For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  Although political violence had plagued the USAMGIK since 1945, the insurgency of April 1948 became a nationwide guerrilla war. Kim Il-sung nurtured the conflict by arming the SKLP partisans and opening a border war in late 1948 that supported partisan infiltrations and mutinies in the South Korean armed forces. The 1948–1950 war in the Republic of Korea (as southern Korea became in August 1948) killed more than seven thousand ROK soldiers and policemen and at least thirty thousand partisans, SKLP supporters, and innocent bystanders. The Korean National Police and Korean Constabulary, which became the ROK army, survived defections and betrayals and conducted effective, if punitive, counterpartisan operations under the supervision of the U.S. Army Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG). Despite the war, the Koreans elected delegates to a constitutional convention that adopted a republican constitution and, under that constitution, elected a National Assembly, which chose Syngman Rhee, a well-known anti-Japanese expatriate, age sixty-eight, as president. Rhee, American diplomats thought, was the least bad choice for his office.

  Viewed from Pyongyang, the partisan war in South Korea offered the opportunity to create a unified Communist Korea, modeled after the Communist victory in China. Secure in his Soviet patronage, Kim Il-sung went to Moscow in March 1949 to seek Stalin’s approval and assistance in invading the ROK, to aid SKLP guerrillas with the NKPA conventional forces. Stalin said “no” or at least “not yet.” He set forth several preconditions for Soviet support of a North Korean invasion. The last U.S. Army combat troops had to leave South Korea, which occurred in June 1949. There should be no chance of a timely American intervention from Japan. The Rhee regime and the ROK army had to be near collapse or defection. The partisans must make a dramatic “Second Front” attack on ROK military bases throughout the country. The North Korean army must be enlarged, more heavily armed with tanks and artillery, and trained by a new Soviet military mission. And Mao Zedong must agree to assist Kim if the North Koreans needed military help. Kim agreed to these terms and worked for a year to meet them—or promise that they would occur. The key elements were Chinese support and American withdrawal, the latter a critical error by the United States. None of the suicidal conditions attached to the ROK came to pass, although Rhee did lose supporters in the National Assembly elections of 1950.

  The South Korean security forces suppressed the SKLP partisans, but did not have the weapons and training to stop the NKPA armor and heavy artillery. The KMAG feared an invasion. It reported that only half the ROK army had enough weapons and training to be combat-ready and had no effective antitank weapons, no tactical air force, and no artillery capable of matching the NKPA. Within South Korea, an invasion seemed certain. The imponderables were its timing and the American response. The KMAG and ROK army generals predicted an invasion, but American leaders in Tokyo and Washington missed or ignored the reports.

  The American position was that South Korea had no strategic value, which meant it could not be used as a base in a U.S.–U.S.S.R. World War III. The ROK army of about 100,000 was not a strategic asset, which meant it could not defend American air and naval bases in South Korea, should they be needed, which seemed unlikely. Interviews, news stories, and congressional testimony on the U.S. defense budget placed no value in holding South Korea. The ROK army looked too much like the Chinese Nationalist army, prone to surrender or abandon U.S. Army heavy weapons. Not arming the ROK army, diplomats and generals said, prevented it from attacking North Korea. Rhee and some of his generals did chant “pukjin tong-il” or “march north for freedom,” but KMAG knew there was no ROK army ability to do so. The Pentagon did not want to send scarce and costly tanks, guns, and aircraft to Asia when NATO needed them.

