A lesson learned from THE GENERAL VS. THE PRESIDENT, by H.W. Brands

 Hold off on your judgments until you know all the evidence.

One of the most confusing and forgotten wars in American History was the Korean War (of which both of my own grandparents were veterans), and I’ve often speculated with my students that a big reason for this was because it was completely overshadowed by the even-bigger-and-uglier Vietnam War a decade later. In the early 1950’s, the fate of Korea was one of the defining questions of American politics, and the debate was symbolized in the battle between President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur, which veteran author H.W. Brands delves into detail in his new book The General vs. The President. These essays are not reviews, but I didn’t find this one of Brands’ more fascinating books, partly because I’ve never been all that into the early Cold War era (lodged as it is right in between World War II and the chaos of the 1960’s). That said, there is a vital historical lesson at the heart of this book, and that lies in one of the most famous events of the war—Truman's firing of MacArthur, which was infamous and unpopular in the moment but has since earned Truman a great deal of retroactive respect.

The Korean War began in 1950 when North Korea launched a massive invasion of South Korea (both governments saw the other one as illegitimate). Although the Soviet Union had given North Korea its blessing for the invasion, it was very much a civil war born out of the ashes of World War II, when competing Communist and anti-Communist forces arbitrarily divided up a country that had been united for centuries. However, the American government under President Harry Truman had become convinced that all Communist groups around the world were directly taking commands from the Soviet Union, and that the invasion of North Korea was just another step in a Soviet plot for global domination. This convinced them the American military had to intervene to prevent South Korea’s collapse, and in the summer of 1950 General Douglas MacArthur launched a bold defense of South Korea that was initially a massive success.

Where the war became more ambiguous was in debates over its ultimate goal—if America’s goal was to liberate South Korea, that was a smashing success early on, and the war could have been quickly ended through negotiations. However, the old World War II veteran believed that only absolute victory was acceptable (more on this attitude later), and he proceeded to then launch an effort to seize North Korea and unify the entire country under a pro-American government. MacArthur assured President Truman that Communist China would never intervene in the war, and Truman authorized the plan based on this key assumption; everyone by all accounts was stunned when China then launched a massive attack on American forces as they approached its border and drove them back into a bloody stalemate near the original North/South Korean border.  

MacArthur then proclaimed to the world that Communist China was now the enemy, and America must embrace an all-out war with them until their power was destroyed, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons. A stunned Truman had no intention of unleashing such global destruction over Korea, and ultimately fired MacArthur for undermining his hope of containing the war from spreading any farther. The American people rallied to MacArthur and proclaimed the Truman presidency a disaster; MacArthur addressed Congress like a conquering hero and prepared a run for the presidency the following year. 

This is where the historical lesson comes in—we have seen over and over in modern history that people often wish to jump to the most simplistic conclusion, and to gravitate toward the idea that American power can solve anything. This attitude was deeply embraced by the American people in the wake of World War II, when we had just defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan back-to-back, and people genuinely wanted to believe that America could easily beat back the new Communist menace all over the world with just a little more military bravado. Congressmen were thus a little stunned when they eventually learned the truth; the post-war American military was dangerously overstretched in Korea, and the last thing that we wanted was to encourage a further widening of the war. Truman also pointed out the ultimate futility of using nuclear weapons as a threat—what was the point of unifying a Korea where millions of people then had to figure out how to survive in an irradiated wasteland? 

There will always be men like Douglas MacArthur, who encourage us to ignore the plain facts of a situation, and assure us that a simple violent solution can restore the world to its proper balance (MacArthur, to his credit, had some great career successes [such as the successful reconstruction of a post-war Japan], and seemed more than anything to just get caught up in obsessing over his own specific front at the expense of broader global concerns). It is the duty of informed citizens to try and avoid extreme reactions to stressful situations, and to instead calmly analyze the facts in front of us before we begin demanding blunt solutions. In our hyper, easily agitated modern world, it is a lesson we should all learn as soon as possible.