THE TRUMAN-MacAR THÜR CONTROVERSY AND THE KOREAN WAR JOHN W. SPANIER THE TRUMAN-MacARTHUR CONTROVERSY AND THE KOREAN WAR THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts 1959 © Copyright, 1959, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 59-12976 Printed in the United States of America To My Parents PREFACE A few minutes after midnight, April 11, 1951, the White House announced that it would hold a press conference at 1:00 A.M. AS the reporters gathered, they wondered what could be so important that they should be called to a conference during the night. They soon found out: President Truman had relieved General Douglas MacArthur of all his commands — as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers; Com- mander in Chief, United Nations Command; Commander in Chief, Far East; and Commanding General, U.S. Army, Far East. The Presi- dent's statement read in part: With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the United States and the added responsibility which has been entrusted to me by the United Nations, I have decided that I must make a change of command in the Far East ... It is fundamental . . . that military commanders must be governed by the policies and di- rectives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and Constitu- tion. In times of crisis, this consideration is particularly compelling. There are few principles to which Americans are more devoted than the principle of civilian control which the President mentioned. Yet, in April 1951, General MacArthur, dismissed from his commands for publicly challenging and opposing the policies of his government, was received home with great popular acclaim while Harry Truman was burned in effigy and publicly booed. The consequent Truman- MacArthur controversy — which had actually begun shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War and had only been climaxed by MacArthur's relief — opened what one astute observer of the national scene has called the gravest and most emotional constitutional crisis that the United States has faced since the Great Depression. The issue at stake was no less than the continuation of civilian supremacy and of the President's authority as Commander in Chief and chief diplo- mat to determine the nation's foreign policy. vii viii PREFACE It is the purpose of this book to examine the nature of this contro- versy, and to accomplish this by analyzing the basic decisions which American policy-makers had to make during the Korean War. The most important of these was the decision to accept the Communist challenge and repel the North Korean invasion by force. The others were: the neutralization of Formosa; the Inchon landing; the crossing of the 38th Parallel; the "home by Christmas" offensive; the decision not to extend the war to China after Communist China's intervention; to condemn Peking as an aggressor; and MacArthur's dismissal. This analysis will bring out clearly the policy differences which separated Truman and MacArthur, how these differences arose, and why they developed to the point where the President had no choice but to dis- miss his field commander. The aim of this book, however, is not only to explore the Truman- MacArthur controversy; more fundamentally, it is to analyze the prob- lems of civil-military relations during a limited war. For it is the author's belief that the Korean War raised the question whether the conduct of a limited war is in fact compatible with the time-honored principle of civilian supremacy over the military. The reason for this belief, and the framework within which the Truman-MacArthur con- troversy will be analyzed, is set out in detail in the introductory chap- ter. This book owes much to two people who have read the entire manuscript, either in its original form as a doctoral dissertation at Yale or the present extensively revised and expanded version: Professor Samuel Flagg Bemis, without whose advice and encouragement this book might never have been published; and my colleague, Frederick H. Hartmann, whose personal friendship and kindness, as well as constant willingness to listen to my problems as I wrestled with this manuscript, I can only gratefully acknowledge. The framework of this study has also benefited from the criticisms of three other of my col- leagues and friends: Charles Farris, Alfred Clubok, and Alfred Diamant. The responsibility for this book however remains mine. It is with great pleasure that I thank the following cartoonists and their newspapers for permitting me to include their cartoons in my book: Paule Loring, of The Providence Evening Bulletin, and Vicky, of the London Evening Standard, formerly of the News Chroni- cle. At the same time, I would like to acknowledge my thanks to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for permission to quote passages from General PREFACE ix Courtney Whitney's MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History; to Time, Inc., for permission to quote from President Truman's Memoirs; and to Mr. Joseph Alsop, Mr. Walter Lippmann, and the New York Herald Tribune for permission to reproduce a number of passages from the columns of these two distinguished political analysts. I also wish to express my gratitude to two of my former teachers at Harvard University: William Y. Elliott, who first stimulated my interest in the problems of formulating and administrating Ameri- can foreign policy; and Henry A. Kissinger, my senior-year tutor, who encouraged my interest in military affairs, and focused it on postwar American military strategy. Lastly, I extend my thanks to the Graduate School of the Univer- sity of Florida for generously providing the typing service for the final draft of the manuscript; and to Mrs. M. Cotton, secretary of the Department of Political Science, and Mrs. N. Sibertson, secretary of the C-l Department, for typing the footnotes and bibliography. J. W. S. Gainesville, Florida January 15,1959