This short account of the Korean War is essentially a critique of an American foreign policy that led to Chinese intervention in the Korean conflict and has poisoned relations between the two countries ever since.
It is also a critique of military misjudgments on both sides that led to unnecessary carnage in a war that could have and should have been no more than a brief but decisive incident in the Far East.
Edwin P. Hoyt's thesis is that the time was ripe for some type of peaceful accommodation with the Chinese communists in the aftermath of World War II. But American allegiance to the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek and a belief that Chinese communism was merely an extension of the Russian variety drove a deep wedge of misunderstanding and fear between the United States and the party of Mao Tse-tung. This, combined with the U.S.-U.N. decision to reunite Korea by crossing the 38th Parallel in the late 1950 after Gen. Douglas MacArthur's brilliant landing at Inchon, led directly to Chinese intervention and a widening of the war.
A greater insight into the desires and fears of the Chinese leaders by American policy makers, Hoyt argues, would have allowed the Korean War to have been limited to driving the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel, then ending the war by negotiations, thus precluding the fighting that continued until 1953.
In all of this Hoyt is particularly critical of MacArthur, portraying him as a myopic, glory-seeking egotist. He has greater respect for the more militarily astute Gen. Peng Dehuai, MacArthur's adversary.
He also points out the supreme irony of the war: After American hubris and dedication to total victory led to the invasion of the north and an expansion of the war, Chinese hubris and thirst for total victory then led to the war continuing even after the Americans had been driven back south of the 38th Parallel.
All in all, Hoyt's study is a needed popular reappraisal of American foreign policy during the early Cold War years. Unfortunately, Hoyt displays remarkable 20/20 hindsight but fails to consider adequately that ultimately American policy is formed by the perceptions of the public (who had adequate reason for fearing the spread of communism), not by the politicians and diplomats.
Clearly and crisply written - typical of all of Hoyt's many works in military history - it uncovers little that is new but makes a worthwhile contribution to the histography of the Korean War by placing it in a measured context available only with the passage of time.
- Morris is professor of history at Christopher Newport College.
* THE DAY THE CHINESE ATTACKED
The Story of the Failure of America's China Policy
By Edwin P. Hoyt
McGraw-Hill. Illustrations. 245 pages. $19.95.