The Foreign Powers Involved in the Korean War
The Involvement of the USA, the USSR and China in the Korean War
Oct 20, 2009
To fully understand the reasons why these countries became involved in the Korean War it is necessary to examine the dynamics of the relationships between them in the run up to the start of the war. It is impossible to examine the reasons behind each countries' involvement without taking into account the perceptions that they had of each other's intentions because, as happened throughout the Cold War, one side's perception of what action another may take was perhaps more important than the action that the country was actually preparing to take.
China and the Korean War
China, having no diplomatic ties with the United States - which refused to recognise the nascent PRC - were reliant on the New York Times for information regarding the USA's foreign policy intentions. From this source they gained the impression that American action against North Korea was the beginning of a wider campaign against Communism and that, given the United States' prior support for Chiang Kai-Shek, China was the next logical target. That such an offensive was in the minds of some in the American administration is historically without doubt, General MacArthur, once he had reached the Yalu river formally requested permission to continue north into China.
The United States, however, was similarly ignorant, and therefore just as suspicious of Chinese intentions, and wrongly interpreted a series of meetings between Stalin and Mao in 1949 and 1950 as the formal agreement of closer Sino-Soviet ties; with Washington in particular and Americans in general coming to see the USSR, China and Communism as interchangeable terms.
Had the American administration established diplomatic relations with the Chinese, instead of isolating the new regime and forcing Mao closer to Moscow, they would have been able to make clear that they had no intention of targeting Communist China; for MacArthur's request was denied by Washington. Indeed, had Washington have been closer to Beijing they would have viewed the regime as an important counterbalance to Soviet influence in the region, whereas American thinking at the time was that the Chinese had only entered the war as a proxy of the Soviet Union.
Sino-Soviet Relations
Taking the actual situation of less than perfect Sino-Soviet relations into account it is perhaps more realistic to think that China was acting solely in its own interests, to protect its borders from an American aggressor who had already swept through its Korean neighbour, and not in any defence of Communist principles. It is unlikely that Mao, given both the somewhat strained relationship with Moscow, and the urgent need to rebuild a country shattered by more than a quarter of a century of civil war, would have allowed himself to be coerced by Stalin into protecting North Korea on the Soviet Union's behalf.
Mao considered himself at least an equal to Stalin and indulged in some very hard bargaining during the Sino-Soviet meetings in the early part of 1950, forcing an agreement for the return of the Manchurian warm-water ports and the Changchun Railway.
Soviet Plans for Korean Reunification
The enforced loss of the Manchurian region held great significance for Soviet plans in Korea, for the southern part of the peninsular has warm-water ports. Stalin had long harboured hopes of 'capturing' the whole of Korea and uniting it from the north downwards, and it seems that a combination of Syngman Rhee's weak South Korean government and apparent American disinterest in defending the dictator persuaded him that his goals were now attainable.
Soviet actions in the period between the end of WWII and the outbreak of the Korean War revealed that their long-term aim in the region was for a fully unified Korea that was friendly to the USSR. Although Stalin, in May 1945, had given his blessing to US plans for a four-power trusteeship comprising the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and, at his request, Britain, he was to continually block the progress of this plan in the years that followed.
NSC-68 and the Korean War
The United States only became involved in Korea through the 1945 peace settlement yet, five scant years later the country was deemed strategically important enough to warrant a massive military commitment. To discover why the USA reacted so swiftly to prop-up Rhee's regime it is necessary to look at the seismic shift that occurred in American foreign policy. Following several important developments in 1949, including the Soviet atomic test and the perceived 'loss' of China to the USSR, President Truman deemed it necessary, in early 1950, to authorise a foreign policy study that would produce the NSC-68 document. NSC-68 outlined a theory of perimeter defence in which all American interests, no matter how strategically unimportant they appeared to be, were considered of equal importance.
The Korean War appeared to vindicate two of NSC-68's most important conclusions, firstly that all interests, no matter how peripheral had become vital and, secondly, that any further shift in the balance of power, no matter how small, could upset the structure of international relations. For these reasons, protecting the government of Syngman Rhee and ensuring the survival of South Korea had become an important test of American resolve elsewhere.
Long-term Ambitions in the Korean Peninsular
Of the three foreign protagonists only the Soviet Union held any concrete ambitions to physically control - or at least hold significant influence over - the Korean peninsular. Washington's long-term aim remained a free, democratic, and unified Korea that could act as a barrier to Soviet ambitions in the Far East, and the survival of the South Korean regime was vital if that were to ever become a reality. Lastly, although Korea had traditionally fallen under the Chinese sphere of influence, there is no evidence to suggest that the PRC harboured any ambitions in the region.
References:
John Lewis Gaddis, "Strategies of Containment", OUP, 1982
Yonosuke Nagai, Akira Iriye, eds., "The Origins of the Cold War in Asia", Columbia University Press, 1977
Vladislav Zubok, Constantine Pleshakov, "Inside the Kremlin's Cold War" Harvard University Press, 1996
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