THE MEANING OF KOREA
pRESIDENT TRUMAN took two days to make up his mind on the use of American armed force in Korea. All the evidence to date goes to confirm that those two days were well spent. The time to stop Communist aggression is now, before a succession of limited advances in various parts of the world produces ,that arrogance which, confronted with a growing desperation among the Western Rowers, leads straight into a world war. The place at which to stop it is in Korea, where on Sunday, June 25th, aggression took the most blatant and barbarous form of a carefully prepared armed attack, but where the Americans cannot be represented, except by the indefatigable propagandists of Moscow, as harbouring any sinister military designs. The manner in which to stop it, once it was clear that the Security Council's demand for a cease-fire was not going to be obeyed, was by a display of armed force on a scale sufficient to convince the Communists that their aggression would not achieve its object, but at the same time limited in such a way as to forestall any fears that this local clash might develop into a general. war. All these exacting conditions have been met with courage.
So far the Americans have not put a foot wrong. American aircraft and warships have gone into action. They have had some small effect in hampering the advance of the North Korean forces and, it is to be hoped, a larger deterrent effect on the aggressive mentality which dictated that advance. The sporadic and incomplete blockade of the Chinese mainland by the Nationalists in Formosa, which was formerly inconvenient and dangerous and is now quite intolerable, has been cut short by the decision to put the American Seventh Fleet in charge of all operations in this area. Any impression that these measures are isolated reactions to a purely local difficulty has been fore- stalled by the decisions, also announced in the President's state- ment on Tuesday, that the United States forces in the Philippines would be strengthened and the forces of France and the asso- ciated states in Indo-China further assisted. The Communist threat throughout the Far East is at last being treated as a whole and met with co-ordinated measures.
At the same time it must be realised—and the Americans clearly do recognise it—that the military outlook is too narrow to comprehend all the dangers and significances of the rapidly changing situation in the Far East. It is much too early to say whether the measures so far taken in Korea will be sufficient to halt the advance of the North Korean forces, now moving southward from Seoul, before they reach the southern coasts and master the whole country. Something like perfect blitzkreig conditions exist, with a well-prepared force equipped with tanks advancing over relatively few roads through country whose inhabitants are not wholeheartedly hostile, whose Government is ineffective and unpopular, and whose forces are equipped only for police duties with light machine-guns and rifles. It must not be forgotten that the American service experts have long written off Korea as indefensible, and indeed hardly worth defending. President Truman's statement does not provide for the use of the American land forces, who in any case would find landing with heavy equipment a hazardous matter, quite apart from the possibility of resistance from the advancing Northern forces. What the President's statement did was to order resistance despite all these difficulties and dangers, because the principle at stake was too important to be thrust aside by short-term mill: tary considerations and because it was important above all things to demonstrate to the Communists that the United States was pre- pared to accept all risks in the attempt to stop further aggression. The North Koreans may not be halted by South Korean rifles or even by American aircraft, but their masters may perhaps be halted by the plain fact that the whole might of the Western World is now ranged against them.
Any hope that may have existed among the Russian authori- ties that the war in Korea could be turned to advantage must in any case have been greatly reduced in the past few days. The Soviet Government is already in a sufficiently awkward position in not having associated itself with the demand for an immediate cease-fire supported by nine members of the Security Council. Objections to the presence of a Chinese delegate on the Council cannot seriously be pleaded as a sufficient exTtse for refraining from an attempt to stop a war. Even if the Soviet Government got itself out of these complications it would still be confronted with the direct request of the State Department, delivered on Tuesday, that it should use its influence with the North Korean authorities to persuade them to withdraw the invading forces and put a stop to the fighting. And to answer the cry of warmonger now raised once more against the Americans it is only necessary to point out that the forces which attacked in Korea were Communist forces and the arms they used were supplied by the Russians.
If the American policy in Korea achieves nothing else it will have put the Russians in a position in which they must either help to stop the fighting or else come into the open as the enemies of the United Nations, which at last finds itself working whole- heartedly for the peaceful settlement of the most serious trouble it has yet had to deal with. Strings of abuse of the sort published in Pravda this week will be no substitute for an official Russian policy. But in fact the American policy with which the British Government has associated itself must do more that call a halt. It must isolate and limit the armed conflict at the very same time as it exposes and emphasises its world-wide signi- ficance. It must persuade or force the North Korean army back to the 38th parallel. And when that has been done we shall only find ourselves once more facing a series of familiar but unpalatable facts. Considered as a frontier, as distinct from the temporary dividing line between American and Russian forces which it was meant to be, the 38th parallel is unsuitable to the point of idiocy. The Koreans do not wish their country to be divided into two for the convenience of the Great Powers. Economically an arrange- ment which puts power-stations and artificial fertiliser factories on one side of the frontier and the main agricultural areas and many of the users of electricity on the other is completely absurd. The artificial arrangement which has existed in Korea since the war simply cannot be treated as permanent. If the. Russians decide to intervene to cut short the war—and there can be no doubt that their intervention would be decisive—they would still have to take part in the positive task of putting the country of Korea on to a reasonable footing. But if they managed to do that we should at last be on the road to world-wide co-operation and good would indeed have come out of evil.
The problem of Korea is a microcosm of the problem of the world as a whole. The first task is to arrest an aggressive development which has already gone so far that it cannot be stopped without the threat of force. If it is arrested, and if the dangers implicit in the use of force, however limited and safe- guarded, are avoided, there will still remain the problem of positive co-operation for reasonable ends. But before that problem can be properly fAced at all the fighting in Korea must stop. The best way out will be compliance by all parties with the cease-fire demand of the Security Council. Failing that the best way will be the fully effective use of American armed force to drive the North Koreans back to the 38th parallel. And if that fails and the conquest of Korea by the Communist forces is completed, then there will be nothing for it but the rapid carrying out of the other defensive measures announced by President Truman on the Pacific, in the Philippines and in Indo- China. In other words, the attempt to avert a world war will have to be . continued in distinctly worsened circumstances. But even if it comes to that it is doubtful whether the Russians, or the world in general, will ever forget the demonstration of strong determination given in the past ,few days by President Truman and the whole American people. This is the kind of determination which in the past has won wars. That should be enough for the Communists in Korea. But it will be far better if the Communists in the Kremlin realise at last what such determination could do towards the establishment of per- manent peace.
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