The Ups and Downs of the Korean War — And of Matthew Ridgway’s Military Career

The Korean War, especially during its first year, was a series of dramatic changes of fortune. North Korea, officially titled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), began with a surprise attack in late June 1950. The North quickly moved to take over almost all of South Korea; only a small area in the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula remained undefeated by August of the year. In the quick invasion, almost all of South Korea, known as the Republic of Korea (ROK), was placed under the domination of the North. This fast attack had taken about a month.

Equally sudden was the reversal of this trend.

In September 1950, when the United Nations and the United States came to the ROK’s aid, a massive counterattack not only liberated the ROK’s entire area from North Korean invaders, but pushed into the DPRK until only a thin sliver of it remained under North Korean control at the beginning of November 1950.

Yet again the direction of the war’s momentum changed suddenly.

At the end of November, with the help of China and the Soviet Union, the DPRK pushed southward, eventually reclaiming all of the North Korean territory and advancing once again into the ROK. By January 1951, North Korea had established a front behind which lay not only all of its land, but approximately 25% of the ROK.

Counteractions by the ROK, the United Nations, and the United States in February, March, and April of 1951 pushed the front northward, back to the original 38th parallel border, and then further north. From May 1951 until the eventual Armistice in July 1953, there was little movement in the front.

With each swing of the pendulum — one side or the other gaining or losing a definitive upper hand — the command structures of the military operations on both sides merit attention.

When North Korea successfully advanced southward in December 1950, General Douglas MacArthur was the commander of the United Nations forces assisting the ROK. When the South was making its strong northward advance in the autumn of 1950, MacArthur had been optimistic, and believed that the ROK’s victory was inevitable. When Chinese and Soviet assistance enabled the DPRK to push the United Nations entirely out of North Korea, MacArthur reversed his mood, and saw the ground war as hopeless. He toyed with the idea that the only way to rescue the ROK was to use nuclear weapons. His flirtation with atomic war raised concerns among US and UN leadership. MacArthur also wanted to strike Northward beyond the DPRK’s borders, into China, another wildly unpopular idea.

Under MacArthur’s supervision, General Walton Walker had been commanding the Eighth US Army in Korea starting in July 1950. Walker died suddenly in December 1950 from non-combat injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. The new leader of the Eighth Army, still under MacArthur’s umbrella of UN command, was Matthew Ridgway.

Ridgway’s installation as leader of the Eighth Army marked — or caused — one of the war’s inflection points.

MacArthur expected that the combined ROK/UN/US forces would be able to use airpower to disrupt the DPRK’s supply lines. This did not happen, as Russell Weigley writes:

The battlefield was not sealed off from enemy reinforcement and supply as MacArthur had counted on, and large Chinese forces threw MacArthur’s troops into a retreat which did not halt until the armies were again south of the thirty-eighth parallel and the Commu­nists had again captured Seoul. In the face of this unanticipated disas­ter, MacArthur’s attitude changed abruptly from complacent opti­mism to the despairing belief that none of Korea could be saved unless the war were widened to include aerial attacks, employing the atomic bomb, against the sources of Chinese power and a naval blockade of China. Fortunately, a new commander of the Eighth Army under MacArthur, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, thought otherwise. Under Ridgway’s ubiquitous battlefield leadership the Eighth Army stiffened, recaptured Seoul, and slowly pushed the enemy northward toward the thirty-eighth parallel, while Mac­ Arthur’s excessive pessimism on the heels of his earlier excess of opti­mism set events in motion toward his recall from command.

Some historians attribute Ridgway’s ability to energize the Eighth United States Army in Korea (EUSAK) to his leadership style, as historian Victor Davis Hanson writes:

When Ridgway arrived at Korea, he quickly discovered, contrary to the general consensus, that an invincible Chinese enemy had not crushed the outnumbered and outgunned Americans led by the once brilliant Douglas MacArthur. The American army was not so much beaten militarily by Chinese and Korean forces, as poorly equipped for winter weather, panicked, terribly led in the field, and without confidence in the nature of its mission. Thus in less than 100 days, Ridgway went on to address those issues, and ended up back across the 38th Parallel, with the Chinese invaders as exhausted and over-extended as the Americans had been in the north during November 1950.

Ridway did what MacArthur thought to be impossible. EUSAK solidified its defense, and then switched to offense, working its way northward parallel to the X Corps, another US Army unit which was moving in the same direction. X Corps would eventually become part of EUSAK.

