2. Review of Alan S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu

2. Review of Alan S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu

January 31, 1962

Mr. H. George Resch

William Volker Fund

Dear George:

Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu⁹⁵ is a work of moderate revisionism on the Korean War, specifically on the reasons for the Chinese intervention in the Korean War as the U.S. troops advanced toward the Yalu border.

The conventional view is that Communist China helped to instigate a North Korean attack, was heavily involved in the war from the outset, and then lured the American troops up to the Yalu so as to counterattack. Dr. Whiting shows irrefutably that this is pure myth. Actually, China had had little to do with North Korea, which was much more Soviet Russia-oriented, and China made every possible step to avoid involvement in the war—sponsoring proposals for a negotiated peace, which the United States brusquely spurned; giving repeated warnings that it would intervene if the United States invaded North Korea and approached the Yalu—warnings the United States waved away as pure bluff; and, even after it had decided to intervene as U.S. troops approached the border, intervening in cautious and piecemeal fashion. Whiting shows, for example, that after the Chinese troops had crossed the border and beaten the U.S. troops away from the Yalu, they deliberately withdrew and disengaged themselves from any fight, from November 7, 1950 on. The implication, as Whiting points out, was that the Chinese might have been content to continue on this line, with the North Korean government left with token territory and the Yalu border protected. But General MacArthur was not content with such a settlement and blithely set out on a “final,” “win the war,” “home by Christmas” offensive against the Chinese. It was only then that the Chinese counterattacked in force, a counterattack that took place with no more troops than the Chinese had had before. It is, incidentally, an apt commentary on the American generalship that the Chinese were able to sweep the American-ROK⁹⁶ troops back despite the fact that the former were no more numerous, were considerably inferior in firepower, and were poorly trained.

Furthermore, Whiting makes clear that China only opted for military intervention when (1) its efforts for peaceful negotiations were rebuffed, (2) it was refused its seat in the United Nations, and (3) the Indian proposal for a ceasefire at the thirty-eighth parallel—eventually adopted after two and a half more years of bloody war—was shelved in favor of an aggressive American policy of compulsory unification of all Korea by American-ROK arms.

Two particularly important conclusions emerge from Whiting’s data: (1) that China’s policy in Korea was essentially peaceful and nonaggressive, and that even the intervention, when it came, was cautious and defensive; and (2) that the “tough” American policy of firmness, aggressiveness, etc., presumably designed to scare off the Chinese, simply didn’t work.

Other valuable aspects of the work are these:

• Whiting points out that the postwar Chinese “expansionism,” which has horrified so many, is simply a continuation of traditional Chinese imperialism and expansionism—an expansionism which was pursued by Chiang Kai-shek as well: e.g., over Tibet, portions of northern India (where China’s, or rather Tibet’s, case is excellent), northern Burma, Vietnam, Mongolia, etc.
• Whiting shows that the United States, soon after the end of the war, began violating agreements it had made with the Chinese Communists, in favor of discriminatory help for the Kuomintang. Whiting indicates the importance—which again the West tends to forget—of Chinese fears of a possible resumption of Japanese militarism and expansionism.
• He marshals a great deal of evidence to show that the Chinese were not involved in the Korean War at the start, including a study of Chinese troop movements and a severe cutback in Chinese military budget and troops.
• He shows that part of the reason for Chinese entrance into the war was the repeated American air and strafing attacks against Chinese villages across the Yalu.
• He shows the folly of American political and military leaders in blithely ignoring repeated Chinese warnings that China would enter the war if U.S. troops invaded North Korea and approached the Yalu. Various errors of General Whitney, apologizing for MacArthur’s grievous mistakes, including his wild speculation that China had discovered that we would not use the A-Bomb by espionage, are properly deprecated.

On the other hand, there are several important weaknesses in the book. The most fundamental stems from what we might call the “RAND Corporation approach” to the writing (the author is a staff member at RAND). The RAND emphasis on sociologizing and “game theory” often lead Whiting to engage in far-flung flights of sociological and psychological speculation: about Chinese motives; about its reasons for various acts; about the weighing that the Chinese did about advantages and disadvantages of actions, which are not at all based on the historical evidence. In short, too often Whiting abandons history for flights of sociopsychological fancy. Happily, the above valuable conclusions are not particularly affected by this, but other conclusions and statements are.

