| Review of: | The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning by Allan R. Millett |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Jeffery C. Livingston |
| Reviewed in: | Diplomatic History |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 31, Issue 04, Pages 765-769 |
Book Review: Storms in the Land of the Morning Calm
Allan R. Millett is one of our generation's most accomplished military historians. An ex-Marine who directs the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, Millett has held an endowed chair at the Mershon Center of Ohio State University and in 2004 received the Society for Military History's Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement. For over a decade, he has devoted his scholarly attention to the Korean War, an endeavor that has produced several fine books and a number of thoughtful essays and articles. [1] In
Millett situates his account at the intersection of two historical developments. One was the clash between the rival visions of Korea advanced by indigenous Communist and anti-Communist revolutionary movements. The other stemmed from the strategic importance that Korea's location held for Cold War rivals. Koreans-like many other Asian peoples in the postwar era-scrambled to protect their national independence and sovereignty even as they fought among themselves, ironically with foreign help, over how to recast their society. Equally ironic is Millett's judgment that, notwithstanding Korean fears of excessive interference from outsiders, insufficient American attention in the late 1940s left southern Korea vulnerable and thereby compelled U.S. military intervention in mid-1950.
In American diplomatic history, it is possible to read a book on an international crisis without the narrative ever leaving Washington, DC. With Millett, however, the action is predominantly in Korea. In turn, because-one suspects-there are more sources in English available on southern Korea than on the north, he spends most of his time south of the 38th parallel. Despite a heavy reliance on American official documents, he demonstrates that Koreans exercised substantial historical agency. One gathers that, even if there had been no Cold War, there still would have been violent Korean civil strife resulting almost certainly in a Communist triumph.
Millett aims to remedy what he believes are severe inadequacies in earlier work by Western historians. In a caustic observation, he derides most academic scholars for weakness in military history, official historians because they cannot or will not confront past policy failures, military historians' incapacity to write about "anything but the combat performance of their favorite armed forces," and secular humanists of all stripes who drift helplessly when treating "the power of faith systems" broadly defined (p. 2). It seems only fair to ask, then: does Millett do any better?
As one might expect, his analysis of issues related to defense and internal security is the book's strongest contribution. Simply put, Millett is a terrific chronicler of organizational structure, personnel, and culture, and he brings to life what for many of us would have been a dreary litany of officers, promotions, chains of command, and acronyms. His discussions of the U.S. occupational force, American intelligence capability, and the South Korean army, navy, and police are lucid, and his evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of each are mostly evenhanded. His witty and illuminating thumbnail sketches of important Korean and American officers are especially valuable. He clearly likes the head of the American occupation, Lieutenant General John R. Hodge, whom he contends had a better understanding of Korean realities than did most other Americans. Indeed, Millett has many good things to say about the occupation's results, declaring that Hodge and company accomplished genuine reform in the Korean educational system and that they successfully managed a cholera epidemic and food shortages which otherwise could have ended in catastrophe. [2] He shows that the Americans tolerated more political diversity in the south than the Russians did in their occupational zone and that, in particular during the first year or so, American soldiers treated Koreans substantially better than Soviet troops did.
