Facing the Greatest Danger Without the Greatest Resources: Balancing the Korean Conflict with the Global Cold War

Following WW2, the United States began to reduce the size of its armed forces. The number of men in the military was reduced. Spending on research and development for new weapons was reduced. Procurement of current weapon systems was reduced. The overall budget for defense spending was reduced.

The war was over. The principal enemies, Japan and Germany, had been thoroughly smashed and were occupied by Allied troops. The United States alone possessed the technology to manufacture and use atomic weapons, giving it an unsurpassable advantage over any competing nation.

America felt secure. There was no need for large military spending or for a large and well-equipped army.

So, from the time that WW2 ended in late 1945 — a ceasefire took place in August, and both sides signed the final surrender papers in September — the United States optimistically anticipated a time of peace. There were no obvious threats of major military action on the horizon, so disassembling the U.S. military seemed like a sensible thing to do.

Four events would startle this calm attitude.

First, the USSR obtained from its network of espionage agents the American technology needed to assemble its own nuclear weapons. In late August 1949, the Soviet Socialists conducted a test, exploding for the first time their own atomic bomb. By early September, the U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed this reality. Suddenly, the U.S. was not the only nation on earth possessing nuclear weapons. This changed the balance of power suddenly and dramatically. The Soviet Socialists no longer needed to restrain themselves in their plans to take over and oppress other smaller nations.

Second, in late 1949, the Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War. This war had started in 1927, dragging on for many years, and had paused during WW2. A few of the freedom fighters who had resisted the Communists fled to the island of Formosa, and set up their own small country, called Taiwan or “free China.” Communist China, or “mainland China,” allied itself closely with the Soviet Socialists during the first several years of its existence.

Third, in January 1950, President Truman asked the National Security Council (NSC) to compose a report about the world’s geopolitical situation. The document, known as NSC-68, was kept secret until it was declassified in 1975. It alarmed the few leaders who had permission to read it. It persuaded readers that, instead of dismantling the military, the U.S. needed to be ready to face major threats.

Finally, in June 1950, North Korea, with substantial support from Communist China, and a smaller amount of support from the Soviet Socialists, launched a surprise attack on South Korea. This began the Korean War, which would ultimately cost the lives of more than a million human beings. Although the majority of military support for North Korea came from China, the Soviet Socialists led the political and strategic impulse behind the war. The procurement of nuclear weapons emboldened the USSR, in which Stalin was still ruling. The global counterforce was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created in 1949, a collective mutual security system, based on a large alliance between thirty nations. These nations pledged to help defend each other, and the major threat was obviously the Soviet Socialists.

The globe was not as safe as had been hoped, as historian William Donnelly writes:

President Truman and his senior advisors quickly concluded that the North Korean invasion on 25 June 1950 demonstrated that the Soviet Union was beginning to take greater risks as predicted by NSC 68. American intelligence estimates stated that the Soviets were not likely to initiate a general war until they had built up conventional and nuclear forces to the point where they could be confident of overrunning Western Europe and deterring an American nuclear response. NSC 68 had warned that 1954 would be the year of maximum danger of a general war. Preventing that war decisively colored the U.S. response to the invasion of South Korea. North Korea’s aggression had to be repulsed lest it encourage further local attacks, but the United States would limit its military commitments on the peninsula in case the attack actually was a Soviet effort to weaken America’s ability to defend the crucial areas of Western Europe and Japan. American leaders decided that the United States would avoid a wider war in Asia, undertake a massive buildup of conventional and nuclear forces to defend crucial areas, use much of that buildup to create a credible conventional defense in Europe, supply its allies with large amounts of military aid, and do all this by 1954 without causing irreparable harm to the American economy.

The thinking about defense spending changed significantly between 1948 and 1951. Although thinking can change quickly, the physical realities change slower. The events of 1949 and 1950 were shocking. There was a lag time between those events and the implementation of plans for a military buildup.

One of the implications of the situation was that the nations supporting South Korea — which included several NATO countries as well as several United Nations countries — fought the Korean War “on the cheap.” Many of these nations were still repairing themselves from WW2, both economically and in terms of physical infrastructure. They were not available for a massive war effort.

The limited military and fiscal resources had to not only support a war in Korea, but develop a global defense system at the same time. Massive amounts of money were required for the research and development of missiles, jet airplanes, and nuclear weapons, as well as the usual conventional forces.

There wasn’t a lot of money left over to fund the Korean War.

Not only was there a lack of money for equipment, supplies, research, and development, but rather there was also, in the words of William Donnelly, a “manpower dilemma.” Soldiers not only have to be paid, but rather also trained, clothed, fed, and sheltered.

The army was experiencing a “massive expansion,” but given the tasks it faced, the needs for men were still greater than the supply. This was especially so regarding leadership positions like non-commissioned officers (NCO). There was a large supply of enlisted men, given the realities of conscription. But draftees remain only as long as they must, and so there was a high rate of turnover among footsoldiers, making leadership even more important. Yet it was precisely among NCO ranks that there was a manpower shortage.

The United States fought the Korean War on a shoestring budget.

Manpower shortages, high rates of turnover, and a high percentage of draftees among the soldiers led to morale problems. Also detracting from morale was the fact that top-level leadership was deciding to treat Korea as a “secondary theater,” with Europe still seen as the likely place for a face-to-face confrontation with the Soviets. A further dampener was the selection of armistice, rather than victory, as the goal in Korean: this was hardly inspiring to already-skeptical draftees who didn’t want to be in the army in the first place.