Britain's Korean War

Cold War diplomacy, strategy and security 1950–53

Thomas Hennessey

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780719097386
• eBook ISBN: 9781784991630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book assesses the strains within the 'Special Relationship' between London and Washington and offers a new perspective on the limits and successes of British influence. The interaction between the main personalities on the British side – Attlee, Bevan, Morrison, Churchill and Eden – and their American counterparts – Truman, Acheson, Eisenhower and Dulles – are chronicled. By the end of the war the British were concerned that it was the Americans, rather than the Soviets, who were the greater threat to world peace. British fears concerning the Korean War were not limited to the diplomatic and military fronts – these extended to the 'Manchurian Candidate' threat posed by returning prisoners of war who had been exposed to communist indoctrination. The book is essential reading for those interested in British and US foreign policy and military strategy during the Cold War.

1

Invasion

By mid-1950 the Grand Alliance of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, that had defeated the Third Reich in 1945 had collapsed into two armed camps of East and West. On the one side stood the democracies of Britain and the United States, defending the recovering countries of Western Europe; and, on the other, stood the Soviet dominated states of Eastern Europe. As Winston Churchill had expressed it, an Iron Curtain had fallen across the continent. Of the Big Three wartime leaders who had been in office when their country had embarked upon war with Germany, only Generalissimo Joseph Stalin survived in power. As Soviet Russia feared the West, so the British and Americans feared the East. It appeared to the British that Stalin sought to supplement Communist dominance in Central and Eastern Europe with forays elsewhere in the world. The British were fighting Communist insurgents in Malaya while the French were fighting against similar foes in Indo-China. When Nationalist China fell to the Communists in 1949 the number of the world’s population under Marxist-Leninism doubled at a stroke. But it was in Europe that Britain’s fears of Soviet moves were focused the most. And the task of devising the strategy of defending the United Kingdom fell to the Chiefs of G Staff: the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Field Marshall Sir William Slim, representing the British Army; the First Sea Lord, Lord Fraser representing the Royal Navy; and Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Sir John Slessor, representing the Royal Air Force (RAF).

These were the men who had to assess the strategic threat to the United Kingdom and its worldwide interests. On 7 June 1950, in their ‘Allied defence Policy and Global Strategy’ paper, the Chiefs set out, as the ‘first essential’ to define clearly the political and military aim – of Britain and her Allies – in the struggle against Russian Communism. They concluded that the ‘enemy’s aim is quite clear – it is a communist world dominated by Moscow’. They were worried that Allied defence policy had been confused by the lack of a clear definition ‘of what we are fighting for and by a failure to recognise that our aim in this struggle, in its present “cold” phase as well as in a possible “hot” phase, must be consistent’. The Chiefs concluded that Allied defence policy ‘cannot be divided into water-tight compartments of “cold” and “hot” strategy’. The former was largely conditioned by the ability, in the last resort, to defend Allied interests against armed aggression; while Allied readiness to fight defensively was inevitably affected by the demands of the Cold War: ‘Our aim must be to reduce to the minimum the extent to which it is so affected, but not to the fatal compromise of our ability to win the cold war which is rightly our first defence priority.’

The aim in the Cold War, ‘which must be achieved if possible without real hostilities’, involved ‘first a stabilisation of the anti-communist front in the present free world’ and then, as the Western powers became militarily less weak, the intensification of ‘cold’ offensive measures aimed at weakening the Russian grip on the satellite states and ultimately achieving their complete independence of Russian control. The aim in a Hot War, if real hostilities were forced upon the Western Allies, would remain broadly the same: ‘Our first preoccupation must be to ensure survival in the face of the initial onslaught. Our ultimate military aim must be to bring the war to the speediest possible conclusion, without Western Europe being overrun, by bringing about the destruction of Russian military power and the collapse of the present regime.’

The Chiefs had concluded that Russian policy was ‘fundamentally opportunist and the Soviet will always exploit any weaknesses – especially the weakness inherent in a lack of unified policy on the part of the Western democracies’. But historically, also, the Russians, whilst always aggressively expansionist in policy, ‘do draw back when faced with determined opposition, a characteristic which communist Russia appears to share with imperial Russian policy – the tactical withdrawal when conditions are unfavourable’. The Chiefs, therefore, cautioned that the West should not be unduly impressed by the ‘war of nerves’ which would undoubtedly continue with varying intensity over the coming years: ‘The war of nerves by Hitler from 1933 to 1939 was in many ways similar to the present cold war, and the history of that period is eloquent proof of what happens if foreign policy and military preparedness do not march closely in step.’ The Chiefs recommended that: ‘We should bear always in mind that half of the Russian “split mind” is traditionally defensive and – however unreasonably today – genuinely apprehensive of attack by the Western Powers; we should, therefore, give the Russians no ground for a degree of apprehension that might drive them to a preventive war.’ Short of that, however, the Chiefs were of the opinion that:

we should not be unduly anxious about provoking the Russians. If it suited them to embark on armed aggression they would do so without waiting for provocation; they have no public opinion capable of rushing their government into hostilities against their better judgment; and their acceptance of our moral victory in the Berlin airlift (when, if ever, they were in a position to defeat us if they had chosen to resort to force) shows that their historic tendency to hold back in the face of determined opposition still holds good.

