U.S. DIPLOMACY

GenesisoftheCOLDWARRUSSIAORUSWITHLECTURE.pptx

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Page 1: America’s wars in Korea and in Vietnam should be viewed in the wider context of the Cold War (1945-1991) because those two major events in history were wrung out of the international competition between the Free World (as “the West” was called in those days which included free Europe, the Western Hemisphere, Japan, and a few other fellow travelers) and the Communist world (Russia, China, North Korea, North Vietnam until 1975 then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam DRV, the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Laos, Kampuchea, and a few other companions). America’s diplomacy during this period ranged from outright hostility and belligerence toward “Red nations” or “Commies”, to neutrality in some cases and, at times, to peaceful coexistence and some variations of all these. America and the communist People’s Republic of China were absent official diplomatic relations from 1949 to 1979, a long 30 year period in the midst of the Cold War. But America and China fought a “hot” war against each other in Korea. Reports vary but the U.S. forces caused about 390,000 Chinese casualties (110,400 KIA) and the Chinese forces caused about 290,000 American casualties (most of the 33,629 KIA) http://www.centurychina.com/history/faq5.shtml (these are Chinese official figures, probably low counts on their side but high counts on the U.S. side, but still the ratio fits). The teaching point here is that America has already been to war once with China within the last 60 some years. Also, American warplanes were shot out of the sky by Chinese directed (and reportedly, Chinese manned) anti-aircraft guns and missiles during America’s war in Vietnam (1965-1975). These two wars (neither was declared by Congress) to the great misfortune to America (Corcoran’s opinion) were labeled and fought as limited wars (fight with one hand tied behind your back-kind of wars) where America gave up its ethos of victory (such as the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) and settled for self-limiting warfighting activities which were in fact unwinnable (America came out with only a cease fire in Korea and the war is not over, and with a complete North Vietnamese take-over in South Vietnam). It wasn’t until 1991 that America again went for and attained victory; against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Then of course America was also victorious in the Cold War with the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union followed by the decommunization of the Eastern European nations, and the downward spiral of communism in places like Vietnam, and Cuba; leaving only China and North Korea as significant rear-guard holdouts in the history of communism in our time.

How’s that for a summary? 

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947

UN AND ITS VARIOUS AGENCIES

LEND LEASE REDUCED FROM $50B ($31B-UK/$11B-USSR) TO $1B (1953)

Page 2: The establishment of the UN was covered in the last class. While there are standing criticisms of the UN, over the past 7 decades much good has been done around the world by the UN (the World Health Organization is one example).

The U.S. revamped its lend-lease levels in the decade after the war, as the shape of the enmity with the U.S.S.R. was coming ever clearer.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947

SOVIET ACTIONS WHICH GRADUALLY ALIENATED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:

DOMINENCE OVER SATTELITE NEIGHBORS,

BOLSTERING SOV. MILITARY, WHILE ALLIES DEMOB.,

TAKING OVER POLAND & ROMANIA – CONTRARY TO YALTA,

ENTRENCHMENT IN “LIBERATED” CAPITALS,

MOLOTOV vs. BYRNES-PARIS, 1945/6

COMMUNIST YUGOSLAVIA & TRIESTE,

Page 3: The Sovs double-crossed the other allies who had made the agreement on freeing the nations of Eastern Europe. SecStae Byrnes performed valiantly in negotiations with Sov Foreign Minister Molotov; but the positions were already hardened by the Russians. While the U.S. demobilized its military forces (and sent millions of G.I.s to university on the brand new G.I. Bill) Russia continued to build and strengthen its military forces.

Marshal Tito was powerful enough to avoid Sov domination of Yugoslavia, but was also in the communist camp as a true communist nation; just not under Russia’s boot as were the rest of the Eastern European nations. The strategic city of Trieste was eventually divvied up between the allies and Tito.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED) SOVIET ACTIONS WHICH GRADUALLY ALIENATED THE AM. PEOPLE: (CONTINUED)

SOVIET THEFT OF FACTORIES/GOODS FROM GER. & CHINA,

SOV. RETENTION OF 1000s OF POWs-CONTRARY TO AGREEMENT

STAGING A PUPPET IN E. GER., SQUEEZING W. GERMANY,

PROVIDED ARMS TO CHINESE COMMUNISTS, CONTRARY TO AGREEMENT,

BETRAYED THEIR PLEDGE TO NATIONALIST CHINESE CHIANG KAI-SHEK,

Page 4: In Germany and Manchuria, the Russians uprooted whole factories and warehouses and moved them, lock-stock-and barrel into Russia itself; they stole factories. That gave them a tremendous plus up in national industrial capability, and allowed Russia to quite quickly become competitive with the U.S.A. Recall that Russia declared war on Japan two days after the U.S. bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. It did that just so it could be in on the bennies due the victor (such as factories and warehouses).

