The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 118 Changes in government orders (2)
So, what should be done?Dulles developed a concept that came to be known as "retaliation on a grand scale."He put it this way: "There is one solution, and this one alone: ​​the free world must cultivate the will and organize the means to retaliate immediately for the open aggression unleashed by the Red Army. That way, wherever it occurs, We all can and will strike back, by means of our choice, where it violates." Dulles argued that there is a "moral or natural law" to which people and nations must obey or end up is about to face destruction.He also sees America as God's chosen representative of revenge. "This law has been violated by the rulers of the Soviet Union, who will and should be compelled to pay for this destruction." The free world has the "means" of retaliation (which is synonymous with nuclear weapons), and now it must "cultivate will" to exercise this power "immediately".

Life magazine editor Emmett John Hughes, who helped Dulles write the article, kept asking Dulles for a more specific definition of his policy intentions: "How do you suggest that American policy should work?" Dulles Ruth prefers to stick to ambiguity: He has set broad goals.Now let the Soviets figure out how Ike would accomplish these goals if he became president.

Eisenhower was privately annoyed by Dulles' notion of "massive retaliation," and he told Sulzberger of the New York Times that he thought the platform's attack on Truman was "a bit over the top."But he made a realistic decision.He raised no serious objections to the language of the platform because he needed the Taft wing of the party in order to win.As for the specific details, Ike will work out at his leisure in the next few months.

Democrats: 'Crazy for Adlay'

Though Adlai Stevenson was one of the most hesitant presidential candidates in history, by July 1952 he finally got busy trying to win the nomination, which turned out to be a sham.The Democratic Party is always trying to toss itself at the national convention, so that the party cannot be united until the November election.This happened a lot in the 7th century.This time the battle was over party loyalty, civil rights issues, and the degree of allegiance to the legacy of Harry Truman.To win, Stevenson would have to beat popular figures in the party such as Richard Russell, beloved in the South; Lil Harriman; Tennessee's Estes Kefauver, who has struck a chord with the public for the past two years with his televised hearings on the underworld; and Missouri's Stewart Symington .Stevenson, though a two-term governor of a large state, was by no means a national figure.His stocky, short, bald-headed persona certainly evokes maternal instincts in some women, but to others it is really unattractive.Stevenson's admirers -- passionate as they may be -- looked for a reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the governor.Unfortunately, he is not.Stevenson can speak with genuine eloquence, and he is one of the few politicians I have come across whose speeches can still "read beautifully" after 11 years in the dust.Despite his earlier hesitation, Stevenson promised the national convention that he would try to win, even if he followed a moral path. "We would rather lose this election," he said in his acceptance speech, "than lead the people astray. We would rather lose this election than mismanage the people."

A few days later, Stevenson deliberately disassociated himself from Truman.He said his campaign will be based in Springfield, Illinois.He replaced Frank McKinney, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, with one of his own, a Chicago lawyer, Steven Mitchell.He also told a reporter that one of his main goals was to "clean up the mess in Washington."This statement should have been prominent in the Republican platform.Truman said angrily: "By this blunder, Stevenson has allowed his Republican opponents to be more emboldened, allowing the Eisenhower campaign to make a big fuss about two trumped-up issues: corruption and the Korean War."

But Stevenson can't shake off his party's recent history, and the Republican attacks he finds himself dealing with are varied.One was a formula outlined by Senator Carl Mount: K1C3 (that is, North Korea, Crime, Communism, and Corruption), and the other was Eisenhower.Everywhere he went he heard choruses of "We love Ike." Marquis Childs of the St. Louis Courier-Post wrote: "Thousands of people would have chosen Eisenhower simply on trust, on his face, on his smile, on his American masculinity consists only in his happy family life." Eisenhower sat comfortably on the Diaoyutai, while Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon made a fuss about "treachery at the top" (Nixon said, Stevenson Victory would mean "more Alger Hiss, more A-bomb spies, more crises...")
Yet Eisenhower's campaign still seemed to lack the sparkle that was crucial to securing victory.Stevenson impressed television viewers with his rousing eloquence, and while Eisenhower had the editorial support of most of the nation's news media, American intellectuals supported what columnist Stuart Alsop called "the nerd." that person.In the first few weeks, Eisenhower made it clear that he wanted to keep North Korea out of the official campaign.As a professional soldier, he disdains to say anything to hurt his old comrades who are in charge of the current war. On June 6, he expressed support for the continuation of the limited war while seeking a "just" truce. On August 5, when he was asked to explain how, if he were president, his policies would differ from those pursued by Truman and Acheson, he attacked the Taft-MacArthur approach, saying they were willing to risk the U.S. The risk of being drawn into a war with China that would be "far more difficult to stop than the one we are currently fighting".

