| October 26 |  |
Editor says, what if the Soviets had vetoed the UN resolution to defend South Korea? muses Matthew Dattilo on the Today in History web site. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the November 2011 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In early 1950, the Soviet Union refused to seat a delegate on the U.N. Security Council in protest over the fact that the Republic of China (Taiwan) had a permanent seat on the council but the People's Republic of China (PRC) did not.
Soviets veto resolution to defend South KoreaThe USSR had veto power on the council, a fact that would become vitally important in June of that year when North Korea invaded South Korea. With no Soviet delegate present, UN Security Council Resolution 84 received 7 "yes" votes with three nations abstaining. This vote gave international sanction for the defense of South Korea. But what if the Soviet delegate to the council had been present and had vetoed the resolution?
Today in 1950, U.S., British, Australian, and Canadian troops landed in North Korea at several points along the shoreline of Wonsan harbor. It was the largest amphibious operation since the Normandy invasion of June, 1944. Although North Korean units in the area fully expected a seaborne invasion, the size of the force wading ashore quickly overwhelmed any effort at defense. It was clear from that morning that there would be no holding back in the defense of South Korea.
A new story by Matt DattiloAfter the Soviet veto of UN Security Council Resolutions 84 and 85 in July, it became clear that if South Korea were to be saved, it would take a coalition of nations operating outside of UN auspices. U.S. President Harry Truman, unwilling to act without Congressional approval, initially ordered only military aid sent to the beleaguered South Korean military. By the third week of July, a North Korean victory seemed certain. By the first of August, the remains of the Republic's military was being loaded aboard ships at the port of Pusan, the last city in South Korean hands. Those fortunate enough to escape the country by sea set up a government-in-exile in Taiwan.
A plan to retake the Korean peninsula was already being finalized by the time the North Korean communists declared victory on August 8th, 1950. President Truman's State Department had been quietly negotiating with a small group of like-minded nations in an attempt to form a military coalition. General Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in the Pacific, would be the overall commander of all land and sea forces. MacArthur wanted to make a landing at Inchon, a port on the west coast of Korea close to Seoul. It boasted some of the world's farthest ranging tides and the invasion force would have to deal with scaling up a seawall while under attack by North Korean defenders. Regardless, Mac was confident that 40,000 men could be put ashore while the tide was in.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff thought differently. Their plan was to put 100,000 men ashore at Wonsan, located on the other side of the peninsula. From there, the force would push over the mountainous interior of North towards Pyongyang, cutting off the North Korean supply routes in the process. With winter closing in rapidly, communist forces in the south would soon find themselves in a desperate situation. At least that was the hope.
Before any overt military action could be taken, President Truman needed Congressional approval. On August 15th, 1950, he addressed a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against North Korea and "any other belligerent nation who shall commit forces in their aid". Truman's advisers had informed him that he was on solid legal ground if he chose to commit forces to the defense of South Korea without a Congressional declaration, reasoning that it was enough to just inform Congress of his actions and place a time limit on the troop commitment. Truman wanted no vague legalities; he told his Chief of Staff: "No half-measures here---if we're going to war, it will be decisive". The Congressional declaration was approved the next day.
And so it began. Truman addressed the nation, hoping to gain support for another war only five years after the end of the most destructive conflict in human history. Public response was lukewarm, but supportive. In the next few weeks, Army and Marine Corps reserve units were called to active duty. National Guard troops from nearly every state in the nation were federalized. Naval units from the Atlantic Fleet were rushed to service in the Pacific. Civilian transport ships were hired out, leased, or bought outright to carry everything the invasion force would need, from toothpaste to bazooka rounds.
At 5AM local time on October 26th, 1950, the liberation of Korea began when the guns of all four Iowa-class battleships and 20 heavy cruisers opened up on targets in and around Wonsan Harbor. Carrier-based fighter-bombers, Air Force B-29s, B-50s and B-36s targeted anything of military value inland. The US Marine Corps First Division, US Army Seventh Division and four British Royal Armored Regiments spearheaded the landings and met eager but weak resistance. By the end of the day on October 27th, 108,000 troops were ashore and pushing west.
By the end of 1950, North Korean troops trapped south of the pre-war border were surrendering in brigade-sized groups. Isolated pockets of fanatics would fight on into early 1951, but the North Korean army had ceased to exist as a cohesive force. Coalition forces pushed to within 20 miles of the Yalu River, which marks the border between North Korea and China. A feared Chinese intervention on the side of the North never materialized. Years later, it would be learned that the overwhelming force presented by the Coalition forces at Wonsan and during the push across the peninsula convinced the leadership in Beijing that sending troops to fight in Korea would not change the course of events.
There was a real fear in Washington that the Soviet Union might become directly involved in the fighting. But Josef Stalin had no interest in Korea and when Coalition spokesmen publicly floated the idea of a 10-mile wide demilitarized zone between Korea and China, Moscow encouraged Beijing to accept the deal and wait for other opportunities. The re-unified nation of Korea had many hard years ahead both politically and financially. But within 25 years it would be a thriving democracy and an economic powerhouse in the Pacific Rim.