In specific content, there are various errors, some connected with Whiting’s frequent penchant for sociologizing.

For one thing, Whiting blithely assumes that North Korea launched the original attack, without even mentioning, much less considering, the considerable evidence that calls this into question—evidence backed by the fact that Russia’s boycott of the Security Council made time propitious for a South, not North, Korean attack. Secondly, Whiting, again without evidence, simply assumes that North Korea was a puppet satellite of Soviet Russia. Certainly, the “People’s Democratic Republic of Korea” was closely oriented to Soviet Russia; but, there is not sufficient evidence, certainly not supplied by Whiting, that Russia totally controlled North Korean actions. (The North Korean Communist Party, for example, now favors the Chinese over the Khrushchev line in the interparty dispute.) The fact, pointed out by Whiting himself, that Soviet Russia pursued a conciliatory line in the United Nations would, in fact, tend to point the other way. At any rate, the absence of any evidence or discussion of the Soviet position is a large gap in the book.

Similarly, I would like to have seen some fuller discussion of American positions and reactions on the Korean question, both in government and out—but there is very little on it. Moreover, there is a large gap in the discussion: when the tide of war was just beginning to turn, at Pusan, the British proposed that the United Nations forces stop at the thirty-eighth parallel, and this was vehemently opposed by the United States; yet, a month or so later, when the UN forces arrived back at the border, the British had meekly shifted their position, and acquiesced to the US-UN invasion of North Korea, leaving the Indians almost alone as conciliators. Why the shift? What had happened? There is no mention of this problem in the book.

Other defects and biases of Whiting:

• Whiting, weak on Communist theory, assumes that the aggressive, “tough,” “two-camp” position of the Chinese is the Marxist-Leninist position, thereby ignoring that other tendency in Marxism-Leninism which has been particularly developed by Khrushchev: “peaceful co-existence” and a recognition that “neutralists” are not “tools of Western imperialism.”
• Also, Whiting defends the American refusal to recognize Communist China or to admit it into the United Nations, even before the Korean War, as having “little choice” because a few minor irritations that occurred with consular officials when the Communists came to power. Surely this is superficial and overdrawn; further, here Whiting adopts the unfortunate Wilsonian theory of recognition of a country as a moral device and instrument of international sanctions—thereby violating the traditional American (and libertarian, nineteenth-century) position of a government recognizing any other government on the basis of its existence, and not on the basis of approval or disapproval of that government.
• Whiting also refers rather blithely to Soviet “obstructionist tactics” in delaying a peace treaty with Germany, which is hardly a careful description of the problems there.
• As one of the few “proofs” that Korea was a Soviet-controlled satellite, Whiting points out that many key North Korean officials were ex-Soviet citizens of Korean descent. He fails to explain that these were, of course, exiles from Japanese oppression who had taken refuge in Soviet Russia and then returned. Their presence in the North Korean government can hardly be called proof of Soviet domination.
• Another flaw in the book is Whiting’s failure to mention the highly significant fact that the U.S. decision to intervene in the Korean War was made in advance of UN sanction, which was just used as a convenient excuse by the Truman administration; Whiting makes it appear that it was a UN decision. Whiting also denies that the Korean conflict was a civil war, between Koreans, which it obviously was, rather than a true international conflict, in inception.
• There is also not enough material on who in the United States government believed, or did not believe, the Chinese warnings that they would intervene. Further, if Soviet Russia had been running the North Korean policy, how is it that the Chinese had no Russian arms, and that—at least from Whiting’s skimpy data—Russian-arms aid only seems to have come in force after China and America had come to grips?
• Finally, although this is happily only a hint in the book and plays no major role, Whiting indicates that he favored a U.S. policy of war on behalf of China against Japan in the 1930s.

Because of these defects, the Whiting volume is hardly a great work; but despite them, its net positive contribution is highly valuable, especially because very little rational and objective historical work has been done about the Korean conflict. The mythology about the Korean War is so widespread that a pioneering work like this performs a valuable, even if limited, service.