The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (32 page)

For the Republicans, it was the apocalypse. Roosevelt was gone, but the Democrats, guided by the little haberdasher about whom they had felt such total contempt, had still won. In addition the Democrats had gained nine seats in the Senate. They had scored a miraculous victory, but there would be a brutal price to pay, and foreign policy—or more accurately, loyalty and security as they affected foreign policy—would be where it would come due, the area where the Republicans found fertile ground.

That Truman was a truly skilled, superior politician, that he had managed deftly to work most of the traditional Democratic groups while cutting into the Republican hold on the farm states, did not dawn on many of his opponents for a long time—he had to leave the White House before many of them realized how talented he really had been. “I don’t care how it is explained. It defies all common sense to send that roughneck ward politician back to the White House,” said Bob Taft, in words that helped explain why Truman had won. Walter Lippmann, the noted political columnist, thought Truman did not have the soul or spirit or belief of a true New Dealer, but that he had shrewdly kept the Roosevelt political alliance together. To the Republican conservatives, the idea that he could triumph, when it was so clearly their turn, had been unthinkable. (One of the best books written about that election was in fact titled
Out of the Jaws of Victory.
) Afterward they blamed Dewey and the liberal wing of their party for having run another me-too race; though it is likely that, in the climate of that moment, if Truman had run against their favorite, Robert Taft, the gap might have been even wider.

In retrospect it is impossible to underestimate the immense impact on the Republican Party of the Truman victory—that and the desperate need to find a new issue, which it created, and the decision that the issue would be the fall of China or, in a broader sense, subversion in Washington. What might have happened if Dewey had won, whether the essential bipartisanship that had existed for almost a decade might have continued with only minor adjustments, and whether the bitter accusations of treason against senior officials might have been greatly tempered, remains a fascinating question. If Dewey had been president and John Foster Dulles his secretary of state, would the Republican right have gone after them anywhere near as cruelly as they went after Truman and Acheson? Might the nation have escaped the ugly fratricidal charges that became known as the McCarthy period, but which were broader in what they represented than the charges issued by the Wisconsin senator? Might Dewey as commander in chief in the years to come have had far more latitude in dealing with (and if necessary relieving) an obstinate Douglas MacArthur, a Republican hero? Or might MacArthur, aware that he had less political leverage under Dewey than Truman, have operated with more respect for his superiors?

As the Democrats celebrated Truman’s victory, few bothered to ponder what the loss of five elections in a row might mean to the minority party, many of whose most important figures now worried that they might be part of a permanent minority party. For the Republicans, the defeat meant no more Mr. Nice Guy. If they were blocked politically by a blue collar American economy and the rise—and political muscularity—of organized labor, then they would no longer fleck the issue of subversion lightly. Loyalty and anti-Communism would be their new themes, the mantra of attack central to their campaigns. To this end they would be helped greatly by forces outside anyone’s control, most particularly the implosion of the government of Chiang Kai-shek, which would finally give them their defining issue. Domestic politics were about to grow far more bitter. The charge against the Democrats would be twenty years of treason.

A
LL OF THIS
—the rise of China as a major domestic political issue, the increasingly polarized debate about American foreign policy, and the fact that the Democratic administration, no matter how hard-line in the view of some of its critics on the left, was being accused of being soft—meant the Korean War was never seen in isolation as just a small war in a small country; it was never just about Korea. It was always joined to something infinitely larger—China, a country inspiring the most bitter kind of domestic political debate. As the Truman administration sent troops to Korea, there was always a vast dark unanswered question haunting them, which was the threat of the entry of Chinese Communist troops into the war, something the president and most of the men around him greatly feared, and that the general commanding in the field and some of his supporters seemed on occasion ready to welcome. The president thus was taking the country into a difficult war with his hands tied. He was also, though no one liked to admit it, politically on the defensive, which was why he had no choice over who his commanding general was going to be.

