Italian Communists and anti-Communists alike expressed deep fears of general war.
And papers all over the world stated that MacArthur should have halted the U.N. armies no farther north than the middle of North Korea, leaving a buffer between them and Manchuria.
Whatever else the press statement may have done, it cleared the air: the United States Government understood immediately where its major allies—indeed, the greater part of the world—stood on the China question. Above all else, the world wished to avoid general war, and atomic war in particular. That United Nations and allied thinking was not brought home forcefully to millions of Americans was due to the fact that apart from the Atlantic- seaboard area, few newspapers or other media printed or reflected foreign views.
For the first time the U.N. cloak that the United States Government had so expeditiously woven for its action in Korea became not a support, but a hindrance. The U.N. in June had been almost wholly responsive to American leadership, and the United States had chosen to implement its national policy under the aegis of the U.N., at the time a great moral victory. With the entry of Red China into the fighting, the sharp U.S. setback in the north, and the prospect of an enlarged war yawning ominously, the nations composing the U.N. suddenly became restive. American leadership, unfortunately, had lost a great deal of its prestige on the battlefield.
After 1 December 1950, the allies who had tripped unquestioningly into the never-never land would never again allow the United States an unlimited credit card, moral or otherwise. For by I December the vast majority of the member nations of the U.N. wanted 'out' of the Korean debacle. Whatever the moral issues, few saw any profit in a continued war with Red China over the eventual fate of divided Korea. The smaller nations had been willing to follow the United States into a small conflict—a police action—against an aggressor as long as the fighting had a clear moral purpose and demanded few sacrifices of them. Now the earth was on the brink of general war, and the moral purpose of defeating Red China was not at all clear in European minds.
Five years after the close of the most destructive war in history, few nations were willing to risk atomic war for any reason short of immediate self-preservation.
The British prime minister, deeply worried, called at Washington to reassure himself of American policy. Other leaders did the same.
In the U.N., thirteen Arab-Asian nations sponsored a resolution asking for a cease-fire in Korea. On 14 December the General Assembly adopted it overwhelmingly. A three-man deputation—Pearson of Canada, Rau of India, and Entezam of Iran—tried vainly to make contact with the Chinese, who at that time were unwilling to discuss the matter except on their own terms.
But the smaller nations of the U.N. continued to press the matter. India's Sir Benegal Rau suggested that 'Peiping was for peace'; India refused to consider any strong measure against Red China. The United Nations had been envisioned—however it was sold to the peoples of the world—not as a parliament of earth but as a controlling body on the questions of peace and war. Real power, through the institution of the veto, remained where it was in reality, in the hands of the great powers: America, Britain, China, the Soviet Union. The problem, as well as the tragedy of the United Nations organization, was that it had never been anticipated that the great powers at the end of World War 11 would have no community of interest.
The first U.N. action utilizing force was, in essence, against itself, for the Soviet Union, sponsor of North Korea, continued in membership. Only the fact that the U.S.S.R. was absent in June 1950 permitted the Security Council to take effective action.
American planners, painfully aware of this accident, strove o overcome such an impasse in the future. The powers of the Security Council—the voice of the big nations—were diluted to the extent of permitting the General Assembly to bypass the Council on certain grave issues. With U.S. sponsorship, such changes were made in the framework of the U.N.
In effect such changes meant that eventually the U.N. would pass, with constantly increasing membership, completely from big-power control. American planners, unfortunately, could not see they were tugging at the lid of Pandora's box. Some of them, probably, did not understand the political—and power—realities of the world they lived in.
In 1951, having wrapped its policy in the U.N. cloak, the United States could not, without being branded with hypocrisy, throw off what were now hampering folds. American policy would have to be worked out within the myriad conflicting policies of the U.N.
The majority of the U.N. wanted an end to the war, as soon as possible. The United States, whatever its own desires, would be forced to listen. Who calls the tune often has to pay the piper, whether he likes the music or not.
When President Truman made the decision to intervene in Korea—with general support—Dean Acheson said to him that the decision 'might not always be so popular as it seemed at the moment.'
Secretary of State Acheson, a much-maligned man, was soon proved to be a prophet, though his status resembled that of most prophets as far as honor in his own land was concerned. Acheson, always intensely anti- Communist, had always to be intensely practical. In the months following Korea, any American Secretary of State in addition to other qualifications needed the abilities of a door-to-door salesman of insurance. Acheson, an aristocrat, a brilliant mind, and a practical man, could never be an effective salesman of policy.
His policy was Truman's policy, as Truman said, but Acheson became the butt of all the frustration felt by the mass of the American people. The truth was that what the American people wanted was no longer—could be no longer—paramount in the world, once the United States chose to work in conjunction with the U.N. and its allies.
Someone had to sell this understanding to the people. The Truman Administration could never do so.
In Washington, in December 1950, there was political crisis.
On 15 December, after lengthy consultation and much argument, Truman declared a national emergency. For some American leaders, such as Senators Taft and Wherry, this was too much. For others, it was not nearly enough.
For as Representative Taber of New York told Truman, 'The people were confused and upset.'
What the people could not understand was, Was the United States at war or not?
It had massive forces in the field, killing, being killed, but life went on much as before. Men were being called from factory and field, but there was still 'peace.' There was war, obviously, but still there was not war as Americans had come to understand it.
Americans had been brought up to avoid war as the plague, but once in it, to pull all the stops. It had been almost a hundred years since they had fought a war on the far frontier or held the border for civilization, and the taste of those campaigns was still foul in their mouths.
They had been taught for generations that the use of war for reasons of national policy was wrong, and now that their government followed such a course, in the path of imperial Britain, they felt only anguish and frustration.
One of the men who felt the agony and the frustration most deeply was America's proconsul in the Far East, Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur.
It is given to the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to conduct the foreign policy of the Republic. From the time of Athens and Republican Rome, no representative parliament has ever had much success with dealings beyond the water; there have been historians who claim that continued involvement of a people beyond its own frontiers inevitably produces Caesarism.
The jury on this question must be reported to be still out. At least, no Caesars were produced by the Korean conflict. Both potential Caesars were, in fact, humbled, one at the hands of his superiors, the other by his people. But first they collided, and the shock was felt around the world.
Douglas MacArthur, one of the most brilliant military minds America has yet produced, graduated from West Point at the turn of the century. He stemmed from a distinguished military family; his father was a lieutenant general and proconsul—of the Philippines—in his own right.
MacArthur was a product of the old, alienated American officer caste, but, like Dwight Eisenhower, he was never typical of that group. While Eisenhower came to embody all the virtues—and vices, to some—of the old- American bourgeoisie, remote from the hard-bitten cavalry of the sun-blasted plains, MacArthur's mind and heart, at the age of thirty-eight, were forged in the horror of the trenches of World War I.
At an age when most professionals looked forward to leaves or eagles, Douglas MacArthur wore general's
