Panel Discussion of the Korean War as a Cold War Conflict (1995)

- Still ahead, Korea, the forgotten war, and our futures in cyberspace. - Now a look at the Korean War, which ended on July 27, 1953. The 42-year-old anniversary will be marked tomorrow by the dedication of a Washington memorial to the more than 54,000 Americans who died in that war, often called America's Forgotten War. 5.7 million Americans served in the military during the Korean War years. More than 8,000 are still listed as unaccounted for. The war began on June 25, 1950, after Communist North Korea sent troops across the 38th parallel into South Korea. It was the first war fought under the United Nations banner, with the United States in 21 other nations sending troops to South Korea. Communist China sent soldiers to help North Korea. We look back at the war and its legacy with three of our regular panel of historians and

writers. Presidential historians, Doris Kearns Goodman and Michael Beschloss, journalist author Haynes Johnson. They are joined tonight by historian Bruce Cummings and author-journalist David Frum. Doris, if World War II was a good war, Vietnam was a bad war, what was Korea? - Well, I think Korea started out as a pretty good war in the sense that there was a clear aggressor in North Korea. They went over that 38th parallel. And it was a dramatic example of Truman's containment policy and had as you suggest UN approval and legitimacy. But once MacArthur with Truman's approval went north of the 38th parallel and tried to liberate the entire country of Korea, bringing in the Chinese and forcing us back to that original, more limited goal, it ended with frustration and weariness and anger and bitterness that in many ways ended Truman's presidency and led to many of the problems that produced the so-called bad war in Vietnam. - You agree with that summary, Michael? - I sure do.

And I think another thing that really was a forerunner of the last 50 years is the fact that, or I should say, 45 years, is the fact that President Truman did this war without a declaration of war from Congress as required by the Constitution. Being in Congress at the time this war began were John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the three later presidents who conducted the war in Vietnam once again without a congressional declaration of war, and this turned out to be almost a template for presidential military action during the Cold War, leading all the way up to the Persian Gulf War when George Bush did not ask Congress for a declaration, but got a resolution of support for what he was doing. Bill Clinton and Haiti, last year, did not ask Congress either for a resolution or a declaration of war. And I think one of the interesting things is going to be now that there is a change in the balance between presidency and Congress now that the Cold War is over, whether this is going to change as well.

- That's a very important role in the Korean War played in history, presidential history and wars. - It really did. And it really began this whole notion that you could fight a limited war in an age of nuclear weapons. That's what later presidents after Truman tried to do. - Mr. Frum, how would you characterize this war? - It was a war that at the time caused, as you say, immense frustration, but it looks better and better in retrospect. It was a war that taught the United States that it could not demobilize during the Cold War as it had tried to do after World War II. It was a war that left America's guarantee more meaningful, than it probably has been ever since. That in 1953, in the aftermath of 1953, you knew that if the United States said it would come help you, it would come help, and it would stay until the job was done. - And that the United States did not have to be invaded like Pearl Harbor for that to happen is what you mean. - Exactly. But that commitment, the value of America's word, I think, has never stood higher than it did in the years between the end of the Korean War and the beginning of the Vietnam

War. It's, I think, a good war in one other way, which is, at the time, Korea, although it was important if if you were Japanese, seemed like a very remote place to Americans. But in retrospect, we can see that the victory in Korea opened up. In many ways, a new epoch in certainly an economic history, and maybe perhaps, in the history of civilization, the epoch in which the North Pacific and the Pacific Rim joined the developed world. That would not have happened without the victory in Korea. And the immense volume of trade that the United States now does across the Pacific greater than the volume it does across the Atlantic. That immense volume of trade is, I think, in many ways, a direct result of the victory. - You used the word victory rather than frustration and whatever. Why do you use the word? - The United States entered the war to guarantee the independence of South Korea. Last time I checked, South Korea was still independent. The United States won. - Professor Cummings, what do you think of this war? What do you think there ought to be called? - I don't think it should be called a victory. I think it was clearly a stalemate. Korea was divided before the war began, it's divided still today. And in effect, you still have a war going on in Korea, with only an armistice holding

the peace. A year ago, we came very close to war with North Korea over the nuclear issue, perhaps some closer than most people understand. Korea has been both a victory in the Cold War and also a kind of running sore for 40 years now, where we got in and found it very difficult to extract ourselves. I think that's a fundamental lesson of the Korean War. A much more important lesson, I think, though, and this goes to why the Korean War is often called the Forgotten War, is that people, particularly in the 1950s, didn't know how to remember it. It's rather hard to remember something that you've already forgotten and that was buried under a partisan verdict. The bipartisan support that the Cold War garnered in 1947 did not exist in Asia in 1950, and it didn't exist when the war was over. Essentially, the Democratic or Truman liberal argued that the war was a success, but for

conservatives and the Douglas MacArthur lineage, it was a defeat. It was a war where there was a substitute for victory and the first American defeat in our history. - North Korea and China did not surrender as the Japanese and the Germans had, is what