Even within his administration there had been a constant squabble over China from the moment that Louis Johnson had come aboard and had begun to take on Acheson. The two men started arguing over aid to Taiwan as soon as Johnson entered the cabinet. Just four days after the North Koreans had crossed the border, Senator Robert Taft, the Republican leader, gave a very emotional speech on the floor of the Senate, attacking Truman for not seeking congressional approval to go to war. Taft also said that the North Korean invasion showed that the Acheson policies on Asia were seriously flawed and that the administration was soft on Communism, and called for Acheson’s resignation. A few hours after Taft’s speech, Averell Harriman, who had been summoned back from Europe by Truman to help Acheson, happened to be in Johnson’s office. The phone rang and Johnson took a call—from Bob Taft. Johnson thereupon praised the speech lavishly (especially the part about Acheson resigning). “That was something that needed to be said,” he told Taft. Harriman was absolutely
shocked—it was like being behind the lines, listening in on the leaders of the enemy. He was even more stunned when Johnson suggested that if Harriman played ball with him he would help make him secretary of state. Harriman immediately told Truman what had happened, and it was the beginning of the end for Johnson as secretary of defense.

Johnson, pro-Chiang and hostile to their essential policy, they could handle easily enough. He overvalued himself politically, and the senior uniformed military despised him. But MacArthur, their commander in the field, was quite another matter. He seemed if anything to want a confrontation with the administration. One of the early skirmishes between himself and Truman had taken place even before the Korean War started, in late December 1948, in
Life
magazine, the powerful weekly published by Henry Luce, a China Firster and a major critic of the administration’s China policies. “MACARTHUR SAYS FALL OF CHINA IMPERILS U.S.,” said the huge headline. MacArthur had sent a sixteen-page cable to the Joint Chiefs,
Life
reported, which “gave our top military men a historic shock.” The Soviets, he had reported, were now in a position to seize Japan. “In the face of facts which seem so plain, how could Washington ever have been so complacent about the consequences of a Communist victory in China?” It was a fascinating piece—the administration’s leading military man in Asia had lined up with the administration’s sworn enemies on the most sensitive political issue of all. It did not augur well for the future.

The next fight took place in late July 1950. There had been some bitter internal squabbling over Taiwan within the administration, with the Joint Chiefs beginning to shift in their opinion on the value of the island—at its nearest about eighty-five miles off the China coast—now that the Korean War had begun. Word had come in from intelligence sources—later it turned out to be completely wrong—that an immense Chinese Communist fleet of some four thousand vessels was being gathered on the mainland, possibly as part of preparations to strike Taiwan. That triggered even greater concern. Acheson was wary of any action that would connect U.S. efforts in Korea to Chiang and might widen the war, and he was still opposed to giving Chiang aid. In his mind any help to Taiwan was also help to Chiang, and would be a fateful American policy move. Truman, however, was beginning to make his own political adjustments. The president suggested a survey team be sent out to gauge the needs for the possible defense of Taiwan. The Chiefs thereupon passed the suggestion on to MacArthur, who decided he would lead the team. At this point the Chiefs became a little nervous and suggested that he might send someone else on this preliminary run—a senior officer, perhaps—since State and Defense were still working out the ground rules for it. Otherwise it might seem more like something of a state visit than an attempt to estimate military needs.

But MacArthur had no intention of waiting and no intention of letting State in as a player. He took off almost immediately, leaving behind in Tokyo the principal representative of State, Bill Sebald, and taking an enormous group of his own senior military people, so large they needed two giant C-54s. On the way over, MacArthur radioed the Pentagon saying that if the Chinese launched their invasion, he intended to use three squadrons of F-80s to repel them. That heightened the tension for everyone back in Washington, most especially Acheson, who believed that the general had already dispatched the three squadrons to Taiwan, thus vastly exceeding his right of command. Acheson was aggravated, but it was also a reminder to the Chiefs, playing their own game in favor of a commitment if not to Chiang, then to Taiwan, that they did not control MacArthur as they might have controlled any other theater commander. It would have been better if Truman himself had ordered MacArthur to delay the trip, Omar Bradley wrote later.

