extraneous matters not directly related to Korea.…
'The Korean nation and people, which have been so cruelly ravaged, must not be sacrificed. This is a paramount concern.… Within the area of my authority as the military commander, however, it would be needless to say that I stand ready at any time to confer in the field with the commander in chief of the enemy forces … to find … means whereby realization of the political objectives of the United Nations in Korea, to which no nation may justly take exceptions, might be accomplished without further bloodshed.'
Right or wrong, this was a remarkable statement to have been issued by an American proconsul in the field. It was more than a statement of military policy; it was a political act. It disregarded Washington's instructions for FECOM to abstain from declarations on foreign policy. It flouted the announced policy of the U.N.
MacArthur had delivered Red China an ultimatum. He had hinted that the full power of the United States and its allies might be brought to bear against the Chinese homeland; threat was redolent throughout the discussion of Chinese weakness, and it was a threat that MacArthur obviously relished.
When Truman read it, he went white. MacArthur's announcement was a challenge to the authority of the President, under the Constitution, to make foreign policy.
Considering MacArthur's high office, his pronouncement crashed into allied chancelleries like eight-inch howitzer shells. The wires began to burn to Washington. Was a shift in American policy imminent?
Had the United States decided to punish Red China?
The Norwegian ambassador called at State, demanding to know what lay behind this 'pronunciamento.'
At noon, Saturday, 24 March, Truman conferred with Acheson, Robert Lovett, and Dean Rusk. It was undoubtedly a bitter and passionate conference, even among men not given to stampede.
On 6 December, when the U.N. had begun to grow restive, Truman had sent a directive to FECOM, instructing that all public statements be cleared through Washington. Truman now read this order, and asked Rusk and Acheson if there could be any doubt as to its meaning.
They agreed there was none in their minds.
Truman then told Lovett to get a priority message to FECOM, telling MacArthur to shut up. Truman had long understood that MacArthur disagreed with him, but he had not understood the extent.
Nor could Truman really understand MacArthur. Truman could not be sure but that the general was playing for the gallery, trying to embarrass the President, and as political leader of the nation Truman found this intolerable. MacArthur was challenging traditional civilian supremacy in government, and Truman was not at all certain but that Caesar was speaking from beyond the Rubicon.
MacArthur was no Caesar, with immense political ambitions. He was a servant of the Republic who felt so strongly that the course of the Administration, eschewing triumph over the transgressor, was immoral that he had put himself into public opposition. He was trying to influence policy.
Under the Constitution of the Untied States, no soldier has that privilege.
Soldiers are brought up to tell the truth, and to take positive action. Since politicians, in the main, regard neither of these with great affection—they must forever please the people, regardless of what is true or what needs to be done—soldiers and political men are often in conflict.
A political leader who takes strong action, who does not equivocate, dally, or try the impossible task of pleasing everyone, has usually nothing to fear from soldiers, even in authoritarian lands. It is the leaders of the Fourth Republic, the Frondizis, the Roman Senate, the men who try to walk a tightrope, who have been intolerable to the soldiery.
Military men, who are willing to risk their lives, have small sympathy with anyone unwilling to risk his office. While politics may be the art of the possible, war is often the art of the impossible.
Douglas MacArthur, as American as Woodrow Wilson or Cordell Hull, had not purposely decided to challenge civilian control of the military—but the result of his act could be that this institutional safeguard was in danger.
Harry Truman, however history will regard him, was one of the most unpopular and unrespected of Presidents. If the people and the Congress rose behind MacArthur, supported his views, Harry Truman and his Administration were in trouble.
Sometime between 24 March and 5 April 1951, Harry Truman resolved to relieve MacArthur of his command. When the next evidence of MacArthur's insubordination arose, Truman's mind was already made up—but what occurred on 5 April 1951 in effect allowed Truman no other course.
On that date Joe Martin, the leader of the opposition in the House, rose and read a personal letter from MacArthur. Martin, of Massachusetts, had long been an isolationist, clinging beyond 1941 to the old school of American thought, much like Taft and Wherry in the Senate.
The old school of thought was honest and sincere, but contradictory. Its major premises were that America should avoid trouble overseas—but that if it arose, should smash it, without counting any cost. No entangling alliances should be made; there should be no involvement in foreign politics; but if the United States were confronted with evil opposition, if it were attacked, then it should rise in righteous wrath.
The old school was highly suspicious of the military, and preferred to cut arms spending to the bone.
There was nothing wrong with this school of thought—Americans had cleaved to it for generations, and as late as 1941 more than 70 percent of them had been against entry in world affairs—except that there was now no one to hold the far frontier. There was no Army of France, no British Navy, to strive, morally or immorally, for order in the world.
Representative Joseph W. Martin, a sincere man, stood before the House on 5 April 1951. He had written MacArthur in early March, saying, among other things, that he considered it sheer folly not to use Nationalist Chinese troops in Korea. He had asked for MacArthur's comments, and now he read them aloud:
''I am most grateful for your note of the eighth forwarding me a copy of your address of February 12.…
''My views and recommendations with respect to the situation created by Red China's entry into war against us in Korea have been submitted to Washington in most complete detail. Generally these views are well known and understood, as they follow the conventional pattern of meeting force with maximum counterforce as we have never failed to do in the past. Your view with respect to the utilization of the Chinese forces on Formosa is in conflict with neither logic nor this tradition.
''It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe's war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words; that if we lose this war to Communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable, win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you point out, we must win.
''There is no substitute for victory.’'
Thus, two views of war, the traditional American, the view of Wilson, Roosevelt, Marshall, and MacArthur, clashed head on with that of the new, the Great Power American, the view of Acheson, Rusk, Harriman, and Bradley.
George Catlett Marshall, one of the most splendid of men, had once said, discussing the possible entry of American troops into the Balkans rather than Western Europe in 1944, that such a move would be political rather than military in nature, might cost 100,000 more casualties, and would delay the destruction of the
And America met force with counterforce, devoting all her energies to the destruction of evil as embodied in the
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel once said he had no real interest in logistics. He would do the fighting; how the gasoline, tanks, and ammunition reached him was somebody else's concern.
Both Marshall and Rommel, splendid men, did not really understand the world they lived in. A war can no more be successfully fought without political concerns for the future than a panzer can roll without gas.
In 1951, defeat of Red China, whether it would have brought on general war with Russia or not, would have alienated the world. In such a world, America could then have led as Hitler led, or not at all.
History, unfortunately, is never concerned too much with where morality lies.
Wherever it lay, whoever was right, and who was wrong, MacArthur's letter to Joe Martin was insubordination.
Truman hit the ceiling. He called a meeting with Acheson, Bradley, Marshall, and Harriman. On 6 April he
