Download The Truman Doctrine in Asia The Korean War Where Will the

Vol. VII, No. 4
Fall 1950
Letter 68
The Truman Doctrine in Asia
The Korean War
India Tries Mediation
Will the War Spread?
Where Will the Truman Doctrine lead Us?
The Drive to "Preventive War"
Peace Is Indivisible
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Vol. VII, No. 4
Fall 1950
Letter 68
Friends:
W
AR BEGAN IN KOREA on June 25, 1950. On that
morning the North Korean armies crossed the 38th
parallel, which is the frontier separating North and
South Korea, and moved toward Seoul, the South Korean
capital. South Korean armies put up some resistance and then
disintegrated. Later they were re-organized under USA direction and leadership.
U.S. armed forces entered the war immediately on the side
of the South Koreans. On the morning of June 27 President
Truman publicly announced their participation in the conflict.
Later that same day the Security Council, which had previously directed the North Koreans to cease firing and retire
beyond the 38th parallel, called upon the members of the
United Nations to send aid to the government of South Korea.
Washington responded to this request by making an all-out
war effort, sending in sea, air and land forces, calling up
reserves and appropriating large sums for war purposes. More
than fifty member nations supported the UN action on paper
and several sent token naval and air contingents and medical
units. It was mid-August, however, before any considerable
number of ground troops other than those of the United States
reached Korea.
The UN Security Council requested President Truman to
appoint a commander for UN forces operating in the Korean
area. The President selected General Douglas MacArthur,
who was commander of USA Far East. forces. From the
beginning, therefore, the brunt of the fighting on the South
Korean side was borne by U.S. forces and the South Korean
war effort was under direction of U.S. personnel.
1
During the first two months of the war, outnumbered U.S.
ground forces, with some support from the reorganized South
Korean armies, traded space for time in an effort to hold on
until reinforcements should arrive. By September 1, the North
Korean armies had won control of all South Korea except an
area fifty or sixty miles square on the southeastern tip of the
Korean peninsula.
Throughout this period of the war, the U.S.-U.N. forces
controlled the sea and the air but lost ground positions. Thev
were unable to end their retreats and stabilize their lines until
their ground forces were comparable to those of the North
Koreans. By mid-September they were strong enough to make
a landing at Inchon and begin a large-scale offensive in the
south around Taegu.
Early in the struggle the Korean conflict was described as a
"police action." It soon developed into a war which involved
hard fighting, heavy casualties and widespread devastation.
Facts About Korea and the Koreans
Koreans revolted repeatedly against Japanese domination of
their country. The most notable of these revolts occurred in
1919-a pacifist independence movement during which large
numbers of peaceful demonstrators were beaten, jailed and
shot by the Japanese-controlled police. After 1910 patriotic
Koreans worked zealously-secretly at home and openly abroad
-for national independence.
Korean independence was promised at the Cairo Conference
of 1943 and the Potsdam Conference of 1945. In 1945, before
t~e pr?mised independence materialized, the country was divided mto two parts, separated arbitrarily by the 38th paral·
lel, with a Soviet army of occupation in the North and a United
States .army of occupation in the South. In 1948 two separate.
sovereign, armed states were established, with the 38th parallel
as thei~ frontier. Korea, with its long history of independence
and umty, was now dependent and divided.
Another cleavage developed in Korea after 1945. North
Korea, under Soviet sponsorship, passed through a social
r:volu~ion.' w~ile Sout~ Korea retained the economic and political mstitut10ns which had existed during the Japanese
occupation.
HAVE TRJED to state the main facts of the Korean War
simply and briefly. Our chief concern is with the s1g·
nificance of the Korean episode.
Korea is a mountainous, forested peninsula, about the size
of Florida, jutting out from the Asian land-mass between the
Sea of Japan on the east and the Yellow Sea on the west. Its
population is thirty millions.
Koreans have constituted a self-conscious national group for
at least three thousand years-that is, from a period before
the foundation of the Roman Empire. They had been politi·
cally independent for more than a thousand years when they
were gobbled up by Japan in 1910.
The Japanese organized Korea as a source of food and raw
materials for their own economy. In order to achieve this
result, they set up a strong police state, staffed largely by
Koreans, under rigorous Japanese supervision. Under the
Japanese, Korean agriculture was owned and operated by land·
lords and carried on chiefly by share-croppers. Industry was
owned mainly by Japanese-controlled companies.
R~VOLUTION IN KOREA was spontaneous and farreachmg. It began before the arrival of Soviet troops
under the leadership of Kim II Sung, who at the age of nine~een star~ed fighting the Japanese as leader of a band of guer·
1llas. His band won successes and increased in size until it
was a sma~l army, operating from mountain hideouts against
the occupymg Japanese. The Japanese put a price of $100 000
on Kim's head but he continued his activities. Today, at' 39,
he is President of the North Korean government.
. !he defeat of Japan in 1945 was the signal for a popular upnsmg throughout Korea. Villages, counties and provinces
elected citizens' committees and sent representatives to an
All-Korean Congress which assembled on September 6, 1945,
three weeks after the Japanese surrender. A thousand delegates
from all parts of Korea and from all factions except the pro·
Japanese attended the Congress. A Korean People's Republic
2
3
I
THE
was proclaimed and a People's Committee of 75 members was
set up to exercise authority until elections could be held.
