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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
The wars in Korea and Vietnam were of a piece, directly related by virtue of U.S. global strategy and China's security concerns. This paper, focusing mainly on the U.S. side in these wars, argues that three characteristics of American policy had enduring meaning for the rest of the Cold War and even beyond: the official mindsets that led to U.S. involvement, the centrality of the China threat in American decision making, and the common legacy of intervention against nationalism and in support of authoritarian regimes. It is part of a continuing Asia-Pacific Journal series on the Korean War on the sixtieth anniversary of its outbreak.
1 Recall that U.S. entry into the war in Korea was soon accompanied by the rearmament of Germany, establishment of a common European defense strategy and command center, and an increase in U.S. ground forces in Europe.
2 Quoted by Akira Iriye, The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 156.
3 Ibid., pp.173-74; Walter LaFeber, The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 295. As LaFeber writes, democratizing Japan was not the primary objective of the U.S. occupation. “The highest objectives were, first, to use Japan as the hub of an open, multilateral capitalism in Asia; second, to contain communism; and third to reassure neighbors by keeping Japan orderly and controlled.” The secret agreements, recently discovered by the new DPJ government in Tokyo, regarded use of U.S. bases and passage for nuclear-armed ships, including the right of U.S. ships carrying nuclear weapons to enter Japanese ports. Martin Fackler, “Japan Drops Denial of Cold War ‘Treaties,‘” New York Times, March 9, 2010.
4 See Michael Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 2d rev. ed., p. 111 on NSC-68 as an ideological document.
5 Benjamin Schwarz, “Why America Thinks It Has to Run the World,” The Atlantic, April 1996, p. 39.
6 National Intelligence Council, ed., Tracking the Dragon: National Intelligence Estimates on China During the Era of Mao, 1948-1976 (Washington, D.C.: NIC, 2004), pp. 37-60, 67-80, 87-98, 375-90, 403-12.
7 See, for instance, the CNN interview with Kennan in May and June 1996, found here.
8 See the documents in Michael H. Hunt, ed., Crises in U.S. Foreign Policy: An International History Reader (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. xxx.
9 Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision: June 24-30, 1950 (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 282. Except for the decision of June 29, 1950 to send combat troops to the Pusan area, Truman did not consult with any formal group such as the NSC. All the decision making was ad hoc.
10 Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 192.
11 Harry S Truman, Memoirs, vol. II: Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), p. 333. “I felt strongly,” Truman wrote, “that if South Korea was allowed to fall Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores.… If this was allowed to go unchallenged it would mean a third world war…” Ibid.
12 See, for example, his speech of October 27, 1948 in defense of his “doctrine,” at Public Papers of the Presidents 1948, online here.
13 See Paige, The Korean Decision, pp. 98-100
14 Ibid., p. 175.
15 Ibid., p. 350.
16 Ibid., p. 331.
17 See John G. Stoessinger, Nations in Darkness: China, Russia, and America, 4th ed. (New York: Random House, 1986), chap. 4.
18 Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
19 Zhang Baijia, “‘Resist America’: China's Role in the Korean and Vietnam Wars,” in Michael D. Swaine and Zhang Tuosheng, eds., Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), pp. 187-88, 190.
20 Ibid., p. 186.
21 See his telegrams to Stalin and Premier Zhou Enlai in October 1950, in New York Times, February 26, 1992, p. A4.
22 Zhang Baijia, “‘Resist America,‘” p. 190. One other Chinese motive was revealed by Mao in once-secret internal talks: his need to demonstrate his revolutionary credentials to Stalin. Mao would say that only when China sent troops into Korea did Stalin trust him. Stuart Schram, ed., Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters, 1956-1971 (New York: Pantheon, 1974).
23 See Allen S. Whiting, “U.S. Crisis Management vis-à-vis China,” in Swaine and Zhang, eds., Managing Sino-American Crises, pp. 218-19.
24 See William Appleman Williams et al., eds., America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), pp. 54-55, 90-91, 105-6.
25 Ibid., pp. 93-97.
26 The documents cited in this paragraph are from Neil Sheehan et al., eds., The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 9, 27-32 [hereafter, PP(B)], and in the much larger “Gravel Edition” of the Pentagon Papers published by Beacon Press.
27 PP(B), pp. 36-37.
28 See, for instance, the cables of Ambassador (to Saigon) Henry Cabot Lodge in PP (B), pp. 208-10 and his comments at a meeting of the policy-making principals in July 1965, in Hunt, ed., Crises in U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 352-53: “We have to do what we think we ought to do regardless of what the Saigon government does. As we move ahead on a new phase—it gives us the right and duty to do certain things with or without the government's approval.” That is clearly what happened in November 1963 when Kennedy in all but executive order authorized U.S. agreement to Diem's elimination. The latest once-secret information on that episode is available from the National Security Archive at nsarchiv.org.