At the same time Russia turned over surrendered Japanese weapons and equipment to the Chinese Communists to allow them to enter into war with Chinag Kai-shek’s Nationalist China; 4 years later the Communists were victorious and the remnant Nationalist Chinese government was forced to flee for its very life to Taiwan, 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait from mainland China.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

AMERICA & ENGLAND CONTRIBUTE TO HOSTILE RELATIONS:

TRUMAN DIDN’T COTTON TO RUSS., “GO TO HELL”,

HISTORY SHOWED WESTERN CONTEMPT FOR “SOVs”,

SOS BYRNES COULD HAVE BEEN MORE DIPLOMATIC,

CHURCHILL WAS OPENLY HOSTILE-”IRON CURTAIN”,

THE US SCARED RUSS. W/ ITS NUCLEAR BOMB,

PATTON WANTED TO JOIN THE GERMANS-GO EAST,

THE US PROPAGANDIZED ITS PEOPLE vs. SOV. UNION

Page 5: There is no question that hostility against Communist Russia was to be found among U.S. government and civilians; to begin with because Russia was communist, diametrically (as well as dialectically ) opposed to capitalism.

During my tour in Western Germany (1963-1966) as a field artillery unit commander and staff officer, lieutenant and captain, I ran into Germans who told me that General George S. Patton had suggested to the surrendering German military that it should join shoulder-to-shoulder with his Third Army and keep moving east into Russia and defeat the Soviet army  .

So, no love lost on the Russians as far as the U.S. was concerned. Note that Stalin was in the top ranks of the world's most brutal dictators; he makes Vlad look like a Sunday school teacher.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED) THE DIVYING UP OF GERMANY

Bailey, 1980, 780

Page 6: See just how the Allies divvied up the defeated Germany, placing the different sectors under the occupation government of the country designated.

The concept was to establish order and encourage stability while the various zones of occupation developed new and democratic forms of government (except for those portions under Soviet domination). Note that the West German capital was at Bonn, down the Rhine river in the British ZoO (zone of occupation). East Berlin was the capital of communist East Germany.

As an Army Lt. and captain, I lived and worked in both the British and the American sectors from 1963 to 1966. The Cold War was hot in those days, and the tension was quite high, with a lot of “noise” the closer you got to the border. Because I had a Top Secret NATO Crypto clearance, I was prohibited from approaching within 5 kms of the border. My son Jim was born in the U.S. Army hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. My artillery unit was direct support to the German Bundeswehr (West German Federal Defense Force). That was before my deployment to Vietnam by way of Fort Sill, OK, home of the field Artillery. For the U.S. and the NATO nations, DIPLOMACY was working extremely well; NATO was effective and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact never got the upper hand in Western Europe. We can say that today’s European Union is one positive result of these earlier days; now it’s up to the member nations to make the EU work.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

Bailey, 1980, 791

Page 7: As you can see there was an equivalent set up of occupation in East Europe, but in contradiction to allied agreements. These various nations would become a coalition known as the Warsaw Pact; in effect, the mirror image of the West European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to be described in detail later; important to remember is that NATO was formed for military defense purposes only; it had no economic or political roles, but diplomatic smoothness on the part of the U.S. and the key NATO nations ensured that the alliance would be strong and effective. While this map shows Yugoslavia as “Soviet dominated”, in fact Marshal Tito was able to retain Yugoslavia’s independence of action, away from Stalin and follow-on Soviet dictators.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED) WAR CRIMES TRIALS – GERMANY WAR CRIMES TRIALS – JAPAN

Page 7: One of the most important outcomes of this war was the conduct of war crimes trials by the allies in Nurnberg, Germany and Tokyo, Japan. The worst of the war criminals were charged and convicted with sentences up to life or execution. These trials demonstrated to the world that there was a framework of international law reestablished, that the victors were serious about bringing justice to the errant areas, and setting a new paradigm of international law and legitimacy. That worked far better than the solutions applied after WWI.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

