End game

Joint Force Quarterly, Spring-Summer, 2001

By 1951, Stalin recognized that his support for the Korean War was a disaster. The United States and its allies in Europe, galvanized by communist aggression in Asia, expanded NATO capabilities while lending sufficient support to carry on U.N. operations in Korea. For its part, China realized that prospects for a limited war and quick victory had vanished and that it lacked the means to fight a protracted conflict. Meanwhile, Dwight Eisenhower became President in 1952 determined to end the war. The new administration launched a series of diplomatic and military initiatives, including a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons, although recently released Soviet documents suggest both the Soviet Union and China were already prepared to bring the war in Korea to a close.

A top secret Soviet history entitled "On the Korean War, 1950-53, and Armistice Negotiations" reveals the following:

By the middle of 1951, the situation clearly indicated that it was in practice impossible to resolve the unification of Korea by military means. Both the Chinese and the Korean leaders equally were forced to acknowledge this. After preliminary consultations with the Chinese and Koreans, the Soviet government on time 23, 1951, put forward a proposal for settling the military conflict in Korea. "As a first step," the Soviet representative declared, "it would be necessary to begin negotiations for a cease-fire, for an armistice with a mutual withdrawal of troops from the 38th parallel. This proposal attracted universal attention....

By the beginning of May 1952, an agreement was reached on all questions, with the exception of the question regarding prisoners of war. Later that question was also resolved on a mutually acceptable basis. Measures undertaken by the Soviet government after the death of Stalin in many ways facilitated the conclusion of the agreement. While in Moscow for Stalin's funeral, [Foreign Minister] Zhou Enlai had conversations with Soviet leaders regarding the situation in Korea.... Zhou Enlai, in the name of the government of the [People's Republic of China], urgently proposed that the Soviet side assist the speeding up of the negotiations and the conclusion of an armistice. Such a position by the Chinese coincided with our position....

A special representative was sent to Pyongyang from Moscow in March 1953 with a proposal for speeding up the peace negotiations. By that time the Koreans also showed a clear aspiration for the most rapid cessation of military activity.

The armistice was signed at Panmunjom on July 27. Although hostilities were concluded in 1953, no formal peace treaty was ever signed. The Geneva conference in 1954 failed to resolve obstacles to reunification. The Soviet Union, China, and North Korea blamed the United States for blocking proposals to create a "single, genuinely democratic government." The headquarters of U.N. Command was relocated from Seoul to Tokyo in 1955 where it remains to this day.

Source: Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 3 (Fall 1993), p. 17.