The rest of the United Nations Command (UNC) harmonized its efforts with EUSAK. The forces of fifteen or more nations joined the ROK against the DPRK. Together they had learned how the North Korean forces, as well as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), operated, and were more able to anticipate North Korea’s moves and weak spots.

Under Ridgway’s leadership, EUSAK effectively coordinated both with UNC and with X Corps. This resulted in battlefield successes, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

Despite MacArthur’s dire predictions, EUSAK stabilized the front south of the 38th Parallel in January 1951 and even mounted limited counterattacks. Rebounding under the firm leadership of a new commander, General Matthew B. Ridgway, EUSAK pulled itself together. X Corps, fighting its way to the coast and evacuated by ship, returned to the front, and Ridgway soon commanded a true international army, with professional troops from the British Commonwealth, Turkey, Greece, Colombia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Thailand. Harassed by UN air strikes, the PLA had increasing difficulty mounting sustained offensives, for it suffered serious supply shortages that its coolie-carrier logistics system could not meet. In addition, EUSAK soldiers now understood Chinese night attacks and mass-infiltration tactics and could defend against them in depth and with massive firepower. When the PLA launched its last grand offensive in April–May 1951, EUSAK fell back in good order, fighting hard, and halted the attack without the crisis of the preceding winter. EUSAK then counterattacked with deliberate advances and awesome artillery and air support, and the PLA began to fall apart, with Chinese soldiers surrendering by the thousands. Despite MacArthur’s pessimism, the soldiers of UNC had proved they could hold South Korea.

Ridgway orchestrated tactical and strategic successes while yet reporting to MacArthur. It was not until April 1951 that MacArthur would be relieved of command. Ridgway needed political instincts to survive under MacArthur, as historian Victor Davis Hanson explains, “Ridgway praised those whose ideas were ensuring defeat, even as” he “quietly proceeded to reject them.”

From mid 1951 onward, the war exhibited fewer dramatic swings. While the front was not entirely static, many books refer to the war from this point onward as a type of “stalemate.” Neither side made major advances or major retreats.

The strategy involved, in part but certainly not in whole, attrition. Resource management was crucial. For the DPRK, China, and the Soviet Socialists, this was the case because they were perpetually operating at the limit of their economic abilities to field armies. For the UN, the ROK, and the US, this was the case because they were simultaneously upholding their NATO obligations to provide a credible defense for Europe against the possibility of Soviet attack.

To reduce the US and UN commitment in Korea, and thereby free up troops for the defense of Europe, some American leaders wanted to help the ROK build up its own military. This is a foreshadowing of Nixon’s strategy of Vietnamization, but it worked better in Korea than in Vietnam. Ridgway was not enthusiastic about it, but it seems to have been effective in the long run.

It was, in part, an economic consideration which finally moved American leaders to embrace the strategy of helping the ROK to build up its own military defenses. Not only would it free up US troops to defend Europe, but it would reduce the financial cost of the Korean war. Eisenhower’s campaign pledge to end the Korean war was fueled not only by a desire for peace, but rather also by a desire to lower the expense of defending South Korea, as William Donnelly writes:

Eighth Army also sought to conserve American manpower by expanding the ROK Army. During 1952, General Van Fleet pressed repeatedly for the United States to support an expansion of the ROK Army from ten to twenty divisions. Initially, Washington and General Matthew B. Ridgway, Commander-in-Chief, Far East Command, rejected these proposals. They believed that supporting such an expansion would consume resources in short supply, such as artillery weapons and ammunition, needed to support the defense of Europe and maintain a strategic reserve. They also argued, pointing to the collapse of several ROK divisions during the Chinese spring 1951 offensives, that the ROK Army’s professional competence and leadership were too immature to support such an expansion. General Van Fleet’s proposals had more success after Mark Clark replaced Ridgway in May 1952. Clark strongly supported expanding the ROK Army, and this support together with several other developments led to a reversal in American policy. Objections on the grounds of the ROK Army’s competence lessened after the performance of ROK units during several successful hard-fought outpost battles in the autumn of 1952. The South Korean government maintained a high level of conscription, which together with casualty rates lower than those of the war’s first year, led to a growing overstrength in existing ROK units that could be tapped to form new divisions. Finally, American leaders wished to end what they saw as an expensive commitment to a secondary area; building up the ROK Army would allow the redeployment of American units. The authorized size of the ROK Army increased to twelve divisions in October 1952, to fourteen in January 1953, and to twenty in May 1953. This change in policy did not lead to a reduction in the number of American divisions in Korea before the armistice because of the time required to form new ROK units and because of lingering doubts about the ROK Army’s competence. From December 1952 to the end of the war, an average of ten ROK divisions were on Eighth Army’s front line; this allowed Eighth Army to keep more of its American infantry in reserve and thus lower the American casualty rate.