  The creation of the People’s Republic of China (October 1949) forced the Truman administration to redirect its Asian foreign policy. Defending Japan seemed the only compelling strategic requirement. Taiwan would not be defended, at least in a U.S.–Quomindang alliance. South Korea had some residual value in the defense of Japan, but was not an essential ally. In a major foreign policy address in January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson admitted that South Korea had no role in strict strategic terms. Its security was a United Nations responsibility, supported by the United States. Republican critics later charged Acheson with “selling out” South Korea, but their cause was really Taiwan’s survival. To save South Korea, the administration had to save the Chinese Nationalists. No doubt Chinese and Soviet intelligence analyzed Acheson’s speech, but it was not a determining factor in the North Korean invasion. Rather, Kim Il-sung profited from a Soviet-Chinese mutual security and economic assistance treaty accepted by Stalin in February 1950. The North Koreans could then exploit the U.S.S.R–PRC pact to their military advantage. For example, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) transferred two Korean divisions to the NKPA and released thousands of other PLA veterans to fill up Kim Il-sung’s infantry divisions. Artillerymen and tankers came from training bases in the U.S.S.R. Eventually Kim fielded an eleven-division army of 135,000 soldiers seasoned by service in the Soviet and Chinese Communist armies. The NKPA was a pocket model of its Soviet counterpart, armed with T-34 tanks, heavy artillery, and attack aircraft, all of which were brought to bear in June 1950 along the 38th Parallel.

  Within two weeks of the NKPA invasion—while the armies of the Republic of Korea (ROK) fell back in disarray—the Truman administration established the international and domestic political foundation for an extended and substantial American military commitment to Korea. Of highest importance was Truman’s determination to use the war as a test of the United Nations’ ability to meet aggression with collective military action. Assisted by Russia’s temporary absence, the United States guided several resolutions through the Security Council that gave the intervention United Nations sanction. The aim of UN action in July 1950 was to restore the prewar border and stop the war, either by negotiation or battlefield victory. In popular interpretation the war became an international “police action” rather than a national conflict. Nevertheless, Truman also requested and received overwhelming congressional support for emergency, war-related measures: Supplemental defense funds, draft extensions, reserve mobilization, and expanded presidential powers. Truman consulted with congressional elders about the commitment of American ground troops and found them acquiescent. In the traumatic days of June 1950 the president might have received a formal declaration of war if he had so chosen, but he and his advisers regarded their actions as fully sanctioned by the United Nations charter. They also assumed the responsibility of fighting the war as part of a coalition whose ardor for the war waxed and waned outside American control.

  In the Far East American military action did not stop the NKPA offensive until early September, and the UN forces—three scratch Army divisions from Japan and one from the United States—barely held on to a perimeter around the port of Pusan. Although air strikes and naval bombardments pummeled the NKPA, the ground actions produced one crisis after another for United Nations Command (General of the Army Douglas MacArthur) in Tokyo and the 8th U.S. Army (EUSAK) in the field, commanded by Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker, a sturdy tanker in the Patton mold. Critically short of essential weapons (e.g., less than one-fifth of its authorized tanks) and units, EUSAK entered the war a partially trained army that had just rotated about half its GIs back to the United States; it was critically short of trained infantrymen. Although it had a cadre of combat officers and NCOs, it did not rally until its ranks were reinforced with American soldiers and it received more artillery, tanks, and antitank weapons. (Korean conscripts shoved into American infantry units were of limited assistance.) EUSAK developed no offensive capability until it added units from outside the theater; the 5th U.S. Infantry Regiment, the 2d U.S. Infantry Division, and the 1st Marine Brigade. On Korea’s hot, dusty hills the Americans learned about combat the hard way. They battled T-34s with inadequate weapons, fell prey to night attacks, retreated in disorder, fought with desperate but ill-organized valor, surren
dered, and were shot by their captors.

