In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950-1953

National Review, Nov 4, 1991 by Robert Elegant

THE KOREAN WAR is as far removed in time from us today as the Spanish-American War was from the outbreak of World War II, and one would think that by now all the loose ends would be neatly tied up, snipped, and sealed. Yet we are still assailed by books and documentaries referring to the "mystery war," the "unknown war," the enigma war," the "forgotten war," and so on. Revisionist and re-revisionist historians have had a fine time spreading doubt and mystification where little or none previously existed, certainly if measured against the confusion all wars normally generate. There is, therefore, a need for a new comprehensive account, and John Toland has provided it.

In Mortal Combat is a triumphant vindication of the often derided technique of recreating history by the paper-and-ink equivalent of brief film clips with voice-overs by hundreds of participants in a great event. The hypothetical average reader should emerge from its more than six hundred pages with a graphic view of the war America sometimes seems to want to put out of mind. Participants in the conflict will smell again the cordite and the napalm, the paddy fields dunged with human manure, the rotting rice, the salt tang of octopus drying on plaster-and-lath houses.

Why has the first declared war fought under the United Nations' flag, the conflict that was a precursor of American involvement in Vietnam, been subjected to so many attempts to render it mysterious? Mystery means more work for historians, of course. But, beyond that obvious advantage, many Americans appear to want to forget Korea; not in shame, albeit manufactured, as with Vietnam, but in annoyance.

Korea was not easy to understand. It looked at the end like a defeat to Americans accustomed to total victory-at the very least, a standoff. It did not fulfill America's expectation that her enemies would be vanquished unconditionally.

Korea was the first limited war the U.S. fought. For the first time, diplomatic and psychological gains were thought more important than holding or taking ground. It was also the first war in which the enemy mustered all the weapons of psychological warfare-and sowed doubt on the homefront, though not the total confusion and consequent revulsion that won the Vietnam War for Hanoi.

Korea was actually rather clear cut, as Mr. Toland demonstrates despite occasionally yielding to the temptation to engage in mock-profound analysis of international issues like the SinoSoviet relationship, which he does not fully understand. He does make it brilliantly clear that Korea lifted the curtain on the great drama of the latter twentieth century. That war began the struggle that ended recently when the curtain fell on the totalitarian, expansionist enemy.

There is little question today that the "Chinese People's Volunteers" were sent into Korea (as the UN forces under General MacArthur surged north to the Chinese border) because Peking feared an invasion of Manchuria. There is hardly any question that Stalin approved, indeed sponsored, the initial invasion of the South by North Korea, as Mr. Toland graphically shows. Nor is there much question that the Chinese Volunteers, possessed by the same vainglory that had led MacArthur to overcommit his forces, then strove to unite all Korea under Communist rule.

Yet Mr. Toland gets himself tangled in a complex, ultimately pointless argument about whether China and the USSR, with North Korea, were actually planning world conquest. Of course they were, as witness the drumfire of revolts that swept Asia (including Korea) in 1948, the year also of the Berlin blockade. Although their motivation and purpose were obvious, at the time the pattern of their actions was not crystal clear. In fact, they were intelligent opportunists, receding when meeting opposition, and advancing when opposition was weak, as Chairman Mao Tse-tung had taught.

It was, however, completely clear who was calling the shots or, at the very least, presiding over the discussions that coordinated Communist policy. Having allowed the UN Security Council to create the international force by his absence in 1950, Yakov Malik of the Soviet Union returned the following year to propose peace talks. Not remarkably, Peking and Pyongyang agreed within days. Yet final agreement was not attained until after Stalin's death.

Irritating, too, is Mr. Toland's obsessive dislike for the often infuriating MacArthur, who is attacked not only for his political and intelligence failures, but for his strategic triumphs. Certainly SCAF in Tokyo should have foreseen the entry of the Chinese-and not thrown the Eighth Army and X Corps piecemeal into extreme peril. But it is, to say the least, ungraceful to attack MacArthur for the brilliantly successful Inchon landing because it was too daring and should have failed. Mr. Toland's near idolatry of Mao Chou En-lai is equally irritating. According to his account, which depends on the memoirs of General Peng Tehhuai, the Chinese commander in Korea, Mao directed virtually every movement of the "Volunteers"-brilliantly, of course. Mr. Toland apparently does not appreciate that Peng was writing to redeem himself after falling out with the Chairman.