The Korean War and the Sino-Soviet Threat

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Abraham M. Denmark, also a fellow at the CNAS, added: “I would say that the end of the Cold War significantly reduced the changes of cataclysmic nuclear war — in the way we contemplat-ed it during the Cold War — I think that the changes for that have declincontemplat-ed.”

“But nuclear proliferation and emerging multipolarity is certainly leading to an international system that is less stable,” he remarked, while hinting at several emerging economies, such as India and Brazil as equally potential candidates to the superpower status.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, recall that U.S. scholar Kenneth N. Waltz was amongst the first to underline how the structure of the international system could force states, such as the United States, Russia and China, to create alliances in order to pursue power.

1. Neorealism and the Sino-American Normalization

In his best known work, “Theory of International Politics” (1979), Waltz argues that bipolar systems are more stable than multipolar ones because they are not highly economically depend-ent — an important factor that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Alfred Kissinger under-stood from the outset of the Sino-American normalization process.

1.1 The Korean War and the Sino-Soviet Threat

For Kissinger, the causes of the Korean War unveiled a double misunderstanding in Washing-ton-Moscow relations since the end of the Second World War.⁶

Even though Washington possessed the atomic monopoly, and the Soviet Union had no known capability for long-range air power, Kissinger explains that American leaders had defined only two likely causes of war with the Soviet Union in the 1950s: A surprise attack on the U.S. or an invasion of Western Europe by the Red Army.⁷

The former U.S. Secretary of State believes that the Korean War exposed this major flaw in Washington’s policy: The aggressor, North Korea, and the victim, South Korea, were both lo-cated about as far as Europe, the focal point of American strategy.

6 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Touchstone, 1994), p. 475.

7 Ibid., p. 474.

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To Kissinger, this flaw caused American leaders to act on the basis of two erroneous premises:

First, Washington assumed that challenges to the U.S. would be as unambiguous as they had been during the Second World War; and second, Washington considered that the communists would wait passively for the disintegration of their own rule.

Accordingly, nothing in America’s behavior would have led policymakers in Moscow or Pyongyang to expect more than a diplomatic protest when North Korean troops crossed the 38^th Parallel on June 25, 1950.

While the communists did not find plausible that Washington would resist because of their analysis of the region in terms of American interests; the U.S. perceived the challenge in terms of principle, and therefore was less concerned with Korea’s geopolitical significance, than with the symbolism of permitting communists aggression to go unopposed.⁸

Still, from the perspective of the U.S. national interest, why did Washington decide to go to war against North Korea? Kissinger stresses that President Truman’s decision to resist North Korean aggression was to some extent courageous because it was in contradiction to what American leaders had proclaimed only a year before. Well, this decision had a solid foundation in tradi-tional concepts of natradi-tional interests.⁹

On the one hand, communism was spreading and had gained a foothold in Eastern Europe as a byproduct of occupation by the Red Army. If communist armies could now march across inter-nationally recognized border lines, the world would have returned to the conditions of the pre-war period. On the other hand, a successful invasion of South Korea would have had a disas-trous impact on Japan, which had always considered Korea as the strategic key to Northeast Asia. Unopposed communist control would have introduced the specter of a looming Asian Communist monolith and undermined Japan’s pro-Western orientation.

Then, after the decision to go to war was made, Truman had to justify his decision to oppose North Korean aggression to the American people. Kissinger thus remarks that Truman com-bined the above mentioned geopolitical arguments in favor of an intervention in Korea with an appeal to American people’s core values.

8 Ibid., p. 475.

9 Ibid., p. 477.

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The U.S. president then announced that American intervention in Korea was to defend a univer-sal principle, opposing a looming threat, rather than American interests only.

“ A return to the rule of force in international affairs would have far-reaching effects.

The United States will continue to uphold the rule of law.”¹⁰

For reference, in March 1949, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, commander of America’s Pa-cific forces, had placed Korea squarely outside the American defense perimeter, and withdrawn all American forces from Korea. Secretary of State Dean Acheson had gone even further. He not only consigned Korea as being outside the American defense perimeter, but specifically abjured any intentions of guaranteeing areas located on the mainland of Asia.