In hindsight, the move to help the ROK build up its own defensive forces, and thereby reduce US involvement in Korea, seems to be, if not the right thing to do, at least the necessary thing to do. Ridgway, who’d so brilliantly rejuvenated the EUSAK, opposed it. Why? “Ridgway was not an easy figure to know, or at times, even to be around,” as Victor Davis Hanson explains. Ridgway might have been a genius, but he wasn’t perfect, and he was sometimes inscrutable.

Ridgway bestowed benefits on the EUSAK which outlasted his command. At a moment in history when MacArthur’s pessimism might have become contagious, “Ridgway going on the offensive in Korea,” as Hanson puts it, might not only have saved the day, but saved many days thereafter, creating a psychological momentum and a positive self-concept for the EUSAK.

One of Ridgway’s uplifting tactics was to frequently visit the front lines, and when doing so, to be in the situation of his men, not above them, as Hanson explains:

Ridgway, with live grenade[s] and medical pack hung on his chest, appeared indistinguishable from a sergeant.

One factor which affected the EUSAK’s effectiveness was the frequency and patterns with which individual soldiers were “rotated” out of combat units. A high turnover rate among soldiers in a frontline unit reduces that unit’s cohesion.

The Army Field Forces (AFF) was responsible for training soldiers and providing them to commanders. Korea was one of several destinations for the troops which the AFF supplied. The AFF has since been reorganized and renamed several times; it is currently known as United States Army Forces Command (FORSCOM). Officers from the AFF needed to see Korea in person and learn about conditions there, given that Korea was the destination for many of the soldiers whom they were training.

Not only the rotation of individuals or entire units, but rather also a general manpower shortage, disrupted effectiveness. General James Van Fleet succeeded Ridgway as commander of both the EUSAK and the UNC. Van Fleet contemplated various actions to mitigate the manpower shortage, including experiments with placing ROK soldiers into EUSAK units to bring those units up to strength.

The disadvantages of individual rotation were clear. On the other hand, rotating entire units in and out of combat zones also has disadvantages. American military leaders faced this dilemma, and as they did so, their hands were sometimes forced by domestic politics — especially budget-related considerations — back in the United States, as William Donnelly writes:

In Korea, commanders at the regimental level and above reported that their units often could not maintain the proper level of proficiency. An AFF inspection team in autumn 1952 listed the major problems as “fast rotation, lack of trained officers and non-commissioned officers, lack of continuity of knowledge, with the ensuing lack of team spirit.” General Van Fleet agreed, writing, “it is a damn hard job to keep an army ever fit, ready, and eager to fight — especially when they go home faster than we can train them. It is a real challenge to every commander in Korea,” and “[W]e simply don’t have the leaders and the skills in the lower grades, or sufficient hard combat to produce an outfit fully combat effective.” Some senior officers in Korea argued that the answer to this problem was to change from individual to unit rotation, but the 1,552,000 limit on the Army’s authorized active strength left the service unable to either build new units or mobilize Guard units to support a unit rotation system. (Other senior officers, most notably General Ridgway, opposed unit rotation, arguing that infusing individual replacements into units better maintained Eighth Army’s combat effectiveness than swapping those units for green units.)

After Ridgway left Korea, he was appointed in May 1952 to be Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) for NATO. His work in this role was generally praised; he took NATO from an idea to a physical reality.

In May 1953, Eisenhower appointed Ridgway to be Chief of Staff of the United States Army (CSA). While this was a promotion and an honor, it brought Ridgway into some tense political conflicts. A complex constellation of civilian politicians and military officers discussed various potential courses of action regarding the situation in Vietnam. There were also decisions made about the size of the Army, decisions based on strategic doctrines about the need for substantial ground forces in the era of nuclear weapons. Ridgway at times criticized Eisenhower. He retired from his role as CSA and from the US Army in June 1955.

