Brothers in Arms (33 page)

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Authors: Odd Arne Westad

Tags: #Political Science, #International Relations, #General, #test

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2.
Stalin, Mao, and the End of the Korean War
Kathryn Weathersby
Scholars using the newly released Chinese and Russian archival sources on the Korean War have quite rightly devoted most of their attention to the important questions regarding the outbreak of the war and the dramatic events of the first six months, events that played a pivotal role in escalating and shaping the Cold War.

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The remaining two and one-half years of the war lack the drama of the early months, as they were marked by stalemate on the battlefield and lengthy and tedious armistice negotiations. However, the more than two-year prolongation of the war caused by the failure of the negotiators to reach an armistice agreement had a significant and long-lasting impact on the development of alliances and perceptions on both sides of the Cold War; thus it requires close examination.

The drawn-out negotiations in Korea, lasting from July 1951 to July 1953, led many within the U.S. government to conclude that negotiations with Communists were useless and even harmful, a perception that contributed to the militarization of U.S. containment policy. In early 1953 newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower resolved to terminate the Korean negotiations if a settlement was not reached speedily, and in May the Eisenhower administration threatened to use nuclear weapons against China if the remaining issue at the negotiations, prisoner repatriation, was not resolved soon. For many years after the Korean War, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles maintained that Washington's threats to use nuclear weapons against China forced a breakthrough in the negotiations, a claim that had long-lasting impact on U.S. thinking regarding the utility of "nuclear diplomacy."
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The prolongation of the war further exacerbated the animosity between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States caused by the fighting. Despite the stalemate at the front, casualties on all sides remained high during the last two years of the conflict. American bombing was, in fact, more intense during the negotiations than in the first year of the war. Furthermore, the American negotiating team's insistence on what the Chinese considered unreasonable and insulting terms persuaded Mao Zedong that the United States was not according the People's Republic the respect it deserved. The chairman therefore concluded that protecting the prestige of China required steadfast resistance to American pressure.
The war's prolongation also meant that the Soviet Union engaged in an intense air war with the United States for more than two years, the only extended confrontation between the armed forces of the superpowers during the Cold War. The story of this air war is only now beginning to emerge,

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but it appears that, among other important consequences, the capture of downed American fighter planes and bombers contributed significantly to the development of Soviet air force technology. Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin apparently used the lengthy war in Korea to gather a broad range of intelligence on American military technology and organization.
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At the same time, the Korean War provided the United States with the opportunity and rationale for conducting overflights of Soviet and Chinese territory, actions that put considerable pressure on the Soviet Union to speed up the development of effective antiaircraft defense systems.

In a broad sense, the prolongation of the Korean War meant that Stalin spent the last two and one-half years of his life managing a major war with the United States. Among the Communist allies, the Soviet leader had the final say in decisions regarding military and diplomatic strategy during the war, regularly corresponding by telegraph with Chinese and North Korean leaders. Although the Chinese were responsible for the day-to-day management of the war after November 1950, Stalin closely followed the events on the ground, periodically intervening with specific military instructions. Mao Zedong and North Korean leader Kim II Sung requested and received Stalin's instructions prior to any significant diplomatic move. The Soviet leader also personally negotiated with Mao Zedong over the amounts, delivery schedules, and terms of payment of the massive quantities of armaments and supplies shipped from the Soviet Union to China and Korea as well as the dispatch of significant numbers of Soviet military advisers to both countries.
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The new Russian archival sources tend to support the argument that the Korean War served as a substitute for World War III.
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The parameters for manag-

 

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ing a superpower conflict established by the two sides during this war remained in force for the remainder of the Cold War. Similarly, both the Sino-Soviet alliance and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created shortly before war began in Korea, took concrete shape in the course of this lengthy struggle. Thus, on closer inspection, the last two years of the Korean War form a large, complex, and important story. An adequate analysis of why the war lasted for two years after armistice negotiations began requires that we integrate the historical evidence on the strategy of the United States, the United Nations (UN), and the Republic of Korea toward the war, with all the complex international and domestic issues that shaped allied policy, with the new evidence on Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean strategy. We have just begun this formidable task. This chapter, therefore, does not claim to be definitive; instead it attempts to begin analyzing the reasons the war was prolonged by examining the evidence provided by recently released documents regarding the Soviet and Chi-nose approach to the armistice negotiations, focusing particularly on the evolution of Stalin's attitude toward a negotiated settlement in Korea.
The War and Initial Negotiations
As I have discussed elsewhere, Stalin was surprised and alarmed by the American entry into the war in Korea.