Then Eisenhower crossed the line and got embroiled in a nasty (and wildly inaccurate) partisan battle over North Korea.In a speech on the origins of the Korean War, Eisenhower said:
The dire record of these years culminated in a dramatic climax in a series of haunting scenes on Capitol Hill in June 1949.Before then, a decision on the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from North Korea — despite signs of a threat from North Korea — had been drawn up by the State Department.

Eisenhower's claims could be refuted immediately and embarrassingly.The initial proposal for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea was made in May 1947 by Republican Army Secretary Robert Patterson. On September 5, 1947, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the United States had "no great strategic interest" in maintaining troops and military bases in Korea, and that American manpower could be better utilized elsewhere.Among the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who signed the memorandum was General Dwight Eisenhower, then Army Chief of Staff.Furthermore, as cited above (see Chapter 9), in 26-1 it was the State Department, not the US military, who argued for slowing the pace of US withdrawal, but the Department of Defense suppressed this opinion.This and other references to Eisenhower in the same speech infuriated Truman, who found Eisenhower's abuse of the record "politically and morally intolerable."The president can understand that North Korea is being exploited politically by his arch-isolationist foe, "but I will never understand why a responsible military person, someone who understands the extreme nuances of our negotiating a cessation of hostilities , would take advantage of this tragedy for political gain."

In contrast, Eisenhower's campaign worried about whether the general was taking North Korea to the extreme.He was a professional soldier, and the public expected more from him than platitudes.When will Eisenhower specify how he intends to end the war and return American troops home from the quagmire of Asia?
The idea came from Emmett John Hughes, editor of Life magazine and recently signed on as a writer for Eisenhower, who was meeting Ike's campaign manager, Herbert Browne, in his Greenwich Village apartment. I came up with this idea at dinner.Brownell recalled: "Hughes had an idea...General Eisenhower had to make a promise...to go to Korea and see the situation there for himself in order to end the war." According to Hughes, the motivation for this speech " Because there is a need to say something affirmative on the most pressing issues of the moment — so as not to get bogged down in some shallow promises, and not to force a future government into fulfilling the kinds of policies that were created in elections by the distorted atmosphere of domestic politics. policies and actions”.North Korea is the "most disturbing and dramatic" issue at the moment, and it's a military issue. "The candidate happened to be a military man of national stature who had vowed to visit the area himself." Hughes found the reference "natural and fitting, almost banal."

During discussions, Brownell and Hughes settled on the phrase: "I will go to North Korea." After several drafts of the speech, the idea was submitted to Eisenhower, but he was not sure about it.Eisenhower read the draft to several people one night on a campaign train staggering through upstate New York, and the response was mixed.Ike finally let Brownell decide.Go ahead and do this speech, Brownell advised.

On October 10, Eisenhower delivered this speech at the Masonic lodge in Detroit.Eisenhower concluded his speech on what he would bring to the national television audience in 24, saying his administration would place the highest priority on ending the Korean War: "The mission calls for a personal trip to Korea. I will do it. Only That way, I can best learn how to serve the American people in the cause of peace. I will go to North Korea."

The speech infuriated Truman, who asserted that Eisenhower "should have known he was weakening our negotiating power" and misled the American people into thinking that peace would soon follow after his election.Stevenson, as usual, tried to laugh off his opponent's success. "If I get elected," Stevenson said the next day, "I'm going to the White House."

