BATTLE OF KOREA: What Ike Faces

In Korea’s hills, U.S. casualties were the heaviest in a year. According to the latest Pentagon figures, the U.S. is currently taking casualties at the rate of more than 1,000 a week (including some hundreds killed or permanently disabled). Since the truce talks began more than 16 months ago, the U.S. has suffered 44,700 casualties. In that time the battle line has moved hardly at all.

The Pentagon also announced that the U.S. Air Force has dropped more bombs in Korea than in the first two years after Pearl Harbor; the Navy and Marine air arms almost as many as in World War II from beginning to end. The Eighth Army has expended about the same weight of mortar and artillery shells as in the whole European theater during the eleven months from D-day to V-E day. And yet, during the Korean fighting, the enemy has grown not weaker, but stronger.

This is the situation which President-elect Dwight Eisenhower must shortly seek to change.

The method of ending a war which Old Soldier Eisenhower is likely to hear recommended by top officers in the Far East may not be simple to apply, but it is simple to state: it is to increase the military punishment of the enemy to the point at which he will consider the war unprofitable to himself, and call it off. The Communists have a way of liquidating militarily unprofitable campaigns. They did it in the Greek civil war when U.S.-Greek pressure (guided by U.S. General Van Fleet) had the Red guerrillas backed into a corner. The Reds called off the Berlin blockade when the U.S. airlift saved Berlin and cost the Communists too much in prestige.

With few exceptions (such as Mark Clark’s dramatic air assaults on the North Korean power plants), the Truman Administration has rejected the pressure strategy in Korea, alleging its fear of “widening the war.” But this hobgoblin phrase can be misleading. By implication, it calls up the idea of a vast jihad aimed at destroying Red China out of hand. Yet it need not, and this is where all the discussion during the election campaign got bogged. It is possible to keep the objective—an honorable and acceptable armistice in Korea—limited, while enlarging the means to reach that objective.

Dwight Eisenhower will probably be told by some advisers that increasing pressure on the enemy will “provoke” Russia into “starting World War III.” Military men on the scene take it for granted that the enemy is already 100% hostile and that nothing can increase his hostility any further; that if he is lying quiet for the moment, it is for good strategic reasons of his own, not because he has been placated, appeased or otherwise put in a good humor.