An essay in universal history

13. THE KOREAN WAR

Immediately after signing the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights in 1948, the Soviet bloc countries showed their complete contempt for any such rights by increasing the cruel and relentless repression of all independent thought in Eastern Europe, raising the numbers of prisoners in the Soviet Gulag to five million, and attempting to overthrow the sovereignty of democratic South Korea.

“In 1945,” writes Henry Kissinger, “Korea, until then a Japanese colony, had been liberated by the victorious Allies. The northern half of the Korean Peninsula was occupied by the Soviet Union, the southern half by the United States. Each established its form of government in its zone before it withdrew, in 1948 and 1949, respectively.”¹⁵³
“Rival regimes then emerged,” writes Norman Stone. “A leathery Methodist, Syngman Fhee, was promoted in the South, while the Communist North Korea formally became independent in 1948 under Kim Il Sung, a figure (also with a Protestant background) who emerged from Chines shadows and had trained for a time at Khabarovsk in Siberia. Kin had megalomaniac qualities (he eventually proclaimed himself ‘President for Eternity’) and went to Moscow in March 1949, as Mao was winning in China. He wanted help to seize the South, where consolidation, with a small American presence, was ramshackle (as happened in Japan, there was a considerable enough Communist element there). That was refused: Stalin’s hands were full with the Berlin blockade. However, Mao was less discouraging, though he wanted action only ‘in the first half of 1950’, by which time he would control the whole of China. He even said that Chinese soldier might be sent in, because the Americans would not be able to tell them apart…”¹⁵⁴
The North Koreans crossed the 38^th parallel, their border with South Korea, on June 25, 1950. Their tanks were Soviet, as were their planes and some of their pilots. Why had the normally ultra-cautious Stalin allowed himself to be persuaded by the North Korean leader Kim-il-Sung into approving the invasion (in April, 1950)? Probably for two reasons: first because now the Soviets had the H-bomb, and secondly because, since October of that year, China had finally been conquered by the Chinese communists under Mao. World Communism was on the crest of a wave, and since Stalin believed that a Third World War was in any case inevitable, he probably reasoned that if risks had to be taken, now was the time to take them. Besides, he probably knew from his British spies in London and Washington Philby, Burgess and Maclean, that the Americans had ruled out the use of nuclear weapons. “Maclean’s deputy on the American desk, Robert Cecil, later concluded that the Kremlin must have found the documents provided by Maclean ‘of inestimable value in advising the Chinese and the North Koreans on strategy and negotiating positions.’”¹⁵⁵ So with Soviet weaponry, and vast numbers of Chinese soldiers to help them, the North Koreans probably had a good chance of beating the Americans, whose lines of supply were, of course, far longer than those of the communists.
Kissinger adds another reason: Stalin “had learned from the defection of Tito two years earlier that first-generation Communist leaders were especially difficult to fit into the Soviet satellite system that he thought imperative for Russia’s national interest. Starting with Mao’s visit to Moscow in later 1949 – less than three months after the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed – Stalin had been uneasy about the looming potential of China led by a man of Mao’s dominating attributes. An invasion of South Korea might divert China into a crisis on its borders, deflect America’s attention from Europe to Asia, and, in any event, absorb soe of America’s resources in that effort. If achieved with Soviet support, Pyongyang’s unification project might give the Soviet Union a dominant position in Korea and, in view of the historical suspicions of these countries for each other, create a kind of counterbalance to China in Asia. Mao followed Stalin’s lead – conveyed to him by Kim Il-sung in almost certainly exaggerated terms – for the converse reason; he feared encirclement by the Soviet Union, whose acquisitive interest in Korea had been demonstrated over the centuries and was even then displayed in the demands for ideological subservience Stalin was making as a price for the Sino-Soviet alliance…”¹⁵⁶
