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 A Clausewitzian Perspective on the Korean War: Josiah McDonald HIST 300KK: America’s Small Wars 17 April 2015 "I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work, and that I consulted the Writing Center." Josiah McDonald
Abstract The Korean War started on 25 June 1950, when North Korean forces attacked across the 38th parallel into South Korea. Using Carl von Clauesewitz’s famous axiom, “War is a continuation of politics by other means,” this paper shows that the United States did not achieve “victory” in the Korean War. The United States had three different political objectives at various times throughout the war. They were (1) to achieve peace and security in South Korea (at the start of the war), (2) reunify the Korean peninsula (from August until the end of 1950), and (3) to achieve voluntary repatriation of communist prisoners of war (from 1951 until 1953). While the first and third objectives were attained, the Korean peninsula is still divided between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Thus, the paper shows that the United States did not achieve victory in the Korean War.
1 One of the most famous axioms of Carl von Clausewitz, a late eighteenth/early nineteenth century Prussian general and military theorist, is that war is a continuation of politics by other means. In other words, states use war as a tool to achieve certain political objectives. This Clausewitzian axiom can be used as the framework for a methodological approach to determining victory in a war. However, the United States had multiple political objectives at different points in the Korean War. The first was to achieve the peace and security of South Korea. The second objective was to reunify the Korean peninsula. Finally, the third objective was to allow for the voluntary repatriation of prisoners of war (POWs). Likewise the Korean War can also be thought of in the context of a campaign within the larger Cold War. In this context, the first objective was to contain communism, the second was to rollback communism, and the third was to provide a morale blow to communism. This paper shows that the United States did not achieve “victory” in the Korean War because it did not complete all of its political objectives. The Objectives On 25 June 1950, military forces from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) crossed over the 38th parallel and invaded the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea). American views of what to do were varied at first. Two days after the attack, General Douglas MacArthur—who later became Commander-­‐in-­‐Chief of the United Nations Command—spoke to an official from the United States, proclaiming that “anyone who advocated a U.S. challenge to communist power on the Asian mainland ‘ought to have his head examined.’”1 Yet with North Korean forces quickly routing South Korean 1
William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 44. 2 forces the United States government quickly realized something had to be done. Donald Snow and Dennis Drew note, “The first and most basic [political objective] was to repel the North Korean invasion, to rid South Korea of those invaders, and to allow reinstitution of South Korean control of its territory.”2 Yet this objective betrays the complexities under which it was formed. The Korean War—especially at the start—must be thought of in the context of a war within the global Cold War. Morton Halperin explains, “American objectives were developed in the framework of the belief that the attack was part of a general plan for expansion and perhaps a prelude to general war.”3 The decision to intervene was based on the assumption that allowing South Korea to “fall” to communism would encourage further aggression in other parts of the world.4 At this point the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had just recently been formed (April 1949), Japan was still under American occupation, and there was a prevalent fear that Soviet forces could very well spread communism through Europe as well as Japan. James Matray notes that Secretary of State Dean Acheson, “more than most, relished the tantalizing prospect of not just repelling communist aggression but also scoring a major political, psychological, and geostrategic victory for the West.”5 2
Donald M. Snow and Dennis M. Drew, From Lexington to Baghdad and Beyond: War and Politics in the American Experience (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2010), 139. 3
Morton H. Halperin, “The Limiting Process in the Korean War,” Political Science Quarterly 78, no. 1 (March 1963): 16. 4
Ibid. 5
Robert J. McMahon, Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2009), 141. 3 While the Cold War served as the impetus to restore the status of South Korea prior to the North Korean invasion,6 it also proved to be a reason behind the expansion of the United States’ political objectives. William Stueck writes, Soon after the attack, the administration recognized that the United States could achieve reunification of Korea under a desirable government only if American forces crossed the thirty-­‐eighth parallel and eliminated the communist regime by military means. Initially, however, American leaders stated that the objective in Korea was merely to restore the status quo ante bellum.7 The decision to push above the 38th parallel was the result of many forces pushing against each other. On the one hand, the Soviet Union was arguing for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the Korean peninsula. If that occurred and the North Koreans pulled back to the 38th parallel, the communists could still resume an offensive at a later date.8 The fear of a resumed communist attack increasingly led, as Stueck says, “toward the conclusion that mere restoration of the 38th parallel was inadequate for the maintenance of ‘peace and security’ on the peninsula.”9 In addition to the threat of a future invasion, Stueck notes, the U.S. recognized that “to halt UN forces at the 38th parallel would add to the volatile situation within South Korea, where President [Syngman] Rhee already agitated for an all-­‐out military campaign in the North.”10 The final incentive to extend the political objectives was 6
