by H. W. Brands
In late August 1950 he spoke at a celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Boston Naval Shipyard. Much of his address was ordinary boilerplate for a navy secretary, especially one speaking where for generations actual boiler plate had been made into boilers. “We have no choice other than to build our military power to the strength which will make it impossible for any enemy to overcome us,” Matthews said. “To reach that position all the resources of the nation should be dedicated.” But America must do more than build weapons. It must be willing to use them. “We should boldly proclaim our undeniable objective to be a world at peace. To have peace we should be willing, and declare our intention, to pay any price, even the price of instituting a war to compel cooperation for peace.” Faint hearts would complain, Matthews said. “They would brand our program as imperialistic aggression.” Let them do so. “We could accept that slander with complacency, for in the implementation of a strong, affirmative, peace-seeking policy, though it cast us in a character new to a true democracy—an initiator of a war of aggression—it would win for us a proud and popular title—we would become the first aggressors for peace.”
The concept and wording were provocative enough. Preventive war and “aggressors for peace” elicited instant headlines. But the timing made Matthews’s remarks much worse. The United States was racing Russia to build superbombs, and it was easy to infer that Matthews was saying that if America got there first, it should use the monster weapons against the Russians. The sobering corollary was that if the Russians got there first, America—or at least Matthews—would have no moral ground for opposing a Russian preventive strike.
The MacArthur angle simply added to the Matthews problem. MacArthur was saying the United States should defend Formosa against the Chinese. Matthews was claiming the right for the United States to shoot first. One didn’t have to be a logician or, if Chinese, a paranoid to conclude that together they seemed to be making the case for preemptive nuclear war against China.
At the very least, the Matthews speech, coming amid the ruckus about the MacArthur message, raised serious questions about who spoke for the American government. The White House quickly distanced the president from Matthews’s remarks. But the echoes persisted, and like those of MacArthur’s message to the veterans they gave America’s enemies and even some of its friends reason to worry that Washington was getting trigger-happy.
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TRUMAN TRIED TO clear things up in a radio and television address at the beginning of September. Truman hadn’t asked Congress for a declaration of war, and so he hadn’t felt obliged to specify America’s war aims. But given the confusion caused by the MacArthur and Matthews statements, the president decided he’d better make clear how the U.S. government viewed the conflict in Korea and what it intended there.
He began with the importance of collective action in Korea. “For the first time in all history, men of many nations are fighting under a single banner to uphold the rule of law in the world,” he said. “This is an inspiring fact. If the rule of law is not upheld we can look forward only to the horror of another war and ultimate chaos. For our part, we do not intend to let that happen.” Since World War II the communists had engaged in subversion; in Korea they had turned to brutal aggression. The United States had no choice other than to act swiftly and boldly. “If the history of the 1930s teaches us anything, it is that appeasement of dictators is the sure road to world war. If aggression were allowed to succeed in Korea, it would be an open invitation to new acts of aggression elsewhere.” American leadership was crucial, but so was the cooperation of other free countries. “The United Nations was able to act as it did in Korea because the free nations in the years since World War II have created a common determination to work together for peace and freedom.” Fifty-three of the fifty-nine members of the UN were cooperating to oppose the challenge to peace; thirty had provided or pledged material support, including troops and weapons. Truman said that he had just received word that Greece was the latest country to offer troops. “This is welcome news. All of these troops will serve under the flag of the United Nations and under the United Nations commander, General MacArthur.” The forces of freedom were still gathering; the UN troops were still outnumbered. “But their hard and valiant fight is bringing results. We hold a firm base of about 3,500 square miles. For weeks the enemy has been hammering, now at one spot, now at another, sometimes at many points at once. He has been beaten back each time with heavy loss. The enemy is spending his strength recklessly in desperate attacks. We believe the invasion has reached its peak. The task remaining is to crush it.”
Several considerations guided American policy for the months ahead, Truman continued. First, the United States believed in the United Nations. “When we ratified its charter, we pledged ourselves to seek peace and security through this world organization. We kept our word when we went to the support of the United Nations in Korea two months ago. We shall never go back on that pledge.” Second, the United States believed that the Koreans had a right to be free and united. “Under the direction and guidance of the United Nations, we, with others, will do our part to help them enjoy that right. The United States has no other aim in Korea.” Third, the United States sought to contain the violence. “We do not want the fighting in Korea to expand into a general war. It will not spread unless Communist imperialism draws other armies and governments into the fight of the aggressors against the United Nations.” Fourth, the United States particularly wanted to keep China out of the Korean conflict. “The Communist imperialists are the only ones who can gain if China moves into this fight.”
Truman’s fifth point took importance from the recent controversy with MacArthur. “We do not want Formosa or any part of Asia for ourselves. We believe that the future of Formosa, like that of every other territory in dispute, should be settled peacefully. We believe that it should be settled by international action, and not by the decision of the United States or any other state alone.” American naval vessels patrolled off Formosa simply to deter new aggression. “The mission of the 7th Fleet is to keep Formosa out of the conflict. Our purpose is peace, not conquest.”