So, how did Washington defined its practical war aims? According to Henry Kissinger, in a general war, which was what American strategic doctrine had contemplated, the quest was for total victory and for the unconditional surrender of the adversary, as it had been in World War II.

Conversely, in the case of a limited war, the simplest and most comprehensible war aim would have been a literal application of the Security Council resolutions to push North Korean forces back to their starting point along the 38^th Parallel.

However, if potential aggressors came to understand that they would never do worse that the status quo ante, containment might turn into an endless progression of limited wars. In other words, if there was to be no penalty for aggression how could any future aggressions be dis-couraged? Moreover, what sort of penalty was compatible with a commitment to a limited war?

Inherent in the strategy of limited wars involving the superpowers, is the ability of either side to raise stakes: that is what defines them as superpowers.¹¹ In this context, and given the multilat-eral approach via the United Nations, America needed to convince those countries with a ca-pacity to escalate, especially the Soviet Union and China, that American objectives were indeed limited.

Unfortunately, the containment theory, in the name of which America had engaged itself, pro-duced precisely the opposite temptation. It inpro-duced Truman to expand the political battlefield as key members of his administration believed in a global communist design and treated Korean aggression as the first move in a coordinated Sino-Soviet strategy.

10 Statement by President Truman issued on June 27, 1950, quoted in Henry Kissinger, Op. Cit., p. 477.

11 Henry Kissinger, Op. Cit., p. 478.

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In order to convey America’s determination to resist communist aggression throughout the Pa-cific area, Truman coupled the announcement of the dispatch of troops with an order to the Sev-enth Fleet to protect Taiwan against communist China.

According to Mao Zedong, however, America’s fear of a communist conspiracy was the mirror image of China’s fear of an American attempt to reverse the communists’ victory in the Chinese Civil War.¹²

In protecting Taiwan, Truman was supporting what America still recognized as the legitimate Chinese government. Mao had reason to conclude that, if he did not stop America in Korea, he might have to fight America on Chinese territory.

“ On this Sunday Mao turned the pages of a “Reference News” idly until his eye caught an item from Pyongyang. Korean radio reported an encounter on the 38th Parallel, very heavy fighting. South Koreans were, it was said, attacking the north all along the perimeter. Mao paused. There was constant tension on the Korean border, an incident nearly every day. This sounded serious. The Korean frontier was close to China, and Mao had not overcome his worries about the United States. He had warned his col-leagues well before June 1950 that the United States might intervene in Korea. This could be it.”¹³

Washington was convinced that the Kremlin would not accept defeat anyway. Based on such assessment, the U.S. believed it was facing a centrally controlled communist conspiracy to take over the world.

Yet, the reality was quite different. Stalin had gone along with the North Korean attack only after Kim Il-Sung had assured him that it would involve little risk of war. The real fanatics, Kis-singer contents, were in fact Pyongyang and Beijing. The Korean War was not a Kremlin plot to draw America into Asia so that it could then attack Europe. While Beijing had been kept in the dark during the war preparation process,¹⁴ Moscow-Beijing cooperation after November 26, 1950 was also limited since Stalin’s aid was grudging, and he demanded cash payment for it.

From Kenneth Waltz’s perspective, the structure constrains and disposes behaviors of units. In a context of structural anarchy, Waltz argues that the balance of power is exclusively based on the distribution of capabilities.

12 Henry Kissinger, Op. Cit., p. 479.

13 Harrison S. Salisbury, The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng (New York: Avon Books, 1992), p.

105.

14 Ibid., p. 106.

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Stephen Walt adds that states form alliances to balance against threats and not power only. The level of threat is therefore affected by geographic proximity, offensive and aggregate capabili-ties, and perceived intentions.

In this respect, we can underline the relevance of the February 1950 treaty between China and the Soviet Union, and December 1954 defense treaty between Washington and Taipei, on both Kenneth Waltz and Stephen Waltz’ arguments.

Mao’s statement in 1949, that China would lean to one side toward the Soviet camp, automati-cally increased pressure on President Truman to resume aid to the ROC.