IKE: 1950-1954 ID Quiz

Korean War

• Background:

• (1910) The Japanese conquered all of Korea in August.

• Koreans began a long nationalist/independence movement against the Japanese invaders.

• (1945) Aug. 6th Hiroshima; Aug. 9th Nagasaki

• Aug. 10th Soviets enter Korea

• Aug. 14th Japan surrenders

• Aug. 28th Soviets reach the 38th parallel & stop

• Divison:

• In a proposal opposed by nearly all Koreans, the US and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy the country as a trusteeship with the zone of control demarcated along the 38th Parallel.

• The purpose of this trusteeship was to establish a Korean provisional government which would become "free and independent in due course." → Though elections were scheduled, the two superpogers backed different leaders and two states were effectively established, each of which claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula.

• No agreement was reached on how to reconcile the competing provisional governments.

• The U.S. brought the problem before the United Nations in the fall of 1947, but the USSR opposed UN involvement.

• The UN passed a resolution on November 14, 1947. declaring that free elections should be held, foreign troops should be withdrawn, and a UN commission for Korea should be created.

• The Soviet Union, although it had veto powers, boycotted the voting and did not consider the resolution to be binding.

• ROK (Republic of Korea):

  The Soviets boycotted the UN-supervised elections in the south.

  No UN supervision of elections in the north.

  > Syngman Rhee was elected in the south, though left-wing parties boycotted the election.

  • Widespread corruption in the elections and the Republic of Korea began life without a great deal of legitimacy.

  • On August 15, 1947 the Republic of Korea formally took over power from the U.S. military.

  • PRK (People's Republic of Korea):

  * Kim Il-sung became prime minister.

  This division of Korea, after more than 1,000 years of being unified, was seen as unacceptable and temporary by both regimes.

• From 1948 to 1950, armed forces of each side engaged in a series of bloody conflicts along the border.

• In 1950, these conflicts escalated dramatically when North Korean forces attacked South Korea, triggering the Korean War and thus making the division permanent.

• Dean Acheson's "Defense Perimeter" Speech: U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's speech on January 12, 1950, before the National Press Club did not mention the Korea Peninsula as part of the all-important "defense perimeter" of the United States, an omission that critics subsequently took to mean that the United States would not defend the ROK (Republic of Korea) from communist attack.

• Crities of Agneson have argued that the speech seemed to say that South Korea was beyond the American defense line, so that American support for the new Syngman Rhee government in South Korea would be limited.

• Crities later charged that the speech provided Joseph Stalin and Kim Il-sung with reason to believe the US would not intervene if they invaded the South.

• However, evidence from Korean and Soviet archives provides some evidence that Stalin and Kim's decisions were not influenced by Acheson's speech.

• 10 Causes of the Korean War (Summary):

1. World War II (1941 - 1945)

2. U.S - Soviet Occupation (1945 - 1949)

3. Cold War climate (1945 - 1950)

   Partition (1948)

4. Border incidents (1949 - 1950)

5. Dean Acheson's "Defense Perimeter" speech (1950)

6. North Korea's invasion of South Korea (1950)

7. South Korea's plea for help (1950)

8. Containment (1946)

9. 🎛🎛🎛🎛🎛🎛U.N. collective security (945)

10. -Thear:

11. - In the first weeks of the conflict the North Korean forces met little resistance and advanced rapdly.

12. -By Sept. 10 they had driven the South Korean army and a small American force to the (Pusan) area at the southeast tip of Krea.

13. •A counteroffensive began on Sept. 15, when UN forces made a daring landing at (Inchon) on the west cast.

14. -North Korean forces fell back and MacArthur received orders to pursue them into North Krea.

15. -Oct. 19, the North Korean capital of Pyongyang was captred.

16. -By Nov. 21. North Korean forces were driven almost to the Yalu River, which marked the border of Communist Cina.

17. -As MacArthur prepared for a final offensive. the Chinese Communists joined with the North Koreans to launch a successful counterattack.

Rosenberg Spy Trial

• American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.

• For decades, many people, including the Rosenbergs' sons (Michael and Robert Meeropol), maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. When the U.S. government declassified information about them after the fall of the Soviet Union, the declassified information appeared to have ineluded a trove of decoded Soviet cables (code-name Venona), which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets, and information about Ethel's role as an accessory who helped recruit her brother David into the spy ring and did elerical tasks such as typing up documents that Julius then passed to the Soviets. In 2008, the National Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs

Hydrogen Bomb

• IVY MIKE (1952): was the codename given to the first test of a full-scale thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion.

• It was detonated on November 1, 1952 by the United States on Enewetak, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, as part of Operation Ivy.

