seemed.’ 2
The miscalculation of Kim Il Sung was to launch so blatant an act of aggression that even the least bellicose spectators around the world found it difficult to take refuge in equivocation. The most cynical Stalinist takeovers in Eastern Europe had been protected by a cloak of legitimacy, however threadbare. The most successful communist acts of expansionism around the world, both before and after Korea, were achieved in a fog of moral and political confusion. Yet not even the tatters of a pretext had been erected along the 38th Parallel. Kim Il Sung set himself simply toseize South Korea by the exercise of naked military force. Even viewed from a communist perspective, it was a huge act of folly. A former senior South Korean officer remarked many years later: ‘If Kim really wanted to get the South, by far his best course would have been to do nothing. His biggest mistake was to attack us.’ The speaker meant, of course, that by 1950 Syngman Rhee’s regime was in deep internal political trouble. A few more years of discreet subversion might well have ensured its collapse from within. But by precipitating his invasion, Kim gave Rhee what the South Korean President could never have gained on his own: a just cause and a banner of moral legitimacy. To these, the United Nations rallied on 25 June 1950.
Dean Acheson met President Truman at Washington airport on Sunday evening with news of the UN vote. Truman returned from his troubled weekend at home in Independence, Missouri, to host a dinner at Blair House attended by all his most senior defence and foreign policy advisers. For twenty-four hours, Acheson and his officials had been examining every aspect of the Korean thunderbolt. It continued to surprise and confuse them. For months, it had been thought likely that the Soviets would launch an operation to test the West’s will. Korea had been listed as a possible, but not a probable, battlefield. Berlin, Greece, Turkey, Iran all appeared far more vulnerable. Korea was geographically easy for America to reinforce, difficult for the Soviets. Yet now the communists had gone to war for it. Acheson later wrote:
Plainly this attack did not amount to a casus belli against the Soviet Union. Equally plainly, it was an open, undisguised challenge to our internationally accepted position as the protector of South Korea, an area of great importance to the security of American-occupied Japan. To back away from this challenge, in view of our capacity for meeting it, would be highly destructive of the power and prestige of the United States. 3
If the first and last of these assertions were unchallenged by most of the President’s advisers, Acheson’s intermediate remarks were to be bitterly contested by his contemporaries, and by history. The Secretary of State was held largely to blame for sending the misleading signals to Pyongyang and Moscow, which made the communists believe they could attack with impunity. His statement to the Washington National Press Club in January 1950, when he so carelessly excluded South Korea from the defined perimeter of American vital interests in the Far East, has been fixed as a critical landmark on the road to war. Today, there remains no shred of evidence from either Russia or North Korea to indicate what influence, if any, Acheson’s remarks had upon Stalin and Kim Il Sung. But Ambassador Muccio had warned for months from Seoul of the dangers of appearing to exclude South Korea from the declared interests of the United States. The withdrawal of American forces from South Korea, the visible lack of enthusiasm within the United States for Syngman Rhee’s regime, the opposition of right-wing Republicans to financial aid of any kind for his country, combined with such public statements as that of Acheson to create an overwhelming impression of American indifference to Rhee’s fate.
And beyond the misjudgements made in the past, there now also existed the utmost uncertainty among the
The miscalculation of Kim Il Sung was to launch so blatant an act of aggression that even the least bellicose spectators around the world found it difficult to take refuge in equivocation. The most cynical Stalinist takeovers in Eastern Europe had been protected by a cloak of legitimacy, however threadbare. The most successful communist acts of expansionism around the world, both before and after Korea, were achieved in a fog of moral and political confusion. Yet not even the tatters of a pretext had been erected along the 38th Parallel. Kim Il Sung set himself simply toseize South Korea by the exercise of naked military force. Even viewed from a communist perspective, it was a huge act of folly. A former senior South Korean officer remarked many years later: ‘If Kim really wanted to get the South, by far his best course would have been to do nothing. His biggest mistake was to attack us.’ The speaker meant, of course, that by 1950 Syngman Rhee’s regime was in deep internal political trouble. A few more years of discreet subversion might well have ensured its collapse from within. But by precipitating his invasion, Kim gave Rhee what the South Korean President could never have gained on his own: a just cause and a banner of moral legitimacy. To these, the United Nations rallied on 25 June 1950.
Dean Acheson met President Truman at Washington airport on Sunday evening with news of the UN vote. Truman returned from his troubled weekend at home in Independence, Missouri, to host a dinner at Blair House attended by all his most senior defence and foreign policy advisers. For twenty-four hours, Acheson and his officials had been examining every aspect of the Korean thunderbolt. It continued to surprise and confuse them. For months, it had been thought likely that the Soviets would launch an operation to test the West’s will. Korea had been listed as a possible, but not a probable, battlefield. Berlin, Greece, Turkey, Iran all appeared far more vulnerable. Korea was geographically easy for America to reinforce, difficult for the Soviets. Yet now the communists had gone to war for it. Acheson later wrote:
Plainly this attack did not amount to a casus belli against the Soviet Union. Equally plainly, it was an open, undisguised challenge to our internationally accepted position as the protector of South Korea, an area of great importance to the security of American-occupied Japan. To back away from this challenge, in view of our capacity for meeting it, would be highly destructive of the power and prestige of the United States. 3
If the first and last of these assertions were unchallenged by most of the President’s advisers, Acheson’s intermediate remarks were to be bitterly contested by his contemporaries, and by history. The Secretary of State was held largely to blame for sending the misleading signals to Pyongyang and Moscow, which made the communists believe they could attack with impunity. His statement to the Washington National Press Club in January 1950, when he so carelessly excluded South Korea from the defined perimeter of American vital interests in the Far East, has been fixed as a critical landmark on the road to war. Today, there remains no shred of evidence from either Russia or North Korea to indicate what influence, if any, Acheson’s remarks had upon Stalin and Kim Il Sung. But Ambassador Muccio had warned for months from Seoul of the dangers of appearing to exclude South Korea from the declared interests of the United States. The withdrawal of American forces from South Korea, the visible lack of enthusiasm within the United States for Syngman Rhee’s regime, the opposition of right-wing Republicans to financial aid of any kind for his country, combined with such public statements as that of Acheson to create an overwhelming impression of American indifference to Rhee’s fate.
And beyond the misjudgements made in the past, there now also existed the utmost uncertainty among the
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