Stueck, The Korean War, 61. 7
James I. Matray, “Truman’s Plan for Victory: National Self-­‐Determination and the Thirty-­‐Eighth Parallel Decision in Korea,” Journal of American History 66, no. 2 (September 1979): 318. 8
Stueck, The Korean War, 60. 9
Ibid., 61. 10
Ibid., 62. 4 history. It had been the goal of the United States since 1944—and the United Nations since 1947—to achieve, as Leland Goodrich writes, “the establishment of a free and independent Korea united under a democratic government freely chosen by the Korean people.”11 At the start of the war, the Truman administration had not considered using the Korean War as a method to achieve reunification. However, debate started occurring and by the second week of August, President Harry S. Truman decided that reunification could be achieved and used as a method to rollback communism. The decision was made to cross the 38th parallel and they quickly began laying the political groundwork to publicly announce such a decision.12 writes, [At the end of August] President Truman declared in a radio address that “Koreans have the right to be free, independent, and united.” Under UN “guidance,” he concluded, the United States would “do its part to help them enjoy that right.” Increasingly, the State Department viewed the unification of Korea as a method of seizing the offensive in the cold war. As a departmental position paper concluded, a total victory on the peninsula would be “of incalculable importance in Asia and throughout the world.” The accomplishment would keenly impress Japan and ‘stimulate any latent or active differences between [Beijing] and Moscow.’ Even ‘Soviet satellites in Europe’ would take notice.13 Within the larger Cold War, the objective would be to rollback communism. In the context of its own war, however, reunification of the Korean peninsula became the political objective. On 7 September 1950, the Joint Chiefs of Staff indicated their support of crossing the 38th parallel. Likewise, on 11 September 1950, Truman approved the National Security 11
Leland M. Goodrich, Korea: A Study of U.S. Policy in the United Nations (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1956), 182. 12
Matray, “Truman’s Plan for Victory,” 325. 13
Stueck, The Korean War, 63. 5 Council report summarizing plans for Korean reunification.14 On 15 September 1950, UN forces under the command of General MacArthur landed at Inchon and attacked towards Seoul—cutting North Korean supply lines in the process. At the same time UN forces conducted a breakout from the Pusan perimeter and North Korean forces began to be overrun. It was not until 7 October 1950, however, that the United Nations15 passed a resolution allowing “UN forces to enter into and remain within North Korea until both halves of that divided country were reunified under a democratic government.”16 By November of 1950, UN forces had almost achieved the goal of unification when disaster struck. On 27 November 1950, Chinese forces attacked south, across the Yalu River, and routed UN forces.17 By early 1951, the Chinese advance had been repulsed and the front line had begun to reach the 38th parallel once more. The political objective now switched back to repelling communist attacks and restoring peace. While the U.S. still held unification as a political objective, it would no longer pursue it through war. No longer was the military objective to take as much ground as possible; instead, Scot Gartner and Marissa Myers write, it changed to “inflicting enough 14
Matray, “Truman’s Plan for Victory,” 327-­‐29. 15 The fighting during the Korean War was under the United Nations banner. The majority of the forces were American, indeed so was the UN military commanders, yet the U.S. administration could not unilaterally set objectives for coalition forces. One example of this is while the U.S. administration adopted the objective of reunifying Korea in August of 1950 (prior to the Inchon landings), the UN pass a resolution permitting the crossing of the 38th parallel until October 1950 (almost one month after Inchon). 16
McMahon, Dean Acheson, 142. 17
U.S. Department of State, United States Policy in the Korean Conflict, July 1950-­‐ February 1951 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1951), 26. 6 pain upon communist forces to bring them to the negotiating table.”18 Throughout this point in the war, President Harry Truman made address after address calling for a settlement which would “fully end the aggression and restore peace and security to the area”19 and would secure “the right of nations to be free and to live in peace.”20 Acheson described the objective at this time as being to “stop the attack, end the aggression on that [Korean] Government, restore peace, providing against the renewal of the aggression.”21 He also noted that both the UN and the United States stood for a “unified, free, and democratic Korea.”22 However, Acheson declared that he did “not understand it to be a war aim. In other words, that [goal] is not sought to be achieved by fighting, but it is sought to be achieved by peaceful means, just as was being attempted before this aggression.”23 On 10 July 1951, belligerent forces started cease-­‐fire negotiations.24 Both Chinese and American commanders involved thought negotiations would end quickly (between three and six weeks) and the war would be over. However, the armistice was not signed until roughly one hundred weeks later. 18