CHINA IN THE DRINK: MAO, MARINES & MARSHALL

“WHO LOST CHINA”, & THE RISING TIDE OF COMMUNISM

MacARTHUR’S DEMOCRACY IN OCCUPIED JAPAN

Page 9: President Harry S. Truman was blamed “for losing China” in 1949 when Mao’s Communists defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists who then fled for their lives 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait from the China mainland (where the descendent KMT party again rules the Republic of China Taiwan after winning the FIFTH free and open election in January last year; Taiwan is the first Democracy on Chinese soil in 4,000 years of recorded Chinese history). In the few years after the close of WWII, the U.S. deployed marines and some air and army forces to assist the KMT government in reestablishing control over the former Japanese occupied sectors of China. The Soviet-backed Communist forces effectively blocked U.S. supported KMT military advances, and also now saw the U.S. as an enemy because it supported their enemy the KMT. The key master-mind of the allied victory in WWII, five star General George C. Marshall was sent by Truman as a special envoy to mediate a peaceful settlement between Chiang’s Nationalists and Mao’s Communists. The idea was that someone of such great stature (who, by the way had commanded the U.S. Army 15th Infantry Regiment in China in the 1930s) could have success at working out an agreement. The problem was that neither side WANTED any settlement. They were both 100% devoted to destroying each other. They took advantage of General Marshall's strenuous efforts just to buy time to upgun and to better position their forces. I remember as a 12 year-old when the news broke across the nation that Mao’s communists had taken over China!! The whole country was shocked and perplexed, “how in the world could that have happened, who are these ‘communists’ anyway?” With the recent Berlin crisis (where the Sovs had cut all land access to and from West Germany, and so the Truman administration supplied ALL Berlin’s needs by air (USAF C-17 and C-19 aircraft) for a period of nearly one year when the Sovs finally backed down and reopened the land routes to the west: WE WON  (without going to war). But, as we looked around the world, the “red tide of communism was rising”; it was scary.

In Japan, five star General Douglas MacArthur (son of the Arthur MacArthur of our Philippine occupation fame; also, winner of the Medal of Honor during the U.S. Civil War: NOTE, Douglas also won the MOH in WWII, so here we have the first father-son MOH winners; the second team would be Teddy Roosevelt sr. and his son Teddy who, as the only general in the first assault wave led the 4th ID 18th InfRegt. 70th TankBn landing at Utah Beach on D-Day at Normandy: isn’t history FUN?) ruled Japan along with Emperor Hirohito. Mac forced Japan into a democratic nation with the U.S. constitution as the model. Article 9 of the Japanese constitution prohibits Japan from conducting military offensive operations abroad; very important in today’s Asia Pacific strategic setting.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED) COLONIALISM & DECOLONISATION $620M FOR AN INDEPENDENT PHILIPPINES

Page 10: From 1945 right up to the 1980s there was a MASSIVE shift in the international order as hundreds of Western colonies, now free from the grip of the imperialist nations which lost control during that war, reached independence, sometimes peacefully, more often in great strife. The Philippines was to have been given its independence by the U.S.A. in 1944, as mentioned earlier, but the Japanese invasion and occupation, beginning in 1941 delayed that; so the U.S. proffered up a supporting sum as shown and granted independence on July 4, 1946; but there is widespread use of June 12 (from Emilio Aguinaldo’s, as head of the revolutionary movement, Declaration of the Republic of the Philippines in 1898) not July 4th as independence day in the Philippines.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

THE NEW UN & RUSSIAN VETO,

THE RUSSIAN BOMB, SEP. 23, 1949,

RUSS., IRAN & THE IRON CURTAIN CLANGS DOWN

PAGE 11: Big surprise to all us ‘Mericans that any vote put to the UN Security Council (UNSC) could be vetoed and killed by any one member of the council (the U.S., GB, France, China [Republic of China-Taiwan up to 1971, when the General Assembly voted the PRC to displace Taiwan from the UN altogether], and the U.S.S.R.) That crippled the UN from taking action in any case not to Russia’s (and today, Communist China’s) liking.

Then ALL the world became afeared with the news of Russia successful testing of the A-Bomb; now there were two nations on the planet with nuclear weapons, America had lost its strategic monopoly; GREAT Insecurity. There was a Russian threat to Iran (for the oil and as a buffer state) which was eventually won by the west (Kermit Roosevelt, the brother of the previously mentioned Teddy Jr., was the CIA agent who successfully engineered the returning King, the Shah of Iran, back into power after a successful coup against the legally elected Mogaddam). His sin was that he nationalized foreign oil fields in Iran; a big no-no, so he had to go. Our man the Shah ran one of the most brutal dictatorships in history and that led to the Ayatollahs'’ return, student revolution, taking over the AmEmb in 1979, and the current disaster which is U.S.-Iran relations today (great book, just out: David Crist, The Twilight War: the Secret History of America’s Thirty-year Conflict with Iran, New York: Penguin Press, 2012. THIS is THE word on Iran. Crist is a historian for the U.S. Government, a Colonel in the U.S.M.C. Reserve, served in Desert Storm, was part of the Special Ops forces first into Afghanistan, and served two tours with the Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. READ THIS BOOK NOW  ; it will be required reading in my in-class courses, HIST 3666 U.S. Military, HIST 3676 U.S. Diplomacy, and HIST 3441 America Since 1945).

Sir Winston Churchill brought us the term Iron Curtain as a way to picture the sealing-off of Eastern Europe from the West by Russia.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

TITOISM, YUGOSLAVIA – OUT OF THE SOV. CAMP (US GIVES $2B)

Page 12: Yugoslavia has already been covered in earlier lessons. America courted Tito’s communist nation because it was a handy hedge against the U.S.S.R.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

US BAILS OUT GB-$3.75B, OVER 50 YEARS, 2% (PRETTY GOOD TERMS),

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Page 13: GB was on the ropes at the end of WWII; only its former colony was able to keep it afloat (isn’t history exciting? ).

