To what extent was US intervention in to Korea purely a response to communist aggression?
On the 25th of June 1950, a communist North Korea invaded South Korea in a totally unprovoked attack. President Truman and his government went to the United Nations in order to liberate South Korea, and the UN Security Council passed a resolution sanctioning intervention by UN & US forces. This resolution could have been vetoed by the Soviets but they were absent during the vote due to a boycott of the UN. The attack on South Korea came as a surprise to the western nations. In the previous week a congressman had told congress that no such war was likely.
President Truman had decided to go to war for many reasons, but one of his main reasons was due to his critics labelling him as being “soft” on communism, one of these critics was Senator Joseph McCarthy. The fact that china had turned communist did not help President Truman’s image and added further weight to his critics claim. But some may argue that china was not Americas to loose but in any case one of the largest countries in the world with a large population had turned communist over night. In relation to the question if intervention in Korea was purely a response to communist aggression, President Truman may have gone to war due to the fact that he was trying to sway public opinion and not as a response to communist aggression.
Containment was a policy that President Truman truly believed in. Containment is the notions that by not letting communism expand that it will have nowhere to go and therefore suffocate its self. The domino theory added weight in the implementation of this theory, the domino theory was that if countries were allowed to fall to communism then eventually the whole world will fall country by country into a communist regime. Containment further became the primary focus in foreign policy due to the NSC-68 document. Therefore US intervention in Korea may not have been purely to respond to communist aggression, but to implement the policy of containment.
The NSC-68 claimed that the Soviet Union was motivated by its ideology to expand its influence throughout the world and this would threaten the United States interests. The NSC-68 document was a key catalyst to the policy of containment, in terms of building up stock piles of conventional arms and nuclear weapons and also providing billions of pounds in aid to countries trying to stop Soviet expansion. The document claimed that to protect the United States interests it had to do all it can to stop the Soviets ideology of expansion, therefore US intervention may well have been purely to respond to communist aggression.
The UN & US forces managed to drive the North Koreans past the 38th parallel, a border agreed by the Americans and soviets after the Second World War since they both helped liberate Korea from the Japanese. By the end of October, the North Korean Army was rapidly disintegrating, and the U.N. took 135,000 prisoners. They had reached their aim of driving the communists out of South Korea which was a major accomplishment. But the UN forces were enticed by the idea of uniting all of Korea under a government opposed to communism even if it was brutal. This was a crucial step in American foreign policy, because American leaders had decided to implement “rollback” in the war, which would humiliate communism and would be seen as a global accomplishment in the face of communism. China was greatly worried by this as they thought that the UN forces may carry one heading eventually into china and implementing roll back there. Therefore it may have been the US’s intention to respond to communism as a whole and not just for communist aggression.
Korea’s geography may well have played a key part in the reason why America decided to intervene. Korea was the last country before Japan. Japan was economically booming, and this fact also played on the markets in America. The more success a rich industrial Japan enjoyed so did the United States, and loosing Japan to the soviets would have been a major blow to America. Korea was situated between communist china and USSR and a rich capitalist Japan, and as the domino theory explained at the time communism would take country by country until the world was under communist rule. The Americans may have had to do all they could to stop communist aggression to save Japan and implement their containment policy again.
South Korea was attacked without any warning and also unprovoked. The Americans viewed them selves as “global policemen”, therefore may have felt compelled to do something about the situation. The image of America as a global policemen would have also have helped President Truman’s image domestically, and not being seen as “soft” on communism.
In conclusion I believe that the US intervened in the Korean War because of communist aggression as well as domestic pressures. President Truman was under great pressure to do something about communism since China had been lost to communism. As well as the McCarthyism era still looming and pointing people out, President Truman may well have been afraid of being labelled a communist him self. He was already labelled as being “soft” on communism therefore being labelled a communist by hawks like McCarthy wasn’t impossible. There was also the case of implementing the containment policy. President Truman may have truly believed that if Korea fell then Japan would be next eventually the rest of Asia and the world. But South Korea was attacked with out any warning by a communist country backed by further communist superpowers therefore there was a need for a show of force on a global stage against communism. The NSC-68 only added more fire to the wood, somehow like a prophecy detailing soviet motives, therefore President Truman may have felt compelled to do something about the situation, but his willingness to go to the UN and bring the war to the international stage, also showed that he was not as aggressive as he could have been. In conclusion it was both a response to communism as well as other factors including financial and domestic reasons.