Scot Sigmund Gartner and Marissa Edson Myers, “Body Counts and ‘Success’ in the Vietnam and Korean Wars,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25, no. 3 (Winter 1995): 381. 19
U.S. Department of State, Working Together For Peace, Address by Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, June 25, 1951 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1951), 10. 20
U.S. Department of State, The Defense of Freedom, Address by Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, July 4, 1951 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1951), 4. 21
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969), 531. 22
Ibid. 23
Ibid. 24
Gideon Rose, How Wars End (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 128. 7 Why did the war last nearly an additional two years to end? The answer is that the United States expanded its political objectives. John Beal writes, Truce had been under negotiation for a year and a half. For almost a year only one issue stood in the way—the UN Command’s refusal to turn back to the Communists those prisoners of war which it held who did not want to go back. It had polled the POWs and learned that 46,380 of them—the big majority—never wanted to see Communist rule again.25 Some may argue that this issue of preventing forcible repatriation was not a political objective. Indeed, there is some evidence for this view. In the first overtures for negotiations, the UN General Assembly’s position was that “[POWs] shall be exchanged on a one-­‐for-­‐one basis, pending final settlement of the Korean question.”26 Likewise, few people in Truman’s administration argued against forcible repatriation. Yet by the time negotiations started in July of 1951, the United States refused to hand unwilling prisoners back to the communists. On January 2, 1952, the UN formally adopted the same position, Gideon Rose writes, as the “negotiating team at Panmunjom formally suggested that the disposal of the prisoners respect the ‘freedom of choice on the part of the individual, thus insuring that there will be no forced repatriation against the will of the individual.’”27 Further proof that the issue was a political objective is the number of casualties that were sustained during the time while negotiations were being held. Roughly 124,000 UN casualties—including 9,000 American dead—occurred, Rose notes, “during the period 25
John Robinson Beal, John Foster Dulles: 1888-­‐1959 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), 180. 26
U.S. Department of State, United States Policy in the Korean Conflict, July 1950-­‐ February 1951, 29. 27
Rose, How Wars End, 132. 8 when prisoner repatriation was the sole contested issue.”28 If POW repatriation was not a political objective, then negotiations would have ended and a peace treaty signed. Objectives Achieved? If countries go to war to achieve certain political objectives, then victory can be judged by whether those objectives are achieved. What happens many times, however, is that throughout the course of a war the objectives will change. Objectives can change for any number of reasons, whether it be a change in administrations, public opposition, economic struggles, or even the success or failure in achieve prior objectives. How does one determine “victory” if the political objectives change? Imagine that country A goes to war with the political objective x. If country A achieves objective x, then A has achieved victory. Conversely, if country A decides to pursue political objective y, then A must achieve y to obtain victory. If country A does not accomplish y, then it does not attain victory. In a methodological study, Patricia Sullivan and Michael Koch29 would treat these statistically as two different wars because the objective y is pursued as a result of completing x.30 However, if y is pursued because x is not completed, then statistically, it would be treated as one war.31 What happens if there are three political objectives? Suppose country A sets out to achieve objective x and, as a result of achieving this objective, country A then adds 28
Ibid., 156 29 Sullivan and Koch, in “Military Intervention by Powerful States,” conducted a statistical survey of military interventions since World War II in order to measure the effectiveness of military force as an instrument of policy. 30
Patricia L. Sullivan and Michael T. Koch, “Military Intervention by Powerful States, 1945-­‐2003,” Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 5 (September 2009): 712. 31
Ibid. 9 objective y. If y is not realized and country A returns to objective x as well as creates objective z, then country A does not attain victory. Even if objectives x and z are completed at the end of the war, they were only set out as objectives because y could not be achieved. Applying this abstract model to the Korean War: objective x was the peace and security of South Korea, y was the unification of the Korean Peninsula, and z was the voluntary repatriation of communist POWs. Was the peace and security of South Korea achieved? Newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower (January 1953) wrote to ROK President Syngman Rhee that the action taken by the UN in “repelling the armed attack directed against [South Korea] by the North Korean regime and subsequently by the Chinese Communists” had been achieved.32 This part of Eisenhower’s letter was wholly true. On 27 July 1953, the armistice was signed—effectively ending hostilities in the Korean War. Donald Snow and Dennis Drew write, “The terms of the peace, which included a divided Korea, forced the North Koreans, however grudgingly, to relinquish the political purpose for which they had initiated violence in the first place, the forceful uniting of the Korean peninsula under Communist rule.”33 While there have been incidents34 since 1953 that have threatened the security of the ROK, in the sixty-­‐two years since the armistice was signed, was has not occurred. While the demarcation line between North and South Korea are not entirely along the 38th 32
