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Odd Man Out: Truman, Stalin, Mao, and the Origin of the Korean War

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The conventional interpretation of the Korean War is that Kim Il Sung provoked the war, and forced a reluctant Stalin to support him, and that the United States was surprised both by the North Korean offensive of June 1950 and by the subsequent Chinese offensive of November 1950. In this important new book, Thornton offers a compelling argument for a re-examination of this version of events.

Thornton begins with a logical examination of the geopolitical interests of the principal actors: the USSR, the PRC, the USA, and North and South Korea. He shows that Mao wanted good relations "with all nations" - including the US - but needed Soviet assistance to seize Taiwan. Stalin, however, regarded a Sino-American rapprochement as his worst nightmare, and responded by unleashing North Korea against South Korea. Stalin calculated that this move would inevitably bring the US and China into conflict, and thus forestall his nightmare scenario. (In his discussion of Mao and Stalin, Thornton builds on such works as Goncharov and Lewis's "Uncertain Partners".) The US, for its part, wanted to keep Russia and China apart, and in late 1949 began backing away from support from Taiwan, which was of course the main obstacle to good US relations with the PRC. This policy was subsequently re-evaluated when Washington understood that the Soviets and the Chinese had reached an understanding of their own.

Thornton demonstrates that Stalin was the principal instigator of the Korean War, not Kim Il Sung - the tail did not wag the dog. The Soviets planned the June offensive, and supplied the North Korean Army with the weapons without which no attack could take place. Moreover, the Soviets controlled the timing, pace, and outcome of the North Korean offensive through their control of crucial resources: communications equipment, bridging equipment, anti-aircraft weapons, food, fuel, and ammunition. Without these resources, the North Korean offensive could NOT succeed, a fact that certain so-called experts in the field of logistics have utterly failed to understand.

Thornton shows that the development of NSC-68 tracks precisely with the evolution of the Sino-Soviet alliance and the Soviet decision for war in Korea. He argues that Truman deliberately left South Korea vulnerable to invasion (a "tethered goat") in order to invite the war that would cement public, political, and congressional support for the new strategy of containment. Thornton shows that the United States was aware of the Soviet arms buildup in North Korea and of North Korean intentions. Therefore, US action (and inaction) in response to this ample intelligence lead inexorably to the conclusion that the US did not wish to deter attack, but to entice it. Similarly, Thornton shows that Truman was not surprised by the Chinese attack in late 1950, but decided to accept war with China with a full understanding of the consequences. These consequences were, in Thornton's view, ultimately beneficial to the United States; Chinese intervention enabled America to construct a global position of considerable strength and advantage over the Soviet Union and its allies by the mid 1950s.

In conclusion, this work should be read by all students of the early Cold War, and particularly those who wish to understand the interplay of American, Soviet, and Chinese policy.

The great thing about this book is that it supplies so much detail from official records that you can decide for yourself whether you buy the thesis of the book. I think the case for President Truman and crew sacrificing Korea on the altar of the need for U.S. rearmament is fairly believable. Thornton's view that Stalin fell for Truman's trap because he wanted to force Mao and China into a war against the U.S. is not well documented, and strains credulity. Mao's reaction to Truman and Stalin is pretty well documented, as is Kim Il-sung's lack of competence or even control over his own nation.

However you read it, a lot of people died in the Korean war not realizing they were just pawns in the games of powerful men who wanted even more power. The Korean nation was left divided, and so was China. You can't replay history, so we will never know how communist China would have developed if Truman had not protected Chiang Kai-shek and instead had treated China as a friendly nation.

This meticulously documented study by a history/political science professor at George Washington University shows that:

1). Mao Tse Tung wanted to invade either South Korea or - preferentially - Formosa, but needed Soviet naval and air power for the latter. The Russians wanted the attack to be in Korea. He opted therefore to support

2). Kim Il Sung, who wanted to invade the South, and was supported by

3). Stalin, whose goal in all of this was to prevent Mao from - like Tito - leaving the Soviet orbit. To accomplish this, he deliberately withdrew the Russian delegate from the UN security council so that a veto of UN support for resistance to the North Korean invasion, when it occurred, could not be cast (that is, the absence of the Soviet delegate was deliberate on the part of the Russians - not a faux pas as is commonly thought). There had been a real possibility that the British would recognize Red China diplomatically, but in this way Stalin ensured a united front of the West again the North Koreans and, more importantly, against Red China. The Red Chinese's only friend would be in Moscow.

4). Truman, on the other hand, realized that the American public would not support the costs of the necessary defense measures against the expansion of Communism without a stark illustration of this aggression. The US knew that the North Korean attack was coming - we had submarines off Vladivostok who watched the ships of armaments leaving and spies on the docks of North Korea who watched them arrive - but left the South Koreans vulnerable - without the arms, air and naval power they desperately requested - so that the attack could not be easily repulsed. In fact, the US planning in autumn, 1949 - the year before the invasion - envisaged a retreat to a Pusan perimeter and then a landing at Inchon! So much for MacArthur's brilliance.

Realpolitik!

Although I found quite a bit interesting the overall concept I found to being quite unbelievable. That Stalin intended that the North Koreans would lose the war, so that he intended to drag in the Chinese and that the US would for their own reasons allow the South Koreans to lose a limited defeat so that they could save them after a long fight once they got the US congress to support the war.

Its just too far fetched. A simpler explanation would be that Kim a Korean nationalist decided to unify Korea, and Stalin, Mao and Kim all miscalculated the US response. So losing control.

this book explains everything. It explains why US was ignoring the north korea preparation for invasion. It also explains why Mao start to go against Soviet after the Korean war,because he was fooled by Stalin like an idiot.

Richard Thornton, an American history professor, has produced a detailed, but deeply misleading, study of the relations between the USA, the Soviet Union and China in 1949 and 1950. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the book is very anti-communist; it whitewashes the US state and blames the Soviet Union and China for the war in Korea and for the `Cold War'.

But the record shows that the USA was the aggressor in East Asia: it intervened in Korea's internal affairs from 1945 by occupying the south of the country, and it intervened in China's internal affairs in 1950 by sending the 7th Fleet into the Formosan Straits to defend Chiang Kai-Shek's defeated forces on Taiwan. These acts broke the Cairo Agreement, the Potsdam Agreement and the UN Charter.

Thornton claims that Stalin ordered Kim Il-Sung to start the Korean War to `prod China into conflict with the United States'. But Stalin did not cause US-Chinese enmity; the US interference in China's internal affairs was quite enough to gain China's enmity.

Thornton believes that President Harry Truman outsmarted Stalin and Mao! He writes that Truman tried to keep the Soviet Union and China apart, but this ploy failed when they signed their Treaty of Alliance in 1950. Thornton then saves his thesis, at the cost of contradicting himself, by arguing that Sino-Soviet cooperation also served Truman's purpose!

Certainly, Truman got the war he wanted: he rejected all chances of a peaceful settlement of the Korean conflict, and he provoked China to enter the war, so intensifying the `Cold War'. But he also got a defeat - which he didn't want! China beat the USA by stopping it from destroying the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Mao and Stalin together prevented World War Three by stopping the USA from invading China. As Mao had warned, "if the US imperialists won the war, they would become more arrogant and would threaten us."

Before, during and after the war in Korea, Britain's Labour government began its long stint as the USA's jackal, giving the USA the political support that it needed for its unjust wars.