Sixth, the United States sought freedom for all the countries of Asia. It had delivered freedom to the Philippines and was fighting for the freedom of Korea. The Soviet Union, by contrast, sought the opposite. “Russia has never voluntarily given up any territory it has acquired in the Far East; it has never given independence to any people who have fallen under its control.”
Truman’s seventh point addressed the Matthews flap. “We do not believe in aggressive or preventive war,” Truman said. “Such war is the weapon of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States. We are arming only for the defense against aggression.”
The corollary of this was Truman’s final point. “We want peace and we shall achieve it.” But peace required effort and sacrifice. “Our men are fighting for peace today in Korea. We are working for peace constantly in the United Nations and in all the capitals of the world. Our workers, our farmers, our businessmen, all our vast resources, are helping now to create the strength which will make peace secure.” The world, through the United Nations, had called on the United States to lead the way to peace. “We have responded to that call. We will not fail.”
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TRUMAN’S SPEECH WAS for public consumption; in private the president and his most senior advisers pondered what would happen in Korea as the tide of fighting turned. In September 1950 the staff of Truman’s National Security Council produced a blueprint for American policy in Korea. NSC 81 started with the past and worked to the present and future. “The political objective of the United Nations in Korea is to bring about the complete independence and unity of Korea in accordance with the General Assembly resolutions of November 14, 1947, December 12, 1948, and October 21, 1949,” the paper said. “The United States has strongly supported this political objective.” But no objective could be considered apart from the costs of achieving it. “If
the present United Nations action in Korea can accomplish this objective without substantial risk of general war with the Soviet Union or Communist China, it would be in our interest to advocate the pressing of the United Nations action to this conclusion. It would not be in our national interest, however, nor presumably would other friendly members of the United Nations regard it as being in their interest, to take action in Korea which would involve a substantial risk of general war.”
The president had to balance America’s interest in unifying Korea against its interest in avoiding general war. The former would require sending UN forces across the 38th parallel and toward Korea’s borders with the Soviet Union and Chinese Manchuria; the latter suggested doing so in a way that minimized the threat felt by the Russians and Chinese. The NSC authors thought it imperative that only ROK forces be employed in this sensitive task.
The authors could not stress this point too strongly. “In no circumstances should other U.N. forces”—particularly U.S. forces—“be used in the north-eastern province bordering the Soviet Union or in the area along the Manchurian border,” they said.
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TRUMAN’S PUBLIC TROUBLES with MacArthur and Matthews were still occasioning comment when another personnel matter exploded. Truman was not given to second-guessing himself, but he often regretted having chosen Louis Johnson for secretary of defense, and he sometimes wondered whether the legislation that had created the position, along with the rest of the modern American national security apparatus, was a good idea.
Since the eighteenth century American defense had rested upon a War Department and a separate Navy Department. The separation reflected America’s distinctive approach to war and the country’s peculiar position in the world. America’s founders believed war would be an occasional endeavor best conducted by part-time soldiers: citizens called to arms on the rare occasions when geographically isolated America was attacked from abroad. Between wars they would be farmers, blacksmiths, merchants and the many other types of productive individuals a peaceful, prospering country required. Their model was Cincinnatus, the Roman hero who returned to his farm upon the defeat of Rome’s enemies. Americans feared standing armies, which corrupted republics and tempted generals to seize political power; the negative example against which the Constitution and American practice were designed was Julius Caesar, the general who made himself dictator. The Constitution guarded against Caesarism by designating the president of the United States the commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces; no general, however popular or ambitious, must overrule the president. American practice hedged against Caesarism by hollowing out the army between wars; the citizen-soldiers were sent home, leaving potential Caesars no one to command.
Americans worried much less about admirals seizing power. Ships were confined to the sea and to rivers, leaving the landed area of the country unthreatened. For this reason, and because navies took longer to build than armies, Americans who rejected the idea of a permanent army tolerated a permanent navy. It was small, and in wartime it was complemented by privateers—the marine equivalent of citizen-soldiers—but it was allowed a Navy Department of its own.
America’s War and Navy Departments proceeded in comparative isolation from each other until the end of the nineteenth century. The U.S. navy assisted in the transport of army troops to foreign shores during the war with Mexico in the 1840s and the Spanish-American War of 1898. Navy warships convoyed army transports to Europe during World War I. But sustained joint combat operations awaited World War II, when they were most conspicuous in the Pacific theater. Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, employed large elements of both the U.S. army and the U.S. navy (and elements of the armies and navies of America’s allies) in the campaign against Japan. Coordinating the two services, with their separate bureaucracies, wasn’t easy, and the friction, combined with an appreciation that future wars would require continued coordination, provided a strong argument for uniting the two services in a single executive department.
Yet unification might not have come without the Cold War. Had the years after World War II followed the pattern of earlier postwar eras, the army would have melted away and defense issues would have faded from the minds of voters and legislators. But the troubles with the Soviet Union caused the American government to remain focused on national security. Consequently Congress in 1947 approved the National Security Act, which placed the War and Navy Departments within a single Defense Department, which also included a new Department of the Air Force. The same act formally established the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group of top officers that had come into being during World War II. The act created the National Security Council, a body of cabinet secretaries and other officials given the special charge of advising the president on national security policy. Finally, the 1947 act established the Central Intelligence Agency, responsible for furnishing the president with information important to the conduct of American foreign policy.
