Refighting the Last War

Despite its being based on a weird premise, Clayton James' study is a model autopsy of muddled politico-military thinking. When he wrote it, in 1993, he explicitly linked his discoveries of errors in Korea to repetitions of the same errors in Vietnam and during Gulf War I. He was a prophet, because the same stupid errors were made and are still being made in Iraq and Afghanistan. His premise is that there is "an American tradition of preferring strategies of annihilation, instead of attrition." It's true that that was the strategy of World War II, where all the high commanders in the Korean War had served, but World War II was the exception. Except for the unique Civil War, American wars have always been limited wars. Perhaps, as James says, men like Douglas MacArthur and Matthew Ridgway would have enjoyed the satisfaction of another total victory. But they were supposed to be professionals, and a genuine military professional tempers his wish for a crushing victory to the fact that he usually faces an enemy who declines to let him have it. There is a childishness in the American way of war, most obvious in the airmen but present everywhere. In World War II, the airmen envisaged cheap, complete victories which they never delivered. In the Pacific, the prudent, always victorious Raymond Spruance was constantly sniped at by the airmen, led by John Tower, with their jejune visions of a naval Cannae. Yet when the airmen got their way, at Leyte Gulf, they barely escaped disaster. The airmenover promised again in Vietnam. Similar examples of childish thinking will spring to mind from the past five years. Surprisingly, this bee in James' bonnet does not get in the way of a mostly excellent analysis of who did what when -- and sometimes why. James' approach is unusual. He starts with chapters on the careers of the five leaders who had command responsibility: President Harry Truman, General of the Army MacArthur, General Matthew Ridgway, Admiral Turner Joy and General Mark Clark. (Joy's command responsibility was less significant but he deserves his spot as lead negotiator of the armistice, even if his hands were tied from Washington.) James is an admirer, not uncritical, of all five men. He wrote a three-volume life of MacArthur (which I have not read) and in this book calls MacArthur a "flawed genius." In reality, MacArthur was an incompetent, who, among other professional failings, neglected logistics, misunderstood air power, failed to assess intelligence, ignored flank security, disparaged the fighting men under him and failed to faithfully follow orders. In addition, he was corrupt, imagined wrongly that he had some almost mystical understanding of "the oriental mind" and by 1950 was insane. Even James calls him "paranoid," but psychotic would be more accurate. This misassessment of the overall MacArthur, however, does not interfere with James' generally persuasive account of the steps and missteps of each of the \five, and of the officers

In "Refighting the Last War" historian Clayton James, biographer of General Douglas MacArthur, reexamines the leadership of five key commanders in the Korean War: - President Harry Truman; - General Douglas MacArthur; - General Matthew Ridgway; - General Mark W. Clark; - Admiral C. Turner Joy. The author then examines six critial issues confronting these leaders in the Korean War: - Sending American troops to fight in Korea; - MacArthur's Obsession with Inchon (vice a breakout from the Pusan Perimeter by General Walton Walker's Eighth Army); - the Liberation of North Korea; - the Chinese Intervention; - Victory vs. settling for an Armistice as the strategic goal; - fighting a Total or Limited War in Korea. One would expect James, sympathetic to Douglas MacArthur, to skew this book in the General's favor. To his credit, the author does not, although he does marshal impressive evidence to support the assertion that MacArthur was indeed carrying out Harry Truman and the Joint's Chief's objectives in Korea. James clearly shows that MacArthur was out of touch with the Joint Chief's and the situation in Korea and bears a heavy responsibility for the significant reverses suffered by the unprepared American forces there. It is clear that American forces were needed in South Korea if that country were to be rescued from North Korean domination. James, however, argues that a breakout from the Pusan Perimeter by Eighth Army could have achieved the same effects as the landing at Inchon without most of the drawbacks. He goes on to question the wisdom of the liberation of North Korea as a strategic objective and shows that most of the senior commanders in the war believed the American and United Nation forces should have pursued victory rather than a armistice to end the war. Finally, he discuses the inability of the United States in the 1950s to pursue a total war in Asia against Communist China and perhaps even the Soviet Union. True, this book suffers from some drawbacks, most importantly the lack of Chinese or Soviet sources to provide a greater strategic perspective on the war. Still, James has utilized the sources available admirably and produced a thought provoking, insightful, and informative work that will cause the reader to reconsider the issue of strategic leadership in the Korean War.

This is a good text that highlights the (5)critical players and (6) command decisions that were part of the war. Truman left the details up to Acheson but felt the war, and especially prisoner repatriation, were moral imperatives. (The later cost Truman the election in '52...an armistice would have been signed before the election had Truman yielded). Ridgway, stabilizing the front after MacArthur's collapse, decided to extract maximum Chinese casualities for largely insignifcant terrain. Admiral Joy wore two hats as commander and negotiator. His minesweeping and Marine air support were often underappreciated, even as his worst fears about the Soviets in Vladivostok never materialized. On the other hand he often negotiated as much with his own State Department as with the communists. General Clark chafed under the restraints of limited war, and wound up signing the Armistice 'with a heavy heart.' As an analyst the command decisions are more interesting. ***The decision to intervene showed the growing strength of the state department vis a vis military matters. It had been the Joint Chiefs ,after all, who had said a war on the Asian mainland should be avoided. But pressure of McCarthyism and fear of a Kremlin monolith pushed us in. For their part, the North Koreans assumed that the US machinery of declaring war would be too cumbersome for a timely response. While bypassing congress was justified under the urgent circumstances that late June of 1953, it was foolish not to engage and consult with key leaders as the war progressed. ***The author, as many do, gives a good description of the insurmountable logistics of the Inchon landing. Asked about its risks, MacArthur (perhaps sarcastically) commented that the real risk was putting US boys on the mainland in the first place. The author could have pointed out that 'donkeys' revealed the Flying Fish Channel was not mined, nor was the port heavily guarded. In any case, the momentum gained at Inchon was lost with the Wonsan landing on the east coast. ***With regards to the decision to cross the parallel, James points out that speeches and excitement about uniting Korea predated US force breakouts. But the success foundered as US forces outran their supplies in the west; the peninsula widened and the temperatures plummeted; the Taebek mountains prevented the 'pincers' from closing. As for the disaster of Chinese intervention, the author lays some blame on Truman. He used the Wake Island meeting with MacArthur largely for political grandstanding when it called for hardnosed geopolitical analysis. ***On the decision to fire MacArthur: Keep in mind MacArthur felt US policymakers placed too much emphasis on Europe. [Reviewers comment: we still do. Can you say BOSNIA?] His proposals to extend the war into Manchuria and China involved limited air and sea operations, not ground troops. [Clark made the same proposals 2 years later]. As for the advance itself, MacArthur took full advantage of what he felt