Re: Next Korean War?

["Mark & Paula O'Neill" <poneill@freenet.tlh.fl.us>]

I wanted to add briefly to what Doug Macdonald stated.  

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Omar Bradley, commented to a
congressional hearing in 1951 on the reason that war with China was a bad
idea.  Tying down US forces in an expanded land war in Asia would be to
focus on an area that was "not the critical strategic prize".  Thus,
fighting in China would mean that the US would be "in the wrong war, at the
wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."  (Rosemary Foot,
"The Wrong War:  American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict,
1950-1953", Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 23)

I would also add my opinion (with the customary $.02--adjusted for
inflation) to the side of those who argue that the Soviets were fully
capable of taking the entire Korean peninsula in August 1945.  The Soviet
reliance on Lend-Lease was dramatic, but cutting off these supplies would
hardly have stopped on-going operations in their tracks.  The US was very
interested in Soviet involvement in the war against Japan.  This priority
changed only when the Japanese surrender became obvious.  The Soviet Army
conducted operations against the Japanese for weeks after the atomic bombs,
and the US had very little interest in Korea (and Indochina as well) as a
primary or secondary area of operations.  Soviet cooperation in dividing
Korea at the 38th Parallel, a spot chosen by Major Bonesteel, etal,
indicates that Stalin was not interested in compromising possible postwar US
monetary aid for dubious territorial gains.  Stalin already had the pieces
of the former tsarist empire that he desired (e.g. Liadong peninsula, Port
Arthur).  Stalin was certainly looking to work whatever advantage he could
in whatever way possible (look at the fate of the emigre Russian population
when the Soviets took Harbin).  The Soviet focus in the cold war was also on
Europe and war with the US would have been the wrong war & in the wrong
place for the USSR.  Stalin did his best to make sure that it was Chinese
soldiers intervening in Korea in 1950 and not Soviet soldiers.  The
commitment of Soviet pilots and AAA gunners was a far as he would go, and
Mao had to really work for that commitment.  

Well so much for comments from the peanut gallery. Thanks for indulging an
historian!

Mark O.
----------
>From: Doug Macdonald <Dmacdonald@mail.colgate.edu>
>To: "'KOREAN-WAR-L@ukans.edu'" <KOREAN-WAR-L@UKANS.EDU>
>Subject: RE: Next Korean War?
>Date: Tue, Aug 1, 2000, 5:33 PM
>

>Marc James Small wrote:
>
>"And wasn't it Dean Acheson, then our august Secretary of State, who
>described the Korean War as "the
>wrong war, at the wrong place, against the wrong people"?"
>
>Actually, for the record, I think it was General Omar Bradley and he said
>"the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."   I believe this was
>more of a military assessment than a political one.  
>
>Doug Macdonald
>Colgate University
>
>  
>
>