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The Communist strategists ordered the North Korean attack, never dreaming that the U.S. or the U.N. would fight them. The U.S. had plainly said it would not defend South Korea, and it was in no military position to do so. Total defeat in Korea was narrowly averted. Victory began—and with it arose a confusion about the U.N. goals. The U.S. was running the war, supplying the bulk of the troops, and to it belonged the main responsibility for defining the objectives of the war. When its policymakers failed, the voices of the . U.S. allies began to make themselves felt. As MacArthur, intent on victory, approached the Yalu, the Chinese, no doubt encouraged by dissension in the U.N. governments, attacked and threw MacArthur back. He rallied below the 38th parallel, started north again. The U.N. confusion over the object of the war grew noisier. With the firing of MacArthur, the confusion was not resolved. It was frozen.
The stalemate in Korea was not military. There can hardly be any question of the U.N.'s ability to defeat the Chinese in Korea. It was a stalemate produced by a paralysis of wills at political levels. Lieut. Colonel Melvin Voorhees' Korean Tales contains this passage of an interview with General James Van Fleet, who thought the war could and should be won:
Reporter: "General, what is our goal?"
Van Fleet: "I don't know. The answer must come from higher authority."
Reporter: "How may we know, General, when and if we achieve victory?"
Van Fleet: "I don't know, except that somebody higher up will have to tell us."
That sums up the last two years of the Korean war. The men who died fighting it did not die in vain. Even the truce, which represents a long-term failure of U.S. will, is far better in terms of justice than if the Reds had been allowed to overrun Korea.
But at the political conference that is to follow the ceasefire, in the dozens of moves that both sides can make in Asia in the next few months, the real measure of the Korean war will be taken. If the U.S. and its allies develop no more will and purpose than they showed in the Korean war, then further costly stalemate is the best that can result.