Cost-cutting Defense Secretary Louis Johnson fought NSC 68 tooth and nail, but he was weakened in the face of the State Department by a Congressional investigation prompted by leaks from the navy, which was bearing the brunt of Johnson’s cuts. When the policy document reached Truman’s desk that April it stayed there until the Korean War broke out. Truman and Johnson sought to cap defence spending at around $13 billion by depending heavily on the nuclear deterrent, but adoption of NSC 68 would increase expenditure by anything from $30 billion to $50 billion. Although the Korean War itself only cost an additional $3–5 billion, it ensured the adoption of NSC 68 and an overall rise in defence expenditure to $48.2 billion in 1951. This translated not only into hundreds more nuclear weapons, but also into an army of 1,353,000 men, 397 major warships and an air force with ninety-five wings. If Stalin wanted a war anywhere on earth he would get it, and the US intended to win.6
NSC 68 eschewed the nuances of a doctoral thesis (this a jibe at Kennan) in favour of bludgeoning the official ‘mass mind’ with basic data and a Manichaean vision of a free world menaced by religoid fanatics. There should be heavy investment in covert, economic, psychological and political warfare, all designed to counter Communist advances and to subvert satellite countries and the Soviet Union itself.7 Since the US was engaged in ‘completely irreconcilable moral conflict’ with the Soviets, ‘total diplomacy’ would be required to mobilize America’s domestic resources and those of the entire free world too. As one of the key drafters of NSC 68 remarked, ‘if we can sell every useless article known to man in large quantities, we should be able to sell our very fine story in larger quantities’.8
Korea and NSC 68 were very bitter pills for Truman to swallow. It was a war he could not shy away from for reasons of face and prestige, but one in which he could not use America’s unilateral military advantage in nuclear weapons without risking escalation into a new world war. There was also a strong element of ‘for want of a nail’ in the voting down by Congress in January 1950 of $11 million in defence assistance for Seoul. Although a compromise package was subsequently approved, Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang took it as a green light for a military solution to the Korean problem.9
War in Korea had many positive aspects for Stalin, provided it remained limited. A unified Communist Korea would extend the depth of this buffer on the Soviet Union’s south-eastern Asiatic flank and it might be a useful springboard for an assault on Japan in the global war he thought inevitable. The US would be bound to shift forces away from Europe towards the Far East, which would weaken the newly established NATO, the Western response to the crises Stalin had engineered over Berlin and in Prague in 1948. If the US intervened in Korea, Mao’s dependence on Stalin would increase, diminishing the likelihood of his becoming an Asian Tito. A war between China and the US would exact a terrible price in blood and treasure on the US, which the ‘soft’ Americans would be unwilling to pay. As for the North Koreans, Stalin said they would ‘lose nothing, except for their men’, a view he later extended to the Chinese.10 At meetings with Mao, Stalin recommended that Mao put the 14,000 remaining Korean troops in the PLA’s 156th Division at Kim’s disposal. Mao had already allowed the 164th and 166th Divisions to return to North Korea, making a total of 30,000 to 40,000 battle-hardened veterans of China’s civil war ready for action in Korea. There really was no downside from the Kremlin’s point of view.
During a secret visit to Moscow between 30 March and 25 April 1950, Kim brought along the leader of the South Korean Communists, Pak Hon-yong, who declared that there were 200,000 disaffected South Korean leftists waiting to spring into action, a gross overestimate that omitted to mention that thousands of them were in prison. Comrade Pak, who was to be shot three years later, hoped that when Seoul was liberated the balance of power within the united Korean Communist Party would tilt towards the southerners and away from Kim’s Soviet Korean group.11 During the visit he assured Stalin that there would not be time for any US intervention because his blitzkrieg would be over in two to three weeks. Stalin bluntly told him that he was more exercised by events in Europe, and insisted that Kim turn for more concrete assistance to Mao with his ‘good understanding of Oriental matters’. His parting shot to Kim was ‘If you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all the help.’
