No Peace Without War?
Repost:
Many years ago when I was a young, naive army boy and a big fan of Carl Sagan, I actually believed that if the US were to disarm, the Soviet Union would do the same and there would be world peace.
Every time I passed my officer’s table in the office, I would scoff at a quote he pasted on the wall – “There can be no peace without war.”
I would still scoff if I see that today, but I would change the quote to “Although there can be peace without war, some people cannot be reasoned with”.
Why did Kim Il Sung think that ROK was ripe for the picking in 1950? Because ROC just became PRC and was no longer friendly to the US. While Soviet tanks could be rolled across the border, the US would have to ship their tanks into the Korean Peninsula a few at a time.
True enough, Kim’s forces pushed the allied forces into the Pusan perimeter. It was a one-sided battle. Kim was ready to celebrate. However, things took a drastic turn with MacArthur’s outrageous amphibious assault at Incheon, cutting off Kim’s supply route and blasting him with anti-tank weapons.
After Pyongyang was liberated, General Douglas MacArthur announced that they would be back home for Christmas. That announcement was meant for Mao Zedong. But Mao got nervous. He had lost a “buffer zone” across the Yalu River and his army greatly outnumbered the UN Corps. So why not? He sent his forces across the Yalu River and attacked UN positions.
MacArthur wanted to end the war by bombing China, but Truman was against it. The POTUS replaced MacArthur with Matthew Ridgway who found out that there was no way they could win this game of attrition. Mao famously said “死了三亿还有三亿”.
In the Chinese propaganda movie 长津湖, US soldiers encountering the 冰雕连 would sigh that an army like this would always be unbeatable. It’s true but quoted out of context. Ridgway was shocked by the savagery of the human waves (人海战术). At the negotiation table, the communists dragged their feet, knowing that mounting casualty numbers on the UN side would cause a huge backlash back home but many times that number of casualties could be sustained by the PRC without putting a dent on communist rule.
The public began to think that MacArthur could have been right all along. Truman’s approval rating dropped to 22%. After Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency, he was determined to end this war. No more gentlemanly approach. He ordered covert actions, bombing Chinese installations and even deployed nuclear weapons near the Chinese border.
That was what ended the Korean war, folks. The moral of the story is that there can be no peace unless you have a strong fist to show to the belligerent bastards. A line was drawn across the 38th parallel to give Mao his “buffer zone”. And that term would come in handy today in many TikTok 大V’s explanation for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He lost his “buffer zone”.
Eisenhower was right, but he had not been tough enough. Shouldn’t have even given them their “buffer zone”. But things were a lot simpler back then. These days, even the belligerent bastards have nuclear weapons.