thedrifter
03-05-03, 12:42 AM
Reluctant Dragons and Red Conspiracies
While much of what has been written about the Korean War in the last fifty years has been colored by political agendas and a lack of critical information, recent scholarship helps place the first conflict of the Cold War in its proper context.
By Rod Paschall
No other twentieth-century conflict has created more disagreement among historians or been the subject of more widespread public ignorance than the Korean War. But thanks to some recent revelations, that unhappy condition is slowly changing for the better. Anyone who doubted the need for a more accurate, widely accepted description of the 1950*53 armed struggle had only to read the August 13, 1998, edition of the Washington Post, where the conflict's beginning was characterized as an attack on North Korea by United States forces. Fortunately, how the Korean War came about and why it took such a bloody course is now beginning to emerge.
Competing Theories
Much of the reason for the widespread ignorance is that until the early 1990s, almost four decades after war's end, two opposing interpretations of the conflict shared library shelves throughout the world. Western historians generally agreed on the conflict for about fifteen years after the cease-fire. During that period, several scholarly works dealt with the origins, conduct, and effects of the war. All but one claimed that North Korea's June 1950 assault on South Korea was planned and that it was supported by both the Soviet Union and the newly installed Communist regime to the north -- the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Historians started to challenge this "Red Conspiracy" theory in the late 1960s when dramatically different interpretations began emerging. These revisionist studies of the war claimed that China was not only uninvolved in North Korea's invasion of the south but had made an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the conflict diplomatically at the outset of fighting. These studies, all built around a "Reluctant Dragon" thesis, agreed with the version of the war then being bandied about by the Chinese government. The newer interpretation held that Mao Tse-tung reluctantly accepted belligerency only after General Douglas MacArthur had thrown back the North Korean invasion and pressed United Nations troops to the Yalu River, threatening China's borders in the fall of 1950.
New Wave Of Revision
Starting in 1992, a third wave of Korean War histories and historians arrived. Most were American-educated Asians who could read, write, and speak Chinese, Korean, or both. In sharp contrast to the earlier works, the third wave's thesis was soundly based on previously unavailable documents -- not mere interpretation -- namely a flood of declassified U.S. government papers and official histories that began to become available in the 1980s. These historians also drew upon newly available memoirs and official papers from the archives of the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. These included approximately five hundred previously secret wartime diplomatic messages the Russian government gave South Korea in 1994. The Asian-American historians also conducted interviews with Chinese and Soviet participants. Not surprisingly, their work is far more convincing than that of earlier Korean War historians, who for the most part had only public U.S. and South Korean sources from which to work.
The third-wave historians tell us much about the underlying causes of the military confrontation that characterized most of the Cold War from 1950 until 1989. Specifically, we are now aware of the extent of collusion among Moscow, Pyongyang, and Beijing in creating and prosecuting the Korean War. We know what the Communist leaders thought about the possibility of American military resistance to the North Korean invasion. The date of China's decision to enter the war has been identified, and its aim in doing so is now known as well. We have enough information to comprehend what Chinese military leaders expected to result from their army's battlefield collision with American troops. And, we now know their reactions after that first clash occurred. The mystery of the "November Lull" -- the pause in combat between the first Chinese-American encounter and the full-blown and violent struggle a month later -- is finally solved. And, we have learned much about Communist strategy from October 1950 until the 1953 cease-fire. Combining this new information with what we already knew about U.S. decisions, we have a much clearer understanding of one of the most important conflicts of the twentieth century.
Communist Collusion
Contrary to assertions in Max Hastings' The Korean War, the single best-selling history of the conflict, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and China's leaders were deeply involved from the conflict's beginning. Hastings claimed China's entry was provoked by the rapid advance of American troops through North Korea in October 1950. Because of the presence of the Soviet Union's large military advisory group in North Korea during 1945*50 and the acknowledged heavy flow of Soviet weaponry and equipment to the pre-war North Korean army, no serious historian doubted Moscow's complicity in the June 1950 attack. New evidence, however, also clearly demonstrates Chinese involvement in the invasion of South Korea. It is now clear that the war was planned and coordinated by the three Communist powers over a ten-month period, from April 1949 until February 1950.
The first solid diplomatic confirmation that North Korea would have Chinese support in its efforts to conquer South Korea occurred during an April 1949 meeting between Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, and Mao Tse-tung. After Kim asked for the return of Korean troops then serving in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Mao assured him that China would assist the North Koreans in their planned conquest. The Chinese leader subsequently ordered the repatriation of two Korean units, the 164th and 166th People's Liberation Army divisions, who were veterans of the Chinese Civil War.
The impending invasion of South Korea fit into a much larger scheme, one that calculated the possibilities of an American reaction to the invasion. In August 1949, Chinese and Soviet officials met in Moscow and agreed on international spheres of influence and functional responsibilities. While Moscow would remain the center of the international revolution, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to underwrite Beijing's assigned role in directing the eastern extension of communism. During the winter of 1949-50, Mao visited Moscow and discussed the forthcoming invasion with Stalin. When the Soviet leader asked about America, Mao said that while the United States might not intervene, they had to take U.S. intervention into consideration.
