It may well be that, in spite of our best efforts, the Communists may — Korean War

"The United States is the power that introduced nuclear weapons into Korea, and it took this drastic step primarily to stabilize volatile North-South relations. Always suspicious of North Koreas intentions, in the mid-1950s the Eisenhower Administration also worried that South Korean President Syngman Rhee might reopen the war. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wanted to restrain both sides -- with nuclear weapons. Even hotheads like Rhee and Kim Il Sung, he believed, would think twice before starting a war that would rain atomic destruction on the peninsula. In January of 1958 the United States positioned 280mm nuclear cannons and "Honest John" nuclear-tipped missiles in South Korea; these were followed a year later by nuclear-tipped Matador cruise missiles. Soon American and South Korean defense strategy rested on routine plans to use nuclear weapons very early in any new war -- at "H + 1," according to one former U.S. commander in Korea, meaning within one hour (more likely a few hours) of the outbreak of war if large masses of North Korean troops succeeded in attacking south of the DMZ. Annual "Team Spirit" military exercises included rehearsals for battlefield nuclear war. North Korea responded by building enormous facilities underground or in mountain redoubts, from troop and materiel depots to munitions factories and warplane hangars. This was a bit of a problem for American surveillance, in that it allowed for a great many places to hide an atomic bomb."

"For one, the films emerging from the war simply werent that good," he says of a spate of forgettable movies that included 1952s Japanese War Bride and 1953s Battle Circus. "Hollywood spent the better part of the 40s churning out war films, and the lack of imagination and inventiveness in Korean War films may simply result from imaginative exhaustion." The stakes also paled compared with WWII, says Steven Gillon, resident historian for the History Channel and history professor at the University of Oklahoma. "The same generation that fought in World War II also fought in Korea," he says. "It was the first limited war of the nuclear age. It ended in a stalemate and left Americans divided. There were no victory parades, no celebrations of the triumph of good over evil. Most Americans of that generation preferred to remember the earlier war."

"We acted because the success of Communist aggression in Asia would have been as harmful to world peace and to our own national interest as the success of Communist aggression would be harmful in Europe. And we acted because we knew that such aggression feeds on itself. We had watched one country after another fall in the 1930s to Nazi aggression in Europe and militarist imperialism in Asia. Force prevailed from Czechoslovakia to Poland, from Korea to the Java Sea. I have always believed that the Communist strategists of the fifties were encouraged by the indifference, the fear, and the weakness that permitted the aggression of the thirties to move so far so fast. But in Korea in 1950--as in Vietnam today-we acted to stop the aggression. Side by side we fought with you to protect your fight to be sovereign and independent. We had total casualties of 157,000--33,000 killed in combat, more than 20,000 killed in noncombat, or total dead of 53,625. While our total casualties were 157,000, the Korean people suffered civilian casualties of perhaps 2 million. Who will ever know how many children starved? How many refugees lie in unmarked graves along the roads south? There is hardly a Korean family which did not lose a loved one in the assault from the North. This was the cost--the terrible cost--of protecting the Republic of Korea from Communist aggression. And as I meet with President Park and see your countryside and your people, and then I look out into the faces of this Assembly, I know that these men did not die in vain."

"Korea was not vital to U.S. interests but Truman and his aides were determined to respond to what they saw as Soviet-inspired aggression. They approved what Truman would call a “police action,” not a full-fledged war, wary of potential Soviet countermoves in Europe or the Middle East. To seize the initiative, MacArthur launched a daring amphibious landing at Inchon, behind enemy lines, in September 1950. A month later, U.S. troops captured Pyongyang, the northern capital, and then, despite orders from Washington, pushed north to the Chinese border. They’d be home by Christmas, the general promised. Instead, the Chinese invaded that December, overwhelming and outmaneuvering American troops. MacArthur again claimed utter surprise and Brands surprisingly ignores scholarship that shows he and his aides discounted or dismissed multiple reports of a Chinese military buildup in the area. Refusing to concede any errors, MacArthur urged Washington to let him expand the war by bombing bases in China. His threats — including one to plant minefields with radioactive waste — worried allies, created turmoil in Washington and irked Truman no end. The final provocation came when MacArthur publicly called for all-out war against China just as Truman was trying to coax the Chinese into peace talks. “Rank insubordination,” Truman angrily wrote in his diary. The general, he decided, had to go. MacArthur’s star quickly faded back home. Gen. Omar Bradley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helped seal his fate when he told Congress that the general’s “strategy would involve us in the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy.”"

"In January 1956, Life magazine published an article that purportedly explained how the Eisenhower administration had ended the Korean War. Secretary of state John Foster Dulles revealed that he had conveyed an "unmistakable warning" to Beijing that the United States would use nuclear weapons against China if rapid progress toward a negotiated settlement was not made. He asserted that it was "a pretty fair inference" that this nuclear threat had worked. Dulles made this claim in defense of the notion that nuclear weapons were useful, indeed essential, tools of statecraft: When nuclear capability was combined with communication of intent to use it if necessary, deterrence- and even compellence-worked. Dulles spoke in response to partisan critics at the beginning of an election year, but his words influenced policy and history long after the 1956 contest ended. They defined the parameters of a debate about the political and diplomatic utility of nuclear weapons generally and the outcome of the Korean War in particular. However, the secretary of states claim wass doubly deceptive. It focused analysts attention on the six months of Republican conflict management, to the neglect of the preceding two and a one-half years of Democratic stewardship."

"Halberstam writes that Korea took place before TV news came into its own. "Given the state of the technology, the footage from Korea ... rarely moved the nation."