The whole idea of U.S. aid was to prevent what had happened after WWI, when the European nations became destabilized in the wake of the high price of war.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

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Page 14: The Marshall Plan (named after Gen. George C. Marshall who devised it as the SecState after WWII) was really responsible for standing Europe back up after the devastation of WWII. The U.S. also provided a flattened Japan with $2 B (billions in today’s value). The saying among some of us was “declare war on America today and surrender tomorrow, and get rich”.

GENESIS OF THE COLD WAR - THE RUSSIANS OR THE US – (OR BOTH) - 1945-1947 (CONTINUED)

PALESTINE & BRIT. OBLIGATIONS TO ARABS (OIL, ALLIANCES),

BRITS. DUCK OUT BY HANDING OVER TO UN,

PARTITION (ala IN/PAK, IRELAND, CAN/US, CYPRUS, AFRICA, etc.)

NEW STATE OF ISRAEL, MAY 14, 1948

1,000,000 DEPOSSESED ARABS – THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

Page 15: GB wasn’t able to hang on to its colonial holdings after it was decimated by Hitler’s Nazis. It handed over these possessions to the UN or (in the case of India and Pakistan) enabled independence. In all of its former holdings the divisions were set up to pit one side against the other as shown here.

It makes NO sense to plunk a handful of Jews right in the middle of a sea of Arab Muslims, but they did it and their former colony (US) is picking up the tab for it today. “Since 1985, it [the U.S.] has provided nearly $3 billion in grants annually to Israel, with Israel being the largest annual recipient of American aid from 1976 to 2004 and the largest cumulative recipient of aid since World War II.” (Sharp, Mideast Affairs, 2012, emphasis added) Israel is a nation of LESS THAN 8 million people today (smaller than N.Y. City). Make sense?

THE COLD WAR, 1947-1950

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE-TURKEY & GREECE- CONTAINMENT

THE MARSHALL PLAN-LONG RANGE REHAB, SOVs MISS OUT,

8 RUSS. DOMINATED NATIONS FORCED TO ABSTAIN,

16 OTHER COUNTRIES BENEFIT FROM THE ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN

SOV. COMINFORM, OCT. 5, 1947,

US CONG.-$23.8B OVER 5 YEARS, HELPED FORMATION OF NATO

Page 16: Truman moved to protect Greece and Turkey from a communist take over; good thing. The term containment describes the policy of containing communism within its present borders. We offered Russia $$ from the Marshall Plan; it couldn’t take the $$ and keep up its planned expansion and opposition to the U.S. It prohibited its satellite nations form taking any U.$. Either.

The Cominform was a Sov attempt to bring together all world communist nations in a single political organization; with varying success.

THE COLD WAR, 1947-1950 (CONTINUED)

THE RUSS. CRANK UP BERLIN ACCESS-ALLIES: BERLIN AIRLIFT

4,500 TONS/DAY FOR

2,500,000 BERLINERS-

1948-1949,

“OPERATION VITTLES”

T-LI

Page 17: The Berlin Airlift has already been mentioned. This was a real Cold War victory or the U.S. During my tour in Germany in the mid 1960s a number of Germans told me tales of catching that glorious American chocolate fluttering to earth carried by little hand-made parachutes made by the American air crews and passed out through open hatches as the planes flew into Templhof Airport. We really did win “the hearts and minds” the German people by that and other acts. And me and my family were the beneficiaries of that as the German people welcomed us with the greatest hospitality, help, and care (and LOTS of beer and schnapps too ). That really was the American way; those days were wonderful; you could buy a good bottle of Schwarze Katze wine for 50 cents (2 Deutsche Marks; 4 to the dollar, only 2 to the dollar today).

THE COLD WAR, 1947-1950 (CONTINUED)

ALGER HISS, USDOS, CHARGED WITH GIVING INFORMATION TO SOVs,

VOA COMES ON LINE-1948

TRUMAN, THE MAN FROM MISSOURI, “SHOWS ‘EM”, 1948

Page 18: Hiss and other Americans were found guilty of spying for the Russians; that’s how they got the A-Bomb.

Voice of America was a huge success and many behind the Iron Curtain risked their lives to listen to it daily. Most popular was American Jazz and R&B.

My Dad took me to the city square in Hartford CT to listen to HST running for reelection. I remember one man standing next to me saying “He makes a lot of sense; too bad he’ll never get reelected”. Against all political odds HST DID get reelected.

THE COLD WAR, 1947-1950 (CONTINUED)

THE “POINT FOUR” PROGRAM-1950, $160M

NATO, APR. 4, 1949: US/CA/GB/FR/IT/BE/NL/LU/NO/DK/ID/PU

A NEW GERMAN REPUBLIC, 1949, BONN, 50,000,000 PEOPLE

THE 1950 KOREAN WAR TENDS TO REARM GERMANY,

GER. ENTERS NATO, 1954/5

Page 19: They may have been our bitter enemies on the battlefields between 1942 and 1945, but they became our close ally as the Sov threat grew.

