Testing ground—korea

Abstract

Abstract “Never has fate been secreted in so unlikely a receptacle as Korea appeared to be in 1943 in Cairo, or in 1945 at the Japanese surrender,” Dean Acheson said in 1954. Viewing even that as “an understatement,” he expressed wonder “that so much of the fate of the rest of the world was going to arise out of this place.”1 At the end of the war against Japan, U.S. and Soviet armies moved into Korea, the former below and the latter above the 38th parallel, an abstract line that would critically intersect with Acheson’s career. The first Korean War, which began with North Korean tanks rolling over the parallel, caused basic changes in U.S. cold war policies. In the second Korean War, U.S. forces threw back the invaders and headed north, above the 38th parallel. The third, which started with Chinese forces smashing the U.S. army and marines above the parallel, plunged the administration into crisis, stirred noxious new effusions of McCarthyism, and put Acheson’s leadership powers to the test. For a year, he labored to prevent the crisis from derailing larger strategic goals. He also seized the occasion to establish new situations of strength by arming NATO and converting NSC-68’s prescriptions to realities. Setbacks lay ahead, but, within the administration, no one seriously contested his foreign policy supremacy after June 1950.