, but he proposed no specific exit plan, and certainly made no promises to make concessions at the negotiating table to bring American troops home.¹³⁹ After taking office, President Eisenhower became more inclined to escalate the war as a means to end it.¹⁴⁰ American public opinion was sufficiently mixed to offer Eisenhower freedom of action. Although most supported an end to the war, opinion was mixed over how to accomplish that goal. One December 1952 survey revealed that 39 percent supported escalating the war to attack China directly, 27 percent favored staying the course, and 23 percent favored an American withdrawal.¹⁴¹ However, Eisenhower opposed both a major new conventional offensive and the use of atomic weapons, the former because it wouldn’t work and the latter because of its international political costs. He did, however, favor the use of atomic threats, although again Eisenhower probably did not seriously consider or make plans for the use of atomic weapons by the time the war ended.¹⁴² American nuclear threats probably did not play a major role in ending the Korean War, as the Chinese leadership did not view the American threat to use nuclear weapons, especially the strategic use of such weapons, as credible.¹⁴³ Ultimately, Eisenhower was attacked by some from within his own party for a war outcome that essentially restored the status quo ante.¹⁴⁴

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Scholars differ over the role of domestic politics in Communist wartermination behavior. Some have argued that the key event permitting the end of the war was probably the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953. Stalin had supported continuing the war and taking a hard line at the negotiating table at least in part because the Soviet Union directly benefited from the continuation of the war. The war tied down American forces, drained the American economy, battered the Truman administration domestically, and provided unique opportunities for the USSR to collect intelligence on American military capabilities. Soon after Stalin’s death, most importantly in a March 19 resolution passed by the Council of Ministers, Stalin’s successors informed North Korea and China that the time had come to end the war. Kim Il-Sung and Mao accepted the new approach.¹⁴⁵ The Communists made a number of moves starting in late March designed to hasten the war’s end. On March 28, they agreed to a UN proposal to exchange sick and wounded prisoners even while the war endured. The Chinese proposed renewing negotiations at Panmunjom for an armistice, and offered to handle the repatriation of prisoners through a neutral country. The UN exhibited persistent intransigence over the next few weeks, but eventually an armistice was signed on July 27.¹⁴⁶

Notably, some have argued that the available evidence does not prove that Stalin’s death was necessary to end the Korean War. One scholar noted that Stalin himself decided to make concessions to end the war before his crippling stroke of March 1, 1953, meaning that even if he had avoided the stroke and lived, the war might have ended in 1953.¹⁴⁷ Others propose that Communist concessions in the spring and summer of 1953 were part of a long-term negotiating strategy rather than an abrupt shift.¹⁴⁸

Domestic politics aside, another factor possibly affecting American war-termination behavior in the Korean War was concern for maintaining and bolstering America’s international reputation. American decisionmakers recognized the relatively low impact Korea had on the global material balance of power. Indeed, this was the main reason why the American Secretary of the Navy explicitly omitted South Korea from the American defense perimeter in a public speech he made in January 1950. However, after the invasion Truman immediately framed the attack in reputation terms, equating the invasion of South Korea with the fascist probes of the 1930s.¹⁴⁹ A strong American response to defend South Korea would have positive reputation effects worldwide. Truman told one of his aides that Korea is the “Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now, if we stand up to them like we did in Greece three years ago, they won’t take any steps.”¹⁵⁰ Acheson made a similar point in a July 14 Cabinet meeting.¹⁵¹

Over the course of that summer, those arguing for expanding war aims sometimes also argued that conquering North Korea would offer broader reputation benefits. MacArthur considered the possibility of unifying Korea in a July 13 conference where he stated that, “We win here or lose everywhere; if we win here, we improve the chances of winning everywhere.”¹⁵² Allison told an agreeable Rusk on July 1 that unifying the peninsula would have a “salutary effect upon other areas of the world.”¹⁵³ The July 31, 1950 Defense memo, for example, postulated that the benefits of Korean unification would be “incalculable. The Japanese would see demonstrated a check on Soviet expansion. Elements in the Chinese Communist regime, and particularly important segments of the Chinese population, might be inclined to question their exclusive dependence on the Kremlin. Skillfully manipulated, the Chinese Communists might prefer different arrangements and a new orientation. Throughout Asia, those who foresee only inevitable Soviet conquest would take hope.”¹⁵⁴ Other world leaders agreed. Ernest Bevin of Britain wrote to Clement Atlee that the Korea operation would give the West the chance to make the Soviets “realise that they are up against it.”¹⁵⁵

However, not all agreed with the reputation arguments. Writing several years after the war, Acheson was skeptical of the sweeping claims in the July 31 Defense memo, although just after the Inchon operation he did make a reputation-based argument, telling the cabinet that Korea could serve as proof of “what Western Democracy can do to help the underprivileged countries of the world.”¹⁵⁶ Under the Eisenhower administration, Secretary of State Dulles’ motivation to continue fighting in order to build American reputation met clear disagreement from the President.¹⁵⁷

COMMITMENT, INFORMATION, AND THE KOREAN WAR

The Korean War well illustrates the interplay between commitment and information dynamics. In the first phase of the war, credible commitment dynamics and specifically American concerns about North Korea possibly reattacking the South following a peace agreement pushed the U.S. to ignore battlefield setbacks and establish the high war aim of seeking the conquest of North Korea. At this stage, the costs of overthrowing the Pyongyang regime—a conventional war with the North Korean army— were acceptable in relation to the benefits of solving the commitment problem. However, after Chinese intervention in autumn 1950, the rising expected costs of continuing to pursue the capture of North Korea, namely the risk of a wider and perhaps nuclear war with China and the Soviet Union, made such a pursuit prohibitively expensive, especially because the stakes were less than the absolute highest for the U.S. In the last long phase of the war, the steady accumulation of information from battlefield activity was generally insufficient to create bargaining space between the two sides. The end of the war may have been delayed by commitment concerns, as the U.S. opposed the restoration of the indefensible 38th parallel, and the deadlock over the exchange of POWs was strengthened by concern that a POW exchange and the forcible repatriation of Communist POWs might shift the balance of power and make any war-ending deal less stable. Worries about unstable war-ending settlements were not unique to the Korean War, though, as shown in the next chapter, which explores the role of such concerns when stakes are even higher.