• The device was the first full test of the Teller-Ulam design, a staged fusion bomb, and was the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb.

• CASTLE BRAVO (1954): was the code name given to the first United States test of a dry fuel, hydrogen bomb, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle.

• Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States with a yield of 15 megatons of

TNT. That yield, far exceeding the expected yield of 4 to 8 megatons (6 Mt predicted), combined with other factors, led to the most significant accidental radioactive contamination ever caused by the United States.

IKE’s “New Look”

• IKE & his Secretary of state John foster Dulles were strongly anti-Communist.

• However, they moved away from Roll-back and implemented a

"New Look" approach to Communism.

• Preventing the extension of Soviet Communism outside of areas where it was already established.

> By isolating Communism, they believed it would collapse upon itself → die on the vine.

• STRATEGY:

• 1) Alliances → encirele USSR

• NATO: SEATO

• 2) Militarism → protect vulnerable nations

* West Berlin

• 3) Support → assist nations fighting Communism

• South Vietnam

• 4) Covert Operations → clandestine services

• CIA

• 5) Nuclear Option → conventional weapons de emphasized

• 6) Brinkmanship → threats of massive retaliation as an instrument of containment forcing aggressors to back down

Nikita Khrushchev’s “Peaceful Co-Existence” (Malenkov 1953-1955)

• After the death of Stalin.

• A move away from the Leninist doctrine of the inevitability of war.

• STRATEGY:

> Communism & capitalism should accept the existence of each other instead of trying to destroy each other.

• Communism predicted the inevitable collapse of capitalism so there was no need to risk a nuclear war.

Mao’s First Five Year Plan

• Intensive program of industrial growth and socialization. -For this purpose the administration adopted the Soviet economic model, based on state ownership in the modern sector, large collective units in agriculture, and centralized economic planning.

• Industry grew 15% per year.

• Agricultural output grew very slowly.

Taiwan Crisis

• US did not commit to defending Taiwan (formerly Formosa) until the Korean War (1950-1953).

• Truman ordered the 7t Fleet to protect Taiwan.

• IKE removed the fleet to "unleash Chiang" to attack mainland China in 1953.

• PRC threatened to invade Taiwan.

• IKE used "brinkmanship" & threatened "massive retaliation" against the PRO.

• Soviets convinced PRC to back down.

• Victory for containment.

Iran Coup: Operation Ajax

• Background:

• In 1925, Reza Khan overthrew the weakening Qajar Dynasty and became Shah.

• Reza Shah initiated industrialization, railroad construction, and the establishment of a national education system.

• Reza Shah sought to balance Russian and British influence, but when World War II started, his ties to Germany alarmed Britain and Russia.

• In 1941, Britain and the USSR invaded Iran to use Iranian railroad capacity during World War II.

• The Shah was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

• The AIOC (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) was the UK's "single largest overseas asset" and a "source of national pride" in the British post-war era.

• Even as late as the "1940s and early 1950s some high British officials still believed that Persian petroleum was actually and rightly British petroleum because it had been discovered by the British, developed by British capital, and exploited through British skill and British ingenuity."

• In stark contrast, the Iranian Parliament believed the 1933 concession granted to the AIOC by Iran was "immoral as well as illegal"

• Mohammed Mosaddeq "challenged every aspect of the British commercial presence in Iran"

• The British feared that if Mosaddeg's policies prevailed.

"nationalists throughout the world could abrogate British concessions with impunity."

-The Abadan Crisis:

Dien Bien Phu: First Indochina War

• First Indochina War was dragging on and France wanted to crush the Vietminh communist nationalists once and for all.

• The French developed a strategy that called for the occupation of the outpost of Dien Bien Phu in the mountains of northern Vietnam, near the border with Laos.

• The French developed a military strategy based on maintaining fortresses, called "hedgehogs," in DRV territory.

• The French would build a large central base there and surround it with three artillery bases, luring Viet Minh forces into assaulting the central base and then destroying them in the crossfire from the artillery bases.

• As expected, the Viet Minh did attack Dien Bien Phu in early 1954, but Viet Minh commander General Vo Nguyen Giap saw through the French plan.

• He had Vicpamese peasants on bieycles carry artillery guns piece by piece into the mountains surrounding Dien Bien Phu. often right under the eyes of French troops.

• Vietminh forces then reassembled the artillery pieces in the mountains.

• Using these strategically placed guns to destroy the French airstrip supplying the central base. Giap launched an offensive with 48,000 troops, and Dien Bien Phu fell to the Viet Minh on May 7, 1954.

  • The Vietminh had won the war.

Geneva Conference/Geneva Accords

• The defeat at Dien Bien Phu humiliated the French and turned the tide of French public opinion against the war.