On 13 May 1950 Kim flew to Beijing for three more days of secret talks. When he told Mao that Stalin had approved his invasion of the South, Mao cabled Stalin to confirm this story. While he did not discount potentially adverse consequences, Mao regarded war in Korea as a useful way of consolidating the Communist regime in China – through anti-American nationalism – and as a means of subverting the world order in the Asia-Pacific region.12 He was also simultaneously reassured, and offended, when Kim insisted that his troops did not require any Chinese military assistance, including the deployment of troops along the Chinese–Korean border. This ran contrary to Stalin’s last words to him, and caused the Soviet dictator to take a bigger stake in the venture. There was a significant spike in the quantity of arms arriving on Soviet ships in North Korea’s main port, and three Soviet generals with extensive combat experience arrived in Pyongyang, where they scrutinized and rejected the North Korean invasion plan. They imposed an alternative ‘counter-offensive’ based on the useful fiction that their ally was responding to South Korean aggression.
The North Korean invasion began at 4 a.m. on Sunday 25 June 1950, a timing seared on the minds of Soviet planners by Hitler nine years earlier. A hundred and fifty Soviet T-34 tanks enabled the In Min Gun to penetrate sixty miles in a couple of days, in a thrust which brought them to Seoul. North Korean secret police made short work of any ‘rightists’ who fell into their hands. Syngman Rhee’s ROK troops had already taken 30,000 imprisoned leftists out of the city to shoot them in ditches, the fate of many more suspects who had been compulsorily enrolled in an organization called the Bodo League. News of the invasion reached MacArthur’s headquarters before dawn on Sunday morning. Because of huge time differences, Washington did not learn of the attack until 3 p.m. on what was still Saturday 25 June. Truman was in his hometown of Independence, Missouri, Acheson was gardening at his Maryland farm, and Defense Secretary Johnson and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Omar Bradley were exhausted after a long flight home from Asia.
The news reached the State Department’s Far Eastern Desk at 8 p.m. and was relayed to Dean Rusk, who was dining with the journalist Joseph Alsop, and then to Dean Acheson, who telephoned Truman. In response to Acheson’s initial grim tidings, Truman made his position clear: ‘Dean, we’ve got to stop the sons of bitches, no matter what.’ Simultaneously John Hickerson, who dealt with UN business, telephoned Secretary-General Trygve Lie at his home on Long Island. ‘My God Jack, this is war against the United Nations’ was Lie’s response. In the early hours of Sunday morning, Lie summoned the members of the Security Council for a meeting to be held that afternoon. Meanwhile Truman flew back from Independence on the eponymous presidential aircraft and had the radio operator summon all the relevant principals for a meeting to be held at Blair House, his residence while the White House was undergoing much-needed refurbishment. Arriving back in Washington by early evening, during the drive to Blair House he exploded: ‘By God, I am going to let them have it.’ After a dinner the fourteen men discussed how to respond, with ‘an intense moral outrage’ pervading the room.13
The USAF began planning to wipe out Soviet air bases in the Far East. The Seventh Fleet was sent north from the Philippines to patrol the straits between mainland China and Taiwan. All Americans were to be evacuated from Korea, while the ammunition previously denied to Rhee was to be rushed there from Japan. Over the following days Truman authorized US air and naval operations up to the 38th parallel to slow the momentum of the North Korean advance. The big imponderable was who stood behind Kim Il Sung, for, as one US official remarked, ‘Can you imagine Donald Duck going on a rampage without Walt Disney know
ing about it?’ Truman accurately calculated that ‘the Russians are going to let the Chinese do the fighting for them’, although at this stage the Chinese were nowhere in sight.
With the Soviets absent from the UN Security Council, which they were boycotting because Chiang’s regime still represented China, on 27 June the UN sanctioned an international armed response to North Korean aggression. Some thirteen nations would eventually join the US-led coalition. That decision coincided with the day the North Koreans overran Seoul, bringing terror in their wake, and sending ROK forces into headlong retreat. In a move which would strain his relations with MacArthur, Truman first accepted and then declined Chiang’s offer of 33,000 KMT troops, on reflection deciding to keep the fates of Korea and Taiwan separate.
