No. 105 THE KOREAN WAR JUNE-OCTOBER 1950: INCHON AND STALIN IN THE “TRIGGER VS. JUSTIFICATION” DEBATE Tan Kwoh Jack Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies Singapore JANUARY 2006 With Compliments This Working Paper series presents papers in a preliminary form and serves to stimulate comment and discussion. The views expressed are entirely the author’s own and not that of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies The Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS) was established in July 1996 as an autonomous research institute within the Nanyang Technological University. Its objectives are to: • Conduct research on security, strategic and international issues. • Provide general and graduate education in strategic studies, international relations, defence management and defence technology. • Promote joint and exchange programmes with similar regional and international institutions; organise seminars/conferences on topics salient to the strategic and policy communities of the Asia-Pacific. Constituents of IDSS include the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) and the Asian Programme for Negotiation and Conflict Management (APNCM). Research Through its Working Paper Series, IDSS Commentaries and other publications, the Institute seeks to share its research findings with the strategic studies and defence policy communities. The Institute’s researchers are also encouraged to publish their writings in refereed journals. The focus of research is on issues relating to the security and stability of the Asia-Pacific region and their implications for Singapore and other countries in the region. The Institute has also established the S. Rajaratnam Professorship in Strategic Studies (named after Singapore’s first Foreign Minister), to bring distinguished scholars to participate in the work of the Institute. Previous holders of the Chair include Professors Stephen Walt (Harvard University), Jack Snyder (Columbia University), Wang Jisi (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Alastair Iain Johnston (Harvard University) and John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago). A Visiting Research Fellow Programme also enables overseas scholars to carry out related research in the Institute. Teaching The Institute provides educational opportunities at an advanced level to professionals from both the private and public sectors in Singapore as well as overseas through graduate programmes, namely, the Master of Science in Strategic Studies, the Master of Science in International Relations and the Master of Science in International Political Economy. These programmes are conducted full-time and part-time by an international faculty. The Institute also has a Doctoral programme for research in these fields of study. In addition to these graduate programmes, the Institute also teaches various modules in courses conducted by the SAFTI Military Institute, SAF Warrant Officers’ School, Civil Defence Academy, Singapore Technologies College, and the Defence and Home Affairs Ministries. The Institute also runs a one-semester course on ‘The International Relations of the Asia Pacific’ for undergraduates in NTU. Networking The Institute convenes workshops, seminars and colloquia on aspects of international relations and security development that are of contemporary and historical significance. Highlights of the Institute’s activities include a regular Colloquium on Strategic Trends in the 21st Century, the annual Asia Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO) and the biennial Asia Pacific Security Conference (held in conjunction with Asian Aerospace). IDSS staff participate in Track II security dialogues and scholarly conferences in the Asia-Pacific. IDSS has contacts and collaborations with many international think tanks and research institutes throughout Asia, Europe and the United States. The Institute has also participated in research projects funded by the Ford Foundation and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. It also serves as the Secretariat for the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), Singapore. Through these activities, the Institute aims to develop and nurture a network of researchers whose collaborative efforts will yield new insights into security issues of interest to Singapore and the region i ABSTRACT China’s decision to enter the Korean War in 1950 is a historical puzzle: why would China, a much weaker country, enter into a military confrontation with the United States, a superpower? The rationale for Chairman Mao Zedong’s intervention in Korea carries strategic lessons for the contemporary crisis on the Korean Peninsula, as well as for Sino-American relations. Utilizing newly declassified Russian documents made available at the Cold War International History Project from 1994- 2004, this paper critically assesses this new evidence concurrently with the existing literature that has emerged so far, and seeks to contribute to the “trigger vs. justification” debate surrounding China’s entry. Three shortcomings of this debate are identified: 1) whether Mao would have intervened had the US military stopped at the 38th parallel is difficult to determine; 2) Mao’s vacillations up till the very last minute cast doubt on the justification argument i.e. offensive intervention driven by revolutionary ideology and politics; and 3) as a result, this ignores the complex dimensions of decision-making and interaction between Stalin and the Chinese leadership, as well as within the Chinese leadership itself. This paper argues that one significant variable overlooked heretofore is the American landings at Inchon on 19 September 1950. This is followed by in-depth analyses of the following three main interactions that Inchon engendered – 1) the policy shifts within the Truman administration; 2) the Stalin-Mao manoeuvres; and 3) the debates and dilemmas within the Chinese Politburo. This paper concludes that it was Inchon, along with additional pressure from Stalin, and not the crossing of the 38th parallel, that triggered China’s eventual entry into Korea. ****************** Tan Kwoh Jack is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He completed his Master of Science in International Relations from IDSS in 2005. He also holds a Graduate Diploma in Political Science from the University of Melbourne (2004) and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Tasmania (2002). His research interests include Cold War and Korean War diplomatic histories, United States foreign policy, and postcolonial International Relations. He thanks Evelyn Goh, Khong Yuen Foong, and Ang Cheng Guan for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ii THE KOREAN WAR JUNE-OCTOBER 1950: INCHON AND STALIN IN THE “TRIGGER VS. JUSTIFICATION” DEBATE INTRODUCTION The Sino-American confrontation in the Korean War witnessed the most populous nation as well as the most powerful country at war for the first time. China inflicted on the United States the longest retreat in its military history, and the war spurred American re-armament not undertaken since the end of the Second World War. This watershed event embroiled the two countries in a bitter, expensive, and inconclusive conflict that strained relations for the subsequent two decades. Most importantly, it manifested the Cold War into Asia, in a political and military confrontation of major proportions. 1 Yet, were these foregone conclusions? Why was China, with its stark qualitative and technological inferiority, confident of winning? What compelled China into war, military inferiority and domestic difficulties notwithstanding? This paper focuses on the critical first four months of the Korean War, and engages the pertinent and ongoing contentions about China’s decision to confront the US in Korea. Many earlier scholars attribute China’s entry into the Korean War to be triggered by the US advance across the 38th parallel, and towards the Yalu River.2 Allen Whiting in his classic landmark study China Crosses the Yalu amply explored 1 Jonathan Pollack, “The Korean War and Sino-American Relations”, in Harry Harding and Yuan Ming, eds., Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade, Wirmington, Delaware, A Scholarly Imprint, 1989, p. 213. 2 See, for example, Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang, China Under Threat: The Politics of Strategy and Diplomacy, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, pp. 25-62; Peter Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War, London and New York, Longman, 1986, pp. 189-201; Ronald Keith, The Diplomacy of Zhou Enlai, New York, St. Martin’s, 1989, pp. 45-7; Robert Simmons, The Strained Alliance: Peking, Pyongyang, Moscow, and the Politics of the Korean Civil War, New York, The Free Press, 1975; Richard Whelan, Drawing the Line: The Korean War, 1950-1953, Boston, Little, Brown, 1990, pp. 236-8. 1 the question, and his conclusions enjoy wide acceptance in the West even today. He contends that Chinese xenophobic attitudes, security concerns, expansionist tendencies and Communist ideology were the reasons the PRC entered the war.3 Writing twenty years later, William Stueck argues that the intervention might have been altogether averted had the US adopted different tactics in the aftermath of Inchon, specifically in not crossing the 38th parallel. 4 A substantial majority of Chinese scholars also share these assumptions, manifested in Chinese publications on the “war to resist America and assist Korea” that appeared in the 1980s.5 In the 1980s,