Stalin Versus Mao
Stalin evidently believed the risk was worth taking. On January 30, 1950, the Soviet leader sent a message to North Korean leaders: The Soviet Union was now ready to discuss the unification of Korea by force and would help North Korea. Kim visited Moscow for discussions in April 1950 and made final plans with Mao during a May 13*16 visit to Beijing. During one of these sessions in China, Kim said he doubted that the United States would have time to intervene because he was confident the conquest of the South would only require about two weeks. He also doubted the need for Mao's support. (Three Chinese armies, standing in readiness, were poised along the Yalu River.) Less confident than Kim, Mao began dispatching additional troops to the border anyway. Thus, on the eve of the invasion, between thirty and forty thousand Koreans -- former PLA soldiers supplied by China -- had joined their countrymen in North Korea and were preparing for an invasion of South Korea. Large amounts of Soviet equipment, which greatly overshadowed the paltry number of armaments the United States had provided South Korea's defenders, would support the invasion. China had given Kim Il Sung use of a substantial number of men for the conquest, and the large Chinese force being assembled on the China*North Korea border guarded against the contingency of American intervention against North Korea's invasion.
From Mao's perspective, Korea was not the only disputed East Asian area that might bring China into confrontation with the United States. But the Chinese leader gave it primacy. In the spring of 1950, a growing conflict between the Communist Vietminh forces under Ho Chi Minh and the French was raging in Indochina. In keeping with China's new role in encouraging revolution throughout the region, Mao was called upon to oversee and support Ho's campaign. And the Nationalist Chinese, although defeated in China, were establishing a hostile base on the island of Formosa (Taiwan). The latter situation was a major concern for the Chinese leader, particularly since the faltering Nationalists had a long-standing relationship with Washington.
But Mao's concern about the United States' intentions in Korea was relatively recent, a condition that only developed after his April 1949 promise to assist Kim Il Sung in the invasion of South Korea. Two months earlier, in February 1949, Mao had told Anastas Mikoyan, a member of the Soviet Politburo, that America had not become directly involved in China's civil war. Mao had said he believed that American obligations elsewhere were too extensive, and that Washington's allies were unwilling to support U.S. involvement in Korea. Stalin, who shared this view, told a Chinese delegation visiting Moscow five months later that the United States was in no position to wage a major war. According to the Soviet leader, this gave the Communist powers an opportunity to develop their own strength.
http://www.military.com/pics/mhqsum00DRAGONSf1.jpg
cont.
While much of what has been written about the Korean War in the last fifty years has been colored by political agendas and a lack of critical information, recent scholarship helps place the first conflict of the Cold War in its proper context.
By Rod Paschall
No other twentieth-century conflict has created more disagreement among historians or been the subject of more widespread public ignorance than the Korean War. But thanks to some recent revelations, that unhappy condition is slowly changing for the better. Anyone who doubted the need for a more accurate, widely accepted description of the 1950*53 armed struggle had only to read the August 13, 1998, edition of the Washington Post, where the conflict's beginning was characterized as an attack on North Korea by United States forces. Fortunately, how the Korean War came about and why it took such a bloody course is now beginning to emerge.
Competing Theories
Much of the reason for the widespread ignorance is that until the early 1990s, almost four decades after war's end, two opposing interpretations of the conflict shared library shelves throughout the world. Western historians generally agreed on the conflict for about fifteen years after the cease-fire. During that period, several scholarly works dealt with the origins, conduct, and effects of the war. All but one claimed that North Korea's June 1950 assault on South Korea was planned and that it was supported by both the Soviet Union and the newly installed Communist regime to the north -- the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Historians started to challenge this "Red Conspiracy" theory in the late 1960s when dramatically different interpretations began emerging. These revisionist studies of the war claimed that China was not only uninvolved in North Korea's invasion of the south but had made an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the conflict diplomatically at the outset of fighting. These studies, all built around a "Reluctant Dragon" thesis, agreed with the version of the war then being bandied about by the Chinese government. The newer interpretation held that Mao Tse-tung reluctantly accepted belligerency only after General Douglas MacArthur had thrown back the North Korean invasion and pressed United Nations troops to the Yalu River, threatening China's borders in the fall of 1950.
New Wave Of Revision
Starting in 1992, a third wave of Korean War histories and historians arrived. Most were American-educated Asians who could read, write, and speak Chinese, Korean, or both. In sharp contrast to the earlier works, the third wave's thesis was soundly based on previously unavailable documents -- not mere interpretation -- namely a flood of declassified U.S. government papers and official histories that began to become available in the 1980s. These historians also drew upon newly available memoirs and official papers from the archives of the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. These included approximately five hundred previously secret wartime diplomatic messages the Russian government gave South Korea in 1994. The Asian-American historians also conducted interviews with Chinese and Soviet participants. Not surprisingly, their work is far more convincing than that of earlier Korean War historians, who for the most part had only public U.S. and South Korean sources from which to work.
