Neither Korean leader could mount a full-fledged invasion on its own and therefore each would need to persuade his superpower sponsor to provide the necessary equipment and support. Thus the crucial question leading up to just before the war broke out was whether the USSR or the US would vet an attempt to reunify Korea by military means. Although after repeated attempts, Kim from the North finally got a green light from Stalin in early in 1950, while all Rhee from the South gathered from Washington were “yellow lights shading over into red” according to John Lewis Gaddis.
The attention now has to focus on the Soviet leader at the top who passed this decision and consider the factors in light of Moscow’s stake in the war.
First of all, one can notice the shift in Stalin’s mindset towards Northeast Asia as a fountain of opportunities, hence an optimism about the prospects for international revolution for the Communist world leader. This has to be comprehended in the light of the inferiority of the USSR in the Western hemisphere with its limited influence in Western Europe, the success of the Marshall Plan, the failure of the Berlin Blockade, the formation of an independent West Germany, and the organization of NATO. As a result of such failures in the West, Stalin had a good reason to believe that Asia was more promising since China had shown the nationalism more easily aligned with communism than it had been in Europe.
Moscow’s stake in Korea was also that with a Communist government now ruling China, Stalin knew that the USSR would eventually have to give up the ports and naval facilities it had secured in Manchuria at the end of World War II. Although the new Sino-Soviet Treaty provided for their transfer in 1952, we now know that Stalin insisted on a secret protocol requiring that the Chinese prohibit economic involvement in Manchuria by citizens of third countries. It was thus evident that the USSR had an insecurity issue emerging in terms of its economic and territorial considerations.
It is reasonable to believe that Moscow had the biggest hand in the outbreak of the Korean War in terms of allowing the North the go-ahead sign. This can most evidently be demonstrated by Stalin’s opportunism, his tendency to advance in situation where he though he could do so without provoking too strong a response. This was propelled in the context of Korea when the American Secretary of State Acheson, in a well-intentioned but carelessly worded speech on 12 January 1950, had publicly excluded both South Korea and Taiwan from the American “defensive perimeter” in the Western Pacific.
The dangerous misinterpretation of the Speech by Mao and Stalin that was in fact intended to direct the Chinese nationalists embroiled in the Chinese civil war and the Koreans to look to the United Nations for support, could have caused them to further conclude, in view of the National Security Council review that preceded it, that Korea was a so-called safe ground to extend its power to. This was the most seminal feature in the reasons for Moscow’s allowing for the war to start, as reflected by the dramatic shift in Stalin’s position by 22 January 1950 to take on a more aggressive tone towards the Asian hemisphere. Previously, before Stalin could be reassured of a lack of US interest (as misleading as it was), his noticeable reluctance in supporting Kim’s relentless plea to support his cause had prevented the decisive outbreak of the Korean War. Therefore, then, Moscow had indeed the biggest role in the origins of the war in Korea in June 1950.
In putting the Soviet involvement in the origins of the war into the larger Cold War context, the involvement of the US and the USSR in the conflict is significant because it shows that superpower intervention was a pivotal factor in the Korean War, perhaps even particularly to the origins as far as the USSR is concerned.
In 1949, Kim had already intended to invade South Korea, but because of the USSR’s unwillingness to support the attack initially, it could not manifest itself. In 1950, however, when the USSR decided to give Kim the green light, the war began in full force. This testifies to the fact that although the conflict may seem to be localized in nature on the surface with all the local players at the forefront, it was actually a piece of the Cold War puzzle, induced by the dynamics played out by the looming superpower rivalry.
Another reason for giving credence to the statement that the outbreak of the Korean War could be attributed to the USSR is that the Korean War was the first proxy war that the US and the USSR fought. It was, in other words, an indirect superpower confrontation that needed an outlet and expansion into Asia at a time when Europe was stuck in a deadlock. Both the US and the USSR were fighting disguised as someone else (USSR as North Korea and the US as the UN force), but the conflict that was resultant clearly can be said to have reflected the dynamics of the superpowers. Perhaps it can also be conjectured that to prevent the possibility of using nuclear weapons, the superpowers chose to confront each other through proxies. Thus, the vested interests of the USSR and the superpowers at large changed a potentially civil conflict into a full-fledged proxy war that was put into the Cold War context.