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Matt Dattilo
© Matt Dattilo 2010-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Matt Dattilo Blog Source: Jeff_Provine_Blog Labels: Soviet Union, Korea, United Nations, America, Stalin. Editor says, in reality there was a landing at Wonsan Harbor on October 26th, 1950, but it was only a two division force landed in support of the larger invasion occurring at Inchon. UN forces overran almost all of North Korea within a few weeks of these landings, but hundreds of thousands of Chinese "volunteers" pushed them back south during the winter of 1950-51. The front stabilized after that, but the fighting continued until July, 1953 when a ceasefire was signed and the border between the two Koreas was fixed at the 38th parallel, where it had been set before the war. No peace treaty has ever been signed and, at least technically, the Korean War is still going on.
~ Actually, Stalin was a fanatic regarding the Korean war. He alone was responsible for the two year stalemate along the 38th parallel from 51-53. The communists eagerly signed an armistice two weeks after the dictator's death.
~ An amusing question would be what China and/or Korea would _do_ with the south bank of the Yalu? I am pretty sure that the Cultural Revolution would get a lot of people contemplating a swim....
~ A good window for America to stand up rather than limited war: Stalin old and working to bide time & rebuild, Khrushchev not yet in place. Any earlier or later, and it could've been WW3.
~ I am confused here. Has Pusan fallen already. IF so the chances of the US trying to liberate all of Korea approximate zero. Inchon was the location because Truman had NOT given permission to liberate the North [MacArthur and Rhee did that on their own] and because the NK supply line to Pusan perimeter ran through Seoul. Wosan means a drive across the spine of Korea. Good luck with that with a Western mechanized force. No roads. Also this completely misstates the problem on China. Both Chinese governments claimed to be the government of all of China and rejected a two Chinas approach.
~ Stan, Stalin only became eager after the stalemate developed; he was less than enthusiastic about the initial invasion. Scott, UN forces DID push across the spine of North Korea in November, 1950 and hooked up with forces pushing east from Inchon. There were and are roads; just not great ones. And what does Beijing's intervention have to do with the government in Taiwan? A two Chinas approach? You need to clarify that one as it is not relevant to the issue of PRC intervention.
~ Re Stan Brin: If Stalin was a "fanatic" on Korea, he was curiously timid about it: it was Chinese troops, after all, not Soviet ones, who enabled the North Koreans to put up the fight they did. The timing of the North Koreans' acceptance of an armistice more likely has to do with Eisenhower's threat, conveyed to the Chinese and to Pyongyang through diplomatic channels, to start using nuclear weapons if they did not.
Or does Stan subscribe to the view thaat Mao was Stalin's obedient puppet? If so, he's in scarce company these days, though that view was popular in the fifties when it was assumed all Communists everywhere took orders directly from Moscow.
~ I'll quote (with updated links) an old post of mine at soc.history.what-if on why I think a Soviet veto would have made very little difference:
"Pursuant to its 'Uniting for Peace' resolution of November 1950...the Assembly may also take action if the Security Council fails to act, owing to the negative vote of a permanent member, in a case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. The Assembly can consider the matter immediately with a view to making recommendations to Members for collective measures to maintain or restore international peace and security."
http://www.un.org/en/ga/about/background.shtml
So if the USSR made action by the Security Council impossible, couldn't the
US simply have gotten the General Assembly to pass the "uniting for peace"
resolution a few months earlier than it did? (Special sessions of the
General Assembly do *not* have to be called by a unanimous Security Council.
"Article 20 The General Assembly shall meet in regular annual sessions and in
such special sessions as occasion may require. Special sessions shall be
convoked by the Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council *or
of a majority of the Members of the United Nations.* [Emphasis added]
http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter4.shtml The non-communist majority at
the UN could easily have called for a quick special session of the General
Assembly had the Security Council been paralyzed by the Soviet veto.)
Whether the "uniting for peace" resolution was wise or even legal is not the
issue here. (In supporting a shift of power from the Security Council to the
General Assembly, the US perhaps failed to adequately consider that someday
the General Assembly would contain a lot more Third World countries hostile
to US policies.) The point is, I don't see why it couldn't have been passed
earlier if necessary.
Mind you, even if the UN had not been involved and the US and a few allies
acted without its sanction, I doubt that would make any real difference.
Congress would overwhelmingly authorize the use of force--not necessarily in
a formal declaration of war. The US would provide the bulk of the force but
some allies would help, as in OTL. MacArthur's proposals would be rejected
by Truman, as in OTL.
In short, I think that those who regard Stalin's boycott as a terrible
blunder (because it led the UN to approve intervention) and those who see it
as a clever move (because UN involvement supposedly put restraints on the US)
are both wrong. It just had very little effect, one way or the other. (What
"restrained" the US was not the UN but fear of a wider war, a belief that
Erurope rather than Asia was the most important battleground of the Cold War,
etc.) It may not even have affected the issue of whether the war would have
formal UN approval.
~ Excellent points, David. I am not well-versed in Security Council or General Assembly procedure, so your comments are quite an education for me. My AH post is a bit of a fantasy piece in that is presupposes that Truman only approved the limited approach we took in Korea because the US was part of a larger UN force. For all I know, he would have pursued that course either way.
My dad is a Korean War veteran and he has always been of the opinion that thousands of lives would have been saved if the war had been an all-out effort to actually reunify Korea, which was the original intention at the end of the Second World War. Instead, the UN merely sought a return to the status quo.
~ Ike merely promised to go to Korea. He did not threaten to invade China. Stalin died, he was buried, the pact was signed, it went into effect -- all in two weeks after three years of fighting.
~ The UN provided a convenient fig-leaf, but IMNSHO Truman would have acted anyway. He wasn't a bit above doing what he thought was necessary.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
