Armageddon.
It was one thing to attempt to prevent the further expansion of Communism, even at the cost of blood, but quite another to seek a global victory over world Communism. Harry Truman doubted that victory would be worth the price.
There was talk, high-level talk, at Wake Island, Sunday, 15 October, but there was not enough communication.
And while these men talked, unknown to any of them, the hordes of Red China, marching by night, wailing the minor keys of Sinic music, were stream-ing across the Yalu and barren wastes of North Korea.
The punishment the U.N. and its agent, the United States, proposed to visit upon the Communist world was greater than the Communist world was willing to accept. Just as the United States had not been able to stand idly by in June as a friendly dependency was overwhelmed, in October the men of Peiping and the Kremlin felt they could not permit the forcible separation of North Korea from their own sphere.
One gambit had failed; now they must attempt another.
In 1950 Soviet Russia wanted general war no more than did the United States. Stalin and his associates held no illusions that the United States could be conquered. Russia's own wounds from World War II were hardly healed, and the nuclear balance of power in American hands was as yet overwhelming. But the Soviets were still willing to accept grave risks.
If the U.S.S.R.'s stance were different from America's, if it could not cease pushing, probing, and risking, it was because Soviet foreign policy was aggressive and expansionist. Communist ideology was far more than a tool to such expansion. It remained a taskmaster forcing the Soviets to it. Unless, with time, Communist ideology could be diluted, or diverted from the narrow precepts of Lenin, there could never be any true peace between Communists and the West. Westerners, tending to be pragmatic and liberal in viewpoint, often miscounted the driving reality of Communist dogmatism.
Russians, determined to oppose the American action in Korea, saw clearly that a confrontation of American troops with Russian, a direct clash, must inevitably escalate into general war, whether the governments wanted it or not. But the West had accepted Soviet arms in the hands of a satellite people; even though they had been drawn into the bloodletting themselves, the Americans had tacitly accepted war at secondhand with the Communist center of power. To substitute another Communist people, the Chinese, for the North Koreans, was not to change materially the tenuous rules of the game. And because of China's contiguous border with North Korea, even some sort of moral case for Chinese intervention could be made.
The Communist leaders, desperate to save both their face and North Korea, felt that if new forces were hurled into the Korean cockpit, so long as the move did not seem to be a direct confrontation of the major powers, the conflict could still be limited to the peninsula.
And on the peninsula they felt they still might win.
Equally important, Red China was ready and spoiling for war.
The Chinese Communists, newly come to power, were driven by that dynamic puritanism that accompanies all great revolutions. Like the French in 1793, they not only desired conflict with the 'evil' surrounding them; they needed it. Their hold on the millions of the sprawling Middle Kingdom was far from consolidated, and a controlled, limited war would consolidate it as nothing else could do.
However lacking in Communist enthusiasm the hordes of China might be, there was both a sullen sense of grievance against the West and a passionate national pride in China's millions. Both these passions have been too often overlooked by foreigners.
Just as the northern states of the American Union have overlooked and forgotten their occupation and reconstruction of the southern states, the West has dismissed the painful humiliations repeatedly visited upon the ancient Sinic culture in the past hundred years.
Neither the South nor the Middle Kingdom has forgotten. The Chinese, a proud and very ancient people, never willingly accepted their domination by foreign powers. They never accepted the extraterritoriality, the quartering of foreign troops on their soil, the control of their commerce. Unable to fight the gunboats the foreign powers sent to quell their resentment, they could only smolder, and await the day when the Middle Kingdom was again a world power.
Even Chinese who detested Communism would thrill if the Middle Kingdom emerged from its long impotence, and the men in Peiping understood this.
If they could engage the West, defeat it, or fight it to a standstill, they would gain face as no Chinese rulers had gained for generations.
When the United States had entered the war in Korea, the Chinese had well understood the inevitable result. After all, China had supplied the hard core of the Inmun Gun; the Chinese were hardly blind to that Army's weaknesses. Early in September Chinese forces began the long march from the south, where they had been deployed against Taiwan, to the mountains along the Yalu. The early successes of the Inmun Gun had surprised the rulers of China—and now those successes gave them renewed confidence.
If the 'imperialists' moved north, the Chinese would have a severe shock awaiting them.
On 1 October 1950 Mao Tse-tung stated publicly:
Red China had no relations with the United States, but on 3 October small, grave-faced Chou En-lai ordered the Indian ambassador, Sardar K. M. Panik-kar, to his office. Here the foreign minister told Panikkar, 'If the United States, or United Nations forces cross the 38th parallel, the Chinese People's Republic will send troops to aid the People's Republic of Korea. We shall not take this action, however, if only South Korean troops cross the border.'
Panikkar was deeply impressed. He called New Delhi at once, and the Indian Government passed this word both to New York and to Washington. The Indian delegate to the U.N. announced that his government felt U.N. forces should remain south of the parallel.
Washington took no action except to inform MacArthur's HQ in Tokyo.
Meanwhile, other Chinese officials dropped pointed hints to members of the few Western missions in Peiping. All these views were reported to Wash-ington, which in turn forwarded them to Tokyo.
On 10 October, Peiping Radio broadcast Chinese intentions precisely as Chou-En-lai had stated them.
On 14 October, from Tokyo, Major General Charles Willoughby, Far East Command Intelligence Officer, issued a detailed study of the question of Soviet or Chinese intervention in Korea. The question had long been one of concern to FECOM Intelligence, and already reams of reports, analysis, and estimates had been written. There was a great deal of evidence—pointing either way.
Evidence, however, signifies nothing unless evaluated, and evaluation is always more difficult than collection.
It was Willoughby's view on 14 October that the Soviet Union, in any case, had no military advantage in intervention, and such intervention could be dis-counted. Then Willoughby took up what the Chinese would do, which was the real problem.
The Chinese had at least 38 divisions in 9 field armies garrisoned in Manchuria north of the Yalu. Of these, 24 divisions were disposed along the border in position to intervene. This estimate of CCF strength was reasonably accurate.
But FECOM knew that 14 October the U.N. forces in North Korea stood very close to total victory. The Inmun Gun had deteriorated into remnants. The ROK's had seized the important port of Wonsan on the east coast, and in FECOM there was a definite feeling that the moment for fruitful Chinese intervention had passed. Most of the vital areas of North Korea had been overrun.
Willoughby's analysis described the open failure of the North Koreans to rebuild their forces, and suggested that this indicated the CCF and Soviets had decided against further investment in a losing cause. Willoughby's views unquestionably reflected those of his chief, and portions of his intelligence analysis are revealing:
