=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Chapter 10 - Korea and Vietnam The most important tests of civilian control came in the course of the Korean War (1950 - 1953) and the Vietnam War (1965 - 1973). These wars were fought for strictly limited political purposes, unlike the total wars of recent memory. These limited wars had to be waged in such a manner as to prevent them from expanding into larger struggles that might precipitate a general war and nuclear exchanges. The need to keep these wars from escalating required adjustments in civil-military relationships. Many of these adjustments deprived uniformed professionals of traditional authority and caused stress in civil-military relationships. The most difficult adaptations were those that led, in the words of one Defense Department historian, to "greater direction from Washington of military operations and tactics in the field"--the most cherished prerogative of the officer corps. The Korean War precipitated the biggest controversy in the history of U.S. civil-military relations. When North Korea suddenly invaded South Korea in June 1950, the United States decided to intervene. It supported the creation of a United Nations Command to expel the North Korean army from the South. General Douglas MacArthur, renowned for his leadership in the Pacific theater during World War II, became the commander of this international force. After containing the North Koreans at Pusan, MacArthur directed a successful counteroffensive that soon brought his troops across the 38th parallel, the dividing line between the two Koreas. MacArthur wanted to pursue and destroy the enemy army, a step that presumably would have led to unification of Korea under the South Korean government. Although President Truman and his military advisers were concerned that this initiative might cause the People's Republic of China to intervene, MacArthur was allowed to proceed. As feared, MacArthur's advance to the Yalu River, the boundary between North Korea and China, triggered a massive Chinese intervention. The United Nations Command was soon forced to withdraw below the 38th parallel. President Truman, supported by the JCS, then decided not to mount a second campaign to capture the North, but, sought instead, to reestablish the 38th parallel as the boundary between the two Koreas. General MacArthur disagreed profoundly with this decision. His public statements on the matter called for an all-out attack to force a decisive victory, an act of insubordination that led President Truman reluctantly to remove MacArthur from his command. Truman refused to accept what Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall, a career army officer, described as "the wholly unprecedented position of a local theater commander publicly expressing his displeasure at and his disagreement with the foreign and military policy of the United States." MacArthur returned to the United States to a tumultuous public welcome. Speaking to Congress, he continued to insist that there was "no substitute for victory," directly rejecting the limited political goals that the Truman administration had pursued in Korea. "Once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory--not prolonged indecision." General Omar Bradley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke for the president and the military leadership when he described this call for a wider struggle as the advocacy of "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy." Although the American people continued to honor MacArthur as a great military hero, they did not follow his lead in rejecting the president's policy. The dispute between Truman and MacArthur is of great interest because it is unique in the national experience. It posed a direct challenge to civilian control of the military, and ended with a strong reaffirmation of civilian control. The Vietnam War, like the Korean War, was broadly unpopular with the American people. It was also a frustrating war for the military because the political decision to limit the conflict led to curbs on the kind of military activities allowed in the field. When the Vietnamese crisis triggered the large-scale armed intervention of 1965, fears that China might enter the war led President Lyndon B. Johnson to insist upon close control of General William Westmoreland's command. President Johnson monitored engagements in Vietnam carefully and even specified courses of action in the field. Restrictive rules of engagement were enforced to avoid undue provocation. Certain operations were ruled out, including an invasion of North Vietnam, despite that country's extensive support of the South Vietnamese Communist, or Viet Cong, insurgency. One onlooker reports that President Johnson "made appointments, approved promotions, reviewed troop requests, determined deployments, selected bombing targets, and restricted aircraft sorties." This departure from normal practice, which stemmed from the complex nature of limited warfare, aroused considerable irritation in the armed forces. During the Vietnam period, Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, moved to strengthen his office. McNamara introduced reforms based on systems analysis, including its most important application, the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System, which was designed to control burgeoning costs. McNamara's success in strengthening his authority within the Department of Defense led one expert to state somewhat hyperbolically: "It is no exaggeration to suggest that a young mathematician only a few years out of graduate school can influence the shaping of defense policy more than a full general with a chest of medals and memories of a lifetime of military service all over the world. Civilian control within the Defense Department is now complete." In 1968, after three years of frustrating failure to "pacify" South Vietnam, President Johnson decided to seek a negotiated settlement with the Viet Cong and North Vietnam. This frank recognition of failure proved unpopular with the military leadership. Starting in 1968 and continuing through the administration of President Richard Nixon, however, the uniformed services cooperated loyally with the "build-down" of the U.S. forces in Vietnam that took place from 1969 until the Paris Peace treaty of 1973 ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The pressures of wartime, opposition to the McNamara reforms, and the disillusionment of defeat did not erode the traditional military acceptance of civilian control.