25 giug 1950 anni - Development within the Korean War

Descrizione:

September 1950:
- UN forces stormed ashore at Inchon, at the same time, more UN forces and South Korean troops advanced and pushed the North Koreans back beyond their original border.

October 1950:
-MacArthur (American general)quickly removed the North Koreans out of South Korea, but the Americans did not stop. Despite warnings from China's leader, that if they pressed on China would join the war, the UN approved a plan to continue into North Korea. By October, the UN had reached the border of China, the war had now changed as Truman and MacArthur wanted something beyond just containment. As the UN forces advanced and secured their positions, Truman and MacArthur saw the opportunity to remove communism from Korea entirely.

November 1950:
- MacArthur underestimated the power of the Chinese. In late October, 200,000 Chinese troops joined the North Koreans. They launched a harsh attack, they were soldiers strongly committed to communism and had been taught by their leader to hate the Americans. They had modern tanks and planes supplied by the soviet union, the UN forces were pushed back into South Korea.

April 1951:
- At this point, Truman and MacArthur fell out, because MacArthur wanted to continue the war and was ready to invade China using nuclear weapons if needed; while Truman on the other hand felt that saving South Korea was enough and didn't want to continue on any further. However, in March 1951, MacArthur ignored the UN's instructions and openly threatened an attack on China. In April, Truman removed MacArthur from his position of general.

June 1951:
- The fighting finally reached a stalemate at the 38th parallel (halfway through Korea on the world map), and peace talks between the North and South started, even though there was still bitter fighting until 2 years later.

July 1953:
- Truman was replaced, Stalin died, and the border was the same as it had started with!


How did this experience help the US with containment?

The Korean War showed the Americans that they couldn't simply send troops to fight wars to contain communism, it was very expensive and did not work very efficiently. So instead, the US used 2 other plans:

Alliances:
- The US created a network of anti-communist allies around the world, SEATO in southeast Asia, and CENTO in central Asia and the Middle East. Within these networks, the US gave money, advice, and arms to these allies. In return, the allies suppressed communism in their own countries. However, the USSR saw these alliances as aggressive and even accused the US of trying to encircle the communist world. And so, in 1955, the USSR set up the Warsaw Pact.

Nuclear Weapons:
- The US had developed its first atomic bomb in 1945, but the Americans did not share this information with the USSR even when they were still allies. When the US dropped its first bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it killed 70,000 people and inevitably made Japan surrender from the war (WW2). It was clear to the US that atomic bombs were the weapons of the future, and that simply threatening a country with one could stop communism. However, the same was clear to the USSR. The result of this was an Arms Race, which later on ended with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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