Estimate of the Situation

In Korea, President-elect Dwight Eisenhower is likely to demand the kind of precise, efficient briefing which General Eisenhower is accustomed to. In any current estimate of the situation, the field commanders are likely to present three possible courses of action:

1) Maintain the status quo and go on hoping for an armistice. This would leave 30% of U.S. Army combat strength tied up in defending a 145-mile front across Korea's middle, would allow the enemy to build up his reserves without having to expend them any faster than he sees fit, and capable of launching an attack at will.

2) Pull out of Korea. Complete withdrawal would threaten Japan's security and undermine anti-Communists throughout Asia. Alternatives: pull U.N. troops out of the trenches, but threaten the Communist China mainland with air and naval retaliation if the Reds cross the present Korean front lines; replace U.N. troops on the line with South Koreans as fast as they are trained. Keep U.S. supporting arms (air, artillery, supply) in action, but hold infantry divisions in strategic reserve.

3) Increase pressure on the enemy. Possible first steps: a sea & air blockade of the China mainland; bombing air bases, troop and supply buildups north of the Yalu River; using atomic weapons (e.g., atomic artillery) against suitable enemy troop concentrations. A U.N. offensive could develop by next spring into a full-scale assault on the Red lines, with or without airborne or amphibious landings. Estimated new U.N. troops needed for the offensive: seven divisions.

None of these alternatives offered any easy way out of the Korean deadlock, and Ike was the last to expect to find the way easy. The purpose of his trip is to survey all of the possibilities with a completely fresh eye. Whether he decides on any one of the three broad courses, or some combination of the three, the survey itself will help put the Korean war back in proper perspective. The year-long negotiations at Panmunjom, and even the debate in the U.N. over the issue of repatriating prisoners (see INTERNATIONAL), has lulled many a U.S. citizen into thinking of the war as mainly a matter of council-table bargaining.

Ike's trip itself was made necessary because of an evident failure of the U.N. policy to date--a policy of collective security with too much emphasis on "collective" and not enough on "security." Only by a decision dictated by the facts of security can the U.S., the U.N. and the Western world hope to achieve the high-principled objectives which took the U.N. into Korea in the first place.

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