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A review by socraticgadfly
The Korean War: A History by Bruce Cumings
5.0
A good history from a left-liberal perspective
The bipartisan mythologizing? It all centers around how, when, where and why the Korean War started.
In a series of essays, Cumings' central themes are:
1. The "Korean War" goes back before 1950, ultimately to Kim Il Sung and others fighting guerrila war in northern Korea and mainly in Manchuria/Manchukuo against Japanese imperialists, then facing a post-1945 South Korea with much of its leadership consisting of collaborators with the Jaapanese.
2. Kim deserves, therefore, to be viewed as being as much a nationalist as a Communist, a la Ho Chi Minh.
3. There were various left-wing movements, many of them non-Communist, in South Korea, in the 1945-50 period.
4. Unlike with Vietnam, most U.S. history has neglected to revisit Korea the way we have done with Vietnam.
5. We understood Korea as little as Vietnam.
In light of all of this, then, Korean War history needs to be "revised." Cumings himself rejects the label of "revisionist historian," and I don't blame him. Many people wrongly call him an apologist for North Korea, and he's not. His writing on 9/11 and Islam should further illustrate that.
Beyond being told myths about Korea, we're told myths about the U.S. by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
Two examples:
1. Dean Acheson didn't "goof" in leaving South Korea out of our defense parameters in his famous/infamous speech. Rather, as later U.S. governments do, to the present, with Taiwan, he was practicing some sort of strategic ambiguity.
2. The decision to cross the 38th parallel, and to push all the way to the Yalu? That started with Acheson, not MacArthur. While MacArthur was insubordinate, and Truman was right to fire him (in a swap with the Joint Chiefs to give a military trigger finger to nukes) Acheson and pushed him on, then undercut him.
I haven't even touched on Cumings' take on how this influence the Cold War, the military-industrial complex and more.
The bipartisan mythologizing? It all centers around how, when, where and why the Korean War started.
In a series of essays, Cumings' central themes are:
1. The "Korean War" goes back before 1950, ultimately to Kim Il Sung and others fighting guerrila war in northern Korea and mainly in Manchuria/Manchukuo against Japanese imperialists, then facing a post-1945 South Korea with much of its leadership consisting of collaborators with the Jaapanese.
2. Kim deserves, therefore, to be viewed as being as much a nationalist as a Communist, a la Ho Chi Minh.
3. There were various left-wing movements, many of them non-Communist, in South Korea, in the 1945-50 period.
4. Unlike with Vietnam, most U.S. history has neglected to revisit Korea the way we have done with Vietnam.
5. We understood Korea as little as Vietnam.
In light of all of this, then, Korean War history needs to be "revised." Cumings himself rejects the label of "revisionist historian," and I don't blame him. Many people wrongly call him an apologist for North Korea, and he's not. His writing on 9/11 and Islam should further illustrate that.
Beyond being told myths about Korea, we're told myths about the U.S. by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
Two examples:
1. Dean Acheson didn't "goof" in leaving South Korea out of our defense parameters in his famous/infamous speech. Rather, as later U.S. governments do, to the present, with Taiwan, he was practicing some sort of strategic ambiguity.
2. The decision to cross the 38th parallel, and to push all the way to the Yalu? That started with Acheson, not MacArthur. While MacArthur was insubordinate, and Truman was right to fire him (in a swap with the Joint Chiefs to give a military trigger finger to nukes) Acheson and pushed him on, then undercut him.
I haven't even touched on Cumings' take on how this influence the Cold War, the military-industrial complex and more.