The Russians recognized the people's committees and worked
with them. The Americans, who landed two days after the
republic had been established, refused to deal with the committees, turning instead to the Japanese as the representatives
of authority in Korea. Later the people's committees were
suppressed south of the 38th parallel. The same fate was in
store for the trade unions, the farm unions, the Union of
Youth and the Union of Women. They were recognized by the
Russians but either ignored or broken up in the American zon,~.
From the outset of the Korean occupation, the Russians welcomed and assisted the revolution; the Americans opposed,
thwarted and crippled it. South of the 38th parallel the Americans succeeded in crushing the revolution in the early stages
of its development.
Success for the Korean revolution in the north and failure
in the south were not accidental. They resulted from the attitudes of the two occupying powers. There seems to be no ques·
tion but that Korea today would be a united people's republic
had it not been for the activity of the conservatives south of
the 38th parallel, backed by the military power of the U.S.
occupation authorities.
IN NORTH KOREA followed a course simiR EVOLUTION
lar to that of parallel movements in other parts of Asia
Korea had been shifted from the Japanese to U.S. armed
forces. But the administration of policy, in particular through
the police, remained in the hands of the same Koreans who,
under the Japanese occupation, had collaborated with the
occupying power and consequently were despised and hated
by their fellow countrymen. The U.S. occupation authorities
turned to these same collaborators on the plea that they alone
knew how to get things done.
North and South Korea were two sovereign states after 1948,
with rival social systems. Korea thus exemplified the world's
cold war between capitalism and communism, with South
Korea under U.S. and North Korea under Soviet tutelage.
Korean history since 1947 is little known in the western
world. It has been difficult for western news-gatherers to get
information in South Korea and virtually impossible in North
Korea. The elections in South Korea were publicised, as have
been the official acts of the South Korean government. In 1943
and 1949 The New York Times and other papers carried stories
of the extreme police terror in South Korea.
Anna Louise Strong, one of the few western journalists to
report North Korea at first hand, has written a 44-page pamphlet, Inside North Korea, which may be bought for 25 cents
from the author at Montrose, California. Miss Strong gives
details of the economic, political and social changes in North
Korea since 1945. She writes clearly, simply and with understanding of the revolution. Perhaps no publicist in the United
States is better qualified than she to present this material, as
she has been a first-hand student of the revolutions in Russia,
China and Spain.
during recent years. Industries were nationalized; land was
divided among the peasants by committees of their own
choosing; women were liberated from feudal restrictions; ambitious programs of education, public health and social security were inaugurated. These developments were directed
by Koreans, many of whom had been exiled or jailed by the
Japanese.
In South Korea U.S. occupation authorities followed a very
different course. They maintained the economy and the social
order virtually intact, under the control of the landlords, money
lenders and businessmen. South Korea is chiefly agricultural.
The landlords therefore retained their customary control over
the lives of their peasant tenants. Political power in South
Korea Today is a 372-page book by Professor George M.
McCune, who was born and lived nearly half his life in Korea.
His book, published by Harvard University Press in 1950,
is a documented study of Korea by a man who sympathize5
with the Korean people and writes from their point of view,
rather than that of an outsider. Professor McCune agrees with
Miss Strong that there has been a social revolution in North
Korea, while the status quo has been preserved south of the
38th parallel.
4
5
THE LARGE-SCALE FIGHTING which began in Korea on
· June 25, 1950 was preceded by sharp border clashes on
June 23 and 24, in the course of which villages north of the
38th parallel were bombed and villagers were killed and
wounded. At dawn on June 25 the armies of South Korea
began a large-scale offensive into North Korea. On the same
day, the North Korean armies retaliated. These episodes in
turn were the climax of hundreds of border incidents involving
shooting and killing which had occurred during 1949 and
1950. North Korea has been designated as the aggressor by
the Washington government and the United Nations, and the
war is legally an effort on the part of U.S. and other armed
forces, under U.N. command, to check aggression.
It will remain for future historians to determine where
responsibility for the beginning of the Korean War rests. There
are reasons for supposing that the visit of John Foster Dulles
to Korea immediately before the outbreak of war played its
part. There can be no question but that General MacArthur
had been in close touch with Syngman Rhee, head of the. South
Korean government, and sympathized with his extremely conservative social outlook. Nor is there any doubt that North
Korea has been under the Truman-Doctrine ban since its promulgation in March 1947. It is equally certain that U.S. planes,
based on Japan, went into action almost as soon as the conflict began.
So much for the available facts of a confused and obscure
situation. Now for some comment.
Nature of the Korean War
First, the conflict in Korea is a civil war. "North" and
"south" in Korea mean much the same as "north" and "south"
means along the Atlantic seaboard in the U.S.A. Koreans are
unconscious of the 38th parallel, as we are unconscious of the
40th. Traditionally "Korea" means the entire peninsula. But
since 1945 industrial North Korea has adopted a new lifepattern, while agricultural South Korea has stuck to the old
one. The resulting tensions have led to conflict, with Koreans
shooting Koreans in the familiar fashion of civil war.