The third-wave historians tell us much about the underlying causes of the military confrontation that characterized most of the Cold War from 1950 until 1989. Specifically, we are now aware of the extent of collusion among Moscow, Pyongyang, and Beijing in creating and prosecuting the Korean War. We know what the Communist leaders thought about the possibility of American military resistance to the North Korean invasion. The date of China's decision to enter the war has been identified, and its aim in doing so is now known as well. We have enough information to comprehend what Chinese military leaders expected to result from their army's battlefield collision with American troops. And, we now know their reactions after that first clash occurred. The mystery of the "November Lull" -- the pause in combat between the first Chinese-American encounter and the full-blown and violent struggle a month later -- is finally solved. And, we have learned much about Communist strategy from October 1950 until the 1953 cease-fire. Combining this new information with what we already knew about U.S. decisions, we have a much clearer understanding of one of the most important conflicts of the twentieth century.
Communist Collusion
Contrary to assertions in Max Hastings' The Korean War, the single best-selling history of the conflict, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and China's leaders were deeply involved from the conflict's beginning. Hastings claimed China's entry was provoked by the rapid advance of American troops through North Korea in October 1950. Because of the presence of the Soviet Union's large military advisory group in North Korea during 1945*50 and the acknowledged heavy flow of Soviet weaponry and equipment to the pre-war North Korean army, no serious historian doubted Moscow's complicity in the June 1950 attack. New evidence, however, also clearly demonstrates Chinese involvement in the invasion of South Korea. It is now clear that the war was planned and coordinated by the three Communist powers over a ten-month period, from April 1949 until February 1950.
The first solid diplomatic confirmation that North Korea would have Chinese support in its efforts to conquer South Korea occurred during an April 1949 meeting between Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, and Mao Tse-tung. After Kim asked for the return of Korean troops then serving in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Mao assured him that China would assist the North Koreans in their planned conquest. The Chinese leader subsequently ordered the repatriation of two Korean units, the 164th and 166th People's Liberation Army divisions, who were veterans of the Chinese Civil War.
The impending invasion of South Korea fit into a much larger scheme, one that calculated the possibilities of an American reaction to the invasion. In August 1949, Chinese and Soviet officials met in Moscow and agreed on international spheres of influence and functional responsibilities. While Moscow would remain the center of the international revolution, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed to underwrite Beijing's assigned role in directing the eastern extension of communism. During the winter of 1949-50, Mao visited Moscow and discussed the forthcoming invasion with Stalin. When the Soviet leader asked about America, Mao said that while the United States might not intervene, they had to take U.S. intervention into consideration.
Stalin Versus Mao
Stalin evidently believed the risk was worth taking. On January 30, 1950, the Soviet leader sent a message to North Korean leaders: The Soviet Union was now ready to discuss the unification of Korea by force and would help North Korea. Kim visited Moscow for discussions in April 1950 and made final plans with Mao during a May 13*16 visit to Beijing. During one of these sessions in China, Kim said he doubted that the United States would have time to intervene because he was confident the conquest of the South would only require about two weeks. He also doubted the need for Mao's support. (Three Chinese armies, standing in readiness, were poised along the Yalu River.) Less confident than Kim, Mao began dispatching additional troops to the border anyway. Thus, on the eve of the invasion, between thirty and forty thousand Koreans -- former PLA soldiers supplied by China -- had joined their countrymen in North Korea and were preparing for an invasion of South Korea. Large amounts of Soviet equipment, which greatly overshadowed the paltry number of armaments the United States had provided South Korea's defenders, would support the invasion. China had given Kim Il Sung use of a substantial number of men for the conquest, and the large Chinese force being assembled on the China*North Korea border guarded against the contingency of American intervention against North Korea's invasion.
From Mao's perspective, Korea was not the only disputed East Asian area that might bring China into confrontation with the United States. But the Chinese leader gave it primacy. In the spring of 1950, a growing conflict between the Communist Vietminh forces under Ho Chi Minh and the French was raging in Indochina. In keeping with China's new role in encouraging revolution throughout the region, Mao was called upon to oversee and support Ho's campaign. And the Nationalist Chinese, although defeated in China, were establishing a hostile base on the island of Formosa (Taiwan). The latter situation was a major concern for the Chinese leader, particularly since the faltering Nationalists had a long-standing relationship with Washington.
But Mao's concern about the United States' intentions in Korea was relatively recent, a condition that only developed after his April 1949 promise to assist Kim Il Sung in the invasion of South Korea. Two months earlier, in February 1949, Mao had told Anastas Mikoyan, a member of the Soviet Politburo, that America had not become directly involved in China's civil war. Mao had said he believed that American obligations elsewhere were too extensive, and that Washington's allies were unwilling to support U.S. involvement in Korea. Stalin, who shared this view, told a Chinese delegation visiting Moscow five months later that the United States was in no position to wage a major war. According to the Soviet leader, this gave the Communist powers an opportunity to develop their own strength.
http://www.military.com/pics/mhqsum00DRAGONSf1.jpg
cont.