On Friday 30 June Truman committed two divisions of US ground troops from MacArthur’s command in Japan to what he described as a ‘police action’ in Korea. MacArthur had sought five divisions, including some from the West, but the Joint Chiefs were anxious lest the Soviets make a counter-move in Germany. The terminology helped avoid a wider war, for a formal declaration of war would have activated Chinese treaties with North Korea and the defence elements of the 1950 Sino– Soviet Pact.14 In Congress, the loudest cheers were for Representative Charles Eaton when he said: ‘We’ve got a rattlesnake by the tail and the sooner we pound its damn head in the better.’ Most Congressmen accepted the administration’s citation of eighty-seven precedents for presidents who despatched troops without prior Congressional authorization. In fact the alleged precedents were all limited efforts to extract US citizens from foreign war zones; in retrospect Truman’s action was an ominous step on the road to the imperial presidency.15
MacArthur’s new title was commander-in-chief, Far East. US forces were thereby entrusted to an egomaniacal seventy-year-old, who suffered more than most from the general’s generic disease of being surrounded by yes-men. He also resembled the actress who complained that the movie screens had grown too small for her talents. A colleague always referred to him as ‘Sarah’ in letters to his wife, alluding to the actress Sarah Bernhardt. The General had alabaster skin dotted with age spots and a craggy profile. His hair was thinning and its colour derived from a bottle. He was routinely kitted out in sunglasses, a battered peaked cap, pilot’s blouson and pleated slacks, with a corncob pipe jutting from his mouth, a contrived common touch designed to contrast with his exalted five-star rank.
MacArthur ruled Japan at a time when Hirohito had wisely abdicated the role to become a low-key constitutional monarch. The General commuted between a huge colonial-style embassy residence and the Dai Ichi insurance building opposite the Imperial Palace. He was a master of public relations, from dealing with the Emperor Hirohito to a humble carpenter who bowed back out of a lift the General entered. Suitably manipulated by MacArthur’s propagandists, the carpenter became a local celebrity. The General had long affected an oracular, third-person mode of speech, in which ‘History’ did this or that, and ‘MacArthur paid a visit’. His vast headquarters staff were dedicated believers in the cult, clones with his rigidity of opinion but without his flashes of genius.
MacArthur had grown contemptuous of his political masters, and became both anti-Semitic and a little loopy. Roosevelt had been ‘Rosenfeld’, but Truman was ‘that Jew in the White House’. When an aide was confused by this remark, MacArthur said, ‘You can tell by his name. Look at his face.’16 Yet fate made him uniquely indispensable to the administration, despite the ties he had with Truman’s domestic political opponents. Ironically one of them, the future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was in Tokyo when the invasion started and privately recommended to Truman that he find another commander since the elderly warrior’s mind wandered. It did not wander far from his principal preoccupation with himself. MacArthur thought himself superior to any other general, dismissing his (four-star) titular boss Omar Bradley as ‘a farmer’, and was convinced that he was an expert on ‘the oriental mind’. In fact the oriental minds he was acquainted with were those of upper-class Filipinos and his wartime comrade Chiang Kai-shek. The Japanese were the policemen who bowed and saluted along his daily progress, or the people who beamed at him from the newsreels he watched at night as a substitute for visiting real places.17
The Tokyo high command was a case of too many chiefs and not enough Native Americans. The General’s intimates were called the Bataan Gang, that is the officers who had played supporting roles in the redemptive myth MacArthur had constructed about the Philippines. They had bitterly resented the prominence given to the war in Europe and hence anyone connected to Marshall or Eisenhower. It was therefore a blow to them when Marshall became Truman’s defense secretary a month into the Korean War, while Bradley became the fifth and last US five-star general in September.
