Woodrow Wilson Center Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. xiv, 586 pp. (Tables, B&W photos.) US$45.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-19274-3.
Perhaps nowhere is the gap between the importance of an event and the attention it has received greater than for the Korean War, and so Samuel Wells’s contribution is to be especially welcomed. It is wide ranging and deeply researched (in addition to the focus on Korea it stands as an excellent account of the first decade of the Cold War) with some discussion of earlier and later events. Focusing, although not exclusively, on the rules of individuals, we are given fascinating portraits of figures including Kim Il-sung, Igor Kurchatov, Walter Bedell Smith, Curtis LeMay, and Andrei Tupolev. Some readers may find these unnecessary excursions, but they are well done and cover relatively unfamiliar ground.
The basic argument is given in the title, “Fearing the Worst: How Korea Transformed the Cold War.” Wells endorses the judgment of the veteran American diplomat Charles Bohlen “that it was the Korean War and not World War II that made us a world military-political power“ (488). Before Korea and the Chinese intervention, American defense budgets were relatively low, NATO was a paper pledge rather than an alliance that was prepared to fight, China was not seen as inevitably tied to the USSR or as a long-term enemy of the US, and limited wars were not a major preoccupation of the US. These are all characteristics that we associate with the Cold War, but in fact they did not exist from 1947 or 1948, but only developed after 1950. I will return to the theoretical implications of this claim later, but cannot resist noting that this was an argument I made over 40 years ago, and so it is not surprising that I think that Wells is correct (Robert Jervis, “The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War,“ Journal of Conflict Resolution, 24, no. 4 [1980]).
As Wells shows, before Kim’s attack—although Truman and his colleagues worried about the trends in world politics, especially after the Soviet A-bomb test and the Chinese Communist Revolution—they did not expect war in the short term. Although the now famous NSC-68 painted the dangers in lurid terms and called for a vast increase in defense spending, drastic changes in US policy did not seem in the offing. The attack and subsequent Chinese intervention magnified and crystallized the inchoate fears in the US and generated the political support necessary to mount a much more vigorous and costly policy. This was a real discontinuity.
Wells’s coverage is admirably complete, looking at US domestic as well as foreign policy while probing into the minds of Kim, Mao, and Stalin. Although most readers are likely to have at least some familiarity with the period, there are details and nuances for the experts as well as a good roadmap for beginners.
Unlike most treatments, Wells examines with care the military build-up on both sides that accompanied and followed the war. He also devotes a chapter to the growth and consolidation of the CIA, especially its vigorous and failed efforts to use covert action to weaken the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe, and provides a clear map of the twisted path to German rearmament.
While endorsing Bohlen’s view that Korea was a turning point, Wells disputes his judgment that the US overreacted, arguing that “the immense resources Stalin invested in his programs for nuclear weapons and long-range bombers“ (488) justified a very robust American military posture, albeit one that might have relied less on air power and more on ground forces. Here his position parallels Melvyn Lefller’s argument about the earlier years of the Cold War: that American fears may have been larger in retrospect indicates they needed to be, but given all the uncertainties, the policies were reasonable (Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
My two criticisms of the book may stem from the fact that I am a political scientist, not a historian. First, I think Wells could have probed more deeply into the fears that so influenced each leader and each country. We know that fear is a major driver of international politics, but what elements of domestic politics and the personalities of the leaders were significant? Overall, did intelligence magnify or dampen fears? When were fears particularly high and when were leaders and countries more relaxed?
Second, what are the implications of seeing Korea as changing—really establishing—the Cold War? If Korea was in a real sense an accident, this is a major challenge to theories that say that the Cold War was determined by the structure of the bipolar international system or the requirements of the American capitalist system. Proponents of these views, which I think are prevalent if not dominant in the literature, would have to argue that if Korea had not occurred, something else would have come along to produce the same outcome (for a valiant but unconvincing attempt to do so, see Walter LeFeber, “NATO and the Korean War: A Context,” Diplomatic History, 13, no. 4 [1989]). As a political scientist, I would have liked to have seen Wells discuss these issues, but as it stands his book tells us a great deal about what happened.
Robert Jervis
Columbia University, New York