MacArthur landed in Taiwan on July 29, a month and a week into the war. Chiang’s people were thrilled. He was greeted as nothing less than a head of state, and both he and Chiang played it for all it was worth. He gallantly kissed Madame Chiang’s hand and called Chiang his “old comrade in arms,” though they had never met before. Most important, though there was technically no change in policy, the entire trip gave the
appearance
of a change in policy, or at least the emergence of a separate policy. It was a great boon for Chiang’s public relations machinery. Chiang said the United States and China were going to make “common cause” against their mutual enemies. “The net effect of the Nationalist propaganda was to give the impression that the United States was, or was going to be, far more closely allied with Chiang militarily in the struggle against communism in the Far East; that we might even arm him for a ‘return to the mainland,’” as Omar Bradley wrote.

Truman and Acheson were both predictably furious. It was a sign, the first of many to come, that Douglas MacArthur did not merely carry out policy but was entitled, at least in his own mind, to make it as well, that he always had his own agenda, and that the agenda was not necessarily the same as that of the president. The president was certain that the general had used the trip to encourage the China Lobby and to increase pressure on him from the right. Hearing how angry the president was, as the furor over his trip mounted in the press, MacArthur aggravated him even more by saying that his visit “has been maliciously misrepresented to the public by those who invariably in the past have propagandized a policy of defeatism and appeasement in the Pacific.” That was another slap at Acheson.

Just so there would be no mistaking how importantly Washington took what happened, Truman immediately sent a three-man team to Tokyo and
Korea to make sure it did not happen again, and at the same time to find out how the war was going and how much the command was going to need. This was the team that Matt Ridgway was on when he made his evaluation of Walton Walker. But the key figure was Averell Harriman, already Truman’s top troubleshooter. His basic assignment was to improve Washington’s relations with MacArthur, find out what he needed in terms of men and materiel, and pass on two messages from the president, as Harriman later noted, first that “I’m going to do everything I can to give him what he wants in the way of support; and secondly I want you to tell him that I don’t want him to get us in a war with the Chinese Communists.” He was also to try to find out whatever it was that MacArthur had promised Chiang, and to warn him to stay clear of him. But even as Harriman was flying to Tokyo, a story came out of the general’s headquarters quoting a reliable source that MacArthur intended to tell Harriman that the war in Korea would prove useless unless the United States fought Communism everywhere it showed its head in Asia.

The Harriman-MacArthur talks were a limited success. The president’s instructions, Harriman later reported to the president, were ones that MacArthur might go along with, but his lack of enthusiasm was notable. As a soldier, he would obey, Harriman reported, “but without full conviction.” Given Harriman’s shrewdness in reading people, that was not a good sign. He was in some ways as grand a figure as MacArthur, had been a major player almost as long, and was in no way intimidated by the general. On arrival, when MacArthur had first-named him—“Averell, good to see you”—he had first-named the commander right back; if it was Averell, then it would be Douglas as well.

It was clear to Harriman that MacArthur thought any form of accommodation with Mao and his China was a policy of appeasement, though he did not put it quite that way. That would come later. He also told Harriman he thought the United States was being too tough on Chiang—they should “stop kicking him around.” But though he did not value Chiang’s troops—there was no disagreement on that—he was essentially on the other side on the general issue of China, one that had begun to haunt Washington politically. “For reasons that are rather difficult to explain,” Harriman reported to Truman on his return, “I did not feel that we came to a full agreement on the way we believed things should be handled in Formosa and with the Generalissimo. He accepted the president’s position and will act accordingly, but without full conviction. He has the strange idea that we should back anybody who will fight communism, even though he could not give me an argument why the Generalissimo’s fighting communists would be a contribution towards the effective dealing with the communists in China.”