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change: 1953-­‐1956 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 182. 33
Snow and Drew, From Lexington to Baghdad and Beyond, 154. 34 Some incidents include: a naval skirmish between North and South Korea in June 2002, the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan by a North Korean torpedo in March of 2010, and a skirmish in November 2010 which killed two ROK Marines. 10 parallel (ROK’s border is north of the 38th on the east coast, and south of the 38th on the west coast), neither country gained or lost significant territory. Under these conditions, the first objective of the United States was achieved. At the end of the Korean War, POWs were not forced to go back to China or North Korea. On 26 July 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proclaimed that the United States would, welcome also the triumph of the principle of political asylum. Many of the North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war want hereafter to live in freedom. The Communists stubbornly insisted that these prisoners must be forcibly returned. Now that demand is abandoned. No prisoners will be returned against their will. They may choose freedom.”35 Similarly, Eisenhower wrote, “We think, too, of the enemy prisoners in our hands. We have steadfastly sustained their right to choose their own future, to live in freedom if they wish.”36 The third political objective of the United States was achieved. While unification was not achieved through force, the United States, as well as the UN, had high hopes for achieving it through diplomatic means. On 26 July 1953, the day before the armistice was signed, Dulles stated that the United States was No less determined than before to achieve this unification. Since World War II, it has been our firm conviction that the unification of the peninsula must come about through political means rather than by force. Nothing has happened to alter that conviction. Now we shall press forward, in political conference, to end an unnatural division which, so long as it persists, will be a potential cause of strife.37 35
U.S. Department of State, Armistice in Korea, Selected Statements and Documents (Washington, DC: GPO, 1953), 4. 36
Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 191. 37
U.S. Department of State, Armistice in Korea, Selected Statements and Documents, 4. 11 Similarly, in his letter to President Syngman Rhee, Eisenhower stated, “The United States and United Nations have consistently supported the unification of Korea under conditions which would assure its freedom and independence. Neither the United States nor the United Nations has ever committed itself to resort to war to achieve this objective.”38 These statements (as well as others from similar US administration leaders) propose that unification was not a political objective of the war. However, in August of 1950, Stueck notes, “the State Department viewed the unification of Korea as a method of seizing the offensive in the cold war. As a departmental position paper concluded, a total victory on the peninsula would be ‘of incalculable importance in Asia and throughout the world.’”39 This indicates a view of the Korean War as a smaller part of the worldwide Cold War. Reunifying the Korean peninsula would prove to be a rollback of communism. Furthermore, James Matray argues, NSC-­‐81 (the report Truman approved which authorized actions above the 38th parallel) “stressed that the American military force had to act as an army of ‘liberation’ in order to maximize support for Rhee’s government in North Korea.”40 The report went on to say that the United States would have to withdraw its troops as soon as possible after hostilities ended so that the United Nations could sponsor free elections throughout the peninsula that would hopefully result in a democrat state.41 The UN set up the United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea on 7 October 1950 to achieve this objective, yet the Chinese counterattacked and drove UN forces out of North 38
Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 182. 39
Stueck, The Korean War, 63. 40
Matray, “Truman’s Plan for Victory,” 328. 41
Ibid. 12 Korea.42 While the objective in the Cold War was to rollback communism, and reunifying the peninsula was seen to be a method to achieve that, reunification became the political objective in the context of the Korean War as its own war. Today, there is a North and South Korea. The Geneva Conference held in 1954 to solve “the Korean problem” did not succeed. There was no unification. The second political objective of the United States was not achieved during the war or after. According to Clausewitz, states go to war to achieve political objectives. Identifying and examining whether those goals were accomplished or not is a way to determine victory. The United States set out three of these political objectives in the Korean War. First, peace and security had to be reestablished in the ROK. Second, the Korean peninsula had to be reunified. Third, communist POWs could be voluntarily repatriated. While the first and the third goals were realized, there was no reunification. The failure to achieve that critical objective means the United States did not achieve victory. 42
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