Expert: Tom Barnes - 12/12/2010

Question
Hi,

i am doing a research paper about why the Korean war was
a failure for the United States. I need help in figuring out
why the containment policy was a failure
and also since the Korean Never officially ended, how can
this be seen as a failure for the United States of America?


Answer
Tiffany,

There are two key reasons Korea cannot legitimately be labeled a failure for the US.  First and foremost it was, and still is, a UN mission; the US was simply part of, albeit the largest part, a Western alliance.  Second after two years of fighting nothing changed; the demarcation line remained where it was at the outbreak of hostilities.  While unknown at the time, the war in Korea would become the West’s anti-communist doctrine for the remainder of the Cold War, a doctrine labeled later as “containment.”     

Though the US and the United Nations wanted Korea to be re-united and hold free and fair elections, the North, backed by China and the Soviet Union (USSR), knew they would not be able to win such elections.  But these were the very early days of the Cold War; the Berlin Wall was not even up yet in Europe.  Both sides, the West and the Communists, were still gingerly feeling their way around each other, initially through their smaller satellite states (i.e. Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc) and eventually through Third World (non-aligned) nations.  Neither side, particularly the USSR, wanted to jump into another world war after participating in two in just the last three decades (at the time of Korea), especially since the US, at least at that time, was still ahead of the USSR in terms of atomic and hydrogen weapons’ research, development, and deployment capability.    

However, while the main powers, the US and USSR, were hesitant about pushing the other too far, the situation presented an opportunity in the mind of such a megalomaniacal murderous dictator like Kim Il Sung, the now deceased founder of North Korea.  He felt he could take advantage of what he perceived as the West’s hesitancy to become embroiled in another war so soon after World War II, particularly if it held the possibility of involving the USSR and potentially the exchange of atomic / hydrogen weapons.  As a result, and knowing there was a very slim chance of unifying the Korean Peninsula under his communist stranglehold, the North launched a preemptive and unprovoked attack on the South, crossing the line of demarcation at the 38th Parallel.  Obviously the UN forces were caught unaware and were subsequently driven south very quickly, resulting in numerous early tactical victories for the Communist North; however, these were short-lived.

The UN forces, under the command of US Gen. Douglas McArthur, failed to heed the lesson he had just taught the Communist forces, which was, you must not outrun your lines of supply / communications lest they leave your forward forces stranded.  This is exactly what happened.  Gen. McArthur, failing to understand the political issues at hand, felt he should eliminate communism once and for all in Korea and charged toward the Yalu River, the boundary between North Korea and Communist China, thus causing panic in China, who felt they needed a buffer (communist North Korea) between them and the West.  As a result, the Chinese, who like the USSR did not believe Truman would resort to atomic / hydrogen weapons, stepped in to relieve the pressure on the North’s forces that had been driven out of the peninsula completely.  

However, after two years of bitter fighting, Korea remained divided ideologically and physically at the 38th Parallel.  While McArthur failed to achieve his goal of eliminating communism and uniting Korea, so too did Kim Il-Sung fail to achieve his goal of eliminating democracy from the peninsula and unifying Korea under communism.  The winners were the UN, for joining together to stop an aggressor nation, and the US, for not allowing communism to spread further in Asia.
The doctrine of containment, first established in Korea, would, for the most part, succeed throughout the Cold War.  The only real exception was Vietnam, but that is another paper all together.  

The fact that technically we are still at war in Korea does not constitute a failure.  The failure with regard to our policies toward North Korea today is primarily the result of post-Cold War leadership in the US not being resolved to economically strangle such a backward, genocidal government still clinging to its revolutionary glory days.  For example, President G. W. Bush was adamant that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq presented a threat to our national security even though they did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMD) nor any way to deliver them if they did have them, while North Korea does have WMD and does support terrorism.  By failing to unflinchingly face down real threats, US leadership simply allows North Korea to not only remain a threat, but actually allows them to believe we are scared of them.

-Tom