THE HYDROGEN AGE

Page 20: It was hard enough to grasp what the hell an atom was; now we had a whole new, much more destructive bomb to understand. This was power like unto the only hands of god; thermonuclear.

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR

McCARTHY AND THE RED WITCH HUNT-SHATTERING THE USDOS

PEACE TREATY WITH JAPAN SEP. 8, 1951

USCONG. MAR, 20, 1952 SIGNS WITH JAPAN-US BASES IN JAPAN

CH-RUSS-30 YEAR MUTUAL AID PACT, FEB. 14, 1950

US PACTS WITH PHILIPPINES, AND ANZUS, AUG. 30-SEP. 2, 1951

Page 21: One day during the world’s first televised public hearings (TV became available in 1948) a fellow senator entered Sen. Joe McCarthy’s office at 08:00 in the morning and casually picked up the tumbler full of water on Joe’s desk; it was Gin . The political grandstander used TV to smear and ruin the lives of many good Americans (he even accused General Marshall of hiding communists in the Pentagon ). The lesson of history is this: never allow ONE man (or small group of men) to have too much power at the national level. (Corcoran, 2016).

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR (CONTINUED) NORTH KOREA (SOV. TRAINED/ EQUIPPED) ILLEGALLY INVADES SOUTH KOREA, JUN. 25, 1950

KOREA

T-LI

Page 22: Kim Il-sung (KIS), grandfather of the present Kim Jong-un (this is the world’s first hereditary communist regime; yea NK) took it upon himself, with the support of the Sovs and China, to launch a no-notice attack on the undefended South where the U.S. had only a few hundred military members advising and assisting the Republic of Korea ROK national police force. The Sovs had outfitted the Sov-trained KIS with an entire Army and Air Force in the Sov image (look at the NK marshals' uniforms; copies of the Sovs). The U.S. and the world were taken by surprise, but quickly HST condemned the NK invasion, ordered MacArthur to respond , and brought the issue to the UN. BECAUSE the U.S.S.R. was boycotting the failure of the UN to vote China in as a member, the Russian seat was empty when the Korean question came up for a vote on the UNSC; the motion was not vetoed, it passed, and the Korean war came under the sponsorship of the UN (although more than 90% of the forces were U.S. all during that 3 year war).

As this and a later map show, the NKs ran roughshod over the ROK’s scarce national police force and by mid-September had the U.S. and ROK forces bottled up in the Pusan perimeter; next stop: the ocean. MacArthur planned and launched a brilliant strategic envelopment and with success at Inchon and into Seoul in one stroke, saved the war for the UN/US and completely cut the NK army off from any logistical support; they were forced to infiltrate back into the north by small unit movement, the NK army was shattered.

WADC and MacArthur saw an opportunity to expand the war aim from merely retaining the ROK’s sovereignty to taking advantage of the turn in the military situation (just a Clausewitz would have advised) and continue to drive north with the new war aim of unifying the entire peninsula under the ROK.

As UN/US forces drew near the border with Communist China (the Yalu River) the PRC was forced to react: a) Must be seen to actively support a sister communist power, b) could not stand gringos sitting right on the border with China; too threatening.

So, China launched a 300,000 People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) (not the PLA because the Chinese wanted to make believe that this was not an official government action, a war) and drove the UN/US forces way south of Seoul. UN/US forces under the command of General Matthew Ridgway recoiled and then drove the PVA/NK forces back across the 38th parallel (poor Seoul changed hands 4 times during this one year). The Sovs, seeing that the Chinese were losing against the UN/US forces, asked for an armistice at the UN in New York. It was agreed to and the next two years were spent in “peace talks” during which time the Sovs completely remade the entire Chinese military, again in the Sov image, right down to unit organization, Sov weapons, equipment, tactics and even uniforms; the world now had a NEW, BIG, communist military on its hands; one that today, dear student, we are increasingly having to contend with, China’s military budget is the second largest in the world, after the U.S. and just before Russia (#3).

The Korean war has not ended. We only have a cease-fire agreed to by the opposing sides.