But Stalin had miscalculated. He did not realize that the American president was in his own way a man of steel – and some cunning also. On hearing the news of the invasion, President Truman, who was in his home state of Missouri, thought that World War III was about to begin. But on reaching Washington, he “told one of those who met him at the airport, ‘By God, I am going to let them have it.’ The United Nations Security Council, meeting that day, passed a resolution by nine votes to nil demanding the withdrawal of North Korean forces. There was no Soviet veto, as the Soviet delegate, Yakov Malik, had walked out of the Security Council five months earlier in protest at his colleagues’ refusal to give Communist China the Chinese Nationalist place on the Council…”¹⁵⁷
Since the invasion took place outside the North Atlantic area, it did not become the first test of the solidity of the NATO alliance. Instead, it was the United Nations that took on the responsibility of resisting Communist tyranny. And while, inevitably, the major burden of the war, both financial and military, fell on the United States, it has to be said that the international organization passed the test with flying colours as several nations gave troops in what was truly a war to defend freedom. Neither before nor since has the United Nations done so well in coordinating an effective resistance to totalitarian evil.
The fortunes of war swung wildly from one side to the other. In the early months, the UN forces were nearly forced to evacuate the whole peninsula. But then in a brilliant flanking movement at Inchon, the UN Commander General MacArthur drove the North Koreans up towards the border with China. Since the Chinese were now sending troops to help the North Koreans, MacArthur recommended carrying the war over the border and even dropping the hydrogen bomb on the Chinese. But President Truman, the man who had ordered the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was not going to repeat the experience: firmly and wisely, he said no, and World War Three was averted. And he refused to panic when things started going badly some months later, but instead boldly sacked the very popular MacArthur¹⁵⁸ and appointed General Ridgway, who reversed the tide once more, recaptured Seoul and made it possible for the two front lines to stabilize more or less where they had begun, on the 38^th parallel, with a very heavily fortified demilitarized zone separating them.
In hindsight, we may see the Korean War as the beginning of the decline of Soviet power. For the two communist super-powers had failed to dislodge the Americans from a clearly weaker position, even though the Americans forswore their huge advantage in nuclear weapons. (The Soviets exploded their first nuclear device in August, 1949.) This was largely Stalin’s fault. By throwing in his own troops and planes, he could almost certainly have swung the war in the communist direction. But he wanted to manipulate Mao and Kim-il-Sung just as he manipulated his own European and Russian satraps. And so he insisted that the Chinese help the North Koreans, while providing only military equipment on his part – not the air power that the Chinese so desperately needed. Nor did he agree to a peace treaty in the peninsula; he preferred a war of attrition in which the North Koreans would have to continue fighting indefinitely, because, as he told Chou-en-Lai, “they lose nothing except for their men”.¹⁵⁹
In the event, as David Reynolds writes, “the Americans lost 33,000; the Chinese perhaps half a million, including one of Mao’s sons; and the overall Korean death toll was maybe 2.5 million, a 10^th of the population…”¹⁶⁰
But in choosing a war of attrition, Stalin made another serious strategic error: it sowed seeds of distrust between the two communist super-powers. Already at their first meeting, during Stalin’s 70^th birthday celebrations in Moscow in December, 1949, Stalin had snubbed Mao. It was not that Stalin did not appreciate Mao’s achievement in making the world’s most populous state communist. Nor did he deny that China would now have to take the lead in the communist movement in the Far East. But he demanded veneration as the high-priest of the movement, and – now already in his 70s – he could not abandon the cunning and manipulative ways of his youth, which might be effective against Capitalist foes such as Churchill or Roosevelt but were less so with Communist “allies” hardly less cunning than himself such as Tito or Mao.
The Lord said that since the kingdom of Satan is divided against itself, it must fall (Matthew 12.26) And already before the death of Stalin, and in spite of the unparalleled power of his repressive apparatus, the communist movement was divided against itself. The differences between Stalin and Mao during the Korean War presaged the more serious split between the two powers in the 1960s - and the complete reversal of roles that we see today, when in spite of its bluster and posturing Putin’s Russia is clearly the junior partner to the enormous and continually rising power of still-communist and only superficially pro-Russian China…