6
Second, Korea has been one of many probing-points and
testing-grounds in the cold war of 1946-50. The two major
antagonists have met and clashed in Korea as in Poland, Iran,
Greece-Turkey, China and Berlin. There is this one difference,
however: in Korea the conflict between capitalism and communism has reached a shooting phase. The Korean War is a
small, isolated war in the large Eurasian area of tension and
conflict.
Third, some observers are insisting that the USSR and the
USA are at war in Korea. Many U.S. advocates of a preventive
war against the Soviet Union take that position. This assertion
is at variance with the facts. The only non-Korean armed
forces participating in the Korean War to date are those of
the United States, Britain, Australia and other anti-communist
nations. The United States is not fighting the Soviet Union in
Korea because, so far as known at this writing, while Sovietmade arms have been used by the North Koreans, no units of
the Soviet armed forces have taken part in the fighting.
Fourth, it is said that the Korean struggle is not a war but a
"police action," undertaken by the United Nations as a means
of meeting and punishing aggression. In a legal sense this is
true. The U.N. Security Council adopted the Korean War.
But this move was made at the insistence of Washington many
hours after U.S. armed forces had entered the conflict, and
three months after the outbreak of hostilities U.S. armed forces
were still bearing the brunt of the fighting on the anti-communist, United Nations side. In law, it is a United Nations
police action. In fact, it is a U.S. war against the armed forces
of North Korea.
Fifth, the events in Korea may be described as a war of
colonial independence-the war predicted so often between
East and West, with western armies fighting Asians on Asian
soil and western high explosives killing and maiming Asians
on their hearth-stones and destroying Asian property.
7
India Tries Mediation
B
Y AND. LA~GE, Asians are a~ti-western at the present
stage m history. Some Asians are also anti-war.
Gandhi's leadership in India won independence from
British domination with a minimum of violence. Gandhi's follower, Nehru, and the Indian government have tried from the
first to mediate the Korean conflict. In the course of this effort,
Nehru on July 13, 1950 sent to Stalin and Truman personal
pleas for the cessation of hostilities and an attempt at peaceful
settlement. The substance of both letters was the same: : "The
aim of India is to localize the conflict and assist a speedy peaceful settlement through elimination of the present impasse in
the Security Council so that the representative of the People's
Government of China could take his place in the Council, the
USSR could return to it and within the framework of the
Council or outside of the Council through unofficial contact,
the USSR, the United States and China, with the assistance
and with the cooperation of other peaceable states, could find
a basis for cessation of the conflict and for final solution of
the Korean problem."
In effect, Stalin answered: "We are ready for mediation in
the Korean war." Acheson replied: "Mediation is out of the
question. We propose to go on fighting."
The War in Asia
On July 18th Secretary Acheson sent a long reply to Premier
Nehru in which he stated that Washington stood for world
peac.:e and security maintained through the United Nations;
that a minority of the U.N. member governments had failed
to support the U.N. action on Korea; that no obstacle lay in
the way of the Soviet Union participating in the work of the
U.N.; that "the decision between competing claimant governments for China's seat" must be made by the United Nations
and not by unlawful aggression, coercion or duress.
EOGRAPHICALLY, Korea is a small peninsula, extending from the continent of Asia toward Japan and
the Philippines. Sociologically, the developments in
Korea are a small segment of the profound changes which
have been taking place in Asia during the past forty years.
Politically, the war in Korea is part of the struggle to win for
Asia independence from western (imperialist) domination.
Asia's struggle for liberation from the colonial status to
which it h~d been reduced by the chief western powers climaxed centuries of western efforts to subjugate and exploit
Asia and the Asians. Until the fifteenth century Asians had
over-run Europe periodically, plundering and ruling parts of
it for considerable periods. The voyaging and discovering
begun by Portugal, Spain, Holland and England about 1450
A.D. gradually brought Asian territories and peoples under
the domination of the western powers. By 1900 Asian economic
and political policy was decided mainly in European capitals.
The Philippine rebellion against Spain in the 1890's, the Boxer
movement in China in 1899, the defeat of Russia by Japan
in 1905 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 marked the transition from defense to offense. Asia had begun her march toward independence.
Asia's independence movement took different forms in
Turkey under Kemal, in India under Gandhi and in China
under Sun and Mao. The net result of these many movements
led to three spectacular developments. ( 1) Between 1941 and
1943 the Japanese imperialists drove the western imperialists
out of the Far East. (2) In 1944-5 the western imperialists
crushed the Japanese Empire. ( 3) From 1945 to 1950 one
Asian country after another won legal or actual status as independent states.
All the Asian independence movements contained social
revolutionary elements-popularly grouped together as "communist". Consequently, the Asian struggle was directed in
8
9
Two days later, on July 15, Stalin answered Nehru with
eight printed lines: "I welcome your peaceable initiative. I fully
share your point of view as regards the expediency of peaceful regulation of the Korean question through the Securitv
Council with the obligatory participation of representatives o.f
the five great powers, including the People's Government of
China. I believe that for speedy settlement of the Korean
question it would be expedient to hear in the Security Council
representatives of the Korean people."