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR (CONTINUED)

TRUMAN/US TROOPS/UN COMMAND-RESIST COMMUNIST AGGRESSION

US FURNISHES $/FORCES/33,000 KIA/150,000 WIA,

PUSAN TO INCHON-MacARTHUR WINS-DRIVES FOR YALU

CHINESE PEOPLES’ VOLUNTEERS & “FROZEN CHOSIN”,

MAC WANTS TO BOMB CHINA-RELIEVED BY HST, APR. 11, 1951

SOVs HOLD OUT, PEACE TALKS FLAG-JUL. 10. 1951

TRUCE “TALKS”-BATTLE DEATHS-TO 1953

Page 23: Continuing the discussion from the previous slide note that Mac wanted to win the war “There is no substitute for victory” he stated. His plan was to cordon off the Chinese border so that no logistic support could get through to PVA/NK forces. He mused about the possible use of small yield nuclear weapons to create an irradiated zone across which Chinese elements would not dare pass. Big political ruckus; but do note that the way HST’s successor, “I LIKE IKE” actually forced peace talks was by hinting that he might have to employ nukes; so Ike’s opponent, Mac, was relieved for the same thing that Ike later threatened to do, go figure. Have you got it yet? Corcoran’s third rule? IT WAS ELECTION YEAR. HST didn’t want the Democratic party to have to run against MacArthur (touted as a possible Republican candidate). As it was, partly because of the great unpopularity of HST’s relief of Mac, Ike ran for the Republican nomination and the White House was under his rule for the next eight years until 1961 (the year Dr. Jim graduated from West Point; do note that both Mac and Ike were West Pointers).

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR (CONTINUED)

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Page 25: A recap of the way the Korean war went (plus, I like this map). Here you can say that America did not win this war…..because it is not ended yet. But, America gained its original war objective (Ends+Ways+Means) which was retention of the sovereignty of South Korea. Very successful if you know anything about SK; if not, my HPU in-class course INTR 3936 Contemporary Korea should be coming around soon so be on the lookout; it has been a very popular class.

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR (CONTINUED)

“I LIKE IKE” BECOMES PRESIDENT: DULLES AT CIA/ DULLES AT DOS

STALIN DIES, MARCH, 1953

KOREAN “TRUCE” (NOT PEACE)-JUL. 27, 1953

Page 25: Here was a case of another “family affair” with John Foster Dulles as SecState and Allen Dulles, John’s bro, as the Director of the CIA. In a nation of 2-3 hundred million people is there any reason why we have to have relatives in high U.S.G. positions (e.g., JFK as Pres and RFK as Attorney General; Bush I and then Bush II, there are other examples, the Bundy bros in the WH & DoS during the VN war; but I just ask the question). The issue at hand is that both Dulles bros were fanatical anti-communists, which may not have been that bad in itself, but they were in the two main seats of power to drive U.S. policies and actions; much that they did further angered the Sovs, with no discernible reward for the U.S. It’s OK to anger the Sovs if you gain benefits from that; but not just for the sake of keeping things stirred up (which IS great for the Pentagon and the U.S. arms industries, true, but should U. S. policy be based on that? I ask you).

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR AFTERMATH

INDO-CHINA HCM & FRENCH LOSSES-DIEN BIEN PHU-1954

GENEVA AGREEMENTS, 1954

THE 17th PARALLEL - N=13,000,000, S=10,000,000,

Page 26: I remember as a 15 year–old high school junior living in Japan that the news coming out of Vietnam was bad; the French were losing. Yes the French had lost in 1870, 1914, and 1940, true, but this time they were losing the colony they were trying to gain back: French Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). I remember the photos of the DBP battle and thinking, “man that is no place to fight a war”. 13 years later, I was in Vietnam with the U.S. Army 1st ID, fighting a war .

The Vietnamese under Ho Chi-min (HCM) forced the French to release Laos and Cambodia, and to divvy up VN at the 17th parallel until such time as elections could be held to determine whether the Republic of Vietnam RVN in the south, or the DRV in the north should rule the nation. As you can see there were more votes in the north, so the U.S. and France blocked any action and moved to put in a “puppet”, first the returning emperor Bao Dai then the French Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem (President dzjieem), who had lived and schooled most of his life in France and preferred to speak French rather than Vietnamese, he sure wasn’t able to connect with the native Vietnamese Buddhist population which was VN. A case of another BAD choice by the U.S. for a puppet leader: Chiang Kai-shek, Marcos, Shah of Iran, Castro,

Kahn and Thieu (South Vietnam), Pinochet (Chile), Noriega (Panama), Karzai (Afghanistan), Park Chong-hee (South Korea); we either put in place or supported these and other BAD leaders, what is it about U.S. foreign policy that we get locked in to keeping alive some podunk ruler who then turns around and makes us look bad to the rest of the world and screws over his own people in the process? Please fix this (my forbears and my generation hasn’t been able to do so).

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR AFTERMATH (CONTINUED)

Page 27: By 1961, our new and bright prince of Camelot, and his princess Jackie, were in the White House, and JFK intended to fight insurgencies with counter-insurgencies; so he created the U.S. Army Green Berets. Those stellar troops were supposed to eat snakes (and like it; I graduated from Ranger School in March, 1961, the rattlesnake wasn’t that bad, tasted kind of like charred chicken) and go into country and train up locals to fight their insurgencies. Possibly a good idea, but without a STRATEGY to use them, things began to fall apart.