  UN Command, however, had Douglas MacArthur. His towering ego nourished by five years as the surrogate emperor of Japan, MacArthur seized the diplomatic and strategic initiative in the Far East, exploiting the uncertainties of collective decision-making in Washington. Basically, MacArthur wanted to make the Korean War a showdown with international Communism. Regarding Asia as more critical to America’s future than Europe, MacArthur had few qualms about the risks of extending the war to Communist China or even to Asian Russia. He believed that the Nationalist Chinese, licking their wounds on Taiwan, could return to the fray with increased American assistance, a proposal immediately rejected by Truman. MacArthur also wanted to extend air and naval operations to North Korea (permission granted) and even to Communist bases in Manchuria (permission denied). To reverse the ground war, he planned an amphibious deep envelopment at Inchon and the recapture of the capital of Seoul, matched with a breakout from the Pusan perimeter. Drawing additional reinforcements from the United States—especially the 1st U.S. Marine Division—MacArthur launched the Inchon invasion on September 15. His plan seemed inordinately risky to every senior military officer who reviewed it, including the JCS and the Navy and Marine officers who commanded Operation CHROMITE. Nevertheless, MacArthur correctly assessed the weak NKPA resistance (more by faith than hard intelligence), and the Navy-Marine team found ways to overcome the physical perils of Inchon harbor, dominated by narrow channels and sharp tidal changes. A wealth of World War II experience prevailed, and in two weeks American troops had liberated Seoul. In the meantime EUSAK took the offensive and drove the NKPA back toward the 38th Parallel in disarray. Close air support and newly arrived artillery battalions reduced the NKPA by one-third in troops and two-thirds in tanks, artillery pieces, and trucks. The shift in military fortunes could have hardly been more dramatic.

  The euphoria of victory brought the agony of decision. In October 1950, despite veiled Chinese hints of intervention, the United Nations, pushed by Harry Truman and ROK President Syngman Rhee, approved a change in war aims. Accepting MacArthur’s request to cross the 38th Parallel to finish the destruction of the NKPA, the Truman administration and the UN expanded the goals of the pursuit to include the reunification of Korea under UN supervision. Truman imposed trivial limitations on MacArthur’s offensive—keep American troops away from the Yalu River—in the hope that the Chinese would not intervene. MacArthur assured the president that the Chinese would stay out; and if they entered the war, he would bomb them to destruction. When Chinese troops first appeared on the battlefield in late October, punishing isolated American and ROK units, MacArthur wished away the threat as an inconsequential delay to his last grand offensive to the Yalu.

  Exploiting the night and the worsening winter weather, 260,000 hardy light infantry of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) attacked EUSAK and the autonomous X Corps (the 1st Marine Division and two Army divisions on Korea’s northeast coast) in late November and sent UN Command reeling back toward the 38th Parallel. The defeat was both militarily and psychologically stunning. Reporting that “we face an entirely new war,” MacArthur asked the president to consider every option, from evacuating his forces from Korea to nuclear attacks on the Chinese. Truman agreed that the war had changed and issued a declaration of national emergency on December 15, accelerating reserve call-ups and rearmament programs with a fourth supplemental defense appropriation. With only one combat-ready division in strategic reserve, he had little to send MacArthur but replacements. In addition, Truman found his UN allies, especially Great Britain, reluctant to expand the war to China. Although the UN decided to fight on, it returned to its original war aims, the preservation of a free South Korea. It was a decision MacArthur could not accept.

  Despite MacArthur’s dire predictions, EUSAK stabilized the front south of the 38th Parallel in January 1951 and even mounted limited counterattacks. Rebounding under the firm leadership of a new commander, General Matthew B. Ridgway, EUSAK pulled itself together. X Corps, fighting its way to the coast and evacuated by ship, returned to the front, and Ridgway soon commanded a true international army, with professional troops from the British Commonwealth, Turkey, Greece, Colombia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Thailand. Harassed by UN air strikes, the PLA had increasing difficulty mounting sustained offensives, for it suffered serious supply shortages that its coolie-carrier logistics system could not meet. In addition, EUSAK soldiers now understood Chinese night attacks and mass-infiltration tactics and could defend against them in depth and with massive firepower. When the PLA launched its last grand offensive in April–May 1951, EUSAK fell back in good order, fighting hard, and halted the attack without the crisis of the preceding winter. EUSAK then counterattacked with deliberate advances and awesome artillery and air support, and the PLA began to fall apart, with Chinese soldiers surrendering by the thousands. Despite MacArthur’s pessimism, the soldiers of UNC had proved they could hold South Korea.