G
part toward the abolition of landlordism, capitalism and other
forms of exploitation. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and
the transformation of Russian society under Soviet leadership
was a major influence in determining the course of events in
Asia.
The establishment of the Chinese People's Republic in 1949
was the turning point in the struggle for Asian independence.
The British still controlled Hong Kong and Malaya. The
French had armies in Indo-China. Holland had a toehold in
Indonesia. U.S.A. armed forces had bases in Japan and the
Philippines. The Republic of Korea was administered by an
unpopular government, supported economically and militarily
by the United States. Otherwise, eastern and central Asia had
shaken off the yoke of western imperialist domination and, in
the language of the U.S.A. press and radio, "gone communist."
The Truman Doctrine in Asia
W
ESTERN GOVERNMENTS in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Washington have done everything in
their power to head off the Asian independence
movement. The Soviet Union has done its best to strengthen
it. In the San Francisco Conference which wrote the United
Nations Charter, in the struggles for the control of Poland,
Eastern Europe, the Near, Middle and Far East, Washington
has consistently opposed the Asian independence struggle and
backed the efforts of London, Paris and Amsterdam to crush
it or thwart it. In 1947 President Truman formulated this
policy:"One of the primary objects of the foreign policy of the
United States is the creation of conditions in which we and
other nations will be able to work out a way of life free of
coerc10n.
"We are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free
institutions and their national integrity against agressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes . . .
Totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples by direct or
indirect aggression undermine the foundations of international
peace and hence the security of the United States.
10
'"At the present moment in world history nearly every nation
must choose between alternative ways of life." (These ways
are then characterized as democracy and totalitarianism.) "It
must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples
who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities
or by outside pressures."
This was the Truman Doctrine as stated to Congress on
March 12, 1947. At that time it was applied directly to Greece
and Turkey. Subsequently it was extended to cover other situations in which "the containment of communism" was an issue.
The Truman Doctrine of March 1947 was followed in June
1947 by the Marshall Plan. This, in turn, led to the organization and subsequently the arming by the United States of the
nations composing the Atlantic Union. The Atlantic Union
contained the surviving fragments of nineteenth-century western capitalist imperialism.
Following the defeat of Chiang and the establishment of the
Chinese People's Republic, President Truman and Secretary
Acheson launched an offensive which I described in the previous World Events letter. General terms were abandoned.
Communism was made the ideological enemy; the Soviet
Union, the political enemy.
D l"RING THE PERIOD which ended on June 25, 1950 the
Truman Doctrine applied chiefly to Europe and the Near
East, although Washington had aided Chiang Kai-shek and
other anti-Communist leaders in Asia. On June 27th, the President applied it to those parts of Asia in which the struggle
was particularly acute. No sooner was the military action in
Korea begun than President Truman ordered U.S. armed forces
into the battle. Subsequently, on June 27th, the President
announced:
"I have ordered United States air and sea forces to give the
Korean Government troops cover and support.
"The attack upon Korea makes it plain that Communism has
passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent
nations and will now use invasion and war ...
"In these circumstances the occupation of Formosa by Communist forces would be a direct threat to the security of the
11
Pacific area and to United States forces performing their lawful and necessary function in that area.
"Accordingly I have ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any
attack on Formosa ...
"I have also directed that United States forces in the Philippines be strengthened and that military assistance to the
Philippine Government be accelerated.
"I have similarly directed acceleration in the furnishing of
military assistance to the forces of France and the associated
states in Indo-China."
Thus the Truman Doctrine was officially extended and applied to the most acute pressure spots in Asia. In Korea this
was done under the cloak of U.N. authority; elsewhere as a
unilaterally declared USA policy.
Incidentally, the President was guilty of a slight inaccuracy
when he characterized the Korean War as an attempt of communism "to conquer independent nations." South Korea is not
an independent nation in any real meaning of that term. It is
a puppet state, set up in 1949 and maintained by economic and
military support from Washington. The Korean War would be
more accurately described as an effort of North Koreans,
who abolished landlordism and capitalism and set up a planned
economy in the northern part of Korea, to drive the landlords
and their western backers out of southern Korea and extend
economic planning to that portion of the peninsula. Such a
move is popularly described as "an effort to extend communism
in Korea." It is not the conquest of "an independent nation."
In Letter 67 I tried to show that the Truman-Acheson policy
of continuing the cold war would not lead to peace, as they
insisted, but to war. The Korean War began while Letter 67
was on the press.
Will the Korean War be a Quickie?
T
HROUGHOUT THE EARLY DAYS of Truman's
Korean adventure, the President, his spokesmen and
the press and people of the United States thought of
Washington's intervention in Korean affairs as a local police
action. The Japanese government looked upon its invasion
12
v
.'1
i1
of Manchuria in 1931 in much the same light. The Korean
struggle would be a "little" war because it was localized· a
"good" war because it would give USA airplane compa~ies
and their suppliers the orders they needed and thus administer
a tonic to USA economy, and a "quick" war because command
of the sea and air would soon isolate the armed forces of
North Korea, make their position untenable and compel them
to withdraw into their home territory.
