United States Role In The Korean War
The role of the United States in the Korean War
1. Introduction
A Korean proverb reads “when whales collide, the shrimp suffer” which refers to the Cold War during the second half of the 20th century and to the role that Koreans saw themselves in. The Korean War is in general referred to as the first battle of the Cold War, the first clash of two superpowers with opposing ideologies, namely the Communist Soviet Union, aiming to spread Communism in countries all over the world, and the United States, representing a capitalist system, democracy, and containment policy. But very often the war is also described as the “Forgotten War” which might seem strange while looking at how severe this event influenced world history. That was also what caught …show more content…
It also brought about social changes, for instance McCarthyism. In this tense atmosphere, the Korean War started out as a local conflict that seemed to be of no greater interest to either the Soviet Union or the United States but the peninsula soon came to be, similar to Germany, another battleground of the struggle for …show more content…
At first, Stalin had not been very fond of the idea of a war in which the United States could easily intervene and make it another major global conflict but in early 1950, the US-government made, according to historian Peter Lowe, several ‘unquestionable foolish’ statements that could be indicative of the US position on Korea and probably contributed a great deal to the outbreak of the Korean War (cf. Sanders: The USA in Asia 1945-1975, p.14). The first statement was about South Korea being excluded from the Defense Perimeter and therefore of no interest to Americans but the United States would have gone to war against any Communist country that attacked another country east of the Defense Perimeter. Also, the influential US Senator Connally openly approved of a Korean reunification, even if it meant that the entire peninsula was under Communist rule. And thirdly, Congress rejected a bill that would give aid to South Korea. Stalin hoped that, because of these three statements, the United States did not care enough about South Korea to join the conflict and in the end, he gave Kim Il-Sung his
1. Introduction
A Korean proverb reads “when whales collide, the shrimp suffer” which refers to the Cold War during the second half of the 20th century and to the role that Koreans saw themselves in. The Korean War is in general referred to as the first battle of the Cold War, the first clash of two superpowers with opposing ideologies, namely the Communist Soviet Union, aiming to spread Communism in countries all over the world, and the United States, representing a capitalist system, democracy, and containment policy. But very often the war is also described as the “Forgotten War” which might seem strange while looking at how severe this event influenced world history. That was also what caught …show more content…
It also brought about social changes, for instance McCarthyism. In this tense atmosphere, the Korean War started out as a local conflict that seemed to be of no greater interest to either the Soviet Union or the United States but the peninsula soon came to be, similar to Germany, another battleground of the struggle for …show more content…
At first, Stalin had not been very fond of the idea of a war in which the United States could easily intervene and make it another major global conflict but in early 1950, the US-government made, according to historian Peter Lowe, several ‘unquestionable foolish’ statements that could be indicative of the US position on Korea and probably contributed a great deal to the outbreak of the Korean War (cf. Sanders: The USA in Asia 1945-1975, p.14). The first statement was about South Korea being excluded from the Defense Perimeter and therefore of no interest to Americans but the United States would have gone to war against any Communist country that attacked another country east of the Defense Perimeter. Also, the influential US Senator Connally openly approved of a Korean reunification, even if it meant that the entire peninsula was under Communist rule. And thirdly, Congress rejected a bill that would give aid to South Korea. Stalin hoped that, because of these three statements, the United States did not care enough about South Korea to join the conflict and in the end, he gave Kim Il-Sung his