THE PRE-KOREA RECORD

Both Eisenhower and Stevenson agree that once the Communists attacked South Korea, the U.S. had no honorable or sensible choice but to fight. But they disagree sharply in their judgment of U.S. policy preceding the Red attack. Stevenson approves without reservation the Administration's course of action; Eisenhower views the Administration's decisions as a "record of appalling failure" that laid Korea open to attack. In the debate, sharpest political issue of the campaign, Eisenhower moved into the winner's position last week. The record on which his Detroit speech was based: 1) General Albert Wedemeyer's report of 1947, after a trip to the Far East under presidential directive. Warned Wedemeyer: "The withdrawal of American military forces from Korea would result in the occupation of South Korea by either Soviet troops or, as seems more likely, by the Korean military units trained under Soviet auspices in North Korea." The Wedemeyer report was suppressed by the Administration. It was also disregarded. 2) General Douglas MacArthur's opinion of January 1949. In response to a request from the Administration, then committed to withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, MacArthur advised: U.S. trained South Korean forces were adequate to maintain "internal order" only; they could not hope to cope with invasion from the north. While raising this warning flag, MacArthur said that the present mission of U.S. troops in Korea (i.e., training Korean forces to maintain internal security) was almost completed and that the troops could be withdrawn. Later, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, MacArthur testified that he had concurred in the decision to withdraw the troops from Korea. Around the time of the Mac-Arthur report, State Department's Far East ern experts and policy planners (among them John Davies, whose role in Far Eastern policy is still controversial) worked up a new policy paper (NSC-8/2) for the National Security Council. In it, MacArthur's advice was misrepresented: he was quoted as saying that the combat readiness of the South Koreans justified complete U.S. withdrawal, while his warning that the South Koreans could not withstand invasion from the north was ignored.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff joined with the State Department in recommending withdrawal. This was in keeping with Truman's decision to reduce total U.S. ground forces, which were then down to 691,000 men. The National Security Council accepted, and Harry Truman signed NSC-8/2 on March 23, 1949.

3) Congressional doubts of the wisdom of the new U.S. policy, voiced in hearings on U.S. aid for Korea, June 8-23, 1949.

Minnesota's Republican Representative Walter Judd insisted that a token U.S. force in Korea was just as important a deterrent to Communist aggression as U.S. token forces of the time in Berlin and Vienna. Said Judd: "I am convinced that if we keep even a battalion [in Korea], [the Russians] are not going to move.

And if the battalion is not there, chances are they will move within a year . . ." (The Communists did, in fact, move twelve months and four days later.)

Representative John Lodge (now Connecticut's governor) compared the situation in Korea to that in Austria: "I think the presence of our troops [in Austria] is a tremendous deterrent to the Russians, even though they can overwhelm us. I think the presence of our troops in Korea is a tremendous deterrent. But you do not think so?"

Months later, Secretary of State Dean Acheson felt that the deterrent of U.S. troops was not necessary. At Senate foreign-aid hearings, in March 1950, New Jersey's Republican Senator Alexander Smith, less farsighted than Lodge or Judd, asked Acheson if the Secretary agreed with him that South Korean forces "probably will be able to defend themselves against any attack from the northern half of the country." Replied Acheson: "We share that same view. Yes, sir."

4) A minority report, based on the hearings cited above and submitted by five Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in July 1949.

Warned the Congressmen:

"It is reliably reported that Soviet troops, attached to the North Korean puppet government armies, are in positions of command as well as acting as advisers.

"If this is the case . . . the Soviet has actually entered the conflict along the frontier. This development may well presage the launching of a full-scale military drive across the 38th parallel. Unless this nation is prepared to meet force with comparable force, economic assistance cannot of itself insure the safety or the integrity of South Korea . . . "Again we are confronted with the constantly recurring specter of piecemeal and stopgap legislation. Admittedly, this country has no policy with respect to the Orient, nor has any program been put forward which would tend to develop such a policy. We labor with the mountain of Asia, and succeed only in bringing forth the molehill of economic aid for South Korea . . . "Already, along the 38th parallel, aggression is speaking with the too-familiar voices of howitzers and cannon. Our position is untenable and indefensible. The House should be aware of these facts."

Discounting all warnings, the Administration had completed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea by June 29, 1949.

5) Secretary Acheson's public statement in January 1950, that Korea was outside the U.S. perimeter of defense in the Pacific. If the Administration's decision not to defend Korea had remained a secret, the Communists might have been deterred by uncertainty about the U.S. reaction to invasion. Acheson advertised the decision.

The Communists invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950--whereupon the Administration immediately demonstrated, by resisting the aggression, that it did not itself believe in its own decision which had invited the war.

Said Eisenhower last week: "On that day, the record of political and diplomatic failure of this Administration was completed and sealed."

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