Movie review - "The Korean War" by Max Hastings (1988)

I've become a big fan of Hastings work - he has an eye for the big picture of war, the strategy and key players, but also an old journo's eye for a personal story, and dramatic incident: the peasants, pilots, mechanics. He's a conservative but not silly - justifiably angry at a lot of what went down: idiocies from the North Koreans who started it, then the Americans who fought back so well but then pushed it too far, the lunatics who wanted the bomb (especially MacArthur who covered himself with glory via Inchon then almost caused World War 3). He argues the war was ultimately justifiable, just far too long - if only the US had the courage to stop at the 38th parallel, then the Chinese the same. (This presumably informed American activities during the First Gulf War - the sensible one.)

Even though this was written towards the end of the Cold War it's fascinatingly apt about lessons for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars - the danger of fighting a technologically poor but tough enemy on their home turf in unforgiving climate. Look at this quote (it relates to Vietnam but it's still apt:

The political difficulty of sustaining an unpopular and autocratic regime; the problems of creating a credible local army in a corrupt society; the fateful cost of underestimating the power of an Asian Communist army. For all the undoubted benefits of air superiority and close support, Korea vividly displayed the difficulties of using air power effectively against a primitive economy, a peasant army. The war also demonstrated the problem of deploying a highly mechanized Western army in broken country against a lightly equipped foe... Yet because it proved possible finally to stabilize the battle in Korea on terms which allowed the United Nations--or more realistically, the United States--to deploy its vast firepower from fixed positions, to defeat the advance of the massed Communist armies, many of the lessons of Korea were misunderstood, or not learned at all.

It's an excellent comprehensive history: causes, big personalities (of which MacArthur was the best known but also Truman, Ridgway - who comes out of this very well, the dodgy and brave Koreans), a Chinese point of view, POWs, air force, navy, Allies (including us - Kapyong gets a brief mention) the battle of Imjin River and Choisin Reservoir, the shockingly poor performance of US troops at the beginning of the war and the beginning of the Chinese offensive, how close the Chinese came to winning, all the nationalities (Turks were fantastic fighters apparently), how the war revived Japan, the climate, the pointlessness of the two year stalemate (due to fights over POWs).

It was a fascinating war - not as epic or easy to understand as World War Two - but a fight worth doing and remembering and it's an excellent book.