Washington was right as to the tonic effect of the Korean
adventure on USA econmy. It was wrong as to the length and
severity of the struggle. It was probably wrong also as to the
area of struggle. Toward the end of August 1950 there were
indications that the Peking government might give active support to the North Koreans.
Will the War Spread?
E
ARLY IN AUGUST, 1950 the U.S. News and World
Report (August 11) printed an article under the title,
"War with China Next?" The article began, "War between the United States and Communist China is becominoo
a real, imminent possibility." The USA commitment to prevent
the invasion of Formosa and the presence in Formosan
(Chinese) waters of the U.S. Seventh Fleet brings USA and
Chinese armed forces into direct contact. The Truman decision
of June 27, 1950 commits the United States to military action
in Indo-China also. These moves of the U.S. government
have been countered by the Chinese, who have concentrated
military forces on the Korean border, also opposite Formosa
and on the Indo-Chinese frontier. The U.S. News article then
specifies the extent of these Chinese concentrations.
Two weeks later, on August 26th, the daily papers onnounced
that General J. Lawton Collins, Army Chief of Staff, had returned from the Far East with details of Chinese military concentrations. The story covered the same ground as that printed
in the U.S. News and World Report.
Both stories pointed away from Korea and toward Formosa
as the strategic center of the Asian conflict.
On August 27th, General MacArthur released a statement
intended for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in which he de'.
13
scribed Formosa as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine-tender," ideally located in a chain of islands extending
"in an arc from the Aleutians to the Marianas" and now "helrl
by us and our Allies." The control of this island chain ha~
shifted our strategic frontier "to embrace the entire Pacific
Ocean ... From this island chain we can dominate with our
air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore ...
Under such conditions the Pacific no longer represents menacing avenues of approach for a prospective invader-it assume~
instead the friendly aspect of a peaceful lake." In order to defend this American lake (the Pacific Ocean), MacArthur argued, the United States must control Formosa, upon which
there is at the present time "a concentration of air and naval
bases which is potentially greater than any similar concentration on the Asiatic mainland between the Yellow Sea and the
Strait of Malacca."
Japanese armed forces used Formosa to good purpose from
1941 to 1944.. In the hands of any hostile power it would be
a menace to U.S. control of the Pacific.
CONTINUED, "Nothing could be more
M ACARTHUR
fallacious than the threadbare argument by those who
The Chou protest was a culmination of a series of incidents
in the growing estrangement of Peking and Washington. Washington had intervened economically and militarily in the
Chinese civil war, supporting Chiang against the communist;;.
Nevertheless the communists had won out. Secretary Acheson,
in his letter of transmittal attached to the Chinese White Paper
of July 30, 1949, had written mournfully, "The ominous result
of civil war in China was beyond the control of the Government
of the United States ... It was the product of internal Chinese
forces, forces which this country tried to influence, but could
not."
Following the establishment of the People's Republic of
China in October, 1949, Washington refused to grant diplomatic recognition and later withdrew its consular representatives from China.
U.N. debates over seating Peking delegates as official representatives of China in the U.N. were led by representatives of
the USSR for Peking and by representatives of the USA
against Peking and for the discredited and defeated government headed by Chiang.
On June 2, 1950 Secretary Acheson, in a plea for arms-aid
appropriations, said, "In Southeast Asia, already torn by guerilla operations, the menace of Communist China threatens the
people of lndo-China, Burma, Thailand, Malaya and the newly
created United States of Indonesia."
advocate appeasement and defeatism in the Pacific that, if we
defend Formosa, we alienate continental Asia ... It is the pattern of Oriental psychology to respect and follow aggressive,
resolute and dynamic leadership . . . Nothing in the last five
years has so inspired the Far East as the American determination to preserve the bulwarks of our Pacific Ocean strategic
position from further encroachment."
In a word, Formosa is a key to the control of the Pacific.
Let's take it while we have the chance, fortify it and keep it.
Three days before the MacArthur statement was made public,
Chou En-lai, foreign minister of the Peking government, cabled
a demand that the U.N. Security Council "condemn the U.S.
government for its criminal act in the armed invasion of the
territory of China and take immediate measures to bring about
the complete withdrawal of all the U.S. armed invading forces
from Taiwan (Formosa) and from other territories belonging
to China."
civil war and was led by Koreans who had fought under Mao
and Chou against the U.S.-trained, equipped and armed Nationalist armies. From the outbreak of hostilities on June 25,
1950 the United States was fighting, indirectly, against Peking
and all that Peking stood for in the Asian war.
MacArthur's statement and Chou's protest, coming together
late in August, brought the issue to a focus: Was the United
States prepared to follow MacArthur's suggestion and offer
"aggressive, resolute and dynamic leadership" to Asia or was
it to appease China and attempt to prevent Peking from taking
an active part in the Asian war?
