Korea was not initially a high ranking security concern for the Truman Administration in the first five years after the end of the Second World War.44 Truman and his advisers viewed Europe as the highest risk due to the increasing fears of the Soviet Union encroaching further west. As discussed previously, the growing concern with perceived Soviet ambitions in Western Europe combined with the decline of the traditional powers in the region had challenged Truman and his advisers to reconsider the role of the US in the new bi-polar international system. The result was a commitment by the US to retain their presence in Europe. There would be no return to isolationism. The major policies enacted before 1950 were focused on Europe: the declaration of the Truman Doctrine after the crises in Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan designed to foster European economic recovery, and the creation of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to offer collective security arrangements for US allies in the region. This was the birth of containment and it was implemented initially with the goal of keeping the Soviet Union out of Western Europe in order to protect US interests.
For Truman and his Administration, much like FDR before him during the Second World War, Asia was a secondary consideration. This is not to say that Asia was unimportant.
Having fought a war in the region and the mass deployment of US troops still stationed across the Pacific meant that Asia would remain high on the foreign policy agenda of President Truman. The point was merely that US policy towards Europe took precedence.
However, even within this area, Korea was not the highest ranking security or economic concern. Japan was viewed as the most important economic centre in the region due to its skilled workforce and latent economic potential (in this sense Japan was very much the
44 Gaddis, J.L. (1997) We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Clarendon), p58
Germany of the Far East). Therefore protecting Japan’s economic development was the key security concern, followed by the traditional US strategic areas of the Philippines.45
However, Korea presented a set of challenges that could prove problematic in both the short and long term. The country had been liberated from Imperial Japan by a joint military effort between the Soviet Union advancing from the north and the United States gaining victory in the south. As in Germany, neither side was prepared to allow the unification of the country under the other’s system, and so Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into two separate political entities. 46 The remaining presence of US troops stationed in the southern Republic of Korea and Soviet troops in the northern Democratic People’s Republic of Korea produced another area of the world where the growing US-Soviet Union rivalry could develop. However, as Gaddis has argued, “American and Russian forces remained there more to restrain each other than from any strong conviction, in either Washington or Moscow, that the territory itself was significant.”47 The division of Korea was not viewed with the same concern as the division of Germany. It did not have the strategic, economic or political importance as its European counterpart. Indeed, the major debate on Korea in the US in the first years after the end of the Second World War surrounded the demobilisation of the US army and the removal of US forces from Korea. The Soviet Union did not bother with an extensive debate and removed their troops from North Korea in 1948.48 The question to address is why did Korea become a security concern?
The debate over the demobilisation of the post-war US armed forces highlights a wider issue, the differing conceptualisations of containment held by different administration officials. There was agreement on what was to be contained, but officials differed over where it was to be contained, and what methods were to be used. In the case of Korea, the fact that US troops were stationed in a country sharing a border with a communist neighbour generated a consensus that containment would be applied there. However, there was disagreement over how much containment there should be and what form it take. The competing factions were State Department officials and senior members of the US military establishment. Both supported the US sending economic and military aid to shore up the South Korean regime. However, the military wanted the removal of US troops from Korea,
45 Leffler, M. (1993) A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p333-338
46 Cumings, B. (1981) The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regime, 1945-1947 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p120
47 Gaddis, J.L. (1997) We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Clarendon), p70
48 Lowe, P. (1997) The Origins of the Korean War (London: Longman), p56
