The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953 , and: A Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks (review)

Abstract

134BOOK REVIEWS indeed be possible to build a strong and even convincing case for Kim Söngsu's collaboration with Japan. But his case is exceedingly complex and needs a more careful, separate study before reaching a definitive conclusion. This book is a study of Kyöngbang, and Kim Söngsu had very little to do with running the company after 1935. To evaluate his association with Japan based on piecemeal evidence, as Eckert has done, may be unfair. These points, however, should not detract from the true import and significance of the work. The book is a work of magnificent scholarship. Eckert has done a great service, advancing our knowledge of modern Korea and Japan. Yöng-ho ChOe University of Hawaii at Manoa The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, by Rosemary Foot. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. 290 pp. Map, chronology, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. A Substitutefor Victory: The Politics ofPeacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks, by Rosemary Foot. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. xv + 273 pp. Map, chronology, notes, bibliography, index. $32.50. Two quotations from the Korean War rank among the most famous in the history of the United States. In his speech to Congress on April 19, 1951, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur declared that "War's very object is victory—not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory." During Senate hearings regarding President Harry S. Truman's recall of MacArthur the following month, General Omar N. Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), voiced opposition to MacArthur's plan for winning the Korean War, asserting that implementing "this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." Rosemary Foot has used these sound bites to provide creative and appropriate titles for her outstanding companion studies of the war in Korea. A Senior Research Fellow in International Relations at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, the author's purpose is not to write detailed histories, but rather to analyze the implications and impact of U.S. policymaking during the conflict. BOOK REVIEWS135 In The Wrong War, Foot endorses the judgment of recent scholars that the Korean conflict was "a major turning point in the Cold War" (p. 36) because it transformed the United States into "a global power with a matching military capability" (p. 246). More important, she thoroughly discredits the conventional belief that U.S. leaders were committed to waging a limited war in Korea. Throughout the conflict, Foot reveals, the debate on expanding the fighting was "extensive, rich, and complex" and "one of the most important and all-consuming questions of the period. Consequently, at many points of the war, the line between limited and expanded conflict was finely balanced" (p. 23). During the MacArthur hearings, for example, the Truman administration falsely portrayed its policies as "cautious and circumspect" (p. 25), while privately approving MacArthur's proposal to attack Manchuria with atomic weapons if the Communists launched a massive offensive. No major U.S. leader, Foot contends, "believed that Soviet armed forces would enter directly into the fighting, or that Moscow would openly invoke the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Alliance" (p. 232). Given Moscow's "lack of credible support" (p. 237) for the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Truman and Eisenhower administrations felt safe in intimidating the PRC with "wholly unnecessary" (p. 37) provocations and threats of a wider war. Bureaucratic battles that had focused on European policy and "the strategic value of Taiwan" (p. 54) before the Korean conflict intensified after June 25, 1950. Foot documents how the Defense Department, especially the Navy and Air Force, advocated "a far more punitive policy" (p. 29) toward the Communists. But Secretary of State Dean Acheson was determined not to alienate U.S. allies. Had he not sustained Britain's veto of hot pursuit, "the psychological and legal barriers to an expanded war would . . . have been torn away" (p. 242). According to the author, the failure of Moscow and Peking to react to U.S. military intervention or the neutralization of...