The last two years of his career were not pleasant ones, as Victor Davis Hanson writes:

National laurels and a quiet retirement did not meet a triumphant Matthew Ridgway when he returned from Asia. A forced retirement and endless controversies instead marked the next four decades of Ridgway’s long life.

After retirement, Ridgway was active, writing articles and advising presidents. He was part of a group which advised President Johnson on Vietnam. Johnson did not always follow the counsel of the group. Ridgway later worked with President Reagan.

Neither the Korean War nor Ridgway’s military career followed a straight trajectory. The vagaries of both were dramatic.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 3

In the United States, people born into poverty don’t simply have a chance to rise; they actually do rise. Not only do they have opportunities, but they act on those opportunities.

Income can be measured in a variety of ways. One of them is by dividing the population into quintiles. The top fifth is the 20% of people who have the highest income; while the lowest fifth is the bottom 20%. But each method of calculating income has strengths and weaknesses. “Income” is different from “consumption,” and the latter is a more accurate measure of a person’s experienced standard of living.

Remaining in a quintile, rather than rising to the next fifth, doesn’t translate into stagnation, because all quintiles enjoy improving standards of living.

The result is social mobility: The United States is a place where people can rise. In a January 2023 article, co-authors Phil Gramm and John Early explain:

Measured by inflation-adjusted household income, 93% of children who grew up the bottom income quintile were better off than their parents. Of children in the middle three-fifths, 86% grew up to live in families with higher incomes than their parents. Even among those in the top income quintile, 70% were better off.

This upward mobility across all income classifications was possible because of the growth of the American economy. Over the 35 years of the study, real median family income rose by 89%. This American cornucopia was spread across the entire income distribution — with the exception of the prime work-age adults in the bottom quintile who dropped out of the workforce as government transfer payments exploded beginning in the mid-1960s. They benefited from the growth in transfer payments.

Together with John Ekelund, the two authors of this article wrote a book explaining in greater detail their findings: that most Americans experience material improvement during their lives.

Mathematics and economics can explain some of this: as the overall standard of living rises, individuals find that their circumstances improve not only because their income has increased, but also because features of daily life like microwaves and smartphones have become assumed to be part of even the most humble life.

Without accounting for this overall income growth, three independent research efforts have measured relative mobility — the extent to which children reared in families in one income quintile stayed in the same income quintile, rose to a higher quintile, or fell to a lower quintile. The first, an extension of the Pew Charitable Trusts study cited above, looked at parental income from 1967-71, when the children were younger than 18, and 2000-08 when the children were 32 to 58.

The second study, by Raj Chetty of Harvard, looked at parental income from 1996-2000, when children were 15 to 20, and adult children’s income in 2011-12, when the children were in their early 30s. The final study, by Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, compared the income of children who were in their 40s in 2013-17 with that of their parents in their 40s.

Another bit of calculation explains America’s ability to lift people out of poverty: it’s important to distinguish between ‘earned income’ and ‘total consumption’ — as various goods and services are provided by the government, an individual doesn’t need a paycheck to obtain them.

Many states now offer free classes at community colleges: something for which people formerly had to pay. Likewise, senior citizens can receive various services for free, or for a reduced price, like bus fares, healthcare services, or access to physical exercise facilities.

Phil Gramm and John Early continue:

The findings of these three studies covering the past half-century were extraordinarily similar.

Several factors can hide the statistical improvement which people in the U.S. are enjoying: The changing and rising definitions of ‘poverty’ and the distinction between ‘earned income’ and ‘total consumption’ conceal the fact that, even for an individual who remains in quintile into which she or he was born, the standard of living rises significantly over a lifetime.

The share of adult children who grow up to live in a household in the same income quintile as their parents is surprisingly small. The chart shows that for the middle three quintiles, only 22.6% to 24.4% of children remain in their parents’ quintile — barely more than the 20% that would result if income quintiles were assigned at random. On average, 39% of those children as adults rose to a higher quintile.

The result of these opportunities is that the majority of Americans experience an increase in the standard of living during their lives, and enjoy a higher standard of living than their parents did.

Of children reared in the top quintile, 62% fell to one of the lower quintiles, including more than 9% to the bottom quintile. A significant number of the children reared in the top quintile who stayed in the top quintile as adults had incomes far greater than their parents, but statistically they could not rise out of the top quintile.