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR AFTERMATH (CONTINUED)

SEATO/US/GB/FR/AU/NZ/PH/TL/PK- SEP. 1954

MUTUAL DEFENSE TREATY WITH TAIWAN-ROC, SEP. 8, 1954

Page 28: The Dulles bro at DoS created the bright idea of forming a defense organization in the model of NATO. Sounded like a good idea. Worked in Europe. BUT, Asia is not Europe!! How many times do we ‘Mericans have to relearn that lesson, dear students. Let’s not waste time, SEATO was a flop (of course, PAKISTAN was one of the members, so how could it have failed? ).

I served two tours in Taiwan, one as the Chief, Mazu (Matsu) Defense Command Advisory Team (MDCAT) in the Chinese offshore Island group in the Quemoy/Matsu complex, between 1972 and 1976. I’m here to tell you, from first-hand experience with Taiwan air, ground and sea forces that they were excellent allies.

COMMUNISM AND THE KOREAN WAR AFTERMATH (CONTINUED)

THE PLA ATTACKS ON QUEMOY/MATSU OFFSHORE ISLANDS-1954/8/AND SPORADICALLY UP TO 1980

MOVING TOWARD JFK, LBJ & THE VN YEARS

CIA WFB 2012

JRC, 1975

Page 29: Here in the upper border of the map you see the Matsu island group (Ma-tsu Lieh Dao 马祖列岛). I was the U.S. field artillery advisor, as an Army 0-4, to the two Taiwan Army divisions (37th Light ID, 57 Heavy ID) on the islands. Occasionally, we would trade artillery rounds with the Chinese PLA artillery all within artillery range with each other; I have a 152mm expended PLA artillery round sitting right here next to my desk as I type this; which landed near my command post at 0:dark thirty one morning in 1975; shook us up quite a bit. My team members dug up that round during my stints away from the CP and presented it to me as a memento as I boarded the LST to depart my command at the end of my tour. In this photo you are looking at an 8 inch gun (you don’t see any of those around today; BIG fixin’s).

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR

SOUTH

VIETNAMESE

BUDDHIST MONK

1963

UPI

Page 30: President Diem may have been JFK’s man in Saigon, but he and his family dynasty were hated by the people for their suppression and oppression of the Buddhist monks and community because they dared to voice objection to the graft and corruption of the first family and cronies. It got to the point where the Buddhist monks were self-immolating in the streets of Saigon in protest to the Diem government.

Right then JFK should have cut Diem and Vietnam loose. None of us would have cared if the South was taken over by the communist north (which DID happen 10 years ,58,000 American war dead, 200,000 wounded 1,000s still unaccounted for today, 2-3 million dead Vietnamese (all sides), and some $800 Billion (some trillions in today’s $) later; the American public had no idea where Vietnam was, what the deal was, much less the consequences of a communist takeover (which have been NONE since the communist takeover of the south in 1975 anyway).

But, again, ELECTION YEAR POLITICS so JFK figured he didn’t want to chance the criticism of “losing Vietnam” just as HST had failed partly because he “lost” China. It was all political bull; we never HAD China, Korea, or Vietnam to “loose” in the first place. Not to offend, but I hate politics (apologies to those of you who are Pol SCi majors; I respect you). Politics=poly (many), Tics (little blood sucking critters that get under your skin).

My new wife and I with our brand new baby daughter were appalled by the picture above and all the other horrors (Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, the line “…the horrors….”; do you remember it?). WHAT the hell…..?? Who knew that I’d be in the hottest part of a Vietnam war in 3 years (1967, the battles leading up to TET ’68, and all through TET ’68 Offensive and Counteroffensive)?

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR (CTD)

AVOIDING

ENEMY FIRE

IN A RICE PADDY

DOD

Page 31: JFK was shot to death and it broke America’s heart. We all really lost our bright-eyed innocence; America turned sour and cynical, revengeful. The draft took young men right out of high school or university, or work (except if you had political strings you could pull to avoid the draft and the war in Vietnam, folks such as George W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, Richard Cheney [5 draft deferments], Dan Quayle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Trump, and a whole slew of politically-connected folks who, as Cheney stated were “too busy with other things in my life…” to go to the war).

I understand, who wanted to go through what the U.S. marine in this photo is going through? Young men were being snapped up out of your neighborhood, sent to basic and advanced training, and within 6 months ending up where this fine young marine was; and the body bags started flowing home (next slide).

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR (CTD)

1ST K.I.A.

MASSAILLON, OHIO

1966

T-LI

Page 33: The best and the bravest; 58,000 of them.

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR (CTD)

WHO IS THE ENEMY?

DOD

Page 33: President Lyndon Johnson, who was the one who actually committed U.S. combat troops (me for instance) to begin the war in Vietnam within 3 years would lament about “that bitch of a war”.

Who was the enemy, who friendly?

We were winning battles on the ground (we never lost a major engagement in the entire war) how come we weren’t winning the war?

I NOW know the answer.

