Reasons to Intervene

The story that investigates the reasons of American intervention could be a very short one.

According to his diary, the President made up his mind on June 25 when it became clear that the North Korean attack was an all out invasion of South Korea. He made the decision on the plane as he flew back from his hometown to Washington D.C. He reasoned that

“I remembered how each time that the democracies failed to act, it encouraged the aggressors to keep going ahead. Communism was acting in Korea just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had acted ten, fifteen and twenty years earlier. […] If the Communists were permitted to force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would have the courage to resist threats and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors. If this was allowed to go unchallenged, it would mean a third world war, just as similar incidents had brought on the Second World War.”⁴⁴⁰

In other words, his reasons were twofold. First, the President saw the world in cold war terms:

the West fighting against a monolithic Communist block. The historical analogy weighted

439 McCullough 1993 [1992], 522, 737, 755, 759-570 and Acheson 1970, 463, 472-483.

440 McCullough 1993 [1992], 777; Hess 2001, 9; Truman, Harry S. 1957 [1955-6].Memoirs. Special Kansas City edition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 332-333.

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even more heavily on the President’s mind. Identifying North Korea as an aggressor, Truman compared the invasion to the defining historical event of his generation as he concluded the lesson of his contemporaries: appeasement should not be allowed and aggression must be met with aggression, because there was no way to lessen the Soviet appetite for further territorial expansion. Both of these fit well with realpolitik, that is, the maintenance of the balance of power. Clearly, the threat of international aggression was the source of Truman’s loss frame.

Accordingly, he was ready to risk a lot in Korea. When he arrived in Washington, D.C., he left no doubt whether the United States would help South Korea. To a group of his advisors, he said, “By God, I’m going to let them have it.”⁴⁴¹ He brought up the lessons of appeasement with his advisors. He was convinced that the US must act, which he explained by drawing a parallel with German, Japanese, and Italian aggression in the 1930s. He also reflected on the success of this view so far: he made the point that a firm stance in Berlin and Greece made the USSR back down.⁴⁴²

Many of his advisors shared his view of international politics, that is, the lessons of Munich, which, thus, had a “profound influence” on the decision.⁴⁴³ General Bradley, head of the JCS, was thinking along the same lines as the President, The line for Russia must be drawn somewhere, he said, and Korea was as good a place as anywhere else. Secretary Finletter of the Air Force, who believed that the lesson of the world wars was to take a calculated risk early on to keep the peace, also stressed the need for standing firm in the face of challenge. John Foster Dulles made the same point in a telegram to the President after the meeting.⁴⁴⁴ After all, aggression was directed against a country that enjoyed US support.

441 Hess 2001, 9; McCullough 1993 [1992], 776.

442 Hess 2001, 2.

443 Record 2002, 41.

444 Truman 1957 [1955-1956], 336; “Memorandum of Conversation by Philip C. Jessup,” June 25, 1950, in “The Korean War.” 2006.Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Available:

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/korea/large/index.htm. Access: October 15.

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Failure to act would not only lead to further aggression as the lesson of Munich predicted but would jeopardize the credibility of the US as an ally.⁴⁴⁵

Several advisors pointed to the strategic imperatives of fighting. For them intervening in Korea was a strategic necessity. Admiral Sherman argued that, just as he had argued in World War II, South Korea was not important in itself, but because in enemy hands it could mean a threat to Japan.⁴⁴⁶ This view was also shared by Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, who saw the North’s occupation of South Korea as a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.”⁴⁴⁷

Acheson shared Truman’s anti-Communist views as well. In a memorandum that Acheson also read out in the course of the meeting, he stressed that the invasion of South Korea was not an isolated act, but as a first step in a chain of events by the Communists, which “alters the strategic realities of the area.”⁴⁴⁸ The next move from the Soviet Union, which was not involved in the conflict in reality, was expected at the Formosa straight and, therefore, the seventh fleet was ordered to move there. In addition, calculations of the probable place of following Soviet attacks were commissioned.⁴⁴⁹ In other words, Soviet intentions were considered in a strategic light.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly for a realist and more in the vein of liberalism, the President considered one more international factor, the United Nations. He saw the United Nations endangered by North Korean aggression. He finished his thinking while returning to Washington by concluding that “the foundations and the principles of the United Nations were at stake unless this unprovoked attack on Korea could be stopped.”⁴⁵⁰ That is, in the early 1950s the President and many officials in Washington still entertained some hope that

445 Hess 2001, 22.

446 “Memorandum of Conversation by Philip C. Jessup,” June 25, 1950, in “The Korean War” 2006;

McCullough 1993 [1992], 778. See also, Truman 1957 [1955-1956], 337.

447 McCullough 1993 [1992], 778. See also, Rusk 1990, 162.

448 “Points Requiring Presidential Decision,” in “The Korean War” 2006.

449 Truman 1957 [1955-1956], 334-335. Acheson 1970, 529. “Memorandum of Conversation by Philip C.

Jessup,” June 26, 1950, in “The Korean War” 2006.

450 Truman 1957 [1955-1956], 333; Hess 2001, 23.

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the UN would be able to fulfill its role, so they wished to act through it. The President also expressed this view early in the Korean crisis when he said, “We cannot let the UN down.”⁴⁵¹ On June 25 Truman expressed his desire to hold any action back until the UN would vote.⁴⁵²

Truman did respect the UN and tried to work though it rather than just using it to legitimize American action, as many of his successors would do. He went back to the UN each time the course of American policy had to be changed. Yet, involvement in the UN did not influence the decision to fight. The decision to remove any restrictions on the use of air and naval forces in Korea went out to General MacArthur on June 26 – a day before the new Security Council resolution that legitimized it was accepted.⁴⁵³ When Truman first met Congressional leaders in the morning of June 27, he left no doubt that the United States preferred working within the UN, but would go ahead even if a favorable resolution could not be obtained.⁴⁵⁴ The previous evening, he voiced similar views when he was warned that the Soviets might veto his plans of working with the UN. He said he “rather wished they would veto,” because it would be clear indication of who was behind North Korean action and would help justify US action in defending Formosa.⁴⁵⁵