Redacted Testimony Shows Why Limited Warfare Against China During the Korean War Favored The US

For anyone that likes to read about the Korean War, the Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article that includes redacted testimony given by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Congress in regards to General Douglas MacArthur’s request to expand the war into mainland China.  In the redacted testimony the Joint Chiefs made a very good argument on why the limited war against China actually favored the United States military instead of hindering it during the Korean War:

Other remarks contradicted MacArthur’s recurrent complaint about the advantage the Chinese derived from the administration’s refusal to grant him permission to bomb targets beyond the Yalu River in China. Democrat Walter George of Georgia, echoing MacArthur’s assertion that “China is using the maximum of her force against us,” said it was unfair that MacArthur had to fight a limited war while the Chinese fought all out.

Omar Bradley responded that George was quite mistaken—and, by implication, that MacArthur was quite misleading. The Chinese were not fighting all out, not by a great deal. “They have not used air against our front line troops, against our lines of communication in Korea, our ports; they have not used air against our bases in Japan or against our naval air forces.” China’s restraint in these areas had been crucial to the survival of American and U.N. forces in Korea. On balance, Bradley said, the limited nature of the war benefited the United States at least as much as it did the Chinese. “We are fighting under rather favorable rules for ourselves.”

Vandenberg amplified this point. “You made the statement, as I recall it, that we were operating against the Chinese in a limited fashion, and that the Chinese were operating against us in an unlimited fashion,” the air chief said to Republican Harry Cain of Washington.

“Yes, sir,” Cain replied.

“I would like to point out that that operates just as much a limitation, so far, for the Chinese as it has for the United Nations troops in that our main base of supply is the Japanese islands. The port of Pusan is very important to us.”

“It is indeed.”

“Our naval forces are operating on the flanks allowing us naval gunfire support, carrier aircraft strikes, and the landing of such formations as the Inchon landing, all without the Chinese air force projecting itself into the area,” Vandenberg said. “Therefore, the sanctuary business, as it is called, is operating on both sides, and is not completely a limited war on our part.”

George Marshall, the secretary of defense and a five-star general himself, made the same argument. Marshall, insisting on “the greatest concern for confidentiality,” said he had asked the joint chiefs just hours before: “What happens to the Army if we do bomb, and what happens to our Army if we don’t bomb in that way.” The chiefs’ conclusion: “Their general view was that the loss of advantage with our troops on the ground was actually more than equaled by the advantages which we were deriving from not exposing our vulnerability to air attacks.”

In other words—and this was Marshall’s crucial point, as it had been Vandenberg’s—the limitations on the fighting in Korea, so loudly assailed by MacArthur and his supporters, in fact favored the American side.  [Smithsonian Magazine]

You can read much more at the link, but another fact of interest in the article was the assessment of Chiang Kai-shek’s military in Taiwan.  MacArthur had wanted to use Chiang’s army to open another front against the Communists.  His Army was however, assessed by the Joint Chiefs to be of little value due to poor training, equipment, and it was riddled with Communist infiltrators.  Additionally Chiang was assessed to have little to no legitimacy on mainland China.

All of this showed why President Truman fired MacArthur and also why the Republicans in Congress quietly withdrew support for him for President.  The Republicans instead threw their support behind another general, Dwight Eisenhower which history has shown was a far wiser choice for President than MacArthur.