Say instead that we had a duty to help a country we bombed to smithereens not be a failed state. We did more than simply protect Germany and Japan from Communist influence, we helped rebuild their entire country. Protection from Communism was not our primary goal. And yes, we had no duty to protect and assist an innocent country from subjugation from another, bigger country simply because we disagreed with their government
Japan lost Korea and all their holdings after losing the war. We bombed the heck out of Japan, not its vassal states. I feel that they should have simply gotten defacto independence
I don’t think its impossible that South Korea could have built themselves back up like China did. China’s slower, but its a huge country compared to relatively tiny Korea. Had we left them alone, they may have had a period of struggle but its not inconceivable that they would have built up their economy by themselves
The most powerful Communist country fell and became a democracy (sort of). If the USSR with their satellite states, military, resources, and spending couldn’t hold it together, what chance do the small states have? China’s not really even Communist anymore, they operate with lots of capitalistic influences. I don’t think its a stretch to say that had we simply let communists take over the likes of Vietnam, that we wouldn’t have the same situation now with all of those former Soviet states in Eastern Europe breaking off and being independent. We would have saved a lot of headache if we weren’t so paranoid about stopping Communism in podunk places like Afghanistan
I’m not treating it as such, mainly because the OP brings up an interesting historical point. That he does it in such a laughably over-the-top manner is unfortunate, but the question of whether the U.S. should have extended hostilities to Manchuria (with or without nuclear weapons) is an interesting one to me. The Chinese had already, without invitation, decided to enter the war in dramatic fashion. Why allow them to dictate which areas will be considered sanctuaries, when they lacked the de facto ability to bomb rear areas in either S. Korea or Japan? FWIW, Dr. Crane in the talk I cited to, states that one reason the U.N. never bombed the airfields in Manchuria was:
Far be it from me to critique Dr. Crane, but I wasn’t aware that the Chinese Air Force had the capability to meaningfully interdict S. Korean airfields. The Soviets, sure, but they were sitting this one out. Certainly, the prospect of the Soviets deciding to get formally involved kept a damper on any actions that might be viewed as escalating the conflict.
For reasons already stated, I would rather that no one use nuclear weapons, and IMHO the overemphasis on nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy throughout the 1950s hamstrung development of conventional arms that would solve problems such as how to destroy the bridges moonshot brought up. The history of the Tarzon bombs (a combination of British Tallboy earthquake bombs and primitive guidance apparatus, and what you’d use to destroy hard-to-hit targets like those bridges.) shows mixed effectiveness before they were abandoned ~1951. My suspicion is that part of the reason for stopping the project was the idea that why use balky precision guided bombs, or develop better ones, when you can just drop a nuke on it? That and the Tarzon had the tendency to occasionally kill the bomber crew carrying it.
Had the U.S. used SAC to bomb airbases and other installations in Manchuria, mine Chinese ports, etc…could the U.N. have expelled the Chinese from North Korea and unified the Korean Peninsula? Might not that be a better resolution for Koreans as a whole than what eventually happened?
In addition, a free Korea right on the border of China (without the water barriers surrounding Hong Kong proper) might have helped destabilize the Communist government and perhaps dissuaded Mao et al from their worst excesses? How many Chinese did Mao and his movement kill in the years between 1953 and his death? 20-30 million? More? Could they have perhaps been saved if there was a free (relatively speaking: South Korea was a hard dictatorship until what, the late 1980s?) Korea next door that might have caused Mao to tone it down? Probably not, but I don’t think examining the questions, and trying to figure out how not to make the same mistakes in other places, is a ridiculous exercise. I could do without the “Kill! Kill! Kill!” tone though. “Nuking the bridge” is really funny though; well done.
YogSosoth, Formosa at least was bombed extensively during WW2, if not by B-29s usually. It was another 250 miles distant from the large B-29 bases in the Marianas. Pusan, Korea, was roughly the same distance away, and of course, other Korean cities like Wonsan, Pyongyang, or Seoul would be that much further. I don’t believe the LeMay tactics of low-level, B-29 incendiary bombing were used against either Korea or Formosa. As to why, I think it was due to Formosa being bypassed by the time the tactic arose, and I don’t know why it wasn’t applied to Korea.
Re: the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, my understanding of efforts like the Marshall Plan was that it explicitly was done in order for both countries to be less susceptible to Communism. The goals of Kennan’s Containment strategy—Korea was certainly a big example of it—and whether they were achieved might be a matter for another thread.
moonshot925
So if Japan would’ve bombed, say, Pearl Harbor in 1941, that would’ve prevented U.S. sending troops to Philippines, or something? Well, maybe next time they are smart and try it.
Yes, it was; our originalplan was to crush Germany even further; to “pastoralize” them into a preindustrial nation. We only decided to do the opposite when opposing the Soviets there became a higher priority.
What about using tactical nuclear weapons? Its not the same as leveling a city; the targets are intended to be military. We have a whole arsenal of tactical weapons, was the US really that worried things would escalate to strategic nuclear bombing as a result of tactical nukes against military targets?
If the USSR used tactical nukes on us (especially on our soil or our allies), I think we wouldn’t have brushed it off as just a tactical nuke on a military target.
The UN had no intention of uniting the peninsula; that was not their mandate and not their mission. The military goal was to repel the invasion of South Korea. That goal was 100% accomplished.
It’s very unfortunate the North Koreans live in a horrible country. I’m not certain how murdering a hundred million people would somehow make that better.
On 7 October 1950 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution which recommended that UN and SK forces proceed north past the 38th parallel to unify Korea under an independent and democratic government. And on the same day UN forces crossed the 38th into North Korea. If the goal wasn’t to unify the peninsula as you suggest, then UN forces would not have invaded North Korea.
