Korean War Lessons

From the Korean War we the United States can learn that communism is spreading rapidly and therefore we are not prepared for a war with the Soviet Union and their allies. Communism is indeed spreading. Even China, soon after the Soviet take-over of eastern Europe, became Communist in 1949. Now suddenly a massive new Communist state had appeared on the map. It is clear that these communist countries are working together, and that Communism is getting stronger around the world. Because of these reasons, America initiated a war in Korea that we were not prepared for. The type of lessons that we can learn from this wear is that we must not under estimate any country. We had underestimated the Chinese, and therefore were forced to push back into South Korea. I think it is also important to realize that we should listen to countries when they warn us, and to not get ahead of ourselves and therefore to know when to stop. When the Chinese had warned us that pressing on would mean
China's joining the war, we still moved on and approved the plan to advance into North Korea.

The United States had certain aims to achieve in the Korean War. Primarily, we had wanted to remove North Korean troops from South Korea. By the help and support of the UN this was able to happen. But as time went on the United States got ahead of ourselves and we therefore kept pushing. Our vaulting ambition only caused us to fall on the end of disaster. We underestimated the power of the Chinese and were therefore pushed back into South Korea. However, with the help of the members of the United Nations we were able to achieve our first goal, which was to remove North Korean troops from South Korea. Although there is some communism still in Korea we did push them farther North making the Soviet Union's control weaken.

At the time General MacArthur had the role of Commander. MacArthur had been the one to make the mistake of underestimating the power of the Chinese. He had invaded North Korea without even thinking about the possible threat of the Chinese, even when they had warned us. I do not believe that MacArthur should have been allowed to invade North Korea. He had gone too far by pushing the border of South Korea almost to the Yalu River, he should have stopped after successfully removing North Korean troops from South Korea. After these actions, MacArthur had even advocated that the United States should carry on the war, invading China and even using nuclear weapons if necessary. Truman however did not agree, but that did not stop MacArthur. MacArthur blatantly ignored the UN instruction and openly threatened an attack on China.
Because of his failure to follow the commands, and his risky/dangerous ideas, it was clear he was not ready for the role of Commander and therefore MacArthur was removed.

The casualties of the Korean War were a total of 1.4 billion! Although most were on North Korea and China's side, the people that got the most casualties was all of Korea, with North Korea being the most and South Korea coming next with 570,000 civilians and soldiers killed. American and UN soldiers had lost the least amount of soldiers and civilians with 34,500 deaths.

Although the United States had successfully removed North Korean troops from South Korea, we were overall not prepared for the Korean War. For future actions, we need to consider what's the most important thing we need to accomplish, and to therefore not let our country get ahead of itself. We also need to realize that Communism is spreading, and therefore they have many allies making them stronger.

Overall I would say that President Truman's containment plan was somewhat successful. His plan did successfully allow us to push communism and the Soviet Union somewhat out of North Korea, allowing us to stop the spread of communism and the Soviet Union in becoming too powerful. However there were some downfalls. Communism did reach into China and almost got us into a third war world. In my opinion there should be more done to the policy of containment because clearly it is not strong enough to stop communism from spreading.