Korea: Moving the Goalposts in War

摘要

Know what you are getting into. Good advice then and good advice today. The thesis of this paper is that U.S. political and military leaders followed Clausewitz's advice at the start of the Korean War, but then lost their way. U.S. strategy changed from waging a limited war to restore South Korea's sovereignty within its original borders, to an unlimited war to destroy the regime in North Korea and unite the peninsula under the South, and then back to the goal of restoring the status quo ante bellum. The story of how and why these policy shifts took place offers some potential lessons for the conduct of future wars. Moving the goalposts in Korea had negative consequences. Foremost among them were millions of additional casualties that could have been avoided if UN forces had stopped at the 38th parallel. For the U.S., losses also included wastage of precious military strength, damage to civil-military relations and domestic controversy that fueled one of the ugliest political debates in U.S. history. Hypothetically, it is possible that the U.S. and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) might have been able to establish diplomatic relations years earlier than they actually did had not the bad blood of the Korean war lain between them. This could have had positive consequences for the course of the Cold War and the conflicts associated with it.