By Francis P. Sempa
The famous landing and its aftermath helped guide U.S. foreign policy doctrine in the postwar period.
The success of the Inchon landing of September 15, 1950, had long-term consequences for U.S. foreign policy in Asia and the rest of the world. Inchon and its aftermath represented the first real-world test of whether containment, as advocated by George F. Kennan, or liberation, as advocated by James Burnham, would be the guiding postwar doctrine of American foreign policy.
Ever since Kennan wrote his famous “X” article in Foreign Affairs in July 1947, in which he advocated “firm and vigilant containment” of Soviet expansionist tendencies, and James Burnham responded in a trilogy of books – The Struggle for the World, The Coming Defeat of Communism, and Containment or Liberation? – that containment was not enough, that we needed to liberate territories and people under Soviet control, Americans and American policymakers debated the best approach to the Soviet threat. Inchon and its aftermath changed that debate from an academic exercise to an actual policy choice.
The Truman administration’s initial policy choice was for liberation. General Douglas MacArthur’s battlefield success sent North Korean troops reeling across the 38th Parallel, and both the Truman administration and the United Nations authorized MacArthur to send forces into North Korea with the goal of liberating the country from communist rule. This remained the policy choice until Chinese troops crossed the Yalu River and entered the war in full force on North Korea’s side. Unwilling to wage a wider war against China, and despite protests from MacArthur, the Truman administration’s policy slowly evolved toward settling for containment on the Korean peninsula.
Read the full story at The Diplomat