Furthermore, the Korean War was the consequence of decisions undertaken by the superpowers when they were occupying the country. The superpowers themselves drew the divisions of the country into North and South Korea for the USSR and the US respectively. In North Korea, Communism can be said to have been developed and USSR encouraged the rise of Kim Il Sung, a Communist. In the South, capitalism was implemented by the US. The US also supported the hard-line anti-communist, Syngman Rhee. It was only then that the superpowers withdrew from the conflict. Hence, it can be seen that it was superpower rivalry that fundamentally caused the USSR and the US to super-impose their ideology on the countries that they occupied, making the conflict inevitable. Perhaps, in view of the first move that Kim Il Sung, a local leader made in the June of 1950, it can be said that the Korean War was a civil conflict that was indirectly caused by the Cold War, in which Moscow had a particularly important role to play, in permitting Kim’s intended first move.
On the other hand, there is also an element of civil conflict in the Korean War, which was locally motivated, at least on the surface. This is because the underlying motives behind the North invading the South in 1950 that began the war were purely local. To begin with, the Korean peninsula had been divided into two countries that practiced the conflicting ideologies of Communism and Capitalism. Both North Korea, led by Kim Il Sung, and South Korea, led by Syngman Rhee, wanted to unite the peninsula under one ideological banner. Eventually, Kim launched an attack against South Korea. Strictly speaking, this explains why the Korean War occurred in the first place. Thus, we can see that at heart the Korean War was a civil and localized conflict instead of being driven by the Soviets’ decision.
However, to only classify the Korean War as a civil war that merely represented the interests of the locals would be too superficial. Besides the role of the USSR in the outbreak of the Korean War, another angle that we could take is that it was a regional war because of the entry of China. China was a regional power in Asia and joined in to help North Korea because it felt threatened by the UN force close to its border. China provided over a million ‘voluntary’ soldiers to fight as well as equipment it purchased from the USSR. This Chinese support helped to push the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. The argument could be that without such a Chinese engagement, there would not have been a Korean War as we know it today, as the North was clearly at a strategic disadvantage in the face of a US-backed United Nations force. On the contrary, regional factor pales in comparison to Moscow’s hold in the outbreak of the war, since the latent entry of China into an already sparked off war does not contribute much in our understanding of the very beginnings of the war.
At the same time, the necessity to categorise the origins of the war as alternatively regional in nature is crippled in view of the fact that the reason for China’s entry into the broil was the influence of superpower dynamics on China. China saw that the US (with the veil of UN troops) was bent on conquering all of Korea and since the US was a champion opponent of Communism, Communist China was at risk with such pro-capitalist neighbours when North Korea was overrun with US troops. Thus, China’s interests may fall under the larger superpower concerns in view of the Cold War. Thus, to a large extent, the Korean War was a Moscow and perhaps Cold War induced conflict because in the present context, the rest of the world conformed mostly to the bi-polar world that the superpowers had created.
In the broadest sense, the Korean War was concocted by the multiple hands of Kim from the North, Rhee from the South, Moscow, Washington, as well as Mao’s China, to a fairly limited extent. The US, in its misguiding the USSR into believing in its seeming detachment from the Korean peninsula through Acheson’s address, should be held responsible to the outbreak of the Korean War because it was only then that Stalin changed his stance. Before such an assurance that the Cold War would not be extended to Korea, Stalin had maintained his position against Kim’s suggested offensive move. However, in putting the greatest weight to the power responsible, it has to fall at the door of Moscow. This, in view of Stalin’s renewed optimism towards Korea in response to the US demarcation of its sphere of interest, as well as its guarantee of military back-up for Kim’s strategy, was the most decisive factor in commencing the Korean War in June 1950, hence rendering the above statement valid to a large extent.
Number of Words: 2249
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, Rethinking Cold War History, Cold War Empires: Asia, pp.71
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, Rethinking Cold War History, Cold War Empires: Asia, pp.72
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, Rethinking Cold War History, Cold War Empires: Asia, pp.73
Kathryn Weathersby, Cold War Crises, Korea, 1949-50, To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War (Spring 1995)
Kathryn Weathersby, Cold War Crises, Korea, 1949-50, To Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung, and the Prelude to War (Spring 1995) p.2
Geoffrey Warner, The Korean War, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs, pp. 106