The Democratic audience applauded, but the Associated Press political writer Jake Bell wrote: "In effect, the race was over that night."

And it was over.For the first time since 1932, the United States elected a Republican president, and Eisenhower won a landslide victory, 33 votes to 936.Now, Eisenhower had the opportunity to seek peace in Korea.

frothy peace talks

During the U.S. election, a silent but interested bystander was President Rhee.Regardless of the outcome of the American election, he does not intend to discuss peace under any conditions that may be considered achievable by the United Nations.When the United States—and the United Nations—entered the Korean War, Syngman Rhee had taken their word, and now he was going to grab them to deliver. The week that peace talks began in June 1951, Rhee laid out his demands in a letter to the U.S. State Department:

- The complete withdrawal of Chinese troops from North Korea;

- North Korea's disarmament;

- The United Nations commitment to prevent any third party from supporting North Korea;

- South Korea's participation in any arrangement of the United Nations concerning "any aspect of the Korean question";

- Guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the DPRK.

All in all, Rhee wanted the UN to stick to its resolutions calling for a free and unified North Korea without any foreign troops.The aging president has seen much of his country destroyed in pursuit of these goals.He does not intend to make any further compromises, no matter how eager the United States is to get out of this war.He is obviously afraid that the United States will resolve the war on the [-]th parallel (Washington is indeed preparing to do so, making some mutual accommodation adjustments on the front).

Rhee's ongoing offensive in late 1951 and early 1952 did not particularly worry Ambassador John Mucho and other American officials in North Korea.Mucho did note, however, that Rhee was "increasingly annoyed at every sign that an eventual truce might appear".When the most famous Catholic leader in the United States, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York State, visited Seoul, Syngman Rhee appreciated that he "asked every Catholic in the United States to pray that a ceasefire cannot be reached" in front of Muccio and Van Fleet. .Much to Muccio's annoyance, this anti-truce sentiment spread to some moderate members of Syngman Rhee's government, with one minister accusing the United Nations of "bowing down to the arrogance and slights of the perfidious Communists."

Reading this material, and dozens of similar cables sent from Seoul to the State Department in the first months of 1952, the author draws a stark conclusion that no document written or reviewed by any agency of the United States government Neither could be refuted, and this is: the Truman administration expected, for some reason, that Rhee would accept any negotiated settlement that the UN forces might reach.Here, Muccio and the other diplomats are caught in an almost fatal fantasy.President Truman did hope for a solution before the end of his term because the Korean War was the major event of his administration and he didn't want to hand it over to Eisenhower.But instead of finding a way to accommodate Syngman Rhee, Mu Qiao followed Acheson's order and actually told the South Korean that he must cooperate.Syngman Rhee then "became furious" (Muccio's words), insisting that his government would never accept a ceasefire and that Truman should have known it was "wrong" to negotiate with the Communists.Li Qiwei has been paying attention to Mu Qiao's report, and Mu Qiao warns that Li Chengman's attitude will "seriously jeopardize" the solution.He sensed that Syngman Rhee threatened to withdraw South Korean troops from the United Nations, and that Ridgway could not guarantee whether he would be able to control the South Korean troops after the signing of the armistice.

But in Washington, no one (i.e. the President, the State Department, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff) wanted to bargain with Rhee or even explain further to him. A telegram to Ridgway dated 1952 February 2 advised him to present any kind of truce as a "fait accompli" and then take "the strongest measures to ensure compliance by the Koreans".Immediately after this telegram, Truman offered Syngman Rhee a personal warning that amounted to a blackmail demand: Syngman Rhee must follow the American guidance or lose any support after the war.Although this note was expressed in euphemistic and tortuous diplomatic language, it was an ultimatum to an ally that was out-and-out threatening:

Your government and the people of North Korea will continue to receive assistance to fight the aggression, find a just political solution, and repair the damage caused by this aggression.But the extent of such assistance will inevitably depend on the sense of responsibility your government demonstrates, its ability to hold the Korean people together, and its devotion to democratic ideals.

(End of this chapter)