UW Historian Notes Relevance of Korean War Experience

July 30, 2003 -- University of Wyoming History Professor William "Bud" Moore says the United States' experience during the three-year Korean War may shed light on military action to fight terrorism in Iraq. This month marks the 50th anniversary of the armistice ending the Korean conflict.

In 1950, Moore says, American policymakers felt they understood the behavior of European Communists and could anticipate, and therefore work to contain, their activities. But he says American officials were much less certain about communist regimes in other parts of the world, particularly Asia.

"It was not a settled question whether Communists in Asia would simply act as the Soviet leaders in Moscow told them to," Moore says. "But events in Korea -- especially China's intervention on the side of the North -- really convinced American policymakers that all communists were alike and that Communism was a monolithic, global threat."

He says this thinking dominated American foreign policy for the next 20 years, obscuring variations and nuances in communism as it was implemented elsewhere in the Third World, including places such as Vietnam.

In the wake of global communism's collapse and the demise of the Soviet Union, Moore says the Korean War has far less importance today than it did 50 years ago. He says ongoing disputes between the U.S. and North Korea may be the last vestige of the Cold War, but he adds that little in the experience of the Korean War is likely to help solve today's crisis on the Korean peninsula.

Moore says the American position on Iraq today actually resembles Cold War thinking about Korea much more than it does current policy on North Korea.

"The American government has been arguing that there is a kind of international terrorist network whose purpose is to destroy Western civilization. They've also argued that Saddam was an aggressor. So, the arguments used to justify military action in Iraq are more similar to the mindset in Washington coming out of World War II and going into the Cold War than the multilateral approach the Bush administration is now pursuing toward North Korea."

Moore says the American public's response to the Korean War may also be instructive as events unfold in Iraq.

"At the beginning of the Korean War, Americans accepted the Truman administration's argument that the global communist threat needed to be contained. But as the fighting dragged on and it began to appear that the U.S. was not using all of the military capabilities it had built up since the end of World War II, people became frustrated and the war became quite unpopular in this country."

Moore says recent public opinion polls have begun to show similar waning of support for ongoing military intervention in Iraq as long-term American involvement in that country seems increasingly likely.

Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2003