MacArthur’s initial strategy was to trade space for time, but little time was bought because the two US divisions shipped from Japan as the Eighth Army under General Walton ‘Johnnie’ Walker performed lamentably. They were unused to marching on foot and had little or no battlefield situational awareness. The North Koreans ambushed their lumbering motorized columns as they crawled through the zig-zagging hills that made up the spine of Korea, or exhausted them by always attacking their positions at night. It did not help that many GIs could not fathom why they were there at all. ‘I’ll fight for my country, but I’ll be damned if I see why I’m fighting to save this hell hole,’ remarked a Corporal Stephen Zeg of Chicago.18 The occupation troops had gone to seed in a fantasy world of cheap servants and cheaper whores, where their main preoccupation was making a fast buck on the enormous black market in American consumer goods. One of the most effective US commanders, Colonel John ‘Iron Mike’ Michaelis, described his troops as follows:
When they started out, they couldn’t shoot. They didn’t know their weapons. They had not had enough training in old fashioned musketry. They’d spent a lot of time listening to lectures on the differences between communism and Americanism and not enough time crawling on their bellies on manoeuvres with live ammunition singing over them. They’d been nursed and coddled, told to drive safely, to buy War Bonds, to give to the Red Cross, to avoid VD, to write home to mother – when someone ought to have been telling them how to clean a machine gun when it jams.19
The blame was shared between Truman’s cuts to the military budget, which had led to a sharp reduction in combat training, and MacArthur’s own lack of diligence. The result, by August, was that the North Koreans, although suffering 40 per cent casualties according to Chinese estimates, had the retreating US and ROK forces contained within a large rectangular perimeter around the southern port of Pusan. That was where MacArthur made his stand, pumping in huge additional resources while his air force pounded the enemy. The 90,000 besieged soon outnumbered the besieging force by 20,000.
North Korean hubris gave MacArthur his chance to execute one of the most brilliant moves of his career. He would strike by sea at the North Koreans’ extended supply chain, trapping them in a pincer movement when Walker’s heavily reinforced army moved north. After initially ruling out an amphibious landing, codenamed Bluehearts, because of the poor quality of his army troops, MacArthur grasped an offer from General Lemuel Shepherd of the US Marines to deploy a combat-ready force that was threatened by Truman’s budgetary cuts. The revamped plan, Operation Chromite, was for a landing at the port of Inchon. If successful the landing would give him a forward air base at Kimpo and a mere twenty miles to cover in order to seize the logistical bottleneck of Seoul. Inchon, however, was very far from being an ideal place for an amphibious landing. It had the second greatest tidal rise and fall in the world, only high enough for one day per month to permit landing craft to avoid getting stranded on viscous mud thousands of yards offshore. The troops would have to land straight on to piers and concrete seawalls and the harbour might also be mined. At a crucial meeting MacArthur won over sceptical naval commanders by asking: ‘Are you content to let our
troops stay in that bloody perimeter like beef cattle in a slaughterhouse? Who will take the responsibility for such a tragedy? Certainly, I will not.’20
On Wednesday 13 September, 261 ships began disembarking a massive invasion force that rapidly secured Inchon. MacArthur marred this act of brilliance by appointing his chief Tokyo crony, General Edward ‘Ned’ Almond, as the titular head of an operation conceived and led by Shepherd, on the thin grounds that Almond was to have command of the army’s post-invasion X Corps. Meanwhile Walton Walker’s Eighth Army command broke out of Pusan and smashed the besieging force. The In Min Gun was shattered, and although 50,000 soldiers eventually managed to flee across the 38th parallel, they did so without their equipment. MacArthur flew into liberated Seoul on his personal Constellation, the Bataan, to preside at the reinstallation of Syngman Rhee. Both men were overcome with emotion, weeping tears of joy. The ceremony took place in the badly damaged National Assembly building, with shards of glass falling down as MacArthur led the Lord’s Prayer. His entourage nervously donned their steel helmets, but he carried on with head bared.
With his forces halted at the 38th parallel, MacArthur waited on instructions. The UN Security Council resolution had called for the ‘complete independence and unity of Korea’ and Acheson dismissed the parallel as ‘a surveyor’s line’. Truman resolved that MacArthur should ‘conduct the necessary military operations either to force the North Koreans behind the 38th Parallel or to destroy their forces’. MacArthur could cross the parallel to occupy North Korea, provided there was no indication of Chinese or Russian intervention. When MacArthur, correctly, sought clarification, Marshall cabled: ‘We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th Parallel,’ although he was supposed to use only South Korean forces for such operations. Simply put, MacArthur was in no way responsible for the decision to extend the war.
Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965 Page 17
