The New Plan for Korea

The U.S. Government, for the first time since the Chinese Reds attacked 14 months ago, has finally figured out what it is going to do about the Korean war. The new policy has been approved, tentatively and "in principle," by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council, of which the President and the Secretary of State are members. The policy may be abandoned later. It may not survive the opposition of Allied governments, with which it is now being discussed. But as of now, this is the plan:

P:Whatever the Communists do, the U.S. will not be drawn into a resumption of the struggle on the Korean peninsula, which is not a good place for the U.S. to fight. Therefore the U.S. will be able to reduce greatly its present forces in Korea.

P:If the Reds sign a truce and then break it with another offensive in Korea, the U.S. will not confine its resistance to Korea or even concentrate on Korea. Instead, it will blockade the coast of China and attack Chinese coastal cities by air.

P:If the Reds do not sign a truce and do attempt to resume offensive war in Korea (either in the air, or on the ground, or both), the main U.S. reply will come not in Korea but by air-sea attack on the Chinese coastal cities.

How to Limit a War. This does not mean a threat of "unlimited war" with Red China. The limits of the present war are set by the enemy and are to his advantage. Under the new Washington plan, the U.S. would set the limits to its advantage.

As Douglas MacArthur pointed out, before he was fired for advocating an air-sea campaign against Red China, there is not much that China's Communist government could do to resist or retaliate against such a war. The U.S.S.R. could come to the aid of its Chinese allies, but in doing so would risk all-out atomic war. Washington, long caught in the fallacy that the U.S.S.R. can be provoked into a war she does not want, has belatedly faced this risk and decided it is not great, if it exists at all.

For the first time in 14 months, the policy shapes a way in which the U.S. can win its war with Red China. "Win" in this limited sense means that it might force Red China to desist from aggression by hitting the Chinese where it hurts most, instead of in Korea, where it hurts least.

The U.S. decision puts an entirely different light on the truce talks. Before the new policy, the U.S. had little prospect of ending the Korean war in any way favorable to U.S. interests. Even if the Reds signed the truce and thereafter stayed quiet, the whole U.N. force would be tied up in the Korean area to defend and police the agreement. Under the new policy, the U.N. can walk away from the Korean truce line, saying over its shoulder: "Violate it, and the war will be brought to you."

How to Defend a Line. Since the truce talks began, the U.N. has spent 30,000 casualties in U.S. troops alone in trying to fight its way through Bloody Ridge, the Punch Bowl, Heartbreak Ridge and the rest. Its goal was a defensible line on which to rest the truce. If the Administration had adopted the new policy in June, it might have saved the subsequent casualties. It could have accepted a truce at the "indefensible" 38th parallel, and defended that with a threat to open up on the China coast.

The "new thinking," of course, is not new. MacArthur and many others proposed it months ago. Indeed, no other practical and honorable way out of the Korean war has ever been suggested. The "new thinking" is merely new in the sense that Washington top officialdom has now agreed on it.

If Washington sticks to the new policy, the Korean war, in its old hopeless, heartbreaking form, is over.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.