One final meeting between MacArthur and the team from Washington had
taken place on August 8 at what was still a low point in the war. The North Koreans were then pushing toward the Pusan Perimeter. At that meeting, MacArthur, surprisingly upbeat, had unveiled plans for a surprise landing behind North Korean lines at a port called Inchon, located far up the west coast of Korea. It was the old Bluehearts plan that MacArthur had favored in the very early days of the war, now greatly expanded and upgraded. The Inchon landing, which he had scheduled for September 15, had become not so much a preferred battle plan as a MacArthur obsession. Almost from the moment the North Koreans had crossed the border and driven south, he had been thinking about it. There had been a staff meeting early in July, and a number of his people had been told to think in terms of an amphibious landing and make suggestions. Many sites were suggested: one staff officer had selected a port just behind North Korean lines; the next, a spot about ten kilometers north, still in artillery range of American troops. A third officer, a young major named Ed Rowny, was the boldest, suggesting a point about twenty-five kilometers up on the east coast. MacArthur was not impressed. “You’re all pusillanimous,” he said. Then he went to a blackboard and wrote out
in French
—Rowny remembered it clearly years later because it was the great MacArthur and a great performance, made even better by the unexpected use of the French—“
De Qui Objet?
” What is the object? And then he took a giant grease pencil and circled Inchon, the port for Seoul, well above what anyone else had suggested. “That’s where we should land, Inchon—go for the throat.” The younger men spoke about the difficulty of the tides and fears that the port’s harbor might be mined, but MacArthur waved the objections aside. “Don’t take counsel of your fears—it’s simply a matter of willpower and courage.” Then he told them to work out a plan for a landing at Inchon.

Now, with Harriman and Ridgway, he made his push for the landing. He normally would need four divisions for such an operation, but American forces being so strapped by the postwar demobilization, he would do it with two, the Seventh Infantry and the First Marines. It was, Ridgway thought, a brilliant presentation of a highly original strategy, and he enthusiastically supported it, becoming the first member of the senior Washington national security team to leap on the Inchon bandwagon. Ridgway had also been impressed by MacArthur’s concern about the hardships that the upcoming Korean winter held in store for the troops, a winter much worse, he was sure, than anything they had encountered in Germany. The sooner they struck at Inchon, MacArthur said, the better. Once winter arrived, MacArthur had suggested, it would be so bitter and harsh that non-battle casualties might exceed battle ones. The irony of his argument, given the fact that in late November MacArthur would not hesitate to send the
Eighth Army and Tenth Corps north to the Yalu in murderously cold weather, often still clothed in summer-weight uniforms, would not be lost later on either Harriman or Ridgway. MacArthur, they decided, could argue passionately on either side of any question—based on whether it suited his immediate purpose or not.

To Harriman, the originality of the Inchon landing presentation caught the great quandary posed to civilian leaders by MacArthur, a man of two selves—such a talented, imaginative general, yet so difficult for his civilian bosses to deal with, an officer constantly bordering on the insubordinate, with an agenda always at variance with that of his superiors. They all knew that it was like a reflex action with him to hold back critical bits of information. How did you extract the best from a man who constantly seemed to create his own political undertow, simply did not play by the rules used by other senior military men, and was never even close to being straight with you? How could you employ him and yet control him? Could he, with all his talent, actually stay on your team? Harriman and Ridgway’s trip had underlined the MacArthur problem perfectly; the mess he had created with Chiang, and the brilliance of the Inchon plan. In a casual remark that highlighted the dilemma MacArthur always posed for his civilian superiors, Harriman told Ridgway it was crucial “for political and personal considerations to be put to one side and our government deal with General MacArthur on the lofty level of the great national asset which he is.” But even as their meeting proceeded in a positive vein, troubling signs for the future abounded. If the relationship between Moscow and Beijing, countries aligned as fraternal allies in the Communist constellation, was soon to prove uncommonly difficult, it would certainly be equaled by the thorny relationship between the American commander in Tokyo and his military and political superiors in Washington.