  In the meantime, Truman weathered the last and most serious test of his decision to limit the Korean War, a test mounted by Douglas MacArthur. Bitterly disappointed by his defeat at the hands of the Chinese, MacArthur pressured the administration to accept his own war aims. Marshaling heroic rhetoric—“There is no substitute for victory”—the general conducted a political campaign to open Communist China to direct attack by his own forces and the Chinese Nationalists. He continued to hint darkly about the use of nuclear weapons, an option Truman never seriously considered. Incident mounted after incident: Indiscreet press conferences, unauthorized contacts with Chiang Kai-shek, inappropriate challenges to the Communists, provocative correspondence with veterans’ groups and Republican congressional leaders, dark hints of treason by the UN allies, especially Britain. With the full approval of Acheson, new Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall, and the JCS, Truman finally relieved MacArthur and ordered him home in April 1951. Buoyed by his enthusiastic public reception and bathed in martyrdom, MacArthur took his case to Congress. In a memorable public address to both houses, he accused the administration of appeasement and defeatism before promising to fade away like an old soldier in a barracks ballad. Like most MacArthur predictions, the promise to disappear proved flawed, since the Senate held hearings on the war and defense policy. MacArthur produced harsh words and limited enlightenment but could not reverse the administration’s policy of limiting the war. As JCS Chairman General of the Army Omar Bradley stated, MacArthur’s wider war was “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” The concept that a theater commander could dictate global policy seemed to endanger the principle of civilian control as well as the professional stature of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Acutely aware that MacArthur’s proposals endangered his rearmament program and the development of NATO, Truman summed up the issue: “General MacArthur was ready to risk general war. I was not.” MacArthur faded away after his weak showing in the early presidential primaries of 1952. The war went on without him.

  The United States Rearms

  The Truman administration had an appropriate substitute for victory in the Korean War, and that substitute was the rearmament of the United States, the development of a collective security alliance based upon NATO, and the strengthened deterrence of the Soviet Union with both nuclear and conventional forces. When Truman submitted his four supplemental budget requests for fiscal year 1951, he made his dual goals clear: “The purpose of these proposed estimates is two-fold; first, to meet the immediate situation in Korea, and, second, to provide for an early, but orderly, buildup of our military forces to a state of readiness designed to deter further acts of aggression.” The president presented his priorities in reverse order, since the administration eventually spent 60 percent of the 1951–1953 defense budgets on general military programs and 40 percent on waging the war. In fiscal terms, defense outlays became two-thirds of all federal spending. Supplemental appropriations brought the 1951 defense expenditure
s to $48 billion, followed in the next two fiscal years by outlays of $43.9 billion and $50.3 billion. Although the budgets fell short of Department of Defense requests, the administration approached a “holiday” on defense spending in its relations with Congress that approximated the halcyon days of World War II.

  Financially, the buildup was anything but orderly in its first year, but the Truman administration eventually patched together a program of increased personal income and corporate taxes and wage and price controls that checked inflation and preserved economic growth. Greater presidential authority over the economy, anathema to conservative Republicans, stemmed from several political adjustments. Warned by the defeat of several prominent liberal Democratic senators and representatives in the 1950 elections, the president backed away from his Fair Deal reform programs, especially those that cost money. Irritated by Louis Johnson’s political ineptness and residual liability as the agent of pre-Korea defense austerity, Truman in September 1950 appointed George C. Marshall as secretary of defense and Marshall’s trusted aide Robert A. Lovett his deputy. Truman agreed with Marshall’s insistence that he serve only one year and that Lovett be his successor. Marshall’s appointment gave the administration greater authority with Congress and pleased the JCS, who welcomed Marshall back to the Pentagon. Although Marshall and Secretary of State Acheson took their verbal lashings from the conservative wing of the Republican party, they gave the administration a tested, forceful team fully committed to the president’s rearmament policy.