T-LI

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR (CTD)

Page 34: The American troops, with some lapses, performed magnificently (as they always do, from the AmRev to today’s Iraq and Afghanistan). The failure was at the top; back in WADC, in the White House and the Pentagon, and Sate Department, and the CIA, the National Security Council. There was no strategy for that war. It just kind of was allowed to have a life of its own, lingering on, like a headless serpent bashing and twisting, from day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year. The warmakers had NO understanding of the setting of Vietnam, the worldview of a proud and brave people who had ejected the brutal Chinese after 1,000 years of occupation (181 B.C. to 939 A.D.); had defeated Kublai Khan’s Mongolian terrors in the jungle in guerrilla warfare in the 1200s A.D.; who had battled the French to a standstill, then ejected them with a decisive military defeat at DBP (Dien Bien Phu); who had fought the fierce Japanese occupiers to a standstill…NOBODY making decisions in WADC knew any of that; nor did they care; nor would they heed anyone who did know and tried to tell them; ignorant @$#*^$%s sending the best and the bravest to their deaths while lavishing away in the cocktail swirl of the WADC social scene playing………………Poly-Tics.

One good source on this topic is H.R. McMaster’s book Dereliction of Duty: LBJ, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. H.R. is a West Point graduate who as a captain commanded “Eagle” Troop, 2nd Cav Regiment in Desert Storm, and at the battle of 73 Easting in the Iraqi desert KILLED 22 T-72 (top line Soviet tanks) of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard Tawakalna Armored Division in 22 minutes. I was together with him at the West Point military history instructors program in 1996 when he was a Major (O-4) on the faculty of the history department and he and I had some long talks about his dissertation (which then became this book that you are reading an excerpt from this week). H.R. explains best. Do know that there are revisionist military historians who are trying to debunk H.R.’s book; their political agenda is that if the U.S. had just invaded and occupied North Vietnam we would have won that war. TOO LATE NOW %$#*&^%s; no one can go back and redo what has already been done.

Put yourself into this photo of our troops in the Vietnam War; go full screen

MY LAI MASSACRE 1968

T-LI

AMERICA’S VIETNAM WAR (CTD)

Page 35: When I was the Director of Asian Studies and Faculty Instructor in the Department of National and International Security and Strategy (DNISS) for two different tours (1982-1985, 1988-1991) we made our students study the My Lai massacre; where poorly-led, sorely-tried American U.S. Army troops massacred defenseless civilians. That type of thing happened here and there; I personally had no inkling of anything like that in the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division during my tour of duty (1967-1968).

The lesson learned is that the chain of command failed; from top to bottom, just as it did at Abu Ghraib prison in 2006. Every private has a corporal, every corporal has a sgt, every sgt a junior officer, every JO a field grade, every field grade a general right on up to the Commander-in-Chief. If the troops are doing wrong, their C-o-C has failed them and our nation. And justice needs to go to as far up the chain as can be proved in court. It doesn’t and it hasn’t; the tendency is to put the blame on the lowest ranking. The commander is responsible for all that his unit does and does not do.

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR (CTD)

“POLICE RIOT”

CHICAGO

DEMOCRATIC

NATIONAL

CONVENTION

1968

Page 36: Meanwhile, back in “the land of the big P.X.” (as we used to say in those days) the people of America had had enough of our kids going off to die in an endless war with no strategy and no exit plan.

Here you see the police assaulting Catholic priests, punching nuns in the belly with night sticks, women, old guys, and yes, provocateurs.

Think about this as we go through our two national conventions. We now live in different times; back then was nasty.

AMERICA’S

VIETNAM

WAR (CTD)

WOODSTOCK

NATION

AUGUST 15-17

1969

Page 37: Well, not all of it was nasty; the Monterey Jazz festival was GREAT, as was Woodstock; ask your (Great) Granddad and Grandma; they might be in this photo; ask them. Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix; great music, great fun.

NASA

WAR & PEACE

Page 38: I was back from ‘Nam for a year when heard this announcement on the radio. It just seemed like such a long way from the red laterite clay of Vietnam. It was all enough to drive a guy crazy .

ALMOST

“FULL EARTH”

WAR & PEACE (ctd)

Page 39: A full earth as seen from the moon. Mind-boggling; we get to snap a photo of ourselves looking at ourselves.

How was it that a nation which could accomplish this science fiction feat could not resolve a limited war, in a very small country, so far away?

Answer: we KNEW what we were doing on the moon shot, we were successful; we knew nothing about Vietnam or strategy…we lost.

Cold War? “The whole art of war is being transformed into mere prudence, with the primary aim of preventing the uncertain balance from shifting suddenly to our disadvantage and half-war from developing into total war.” ~~ Clausewitz: On War, viii, 1832 ~END~ (OR THE BEGINNING?)

Page 40: If I had not shown you who, or when this saying came from, you’d have thought it was made today, and yesterday………….that’s history .