With few advantages and often trapped in failing public schools, 63% of children who grew up in bottom quintile families rose to a higher quintile, 6.1% rising all the way to the top quintile.

To be sure, social mobility includes the opportunity to move down as well as up. Children born into the very highest levels of income can, and sometimes do, end up with a lower standard of living than their parents. The children of multi-billionaires may well end up with fewer billions than their parents.

Downward mobility can be the result of deliberate choice: the child of a successful lawyer may simply want to be the curator of a museum, an instructor at a college, or a teacher. Downward mobility can also be the result of bad choices, or of unforeseeable tragic accidents.

These studies measure relative mobility by comparing the children’s income quintile then and now. Relative mobility is a zero-sum game — by definition, 20% of households are in the lowest quintile and only 20% in the highest — but income growth isn’t. The vast majority of adult children had higher real incomes than their parents. To rise out of the bottom quintile, children’s inflation-adjusted income had to increase by more than the growth of the income ceiling for the bottom quintile during the years between generations — 35% in Mr. Strain’s study. Children reared in any other quintile had to see their real income as adults rise on average by roughly 50% above their parents’ income simply to avoid falling into a lower quintile than their parents. The climb to a higher quintile is steeper still.

Fortunately, data from the Strain study can be used to measure mobility in a way that takes into account the extraordinary income growth in America between the parents’ generation and the adult children’s generation. When the income of the children is compared with the inflation-adjusted income of their parents using the real income quintiles of their childhood in 1982-86 rather than the income quintiles of 2013-17, measured mobility is dramatically greater. Only 28% of children reared in the bottom quintile had adult incomes that would put them in the bottom childhood quintile, and 26% rose all the way to the childhood top quintile, which required a minimum income of only $111,416 (in 2016 dollars) for a family of four in 1982-86. A family of four with that income in 2013-17 would have been in the middle quintile based on 2013-17 income distribution.

During the 35 years of the study, adult children who worked rode up the American economic escalator as average incomes rose dramatically. Those who climbed as the escalator rose moved up faster. Those who stood still or stumbled down rose more slowly, and those who stayed off the escalator by not working missed the ride. The mobility studies shown in the chart capture the effect of climbing, stumbling and choosing not to ride, but they miss the escalator effect, which came from the growth of the American economy. Many of today’s middle-income adults have a real standard of living that would have put them in the top quintile in their parents’ era.

This incredible income mobility is measured only over one generation. Parents struggle and sacrifice to provide their children with education and opportunities they themselves lacked. Millions of parents have lived out their dreams through the achievements of their children, generation after generation. As a result, America’s real mobility is most visible over multiple generations.

“The American Dream is of individual upward mobility,” Phil Gramm and John Early conclude: “Upward mobility is alive and well in America,” and “the vast majority of adults have higher income than their parents did.”

A younger person who immigrates into the United States, or a young person born in the United States, has exceptionally good opportunities to rise socially and economically.

Kennan Sees the Soviets Accurately: Only with Great Caution Should the Western Allies Join Forces

Between 1931 and 1963, George F. Kennan worked for the U.S. State Department. During those years, and afterward, he gathered information, analyzed it, and explained, both to the U.S. federal government, as well as to the public at large. He served under an impressive and diverse array of presidents — Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.

In 1941, Kennan was in Berlin, observing the operations of the Nazi government, which had taken over Germany eight years earlier. France and England were already at war with the Nazi government. Russia, i.e. the USSR, had recently switched sides, from being a friend of the Nazis to an enemy of the Nazis.

America was already supporting Britain in its war effort to liberate Germany from the Nazis. It was becoming increasingly clear that the United States would probably soon become directly involved in the war.

When Russia changed its allegiance, and started fighting against both the Germans and the Nazis, the English government under the leadership of Winston Churchill issued statements warmly welcoming the Soviet Socialists to the anti-Nazi cause. It is probable that many English political leaders had private misgivings about an alliance with the Soviets.