The Chiefs described the current phase of East–West relations as the ‘deterrent phase’. Western military weakness as a whole was now such that, from the purely military point of view, ‘Russia could march to the Atlantic at any moment.’ That she had not done so, ‘and in our view is unlikely to do so’, was due to her realisation that a certain consequence of aggression would be war with the United States involving ‘immediate retribution in the form of the atomic weapon’. Russia was not prepared for a long-drawn-out struggle with the prospect of ultimate defeat in face of the superior war-making capacity of the United States and the British Commonwealth. The ‘“Pax Atlantica” rests to-day on the atomic weapon as the Pax Britannica rested in the 19th century on the British Fleet’.

The Chiefs then identified the three main theatres in which Allied interests were threatened: Western Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. The Chiefs were of the opinion that: ‘European civilisation could not survive a Russian occupation of a Western Europe.’ It would only be with the utmost difficulty and sacrifice that Britain could survive, ‘as she did last time’, an enemy occupation of Channel and Atlantic coasts. In the long run ‘the rest of the free world could not survive the submergence of Europe and Britain’. It was clear, therefore, that the defence of Western Europe, initially at least as far as East of the Rhine, was absolutely vital. Militarily, this meant that the defence of Europe – including the United Kingdom – ‘must have top priority. The primary offensive weapon in hot war must remain the atomic bomb’.

The second most important theatre was the defence of the Middle East which had ‘always been one of the three pillars of British defence policy and it is of equally critical importance in Allied strategy’. It was the land bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa and a most important link in the Commonwealth system of sea and air communications. Its oil supplies were of very great importance, and, if it fell under Russian influence, ‘the repercussions on the whole Moslem world from French North Africa through Pakistan to South East Asia would be critically serious’. There could be no doubt that to retain the countries of the Middle East within the Western orbit was ‘a vital cold war measure, and we must be prepared to make military sacrifices to that end’.

The Chiefs considered the key to the Cold War problem in the Far East to be China. Allied policy in that direction, ‘while inflexibly anti-communist, should not be anti-Chinese’. It was important that ‘we should not drive China irrevocably into the arms of Russia’. The Chiefs accepted that there was room for doubt whether the inherent xenophobia of the Chinese would submit to Russian any more than to any other foreign intervention. The problem of the ‘unassimilated’ Chinese and ‘hence our internal security difficulties’ in British and French dependent territories could only be aggravated by the permanent hostility of the new China. This should involve no policy of appeasement. Unlike the Americans the British had, in recognising the Communist Chinese People’s Republic, taken the line that their system of government was a matter for the Chinese themselves. The aim with Chinese Communism, however, ‘must be the same as that with Russia – to confine it within the borders of China’; and the Allies should react firmly and vigorously ‘to any threat of its extension’. Therefore:

The front line of the cold war in Asia lies in Indo-China. If that front gives way it is only a matter of time before Siam and Burma fall under communist influence. In that event our difficulties in Malaya would become almost insuperable and ultimately communism would probably prevail throughout Malaya and the Archipelago. Nothing is more important than to make sure that the French restore order and establish a stable and ultimately independent friendly government in Indo-China.

The history of the previous three years left no room for doubt, in the Chiefs’ minds, that from a military point of view the most important object of British foreign policy in the Far East should be to achieve a firm unity of policy between the British Commonwealth, the United States and France. ‘Nothing could suit our enemies better than for the Western Powers to pursue divergent objectives in the Far East and South-East Asia’ considered the Chiefs. The aim of a unified policy should be to resist the encroachments of communism beyond the borders of China and thus enable the French, and to a lesser extent the British, to reduce their garrisons and devote resources now tied up in the jungles of Indo-China and Malaya to the ‘really vital’ end – the defence of Western Europe.¹ There was no mention of Korea in all of this. It just was not a strategic concern in the British view of Cold War priorities. The very idea that Korea would be the principal theatre in which East and West turned the Cold War into a Hot War seemed absurd at the beginning of June 1950. That view changed a few days later.

Politically, Korea was a divided nation by 1950. Its population had suffered terribly under a three-decade occupation by the Japanese Empire. During the Second World War, at the Cairo Conference, in 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Chang Kai-shek, of China, met to decide what should become of Japan’s colonies after the war. They decided that ‘all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China … in due course Korea shall become free and independent’. Following the surrender of Japan, in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy Korea between them using the 38th parallel as the dividing line between the two. The Americans occupied the territory south of the parallel while the Russians took the area north of it. The Americans were only interested in Korea – if Communists came to power there – as a potential threat to Japan. In 1947, the fledgeling United Nations Organisation (UNO) passed a resolution announcing that free elections should be held across Korea. It also declared that foreign troops should withdraw, and created a UN Commission to oversee progress. The Soviets boycotted the vote and claimed that the resolution was invalid as a result. The man the United States picked to be their agent in securing South Korea from Communisation was the fervent nationalist, Syngman Rhee, who returned from a long exile in America. He was committed to the reunification of the Korean peninsula by either peaceful or violent means. The South held elections in 1947; in 1948, Rhee became the first president of South Korea. The same year most US forces left the new country. As they did so, Rhee crushed leftist opponents in the South. In the North, meanwhile, the Soviets established a puppet regime, the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee, under the leadership of Kim Il-Sung, a former guerrilla leader who had fought against the Japanese occupation. Kim was also committed to the unification of Korea.