The distinction between tactical and strategic use is pretty artificial - for that matter the distinction between conventional and nuclear is artificial - and once the genie is out of the bottle it’s beyond control. Would it really make any sense to restrict strategic bombing to conventional weapons while dropping nuclear weapons on tactical ones?
I do appreciate Gray Ghost’s effort to take to OP seriously but well… In a nutshell why the UN/US didn’t bomb targets in China is it would have been taking a step off of a ledge that might not have a bottom. The gloves would really be off and it would no longer be a conflict about Korea; trying to prevent it from escalating to major powers at total war with each other would be grasping at smoke. The last total war five years ago had killed fifty million people with only the briefest use of nuclear weapons.
Officially, yes.
In reality, not only did they provide entire regiments’ worth of MiG-15s to turn MiG alley into the quasi-permanent furball it was, there were pilots coming in those as well. And not just to ferry the birds over. They were forbidden to fly too close to UN-controlled areas, lest they get shot down and the US wonder why those ostensibly Korean pilots flying planes with Korean markings were so tall. Also white. And only spoke in Cyrillic ; but they did fly and fight.
Of course, these restrictions and secrecy mean that per these ROE the Soviets could not have bombed Allied airfields even without the unwritten sanctuary rules and even if they’d wished to. That being said, had the UN officially attacked targets in Manchuria, that would have been a de-facto aggressive assault on an allied, neighbouring country. Wouldn’t the Russians have been treaty-bound (not to mention reason- and safety-bound) to join in the fun for realz ?
Oh. Well, there you go then
Yeah, I’d go with “probably not” as well. The freedom of West Germany didn’t really perturb the Kremlin or the Stasi, nor did it prevent East Germany (along with the rest of the Balkans) from being industriously turned into abysmal, dictatorial, police state shitholes and de facto prisons for their own citizens. And the Yalu is as good a wall as, well, *the *Wall.
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What about using tactical nuclear weapons?
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Even if the Soviet Union decided to write off Korea and Manchuria, it’s not like they wouldn’t notice our (second) use of nuclear weapons to resolve a war. They’d build up their own nuclear arsenal and apply our precedent to their conquests.
I guess the new rule would have been the United States and Soviet Union wouldn’t fire nuclear weapons at each other. But either side was free to use nuclear weapons as part of a military campaign to occupy any other country. No NPT rules.
I thought I’d alluded to the Soviet adviser pilots earlier on around the first page of the thread? Oh well. I think we agree that there’s a big difference between flying a few regiments of MiGs and sending in the Long-Range Aviation Tu-4s which they’d have needed to effectively bomb the South and Japan. I don’t see the Soviets doing that, even after the U.N. would have hypothetically expanded the war to Manchuria, for the reasons I laid out above: Soviet foreign policy had as the foremost goal avoiding injury to the Rodina (Not protection of allies that bit off way more than they could chew.) and direct conflict with the U.S. would probably result in a nuclear conflict. Which, while the U.S. might not have “won”, the Soviets definitely would have lost. I agree with Dissonance above that expanding the war would indeed be a big dive into water of unknown depth. Winking at the use of advisers and complying with restrictive ROE, limits the downside risk considerably.
One place not mentioned by moonshot where nuclear weapons probably were on the drawing board for use, is for the final defense of the Pusan Perimeter. I’d have to go look around for some cites, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if SAC had B-29s with armed nuclear weapons ready if the Perimeter looked like it was going to be completely overrun. I also don’t think the easy division between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons to be maintainable in practice, with the possible exception of weapons used at sea. Even there, I think the distinction would be artificial. One side is always going to think that the response was disproportionate, escalate accordingly, and…so on. It would have helped in the case of Pusan that the North Koreans weren’t going to be able to retaliate.
Per Little Nemo’s point, I don’t think we’d want to live in a world where the Soviets would have used nukes in Chechnya or Afghanistan. Or the U.S. at Khe Sanh, the French in Algeria, or the Brits in the Falklands had the Argentinians gotten a few breaks: you get the idea.
World of difference between what the Eastern Bloc did under Western observation in the post-1945 period, and what the Chinese did to their own population in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. While indeed a shithole and prison, the Soviet Union post World War 2 did not try to duplicate the Holodomor or the various Terrors in this period, though they did punish much of their population that had suffered Nazi occupation/capture. (Afghanistan—and the death of ~10% of the civilian population, with the exile of ~35%, is probably the exception to this statement.) Perhaps the Soviet’s “restraint” in the Soviet Union was due to a somewhat nearby West Germany, or it was due to a greater global media presence than in the 20s, or it may just have been due to Stalin finally kicking it.
Eyewitnesses to the multiple famines and slave labor camps, which a “free” Korea on their border might have fostered, might have mitigated some of the worse excesses of Mao. OTOH, the hell that currently is North Korea is right next to South Korea—albeit divided by the world’s toughest border to cross—and hasn’t slowed down the Kims any. Gripping hand, (The sci-fi quote thread has rubbed off.) the Kims haven’t resurrected the Killing Fields of Cambodia, have they? Doubt we’re going to change each others’ minds though at this point. Absent one of us bringing some more cites into this—if I find anything in my local library’s copy of Cumings, or others, I’ll let you know—I think I’m done.
Alka Seltzer, chairborne warriors gotta’ war, I suppose. Not surprising, but very funny. I love the Internet’s ability to fact-check bullshit. Why do people think they can plagiarize so baldly and get away with it in this day and age?