14
15
IN KOREA was conducted from the north along the
W ARfamiliar
lines used by the communists in the Chinese
Washington's first reaction was MacArthurish. Security
Council Delegate Austin began his answer to Chou's protest
as follows: "There has been circulated to members of the
Security Council a paper which charges the United States with
aggression against Formosa ... The U.S. government does not
intend to discuss at this time this paper or the ridiculous falsehoods which it contains" (U.N. Security Council debate, Au·
gust 25th).
At the same time, however, President Truman ordered General MacArthur to withdraw his statement to the Veterans of
Foreign Wars. General Collins' reports had had their effect.
Washington had decided to keep China out of the Korean War.
On August 27th, Chou protested the invasion of Chinese territory by U.S.A. bombers and the killing and wounding of
Chinese citizens. In those two days Washington policy had
shifted. On August 31 Delegate Austin asked that a U.N. commission be appointed to inquire into the charge of U.S. bombing on Chinese territory and offered to make amends if the
report of the territorial violation proved to be true.
Meanwhile, on August 30th, Secretary Acheson announced
that the U.S. government was doing everything in its power to
deter Peking from entering the Korean War and was attempting
to make it plain that Washington was friendly to the Chinese
and had no aggressive intentions in the Far East.
Next day President Truman, following the same line, declared that the sending of the Seventh Fleet into Formosan
waters was a defensive move, necessitated by the Korean War,
and that as soon as the Korean conflict was ended, the Seventh
Fleet would be withdrawn.
Where Will the Truman Doctrine Lead?
L
President Truman and Secretary Acheson during the early
months of 1950.
Despite repeated assertions m those speeches that the cold
war was being prosecuted to insure peace and freedom, the
events surrounding June 25, 1950 indicate that the TrumanAcheson primary objective was not peace, but victory over
communism. Washington made no attempt to find a peaceful
way out of the conflict between the two factions in the Korean
War. Instead, it opened up immediately with Japan-based
bombing planes, naval units and ground troops.
It may not be possible to determine exactly the purpose
which animated the President and his Secretary of State.
Sooner or later, in every developing situation, events either
confirm or negate assertions. The events in Korea negate the
"peace and freedom" assertions of Washington's propaganda
offensive and confirm my statement in W odd Events Letter 67
that the Truman Doctrine would lead to war.
This is a very different thing from stating that Washington
wanted war. During the last week of August 1950 both Truman
and Acheson made it clear that they had no intention of engaging in war with China and would do what they could to
prevent the war from spreading beyond the Korean frontiers.
Had Washington wanted war with China, it could have had
it in all probability by following the MacArthur line on
Formosa.
Actually, few policy-makers want war, because of its harrassments and its uncertainties. They merely aim at certain
objectives and, when they are confronted with a choice between the loss of the objective and a shooting war, they choose
war.
This was the case in Korea. Events have shown that
Washington was ill-prepared to engage in a military struggle
on the other side of the Pacific. When it came to a choice
between a communist Korea and a war, however, Washington
chose war.
IKE THE NAZI MOVEMENT in Germany, the Truman
Doctrine aims to save remnants of capitalism from further disintegration. It proposes to do this, not so much
by strengthening capitalism, as by fighting against communism.
This was made clear in the series of speeches and statements by
The Truman Administration has spent four years on a "fear
Russia-stop communism" crusade. Such crusades are more
likely to result in war than in peace.
16
17
THE PRIMARY OUTCOME of the Truman-Acheson poli·
cies has been a shooting war which has already cost
billions in money and thousands of lives. Some of its second·
ary results are worth noting.
public officials to talk openly in favor of a preventive war
~gainst the Soviet Union. Yet the search for security and the
tension of military combat led Secretary of the Navy Matthews
and others to that point after two months of the Korea campaign.
1
Federal-government spending has been increased by per·
• haps 25 percent. This increase means more taxes or
additions to the Federal debt. In practice it will mean both.
Larger government spending along specialized lines has created
scarcities, raised prices, led to black markets and opened the
way for a new round of wage advances. Business is booming;
profits are higher; labor and capital are both in greater
demand. These developments mean further inflation.
2•
New government spending, chiefly for military purposes,
has pushed U.S.A. economy to a point at which it is
more depe~dent on war for full-scale operation. It has also
added billions of dollars to the vast sums already spent by the
armed forces. More "defense" billions mean more contracts,
more jobs, more prestige and more power for the armed forces,
both actually and relatively to other government departments.
3"
War dangers and losses in Korea have rallied the people
of the United States to an armed struggle which they did
not expect, which they do not want and for which they have
no enthusiasm. Battle tension and the fear of "enemies within"
have built up a public opinion which not only tolerates but
supports and welcomes the suppression of opposition, academic
purges and the outlawing of "dangerous thoughts."
,C
War in Korea has reduced the chances of ending the cold
war by a negotiated peace, has stepped up the worldwide
armaments race and has increased the chances of an all-out
shooting war for unconditional surrender and victory.
