Korean Conflict: Cold War Origins and U.S. Involvement

Background on U.S. Involvement in the Korean Conflict

How did the Korean conflict begin? What were the dynamics behind this war? How and why did the United States get involved? How was the Korean conflict linked to the Cold War? These and other issues will be addressed in this paper. The Korean conflict was indeed the first battle of the Cold War, and the United States, although it was thoroughly unprepared when it went into battle, came out a winner even though the end was a virtual standoff.

In the book Truman and Korea: The Political Culture of the Early Cold War, author and professor Paul G. Pierpaoli Jr. explains that after World War II the Soviet Union emerged in a "new and more powerful stance" — a direct challenge to America and its "fragile allies" (Pierpaoli, 1999, p. 17). Notwithstanding the fact that the Cold War really began to take hold in 1947 and 1948, President Truman — known as a "legendary fiscal conservative" — was very reluctant to increase military spending after WWII (Pierpaoli, 1999, p. 18).

Truman and Congress were trying to keep defense budgets down even though they knew that potential dangers existed in the world. Moreover, Pierpaoli writes that Truman distrusted "flashy military officers" because he feared the country could become a military dictatorship (18). Truman was pragmatic about keeping the country on a peaceful path if possible, and he specifically did not trust the National Security Resources Board — a group that warned a large military buildup was necessary (Pierpaoli, 18).

In fact, Truman won the battle of wills over the military budget until Dean Acheson replaced General George C. Marshall as Secretary of State in 1949. Acheson began lobbying vigorously for a military buildup, and the "young Turks" he added to his staff were articulating a policy that included significantly more money for the military (Pierpaoli, 21). At about the same time, world events were causing consternation in Washington. The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in September 1949, and in October 1949, Mao Tse-tung and his Communist forces won the Chinese civil war — "China was now 'lost' to the Communists" (Pierpaoli, 23). A few months later, Senator Joseph McCarthy began his "first barrage against alleged communist infiltration into the highest levels of the federal government" (Pierpaoli, 24).

Given these disturbing events, Truman began to relent on his hard line against military spending. On June 25, 1950, he had no choice but to agree to begin building up the military — that was the day the North Koreans invaded South Korea. The president mistakenly believed the Soviets were behind the invasion, so he ordered the Air Force to "prepare plans for destroying all Soviet airfields in the Far East." After he ordered the mobilization of troops into combat, his "approval ratings soared," albeit some of that public admiration stemmed from fear in American society that the U.S. was headed toward World War III (Pierpaoli, 29).

Once the Chinese intervened in the Korean War, the Truman Administration worked to speed up the mobilization. Even though the public was unaware of it, the Truman Administration had "reconciled the 'Korean' mobilization with the larger Cold War mobilization" — and this proved to be a wise strategy.

The Korean War as a Cold War Confrontation

In The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command, author Burton I. Kaufman explains that contributing to the dynamics of the Korean conflict was the Truman Administration's National Security Council report on the Cold War and how the U.S. should prepare for hostilities. Called NSC-68, the report became a "key document" in American foreign policy for twenty years after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. It was originally created in response to the Soviet atomic bomb test, but Kaufman explains that NSC-68 was actually a "field manual for waging the Cold War" (Kaufman, 1983, 28). The narrative in NSC-68 sounded the alarm for what might lie ahead militarily:

"The assault on free institutions is worldwide, and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere" (Kaufman, 28). NSC-68 continued: "Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass," and any additional expansion of Soviet-controlled territory "would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled" (Kaufman, 28). Although the report offered "no specific figures," it flatly asserted that the U.S. was wealthy enough to spend "up to 20% of its Gross National Product for military purposes" (Kaufman, 28).

When the North Koreans invaded the south, they had "nearly 110,000 soldiers, more than 1,400 artillery pieces, and 126 tanks" — formidable aggression that seemed to confirm what the National Security Council had alluded to in NSC-68 (Kaufman, 30).

Kaufman (31) asks why the north invaded the south on June 25. Was Truman pressured politically to commit American ground troops to Korea? While the motives behind the north's aggression initially appeared to be part of Cold War tensions, Kaufman believes the war was not a spin-off of the global conflict between the U.S. and the Soviets. He asserts that the North Koreans did not attack at the "behest of the Soviet Union" and did not seek or receive the approval of Mao and the People's Republic of China (PRC) (32). It was truly a civil war issue, Kaufman insists, because the north attacked the south "unilaterally and without the knowledge of either the Soviet Union or the PRC" (32).