Before Kim could fulfil his ambition to unite Korea under his rule he had to get the consent of Moscow. This meant the go ahead from Joseph Stalin. Kim first requested Stalin’s permission to invade South Korea, while on a visit to Moscow, in March 1947. Stalin was reluctant. He pointed out to Kim that the United States might interfere; instead Stalin offered the prospect of a South Korean attack on the North – which would result in Soviet support to repel it. Given the dire state of the North Korean forces, Kim could not instigate a war without Stalin’s support. But then Stalin suddenly gave Kim his support for an attack. Kim had kept pushing to be given the green light from Moscow. There were already fierce clashes occurring between Northern and Southern factions on the 38th parallel. And Kim had thousands of Communist guerrillas operating in South Korean territory. But what seems to have changed Stalin’s mind was the dramatic change in the Chinese civil war during 1949.²

In China, bordering both the Soviet Union and North Korea, Mao Zedong had finally driven Chang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang forces off the mainland to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Mao established the People’s Republic of China. While the British recognised Communist China as the de facto Chinese Government, the United States, with a strong pro-Chang Kai-sheik lobby in Congress, refused; instead the Americans supported the retention of the Nationalist Chinese Government in exile on Formosa as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Mao and Stalin rejected this. Unsurprisingly, on 30 June 1949, Mao issued his ‘lean-one-side’ statement – that was to ally Communist China ‘with the Soviet Union, with the People’s Democratic countries, and with the proletariat and the broad masses of the people in all other countries, and form a united front … We must lean to one side’.³ While Mao was keen to finish the job and invade Formosa, Stalin encouraged Peking (Beijing) to support Kim’s ambitions in Korea instead. Stalin, though, put the onus on Kim to gain Mao’s acceptance for the attack. He also emphasised to Kim that, if things went wrong, the North Koreans would have to look to the Chinese not the Soviets for help – Stalin still feared American intervention. But the job had to be done quickly. Kim assured Comrade Stalin that North Korea would be victorious in three days. After Kim approached Mao, the latter cast doubt on the operation. Stalin, however, informed Mao he agreed with Kim’s proposal – but the final decision had to be made jointly by ‘Chinese and Korean comrades’. Mao agreed albeit reluctantly.⁴ Stalin’s position might, he thought, have removed Moscow from the scene of the crime but, without his permission, there would have been no invasion of South Korea.

At 0400 hrs on 25 June 1950, North Korean Forces launched attacks across the 38th parallel followed, at 1100 hrs, by a declaration of war by North Korea against the Republic of (South) Korea (ROK).⁵ The first news received in Britain of the invasion of South Korea came via the United States the UN and the press. A telegram, sent to the Foreign Office by Captain Vyvian Holt, His Majesty’s Minister in Seoul, on 25 June, gave no indications of any forthcoming conflict. Captain Holt was soon to have more pressing concerns however, as he was to be captured shortly afterwards by the advancing North Koreans.⁶ The same day, at No. 10 Downing Street, in London, D.H. Rickett, Principal Private Secretary to Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, passed the premier the following note: ‘The Foreign Office thought that you should know that a state of war has been declared between Northern and Southern Korea. The United States Government are calling an emergency meeting of the Security Council.’⁷ It was just the latest in a series of East–West crises that the Prime Minister had had to face in the evolving ‘Cold War’ with Marshall Stalin’s Soviet Union. Korea, although it was not immediately apparent, threatened to develop into World War III. While Attlee was the Prime Minister he was content, as far as possible, to rely upon the judgement of his Foreign Secretary the extraordinary – a term somewhat overused to describe statesmen but in this case fully justified – Ernest Bevin. For Bevin and Attlee the cornerstone of British foreign policy was the ‘special relationship’ with the United States. And, in 1950 the President of the United States was Harry S. Truman. Truman was a President under severe domestic criticism. The administration had suffered huge domestic criticism for effectively ‘losing’ China to Communism the previous year. Britain, recognising the importance of maintaining eco...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Invasion
• 2 To cross or not to cross: the 38th parallel
• 3 Enter the dragon: China’s first intervention
• 4 Attlee in Washington
• 5 Divisions: January 1951
• 6 MacArthur goes
• 7 The long war
• 8 Breakthrough
• 9 Manchurian candidates
• Epilogue: Bermuda
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index