• The French government, wanting to end the fighting, organized the Geneva Conference, which lasted until July 1954.

• At the conference, diplomats from Erance, Vietnam, the United States, the USSR, Britain, China, Laos, and Cambodia declared a cease-fire.

• They decided to split Vietnam officially at the 17th parallel, into Communist-controlled North Vietnam (under Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh) and South Vietnam (under Bao Dai).

• The Geneva Accords required French withdrawal from North Vietnam and Viet Minh withdrawal from South Vietnam.

• The accords also promised reunification of Vietnam after free elections, which were to be to be held by July 1956.

Domino Theory

• After Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Truman's successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, outlined his U.S. Cold War policy.

• In the speech, Eisenhower drew on George Kennan's containment policy but went a step further in describing what became known as the domino theory.

• Eisenhower stated that the U.S. needed not only to contain the

USSR at critical locations but in al/locations, for if one nation became Communist, its neighbors were likely to turn Communist as well, falling like a row of dominoes.

• The domino theory led U.S. policy makers began to see Vietnam as extremely important.

• If Vietnam became Communist, domino theory logic held that all of Indochina, and perhaps even all of Southeast Asia, might become Communist.

• Well aware of the popularity of Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh in both North and South Vietnam, U.S. leaders feared that the free elections promised at the Geneva Conference, which were scheduled to occur in 1956, would result in a unified, Communist Vietnam.

SEATO

• Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

• International organization designed to be a Southeast Asian version of NATO.

• Military forces of each member would be coordinated to provide for the collective defense of the members

• Came to be viewed as a "paper tiger"

• It was primarily created to block further Communist gains in Southeast Asia.

• SEATO was dissolved in 1977.

Eisenhower & Vietnam

• The Geneva Accords promised reunification of Vietnam after free elections, which were to be held by July 1956.

• Once Ngo Dinh Diem came to power in South Vietnam in 1955, these elections were never held, since it was probable that Ho Chi Minh's Vietminh communists would have won.

• IKE accepted the cancelling of the elections and began backing the anti-communist regime of Diem.

  The US began to send military advisers to help train and support the South Vietnam Army (ARVN).

• DIEM'S REGIME:

• Totalitarianism → Used force & oppression rather than democratic means to initiate change.

• Protected aristocracy → Beginning in 1955, he used ARVN troops to reverse Communist land redistribution in South Vietnam and return landholdings to the previous owners.

• Peasant Relocation → Fearful of Viet Minh popularity and activity in rural areas-which had increased as a result of Diem's cancellation of the scheduled 1956 elections-Diem uprooted villagers from their lands and moved them to settlements under government or army surveillance.
  Precursor of the Strategic Hamlet Program (1961)

• Drafting → Forcibly drafted many peasants into ARVN, increasing his unpopularity in rural areas.

• Catholicism & Nepotism → Diem's government was also unpopular because it had an overwhelming Catholic bias and contained several unpopular, key figures who were members of Diem's own family, the Ngo family.
  Although Catholies made up less than 10% of the Vietnamese population, Diem himself was Catholic, as were all his other family members in the government.

• Persecution of Buddhists → Diem's government engaged in often vicious persecution of Buddhists, who made up the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese citizens. particularly peasants.
  Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Thue, the influential Catholic archbishop of Hue, in particular came into confliet with Buddhists.

Guatemala Coup

• Although most high-level US officials recognized that a hostile government in Guatemala by itself did not constitute a direct security threat to the United States, they viewed events there in the context of the growing Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union.

• They feared Guatemala could become a client state from which the Soviets could project power and influence throughout the Western Hemisphere.

• United Fruit Company:

• American corporation

• Guatemala's largest landowner

• To limit banana production o keep prices high, it kept much of Guatemala's land fallow

• President Jacabo Arbenz Guzman tried to reform the laws to give the fallow lands to the poor.

• PBSUCCESS, authorized by IKE → codename for the CIA first covert operation in Latin America, (Guatemala).

• The purpose of the operation was to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically elected President of Guatemala.

• The U.S. began to worry about the growth of Communism there due to Arbenz's policies.

• By recruiting a Guatemalan military force the CIA's operation succeeded in eliminating the democratic government and replacing it with a military junta headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.

• Arbenz was given safe passage out of the country.

• Soviet Communism had earned a reputation of using whatever means were expedient to advance Moscow's interests internationally.

  American officials and the public regarded foreign Communist parties as Soviet pawns and as threatening to US security interest.

• The public perception was that the Soviets were intent on world hegemony - which the Soviets believed of the US.

• The political and consequent social instability created in Guatemala 6 years later resulted in a very long civil war and its consequent, destructive impact upon the society, the economy, human rights and the culture of Guatemala.