29 W. W. Rostow, “Guerrilla Warfare in the Underdeveloped Areas,” Department of State Bulletin, vol. 45, No. 1154 (August 7, 1961), pp. 233-38.
30 Most emphatically in a speech of April 20, 1961, following on the disastrous attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's government in the landing at the Bay of Pigs. Text in Williams et al., eds., America in Vietnam, pp. 189-91.
31 PP (B), p. 372.
32 Memo from McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson, February 7, 1965, ibid., p. 426.
33 Draft memo from John T. McNaughton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, to McNamara, March 24, 1965, ibid., p. 438.
34 Ibid., p. 432.
35 Memo from Rostow to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, November 23, 1964, ibid., pp. 419-23.
36 Memos of meetings with Johnson and advisers, July 21-22, 1965, in Hunt, ed., Crises in U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 351-58.
37 Russell Baker, “What L.B.J. Knew,” New York Times, March 18, 1997, p. A19.
38 Here I rely especially on Zhang Baijia, “‘Resist America,‘” pp. 197-208.
39 Ibid., p 208. The scholar does not consider, however, how that trust was easily undermined by later developments, such as the U.S. invasion of Cambodia under Nixon, which drew very sharp Chinese criticism.
40 Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974), pp. 11-12.
41 See Melvin Gurtov and Konrad Kellen, “Vietnam: Lessons and Mislessons,” RAND Corporation Paper P-4084 (June, 1969).
42 Unlike in Korea, “the forgotten war,” the Vietnam War produced a huge literature on the political and cultural history of the country—but only after the United States had been involved for about a decade. That output shows no sign of slowing. Still, the Korean War has produced a number of distinguished works, including Bruce Cumings' two-volume history cited previously; William Stueck's The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995) and later works; Chen Jian's China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); and David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007).
43 Ernest R. May, “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, chap. 3.
44 James C. Thomson, Jr., “How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy,” in Eugene R. Wittkopf and James M. McCormick, eds., The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy: Insights and Evidence (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 5th ed., pp. 291-302.
45 See the testimony of Gordon Adams before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, February 23, 2010 here. “The total resources requested [by the Obama defense department] are, in constant dollars, 16% higher than the 1952 Korean War budget peak, 26% higher than the peak defense budgets of 1985, and 36% higher than the 1968 peak year for Vietnam War-era defense budgets.”
46 When, for example, the British objected to American domination of decision making on the war and proposed that a committee might run it, Truman and General Omar Bradley responded that if anyone didn't like the way the war was being waged they could withdraw; the United States was in charge. Minutes of conversation with Prime Minister Attlee, December 6, 1950, in Hunt, ed., Crises in U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 222.
47 The War Powers Resolution was intended to restrict presidential prerogative with respect to the dispatch of troops abroad without Congressional authorization. But the resolution has never kept presidents from acting as they pleased, whether with reference to the WPR or not. Efforts in Congress to invoke the WPR have typically failed, usually due to deference in Congress to presidential power in foreign affairs. Such was the case recently when Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) tried to use the war powers bill to force U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan within 30 days or by the end of 2010 at the latest. See Carl Hulse, “House Rejects Plan to Leave Afghanistan By Year's End,” New York Times, March 11, 2010, p. A6.
48 For an excellent general argument on behalf of a U.S. foreign policy of nonintervention, see Earl C. Ravenal, Never Again: Learning from America's Foreign Policy Failures (Philadelphia, Penna.: Temple University Press, 1978).
49 See my Superpower on Crusade: The Bush Doctrine in US Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007) as well as Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, “American Hegemony—Without an Enemy,” Foreign Policy, No. 92 (Fall, 1993), pp. 1-7.
50 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 323.
51 Thus, according to Michael T. Klare (“‘Two, Three, Many Afghanistans,‘” The Nation, April 26, 2010, pp. 21-24), the Pentagon's latest Quadrennial Defense Review indicates that Obama, like Kennedy in the 1960s, “seeks to fashion a new military posture that shifts the emphasis from conventional combat to brush-fire wars and counterinsurgency.” This “new posture” does not alter the overall U.S. strategy, which remains (as Klare quotes the QDR) that “The strength and influence of the United States are deeply intertwined with the fate of the broader international system. The U.S. military must therefore be prepared to support broad national goals of promoting stability in key regions, providing assistance to nations in need, and promoting the common good.”
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