Millett's account of the occupation is not always convincing. Several times, he observes that when the government of Syngman Rhee assumed power, it confronted enormous economic and political challenges, which calls into question how much credit we should give to the occupation. He argues that "Korean oppositionists and American liberals" undercut Hodge's effectiveness by successfully "painting [the occupation] as an unholy alliance of Korean fascists and American conservatives" (p. 91). But Millett's evidence qualifies this assertion; it appears that just as damaging were Washington's confused and contradictory policies (an important theme in the book [3]), the increasingly poor quality of troops in the U.S. occupational army, limited intelligence assets, and an American inability to stop Communist infiltration of the South Korean military and police. As for Hodge, he never earned the trust of any important Koreans, which will lead some readers to conclude that the general lacked the skills to develop a feel for Korean politics and culture. [4]
Millett takes "faith systems"-political ideology as well as religion-very seriously. He is especially good on Christianity, which he demonstrates, more than any other writer that I know of, had an important impact on the thinking of many Korean proponents of modernization and on the political dynamics in both Seoul and Pyongyang. Christianity also influenced
Unreconstructed Cold Warriors will be pleased by how often Millett seizes the opportunity to denigrate anyone or anything linked to leftist politics and ideology. Of course, often his hostility is warranted. Kim Il-sung, characterized by Millett as a lucky opportunist who exaggerated his war record, committed just about all of the savage excesses that typified Communist consolidations of power. In fairness to Millett, he has harsh words for many southern anti-Communist politicians, who as a group were petty and fractious and who, even as they begged Washington for more economic and military aid, played the American imperialist card whenever it suited their purposes. Millett is particularly hard on Rhee, a self-centered schemer handicapped by his titanic ignorance of economics and by his pronounced lack of administrative talent, but who nonetheless manipulated the U.S. news media and, Presbyterian though he was, fought his enemies with conscience-free ruthlessness.
Ultimately, there is no question that Millett's heart is with the southern anti-Communists, whom he defends as genuine nationalists and patriotic reformers. Other scholars have noted that some had collaborated with the Japanese and were reactionaries. These charges, Millett insists, apply only to a small minority. Most were bona fide "revolutionaries" who leavened their predisposition to authoritarianism with murky proto-republican ideals.
Millett blames Moscow and Kim Il-sung for opposing reasonable compromises, offered by the United States and the United Nations, which could have prevented Korea's partition and civil war. He obviously does not find the available evidence sufficient to suggest a broad base of support for a leftist or for that matter more a populist, political alternative in the south. As an example, he argues that the Russians did not take seriously the thousands of people's committees that sprang up all over the peninsula in 1945-1946; apparently, then, neither should we. [6] He contends that the Autumn Harvest uprising of 1946 was less a genuine demonstration of grassroots discontent than the product of organized agitators who manipulated popular grievances. He recounts the brutal and corrupt policies of the occupation's governance of Cheju-do, but holds that the island's uprising of 1948 "revealed the persistent strength" of the organized Left in southern Korea. Led by the South Korean Labor party, radicals in Cheju-do challenged the Americans and southern anti-Communists not by articulating mass discontent but rather through "terrorism, partisan warfare, and subversion of the Constabulary" (p. 148). Other scholars have offered plausible arguments to the contrary, most notably Bruce Cumings and John Merrill. [7] Readers will determine for themselves who is more convincing.
Anyone who admires the historian's craft will applaud the scope of Millett's research and his gift for writing. The endnotes alone run for over forty pages. The thorough bibliographical essay reveals a massive documentary foundation comprised of Russian, Korean, Chinese, and American sources; it also discloses that Millett has read widely in and thought deeply about the secondary literature. [8] Millett's eye for arresting details and interesting factoids (the weather comes up often in anecdotes) combines with his hilarious, if at times cocksure, irreverence to make for an eminently enjoyable book. I found few outright errors of fact, though I was skeptical when reading that American missionaries arrived in Korea by plane in 1885 (p. 22). I look forward to revising my lecture notes to compare and contrast Millett with other scholars, including Cumings, William Stueck, Chen Jian, Peter Lowe, and James Matray, [9] and await the second volume of this study with much anticipation.
[1]See, for example,
[2]For an alternative interpretation, see Bruce Cumings,
[3]It is also a major interpretive difference between Millett and Bruce Cumings, who holds that the American role of global capitalist hegemon dictated a consistent policy for Korea. See
[4]Hodge gets good press as well in Peter Lowe,
[5]Of course, forty-five years ago, Fred Harvey Harrington noted the importance of Christianity to Korea and to Korean-American relations in his
[6]See Cumings,
[7]John Merrill,
[8]See also the historiographical essays referenced above in note 1.
[9]In addition to work already cited, see William Stueck,