The Impact of the Korean War on the World (Essay Sample)

First and Last Name Instructor Course Name Due Date The Impact of the Korean War on the World Introduction The Korean War continues to define relations between East Asians today. Though the fighting concluded in 1953, the war between the two nations of the divided Korean peninsula has never formally concluded and the two sides are still officially at war. Though there never has been a satisfying resolution to the conflict, the war itself had the effect of reshaping the politics of the wider region. It is likely that the world would look different today had it ended differently or never began at all. This paper is interested in exploring the effects of the Korean War on the world, particularly the United States and the East Asian region. The United States came into its own as a military superpower in large part because of the Korean War. Chinese relations between the mainland and Taiwan were affected by it. Japanese postwar recovery was significantly affected. Finally, the Korean peninsula continues to bear the scars of the conflict, and the contemporary politics of both countries have echoes of the fighting that took place in the mid-Twentieth Century. How The United States Was Remade by Korea Following World War II, the United States emerged as the single major power that had been left largely undamaged by the effects of the fighting. Militarily and economically, the US was on the rise. But while the war had established it as a powerful country on the world stage, the United States was not yet the superpower that it would later become. For most of its history, American politicians were wary of entering the United States into foreign conflicts. Since the country was formed in opposition to the power of Great Britain, it was feared that a powerful standing army could become a threat to the liberty of its citizens. Even when the country was mobilized for war, the military usually shrunk in size when the conflict was over (Cumings 190). This changed with the Korean War. For the first time ever, the United States stationed thousands of soldiers overseas in regions that were far from American territory (Cumings 196). The effect of this change was that the United States military could exert influence by projecting power across the globe. By creating military bases which were more or less permanently stationed on foreign soil, the United States could check regional powers all over the globe. Psychologically, the spread of US military bases throughout East Asia had effects on the way that Americans saw themselves. At the time, the conflict was viewed by many academics as a “police action” meant to defend the Republic of Korea and combat the spread of Communism (Cumings 204). But it also had the effect of convincing large portions of the American public that the United States was a uniquely powerful country with a special responsibility to bring peace to the world by deterring aggression. The United States effectively became a kind of neo-colonial power. Though it did not formally acquire new colonies, it did create a network of countries that were largely or entirely dependent on the US military to ensure their security. This helped to create a strong sense of confidence in the strength of the American military. This confidence, in turn, helped to justify the expense of the large-scale spending required to keep this global military funded. Bombers and aircraft designed during World War II but intended to be scrapped after the war ended instead were rescued by the Korean War (Cumings 195-196). After the war concluded, these new technologies became part of the American arsenal that reinforced the country’s strength. Though the war itself was bloody and its ending inconclusive, its aftereffects contributed to a myth in the minds of Americans that the country was unbeatable on the battlefield. Immediately following the war, the American public was ambivalent about what it had meant. Generally, the public came to believe that American had interceded for the sake of protecting its ally South Korea from incursion by the North. If there were atrocities committed, they were committed by the enemy (Cumings 209). The moral blindness that the public engaged in in understanding and memorializing a bloody conflict was nothing new. The United States had engaged in many previous wars, all mythologized after the fact to some degree. This willful forgetting may in fact be a necessary component in order to make war seem moral to those who make it (Cumings 207). What changed after the Korean War was the fact that the United States military was powerful enough to begin a conflict anywhere on Earth. This meant that confidence quickly turned to hubris. First in Vietnam and later in Iraq, the United States entered into conflicts with countries it had little history or understanding of, believing that American victory was assured in any case (Cumings 205). The failure of the American military in these conflicts dampened this enthusiasm somewhat. However, the United States still retains the network of foreign bases that it established during and after the Korean War. This means that the US is still living in the legacy of that conflict. The Effects of Korean War on China The Korean War was also significant for the effect it had on the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. It was the first international conflict in which the People’s Republic of China participated after the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War. President Harry Truman declared that United States would remain officially neutral in the civil war in 1950 (Matray 156). However, Washington was sympathetic toward the Nationalist government that retreated to Taiwan after the fighting was over. China’s entrance into the conflict on the side of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea turned China from a potential rival into an undeclared enemy of the United States. Having fought in Korea, the United States would continue to have a frosty relationship with the PRC for many decades. Even when Mao signaled that he would like to move closer to the West during the Sino-Soviet thaw following the war, Washington remained suspicious of the PRC’s intentions (Stueck 6). This meant that relations between the two countries would not normalize for many years. The civil war between the two Koreas also had a direct effect on China’s own civil conflict. Scholar Chen-yi Lin has argued that without the outbreak of the Korean War, the PRC would have moved to retake Taiwan in 1950. The United States observed the conflict in China was interest, but military planners did not prioritize defending the island of Taiwan from attack from the mainland. It was only during Korea that the United States shifted attention towards East Asia, prompting the United States to enter into treaties with the breakaway ROC government on Taiwan (Lin 1). Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet to deter the People’s Republic from attempting to reunify with Taiwan by force, effectively creating the stalemate that continues to this day (Matray 157). If the United States had not intervened, Chinese politics today might be quite different. Before it had grown into a superpower with military bases stationed around the world, it is likely that Washington would have seen a civil conflict in China as something outside of their control and not in their interest to engage with. But American involvement in East Asia had a self-reinforcing effect. As America became involved in Korea, it ran up against the power of The People’s Republic of China. When China came to aid North Korea, the United States had a new justification for maintaining its presence in East Asia. The United States would remain engaged in the region for the sake of checking a powerful China and maintaining the status quo regarding Taiwan. What Korea Meant to Japan Japan watched the conflict between divided parts of its formal colonial possession with interest. Japan was occupied by the US military when the war began in 1950 (Kanji 176). It had no military of its own, and Japan was unable to decide foreign policy for itself. But it did participate in the conflict indirectly, at the insistence of Washington. Recognizing that the United States had hugely increased its military presence in East Asia, the hope by American leaders was that Japan could be rebuilt as a friendly country that could check aggression in the region and maintain the balance of power between Communist and non-Communist powers. With its economy devastated after the loss to the Allies, Japan’s economy was in need of revitalization. Though rebuilding the country had already been an American project before the outbreak of the Korean war, the conflict offered a chance for Japan to benefit economically. The United States purchased goods and materials from Japan to be used in Korea. This helped the Japanese economy grow (Lee 109). This was helpful, as Japan was generally desperate for a way to grow the economy and help its people recover. Having lost Korea was a devastating blow to Japan beyond the destruction that the war brought to the country. After North Korea declared itself The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Japanese factories and land were seized and their Japanese owners were not compensated for the loss (Lee 103). Japan had to compensate for the loss of territory it had seized decades before and the economic activity that had existed there. American military spending helped the economy to recover and gave Japan an export economy that it would continue to build upon after the Korean War concluded. Taiwan similarly benefited from supplying food and other raw materials. The island’s lush land made it better suited to farming for export than Korea, which was rocky (Lee 108). After the war, Japan would use its revitalized industry to strengthen its ties with Taiwan and South Korea (Cummings 198). Having been devastated by World War II, the effects of the Kore...