Although the U.S. took the matter before the United Nations, because the U.S. perceived North Korean aggression as Soviet-inspired, the U.S. was prepared to respond unilaterally (Kaufman, 34). The Truman Administration and other U.S. officials believed that if America did not respond to North Korea's aggression, it would "cause significant damage to America's prestige in Europe and the Middle East" (34).

Quietly, the Truman Administration held the conviction that the U.S. must not allow "another case of appeasement" similar to how the British and French were drawn into appeasing Adolf Hitler in 1938 at the Munich Conference — a negotiation in which the French and British gave Hitler part of Czechoslovakia, thinking he would be satisfied (Kaufman, 34). That had been a disaster, and Truman did not want a repeat of that kind of diplomatic failure in Korea.

Moreover, the credibility of the Truman Administration's foreign policy was at stake. Truman could not appear weak, but he also had to worry about drawing the U.S. into another long and bloody war. In the first phase of U.S. involvement, American forces were prohibited from attacking North Korea past the 38th parallel — a decision meant to avoid a direct showdown with China and the Soviets. But by the fifth day of fighting, the president authorized "strikes against military targets in North Korea," albeit U.S. forces were asked to take care not to operate into Manchuria or near the Soviet border (Kaufman, 38).

America's Poor Preparations and Early Battlefield Failures

"First, that the Chinese Communist Government proposes to intervene with its full potential military forces, openly proclaiming such course at what it might determine to do…" As a follow-up to that possibility, MacArthur said such a "contingency" by the Chinese "would represent a momentous decision of the gravest international importance. While it is a distinct possibility and many foreign experts predict such action, there are many fundamental logical reasons against it and sufficient evidence has not yet come to hand to warrant its immediate acceptance" (MacArthur, from the Truman Library).

Prior to his death in 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam published a 657-page book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, covering multiple aspects of the Cold War and the Korean conflict. Halberstam explains that the initial American units "thrown into battle were poorly armed, in terrible shape physically, and, more often than not, poorly led" (Halberstam, 2007, 138). The U.S. was trying to get by "on the cheap," and in Korea "it showed immediately." Truman wanted to keep taxes low, to pay off the enormous debt from WWII, and to keep military expenditures down.

What that austerity program meant in practice was that the first troops being trained at Fort Lewis — prior to their orders to fight in Korea — were asked to "use only two sheets of toilet paper each time they visited the latrine" (Halberstam, 138). The lackluster performance of those initial troops caused serious concerns back home. "Almost daily, there were stories of American units being driven back, of constant North Korean advances," Halberstam continues (138). Military leaders, including General Douglas MacArthur, had apparently believed America could enter Korea with a limited number of troops and keep the North Koreans from crossing the 38th parallel.

What was the genesis for this attitude? Halberstam asserts that the belief in the "superiority of Caucasians over Asians on the battlefield" was rooted in racism (139). But how does that attitude hold up against the fact that the Japanese experienced numerous victories in the early stages of World War II? Americans dismissed those victories; the Japanese won those early battles not because "they were Asians, but because they were fanatics" (140).

As to why the Koreans seemed stronger than the first American troops, Halberstam quotes Major General Bill Dean: "Let's face it, the enemy has something that our men don't have, and that's the willingness to die" (140). Dean, who was later captured by the Koreans, made that statement to Chicago Daily News reporter Keyes Beech, himself a Marine Corps veteran of WWII. Beech later wrote that the initial American troops sent to Korea were "spiritually, mentally, morally, and physically unprepared for war" (Halberstam, 140). North Korean units were better armed, and in the face of their attacks the Americans retreated again and again; by July 1950, the war was a "disaster" for America, the author asserts (140).

On page 146, Halberstam reports that the disastrous beginning to the American side of the war was "a textbook example of what happens when a nation, filled with the arrogance of power, meets a new reality." History shows that things improved considerably as the military fully geared up, sent proper equipment, and deployed more thoroughly trained men — the tide turned, and the war ended, albeit at a stalemate.