whereas the State Department wished for the troops to remain. As Barton J. Bernstein has argued, “The concept of containment meant different things to different groups within the administration, depending on the perceived value (economic, military, and political) of an area and the cost and type of assistance in applying containment there.”49 The military did not want to fight in Korea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff noted that although Korea was important as a political symbol of US resolve in supporting her allies, the geostrategic location did not favour US victory in a military conflict, and as a result recommended that resources be directed to nations of primary strategic importance in Western Europe and Japan. Only once this objective had been secured should resources be directed to Korea.50 The State Department, however, stressed the importance of South Korea as a political ally and emphasised the need for US troops to help stabilise the government in the face of post-war social unrest, economic decline and communist agitation from the North.51
The decision was left to President Truman. He tried to find a compromise among the competing factions. Not only did he have to concern himself with international political, geostrategic and economic factors, but he also had domestic political factors to address. The long term deployment of troops in South Korea would drain budgetary resources at a time when they were needed elsewhere. The President signed NSC 8/2 in March 1949, authorizing the return of US troops by the end of June. Truman agreed with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The US could not risk getting involved in a conflict on the Korean peninsula that could escalate into a wider war with the Soviet Union.52 The US would continue to send economic aid to South Korea and Truman hoped that the country would become “a beacon to the people of northern Asia in resisting the control of the communist forces which have over-run them.”53 Truman had decided Korea was important enough for aid, but not important enough to commit US troops into combat. Unfortunately, there were several factors pushing Korea back up the security agenda. The decade long civil Chinese civil war ended in October 1949 when Mao’s Communists drove Chaing Kai-shek’s Nationalists from the mainland and proclaimed
49 Bernstein, B. (1991) “The Truman Administration and the Korean War” in M. Lacey eds The Truman Presidency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p414
50 Joint Strategic Survey Committee, Joint Chiefs of Staff, “United States Assistance to Other Countries from the Standpoint of National Security”, 29 April 1947, in FRUS, 1947, I, p744-745
51 Bernstein, B. (1991) “The Truman Administration and the Korean War” in M. Lacey eds The Truman Presidency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p414-415
52 National Security Council 8/2, ‘ Position of the United States With Respect to Korea’, 22 March 1949, in FRUS, 1949, VII, pp969-978
53 Truman, H.S. (1949) “Special Message to Congress Regarding Continuation of Economic Assistance to Korea”, 7 June, Public Papers of the Presidents, The American Presidency Project,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=13202&st=&st1=, accessed 08/08/2013
the People’s Republic of China. The communist victory sent shockwaves through US domestic politics, and provided the Republican Party with ammunition to attack President Truman and what they saw as his Administration’s preoccupation with Europe at the expense of Asia.54 The continued questioning of “who lost China?” strengthened Truman’s critics, most notably Joseph McCarthy in early 1950, and forced Truman and his Administration to publicly explain and justify their policy choices in East Asia.55 The most famous incident came in January 1950 when Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered an address to the National Press Club. Discussing the Administration’s application of the containment policy in East Asia, Acheson explained that there was an American “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific that included Japan, the Ryukyus islands and the Philippines where America was prepared to use military force to protect US interests in the event of foreign aggression.
Although Taiwan and Korea were excluded from this perimeter, Acheson confirmed US economic aid to these countries. Six months later North Korea invaded. Academics have debated for years whether Acheson’s public refusal to pledge military support to South Korea was read by the North as a “green light” to invade, on the basis that the US were not prepared to defend South Korea.56 However, the speech is important to the present analysis because it demonstrates the growing importance of Korea in US officials’ debate over how and where containment should be applied. External events were pushing Korea back up the security agenda.
Finally, President Truman played an important, if unintentional, role in laying the groundwork for possible US military intervention in Korea. Although he did not want troops stationed in South Korea, and signed NSC 8/2 authorising their removal, his prior commitment to the United Nations and the agreement of collective security placed US Korean policy in a bind. If the North did invade South Korea serious questions would be asked of the President’s resolve and would test his commitment to an institution that, as discussed previously, was central to his plans for promoting world peace. It could be argued that all of the above was a growing pile of firewood that was awaiting a spark to ignite it.
54 Donovan, R.J.(1982) Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman 1949-1953 (London: W. W.
Norton & Company), p27
55 Gaddis, J.L. (2006) The Cold War (London: Allen Lane), p36-37
56 Matray, J I. (2002) “Dean Acheson’s Press Club Speech Re-examined” in The Journal of Conflict Studies, 22:1, pp28-55