If-•
5•
Frustration in Korea has likewise given aid and comfort
to the advocates of a preventive war fought by the USA
against the USSR. It is one thing for General MacArthur
and his supporters to argue in favor of seizing and holding
foreign territory (Formosa) as a strategic unit in the control
of the Pacific. It is a very different matter for highly placed
18
The Drive to Preventive War
ROM THE OUTSET of the cold war, President Truman
and his advisers have assumed that communism wao
something which could be localized, personalized and
destroyed as the authorities destroy a man-eating tiger in the
Indian jungle. Until 1947 it seemed as though the Soviet
Union was the seat of the trouble and that, if the USSR could
be quarantined or crushed, the dangers to the survival of
capitalism which seemed to inhere in communism would be
decreased or perhaps even eliminated.
,
Subsequent developments in Europe and Asia threw a very
different light on the matter. In place of an isolated, blockaded
Soviet Union, the three short years 1947, 1948 and 1949 built
11p around the USSR an increasing flock of anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist East European and Asiatic states. The establishment of the Chinese People's Republic in October 1949
proved to be the climax in the conversion of erstwhile monarchies and dependencies of capitalist nations and empires into
independent, anti-capitalist republics. The victory of the libera·
tion forces in China established in the heart of Far Asia a
new communist area, more than twice as populous as the Soviet
Union and with a large military force, trained in combat and
equipped with quantities of U.S.A. military supplies in addition
to its own considerable capacity for the production of military
equipment.
From Poland on the west to China on the east stretched
a cordon of armed anti-capitalist states, contemptuously re·
ferred to in the U.S.A. press as "Moscow satellites." With
this cordon sanitaire intervening between Washington and
Moscow, a direct attack on the USSR was no longer possible
except by air. A land attack on the Soviet Union could be
effectively delivered only after the invading armies had first
occupied the territory of one or more of the Soviet Union's
anti-capitalist neighbors.
F
19
Then came June 25, 1950, with its revelation of the immense
military difficulties involved in dealing with a small, isolated.
lightly populated, semi-industrialized geographical unit-th~
Korean peninsula, on which the U.S.A.-U.N. forces began with
an extensive foothold. This anti-capitalist area was neither the
Soviet Uunion nor China, but a geographical appendage to
Chinese territory. In the language of the street, it was a
oatellite of a satellite of the USSR.
Against North Korea, with its nine millions of people and its
long, exposed coastline, U.S.A.-U.N. forces, speaking in the
name of fifty-three U.N. members, directed the attacks of their
battleships, their bombing planes and their ground forces for
ten weeks before they were able to turn the tide of battle. If
events followed such a course in tiny Korea, what would be
the consequences of an attempt to establish capitalist law-andorder in China, let alone in the USSR?
TOT.HIS QUESTI?N the n:ilitary mind has but one answer.
Wmston Churchill gave it at Fulton, Missouri, in March
1946. General MacArthur gave it in his proposal to occupy
and hold Formosa. Secretary of the Navy Matthews o-ave it
in his Boston speech of August 25, 1950. The ans:er is.
"Strike and strike quickly! Strike now! Catch the enemy
unawares. Vaporize his industries and devastate his cities
while we have a larger stockpile of atom bombs than he
possesses." In ethical-sociological terms, "Find out what the
other fellow is going to do to you and do it to him first."
Secretary Matthews began his peace-through-power address
of August 25, 1950: "Without the contribution which the
Boston naval shipyard has made to the current character of our
modern navy, we would not have the most powerful navy in the
world today. Without such a navy and its glorious. accomplishments for more than a century and a half, America could
not have become the leading power in the family of nations ...
The navy has done much to make freedom and liberty realities
for every American citizen in a world threatened bv despotism
and tyranny."
·
Matthews then spo k e o f th e R evo1u t'10nary W ar of 1776, m
20
which Americans became "aggressors for freedom." Without
the struggles, sacrifices and victories of these revolutionists,
Americans of today could not have "many of the blessing~
which distinguish our favored American way of life from the
common lot of the average citizen under every other government in the world."
Americans today, said Mr. Matthews, "are the trustees of
this sacred inheritance . . . Are we worthy of the sacred
trust that has been imparted to us? Will we preserve inviolate
the precious charter of individual liberty that is America? ...
We have become the custodians of the Holy Grail, in which
are enshrined the imperishable hopes of man to live in peace
and freedom. The greatest challenge of our national life
confronts us," he continued. "It is for us in our generation
to decide if it is ever again to be possible for men to live
in freedom and peace."
Then he presented his program. "Only an affirmative and
vigorous national policy will make that possible. A true
democracy ordinarily does not seek international accord
through resort to violence. For one hundred and sixty-three
years, the United States has settled its international differences
through peaceful negotiation. Never have we drawn the sword
unless first attacked and so compelled to fight in self-defense.
It is possible that we shall be forced to alter that pacific policy.
"Self-preservation in the present world can be purchased only
by those who are capable of resisting successfully a violation
of their rights. We have no choice other than to build our
military power to the strength which will make it impossible
for any enemy to overcome us. To reach that position, all
the resources of the nation should be dedicated.
"We should first get ready to ward off any possible attack
and, reversing the traditional attitude of a democracy, we
should boldly proclaim our undeniable objective to be a world
at peace. To have peace we should be willing, and declare
our intention, to pay any price, even the price of instituting
a war to compel cooperation for peace.