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Although we have no precise record of his reasons for approving Kim II Sung's plan to reunify Korea by force, the evidence strongly suggests that considerations of the likely American response were a key factor in Stalin's decision. After the announcement of the Marshall Plan in 1947, the Soviet leader abandoned hopes for partnership with the West and thought increasingly in terms of an eventual conflict with the "imperialist" powers, but he wanted to postpone that confrontation until the Soviet Union had recovered sufficiently from the devastation of World War II. Stalin therefore wished above all to avoid having the action in Korea pull the Soviet Union into military conflict with the United States. Consequently, when the Truman administration abruptly reversed its policy toward the peninsula and committed American armed forces to the defense of the Republic of Korea, Stalin took every measure to distance the Soviet Union from the conflict.
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During the first two months of the war in Korea, Stalin instructed Soviet officials to respond positively to British and Indian overtures regarding a peace settlement. He also ordered the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Jacob Malik, to return to the Security Council. However, the Soviet Union used Malik's presence at the United Nations more to advance it's propaganda campaign against American bombing in Korea than to pursue a negotiated settlement.
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While conditions on the ground remained favorable to North Korea, Stalin understandably focused primarily on the progress of the fighting, waiting to see

 

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whether UN forces would break through the encirclement around Pusan before deciding on a further course of action.
The successful American landing at Inchon on September 15, 1950, and the subsequent disintegration of the Communist Korean People's Army transformed the Korean conflict into a serious military crisis for the Soviet Union. Stalin panicked at the advance of American troops into North Korean territory.

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In this new, far more dangerous situation, the Soviet leader ordered Malik to pursue possible channels for a negotiated settlement,
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but his attention was focused overwhelmingly on the difficult and urgent task of finding a way to stop the American advance militarily without drawing the Soviet Union into war with the United States.
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The dramatic success of the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) in turning back the American advance in November 1950 sharply altered Stalin's approach to the war in Korea. On December 7 the Soviet leadership informed Andrei Vyshinskii, Soviet foreign minister and ranking official in the Soviet delegation to the United Nations, that the draft proposal he had submitted to Moscow about a cease-fire in Korea was "incorrect in the present situation, when American troops are suffering defeat and when the Americans more and more often are advancing a proposal about the cessation of military activity in Korea in order to win time and prevent the complete defeat of the American troops." With the unexpected and no doubt welcome sight of the supposedly fearsome American armed forces retreating before the troops of his junior ally, Stalin ordered Vyshinskii to propose instead that all foreign troops be withdrawn from Korea and that the resolution of the Korean question be left to the Korean people themselves, conditions the United States would surely reject.
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At this point both Moscow and Beijing were euphoric, and Stalin had every reason to prolong the American disgrace.
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In early December representatives of India, Great Britain, and Sweden, along with UN Secretary General Trygve Lie, approached the PRC representative at a UN meeting at Lake Success, with a request that he communicate under what conditions it would be possible to end the military operations in Korea. The Chinese leadership drafted a response repeating the five conditions Premier Zhou Enlai had proposed in July: the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea; the withdrawal of American troops from the Taiwan Straits and the territory of Taiwan; the Korean question must be resolved by the Korean people themselves; a representative of the People's Republic must participate in the United Nations and the representative of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) must be excluded; and if these conditions are accepted, the five Great Powers would convene a conference to sign an armistice.
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Before replying, however, Zhou Enlai solicited Stalin's opinion on the pro-

 

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posed terms. The Soviet leader replied that he completely agreed with the proposed conditions for a cease-fire in Korea. "We consider that without the satisfaction of these conditions, military activity cannot be ceased." However, apparently aware that such an extreme position would be tactically disadvantageous, Stalin went on to say that
we consider that you should not be too open and show all your cards too early in front of the representatives of the three states, who frankly speaking, are spies of the U.S.A. We think that the time has not arrived for China to show all its cards, while Seoul is still not liberated. Moreover, the U.S.A could use China's five conditions to box us on the ear by [making] a UN resolution. It is not necessary to give this advantage to the U.S.A.
Drawing on the diplomatic experience he had by then acquired, Stalin advised Zhou to issue a more subtle statement. The Chinese should say simply that they "would welcome the soonest possible conclusion of the military actions in Korea" and therefore "would like to know the opinion of the UN and the U.S.A with regard to conditions for an armistice." They also should add that
the delegation from England together with the delegation from the U.S.A, France, Norway, Ecuador and Cuba already introduced into the First Committee [of the General Assembly] of the UN a resolution condemning China, thereby hindering the matter of a settlement of the Korean question. In view of this we will eagerly await the opinion of the UN and the U.S.A about the conditions for a cessation of military actions in Korea.

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In accordance with Stalin's recommendation, the Chinese were cool toward the resolution Benegal Rau, head of India's delegation to the United Nations, introduced into the First Committee of the General Assembly on December 12 to create a three-person committee to investigate terms for a cease-fire. At this time Mao Zedong also was unwilling to consider a negotiated settlement, as he was eager to press the advantage the Chinese held on the battlefield. He thus ordered the CPV commander, Peng Dehuai, on December 21 to begin a third offensive, speculating to Peng that in face of this offensive, the Americans might ask for a cease-fire. In such a case, Mao informed Peng, he would demand as a first step toward a cease-fire the withdrawal of U.S. forces south of the thirty-eight parallel.
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The third offensive was successful. By January 4, 1951, Chinese and North Korean troops were in possession of Seoul, and by January 8 advance units had reached the thirty-seventh parallel. On January 11, at the point of maximum

 

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