A Will & a Way

Is there any solution for the Korean stalemate? President Eisenhower has given no inkling of specific plans, but his approach to the problem is vastly different from that of Truman, Acheson & Co. Inauguration week invited a hard look back at how the stalemate came to be and a hard look ahead at possibilities for ending it.

Wars are sometimes stalemated for military reasons, e.g., the Western front in World War I, which was deadlocked for three years and nine months by the then tactical superiority of the defensive and by the fact that the military potentials of the enemies were almost evenly matched. Korea is not that kind of deadlock. Present military technology gives an advantage to the offensive, as was the case in World War II. The U.N. nations have a military potential many times China's.

The Korean deadlock has political, not military, roots. To set the objectives of a war is a political responsibility, but the Truman Administration never clarified its objectives in Korea. Military action could not be fitted to strategic aims which were not clear enough. Before the Korean war began, the U.S. knew (and the Kremlin knew) that Communist aggression in certain vital areas (say a Red army advance into West Germany) would be met with all-out atomic retaliation by the U.S. But the U.S. did not know (and the Kremlin knew it did not know) what to do about limited aggression. A vague doctrine of defending the perimeters of the free world was in the minds of U.S. leaders, and after the Communists crossed the 38th parallel, but not before, this violated line was considered part of the perimeter. The Administration was in a siege state of mind; it entered the Korean war to repair a breach in the wall.

Political Question. Criticism stemming from this state of mind landed on MacArthur as soon as he began pursuing the shattered North Korean army above the 38th parallel. When the Chinese Communists attacked, they threw MacArthur back; he, and later Ridgway, stabilized the front, and the U.N. forces were advancing again when the Reds set up the peace talks. The siege mentality in the U.N. nations revived, as the Communists doubtless thought it would.

No serious military man doubts that the U.S. and its allies can destroy the Communist armies now facing them if they choose to pay the price in casualties in one or two months instead of spreading them over years. (The siege mentality stresses the fact that the Chinese Reds are well entrenched, but their fortifications can scarcely approach the Maginot line, which has been a joke among military men since 1940).

The real inhibition against action in Korea arises from the question: Suppose the U.N. defeats the Chinese army in Korea, then what? That question is more political than military; it calls for definition of the political objectives of the Korean war. A reasonable statement of those objectives might be to: 1) restore a unified non-Communist Korean nation running to the Yalu River, and 2) punish the Chinese Communists sufficiently to make them drop their aggression against Korea.

The first objective does not necessarily require huge U.N. armies camped along the long, weak line of the Yalu. And the second objective does not require U.N. armies "wandering around . . . China." (Churchill's phrase)

The U.S. fought a successful war of limited objectives with Spain without dreaming of taking Madrid. The Japanese fought a successful war of limited objectives with Russia without having to wander to Petrograd. In fact, the war of limited objectives is a thousand times more frequent in the pages of history than the apocalyptic war of unconditional surrender. The defeat of Germany in 1945 was so impressive an event that it has almost persuaded a generation that this is the only kind of war. In fact, the 1945 victory is almost unique.

Military Means. If the limited U.N. aims in Korea are stated in clear terms, the military means to achieve them appear anything but impossible.

First, the present Communist army in the field must be destroyed. If this is not well within the capability of the U.N. nations, then the whole world is at the mercy of Communist force.

Second, a U.N. line might be established across the Korean peninsula's narrow waist (some 90 miles wide). Behind such a line would lie the present Red capital, Pyongyang, and some two-thirds of Korea, with four-fifths of its population.

If the Communists choose to put a new army below the Yalu. it would risk the same fate that would have befallen the first. If the Communists want to contest the area between the waist and the Yalu with guerrilla activity, ROK troops, with U.S. air support, should be able to carry on the fight as long and as well as the Chinese.

Nobody can predict precisely the point at which the Chinese would quit. But governments that find wars politically unprofitable usually stop fighting.

Eisenhower has the will to end the Korean war in victory. A way to do that is very much in the realm of the possible. Between the will and the way perhaps months of preparation must elapse. But a world that is paying the cost of years of indecision will not begrudge such months.

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