"Only the forces who do not want peace would oppose our
efforts to transform the hostile nations embroiled in the
present international conflict into a tranquil world. They would
21
brand our program as imperialistic aggression. We would
accept that slander with complacency for, in the implementation
?f a strong, affirmative, peace-seeking policy, though it cast us
m a character new to a true democracy-an initiator of a war of
aggression-it would win for us a proud and popular titlewe would become the first Aggressors For Peace.
"It is a role. which, in my opinion, we cannot escape. It is
a cause to which we shall be compelled to dedicate our total
and ultimate resources. From no other course can there be
effected the salvation of the free world."
A u:~STU~, PRESIDED o~er a co~quere~ world which en-
JO) ed a Roman peace.
The mdustrial revolution the
British vict~ry ~t Wat.e~loo, the might of the British Navy' and
~he p:ane~-girdlmg British Empire gave the nineteenth century
its Victorian Age of peace, progress and prosperity. Now Mr.
Matthews wishes to step into the power-politics ring, lick all
~omers and then, through the agency of battleships and bombmg planes, confer the blessings of peace upon any portions
of the earth which may survive the aggressive atom war for
peace and freedom.
"Preventive War Talk-Why?" was the title of the lead
article in U.S. News and World Report for Sept. 8, 1950. It
referred to the Matthews program, compared it to like utterances by other U.S. policy-makers, and concluded that "odds
are strongly against preventive action" because "defense
planners say U.S. isn't strong enough to assure a knockout
victory" and that U.N. forces could not be used in such an
opera.tion because "secrecy, needed to make any such attack
~ffective, could not possibly be maintained, the planners say,
if the forces of several of the United Nations were involved."
In a word, preventive war might be worth trying if it would
work, but it will not work.
Advocates of preventive war are not making U.S.A. policy
at the moment but some of them occupy official positions and
many of them are high-ranking officers of the armed forces.
22
Folly and Wickedness
N THE PRECEDING World Events letter I referred to
the Truman-Acheson "hate-communism" campaign as a
mad adventure. It is more than mad-it is foolish and
wicked. Truman and Acheson are not merely leading the
people of the United States into a war which will bankrupt
their economy. They are following a line of policy which will
eventually compel the United States, single-handed, to attempt
by economic and military means to resist the dominant historical trend toward collectivism.
Nowhere have I read a clearer, simpler, more convincing
answer to this aspect of the Truman-Acheson policy than in
the September 1950 Monthly Review ( 66 Barrow Street, New
York-single copy, 35 cents; year's subscription, $3). The
editorial to which I refer is headed "Sound the Alarm!" Its
first sentence reads, "The Korean war shows that our rulers
are leading us along the road to national defeat and disaster."
The cause of this misleadership, the editors insist, is not the
wickedness of policy-makers but their "belief that the basic
dynamic factor in the present world situation is Russian expansionism, a drive on the part of the Soviet Union to conquer
the world." American policy-makers mistakenly identify Russia
with communism. The real dynamic in the present world
situation is the growing determination of masses of people
to replace nineteenth-century competition, capitalism and imperialism by some form of cooperation and collectivism. Hence,
"the real conflict is not between the Soviet Union and the
United States, but between socialism and capitalism, and this
conflict cuts across all national boundaries and reaches into
every aspect of social life. In the field of international
relations it manifests itself at the present stage of development
as a conflict between two blocks of states, the socialist states
and the capitalist states, each led by its most powerful member."
Any move toward war, whether made in the name of peace
and freedom or of preventive aggression, is both foolish and
wicked. It is foolish because it will lead to the disruption and
destruction of the means of livelihood. It is wicked because it
rests upon the fallacy that one can gain by harming one's
neighbors.
I
23
Peace Is Indivisible
T
HERE ARE no local, limited, "good" wars. Wars
spr_ead. The present-day tense, arm~d world is like
··
a tmder-dry forest. War smoulders m Burma, IndoChina, Malaya, Korea, the Philippines. A minor incident,
fanning the flames of fear, hatred and local violence, can start
a conflagration that will decimate and destroy man and his
works in an incredibly brief space of time.
War is the act of destruction, but behind war lie social
forces which are closer to the heart of the difficulty than armed
struggle. It is these social forces which we must control and
direct before world peace can beome a reality.
In the preceding World Events I wrote that the present
letter would deal with the problem of making peace. The
outbreak of war in Korea led me to change the topic. Barring
some unforeseen development, we shall devote Letter 69 to
the problem of peace.
One more word. A World Events subscriber writes from
California, "I will no longer subscribe to World Events or any
paper critical of our domestic or foreign policies. I must
and do support the decisions of our representatives." This is
a good illustration of the viewpoint which is developing in
California and elsewhere in the country. "Our Leaders, right
or wrong."
Over against this view, I would like to place another, which
is the animating conception of World Events. At this critical
juncture in world affairs the greatest contribution which an
individual can make is a vigilant, forthright evaluation and
re-evaluation of trends, programs, policies and representatives
-bearing down hardest on the representatives-and a vigorous,
ceaseless announcement of the conclusions to which the evaluations lead.
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