The National Security Act stood as a lonely bright spot in Harry Truman’s dealings that session with Congress, which trampled his veto of the Taft-Hartley Act just as it was approving the security act. Republicans were pleased with the efficiencies service unification promised, and they weren’t especially bothered by the augmentation of presidential power implicit in unification and in the creation of the NSC and the CIA, for they expected to claim the presidency in the 1948 election.
Yet if approval of the act was straightforward, implementing it was not. Truman’s first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, lasted a year and a half, making enemies in the uniformed services, in Congress and in the other executive departments before resigning under the strain of ill health. Truman’s second try was Louis Johnson. “A big 250-pound bear, whose major goal was to work a miracle in the Pentagon—that is, bash heads, cut budgets, stop the interminable wrangling and truly unify the services,” Omar Bradley said of Johnson and his agenda. The joint chiefs chairman added, “Johnson was flamboyant, outspoken and, rumor had it, had his eyes on the White House.” Johnson’s political ambitions were mentioned so often he felt obliged to deny them publicly, thereby fueling the rumor mills further.
Truman might have overlooked Johnson’s ambitions, but he couldn’t tolerate the disruption Johnson caused in the administration. “Louis began to show an inordinate egotistical desire to run the whole government,” Truman recalled later. “He offended every member of the cabinet. We never had a cabinet meeting that he did not show plainly that he knew more about the problems of the Treasury, Commerce, Labor, Agriculture than did the Secretaries of those Departments.” Truman didn’t want to have to find a third defense secretary in less than three years, but by September 1950 he concluded that Johnson was more trouble than he was worth. “I made up my mind he had to go.”
He knew just the man to replace Johnson, the man he would have chosen for defense secretary in the first place if he hadn’t been serving already as secretary of state. George Marshall was Truman’s ideal of the soldier as public servant, an officer who put the national interest above personal interest and definitely above any party interest. Marshall had stepped down from the State Department to enjoy a well-earned retirement. Truman felt badly about recalling him to service, but there was no one of comparable stature and experience he could turn to. The unified Defense Department had to be made to work, the president judged; the nation’s security demanded it. Forrestal and Johnson had failed to accomplish the feat. Marshall was his last hope. If Marshall couldn’t do the job, no one could. A bonus for Truman was that Marshall’s military stature would lend authority to the president in case of a showdown with Douglas MacArthur.
Truman sought to handle the transition with delicacy. “Tomorrow I have to break the bad news to Louis Johnson,” he wrote to Bess on September 7. “I think I have a way to do it that will not be too hard on him. General Marshall came to see me yesterday. I told him what I had in mind. He said, ‘Mr. President, you have only to tell
me what you want, and I’ll do it. But I want you to think about the fact that my appointment may reflect upon you and your administration. They are still charging me with the downfall of Chiang’s government in China. I want to help, not to hurt you.’ ” Truman concluded the story to Bess in a tone of the deepest admiration: “Can you think of anyone else saying that? I can’t.” Truman hoped Johnson would yield to Marshall quietly. “He can make himself a hero if he’ll do that. If he doesn’t, I shall simply fire him.”
Johnson declined the hero role, and Truman fired him. The president immediately announced the nomination of Marshall. Ordinarily only the Senate would have had to approve the nomination, but the National Security Act prohibited the appointment of any person as secretary of defense who had been on active service in the military within ten years of the appointment. A special bill would have to be introduced and passed by both houses of Congress, waiving the ten-year rule. Truman didn’t think this would be a problem, and in fact it proved not to be. Some congressional Republicans greeted the Marshall nomination as Marshall had warned: by raising the China issue again. But large majorities in both houses held Marshall in the same esteem Truman did, and the waiver bill passed each house by a margin of more than two to one. The confirmation hearing in the Senate lasted less than an hour; the upper house then confirmed Marshall’s nomination by a vote of 57 to 11.
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MACARTHUR PROBABLY NEVER read NSC 81, and if he did he apparently took as mere advice its admonitions to avoid the risk of general war and to keep U.S. troops away from the border of China. MacArthur had his own ideas of how war should be waged, and he was sure they were better than those of armchair strategists thousands of miles from the theater of combat.
He knew that Korea was his final campaign. At seventy he was already far past the age when most soldiers had entered retirement or Valhalla. He intended to crown his career with his most brilliant operation. The plan had been forming in his mind since the retreat from the Han River in the war’s first weeks. His ships controlled the seas around Korea, his planes the air above the peninsula. Johnnie Walker’s Eighth Army had stabilized the front outside Pusan. “I was now finally ready for the last great stroke to bring my plan into fruition,” he recalled later. “My Han River dream as a possibility had begun to assume the certainties of reality—a turning movement deep into the flank and rear of the enemy that would sever his supply lines and encircle all his forces south of Seoul.” MacArthur conceived of military command as a genre of art; this would be his pièce de résistance. “I had made similar decisions in past campaigns, but none more fraught with danger, none that promised to be more vitally conclusive if successful.”