The Korean War Remembered

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2004 by Donald Chisholm

Stueck, William. Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002. 285pp. $29.95

Mills, Randy K., and Roxanne Mills. Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the Korean War. Annapolis, Md.: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2000. 271pp. $32.95

Millett, Allan R. Their War for Korea: American, Asian, and European Combatants and Civilians, 1945-53. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2002.311pp. $25.95

Taken together these three volumes indicate the variety of published works on the Korean War to appear during the past several years, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of that once-forgotten conflict.

Only one of these books, however, Stueck's Rethinking the Korean War, follows the format of a conventional academic disquisition. Stueck, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Georgia, published his similar but much longer The Korean War: An International History (Princeton University Press) in 1995; that edition relied heavily on primary sources made available in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse and the slight but promising opening of China. He argued reasonably enough that, when viewed in the sweep of history and in the context of the new world order assembling itself from the ravages of World War II, the Korean War constituted a less bloody substitute for what might otherwise have been World War III. Well researched and largely persuasive, the book effectively and clearly demonstrates the vast complexity and uncertainties that characterize the international system, the strangeness of those internal decision-making processes of states that produce foreign policy decisions, the attendant opaqueness of motivations underlying the behaviors of states, and the often bizarre foundations of coalitions and alliances.

As an empirically grounded historical work it was marred, however, by two recurring indulgences that Stueck apparently could not resist: his evaluations of the morality of American motivations and behaviors, based, evidently, on the author's own unstated ethical code and related "counter-factuals"--those seductive but ultimately empty conjectures that frequently bemoan that if such and such had happened the world would be a better place.

Stueck's Rethinking the Korean War represents a distillation and updating of its predecessor, reflecting both the author's further reflection on the subject and additional information provided by recently declassified archival material from both sides of the Iron Curtain. In a very real sense, it constitutes the book that Stueck would have liked to have originally written. As its title suggests, it directs its attention to the broader canvas of international politics on which the conflict was played out. The book is most persuasive in its analysis of the disparate chain of events that began in various places across the planet and that came together to produce the Korean War: the ideological rigidity, stunning parochialism, insularity, and centuries-old geopolitical concerns of the Soviet and Chinese leaderships; the naivete of the United States and its confusion about the extent of its global interests and new responsibilities; fear of a monolithic international communism; Kim Il Sung's unabashed drive to unite and dominate the recently divided country from the north and Syngman Rhee's equally intense push to do the same from the south--provided all the variables needed to cause the war. Stueck's narrative of China's decision to intervene actively in the war is especially well done. He concludes that while operationally and tactically brilliant, the success of the Inchon landing and MacArthur's subsequent efforts across the thirty-eighth parallel, by rapidly and dramatically reversing the tide of the war, so alarmed the Chinese that their direct involvement on the ground was virtually assured, consequently concluding one war and commencing another. (1)

For this reader, the zenith of Stueck's efforts is in his analysis of why the conflict did not expand beyond the Korean Peninsula. He argues that the most important limiting factor was that both sides reassessed their political aims in light of changing military conditions on the ground and in the larger context of pressures from their respective allies. The Chinese and North Koreans consistently sought more active participation from the Soviets, particularly direct air support from their ground troops (the lack of which had proven their undoing in their autumn 1950 operations). Notwithstanding, the Soviets confined their air operations to a narrow area in the far north of Korea, affording them what more recently would become known as plausible deniability.

For its part, the United States was not anxious to see greater Soviet involvement, and in 1950, at least, America kept very quiet about its use of depth charges on unknown submarine contacts and the shooting down of a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft immediately prior to the Inchon operation. Chinese nationalists actively pursued a larger war, recognizing that this would afford them their only opportunity to retake mainland China. In the early stages of the war, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, as much to keep Chiang Kai-Shek in Taiwan as to deter the communists from mounting a crossstrait invasion. The Chinese nationalists also unsuccessfully tried to gain U.S. approval (General Douglas MacArthur at least entertained the idea) to place their own forces in the Korean ground war. Rhee saw this as his best chance to reunify Korea under his control.