The question facing the United States was this: in American efforts to stop the Nazis, should the U.S. embrace the Soviet Socialists as allies? Like many officials in the upper levels of government, George Kennan was aware of the mass murders which the Soviets had carried out in Ukraine and other places. Kennan wrote to Washington from Berlin:

It seems to me that to welcome Russia as an associate in the defense of democracy would invite misunderstanding of our own position and would lend to the German war effort a gratuitous and sorely needed aura of morality. In following such course I do not see how we could help but identify ourselves with the Russian destruction of the Baltic States, with the attack against Finnish independence, with the partitioning of Poland and Romania, with the crushing of religion throughout Eastern Europe, and with the domestic policy of a regime which is widely feared and detested throughout this part of the world and the methods of which are far from democratic. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that in every border country concerned, from Scandinavia — including Norway and Sweden — to the Black Sea, Russia is generally more feared than Germany.

Kennan’s report reveals that, even after fighting had begun on the Eastern Front, the nations of central and eastern Europe were more worried about the Soviets than about the Nazis.

Such worries turned out to be correct. Although the war in that part of the world killed many thousands of people between 1939 and 1945, the postwar Soviet occupation of that same part of the world killed millions more. The postwar peace under Soviet Socialist domination turned out to be deadlier than the war itself.

Writing in late 1941, after the Soviet Socialists had started fighting against Germany, but before the U.S. had declared war, Kennan wanted to persuade the Roosevelt administration “that we should do nothing at home to make it appear that we are following the course Churchill seems to have entered upon in extending moral support to the Russian cause in the present Russian-German conflict.”

If it would indeed become necessary — and it did become necessary — to make common cause with the Soviet Socialists against the Nazis, then, Kennan urges, the U.S. should in no way endorse the USSR’s goals and ideologies — the U.S. should in no way portray the Soviets as friends or supporters of democracy. It should be made clear what was in fact the reality: any bonds to the USSR extended only as far as the war effort against the Nazis, and no further. This is how the Soviets could be seen as allies as late as September 1945, but become the aggressors and enemies in the Cold War as early as 1946 or 1947, depending on which date one chooses to mark the start of the Cold War.

The Soviets had made it clear that they did not support free elections, a free society, a free market, or free trade. The Soviets had both said and shown that they were willing to be allies of the Nazis as much as they were willing to be allies of the United States — they would do one or the other based only on which one would give them the most geopolitical power.

The fact that the Soviets had been allies of the Nazis until June 1941 revealed that they were not interested in a postwar world organized around governments of freely-elected representatives. The Soviets planned to receive help from the western Allies against Germany, but once Germany was defeated, the Soviet plan would be to destabilize the governments in those western Allies. The USSR hoped either to foster revolutions in France, in the U.K., and in the U.S., or to subvert the electoral process and thereby install pro-Soviet governments in those countries.

It had similar goals for Italy, Greece, Belgium, etc.

Therefore, Kennan wanted the Roosevelt administration to clearly articulate that the U.S. was cooperating with the Soviet Union only for the purposes of defeating the Nazis, and that beyond this one goal, there was no affinity between the two nations:

It is obvious that the Russian involvement in this struggle is not the result of any concern for the principles underlying the Allied cause and that Russia, despite its present involvement, has little desire to see England emerge as a real victor. Russia has tried unsuccessfully to purchase security by compromising with Germany and by encouraging the direction of the German war effort toward the west. Throughout the war the Moscow government has been most vehement in insisting that its own policy was based on sheer self-interest and in expressing its determination to do nothing to aid any warring power. It has thus no claim on Western sympathies; and there is no reason apparent to me why its present plight should not be viewed realistically at home as that of one who has played a lone hand in a dangerous game and must now alone take the moral consequences. Such a view would not preclude the extension of material aid wherever called for by our own self-interest. It would, however, preclude anything which might identify us politically or ideologically with the Russian war effort. In short, it seems to me that Soviet Russia could more soundly be regarded as a “fellow traveler” in the accepted Moscow sense, rather than as a political associate.

In sum, George F. Kennan is advising the Roosevelt administration to proceed in some military cooperation with the Soviet Socialists, but to do so with eyes wide open. The Soviets should be viewed as a military power which happens, at the moment, to have the same enemy as the western Allies have. There is nothing more to the partnership than a temporary alignment of military goals. Cooperation will cease as soon as those goals are accomplished.

Despite Kennan’s prescient warnings, the Roosevelt administration engaged in some public discourse which painted the Soviets in a better light, and engaged in conferences with Stalin which gave the Soviets a hand in shaping the postwar world.

Had the Roosevelt administration heeded Kennan’s advice more carefully, many lives would have been saved, and the world would not have endured the setbacks to the cause of freedom which happened during the Cold War.