What is it about?
This paper deals with the cooperation between the U.S. JCS and State Department during the Korean War after the removal of General MacArthur from Supreme Comander of the Fareast Command. Initially, the leaders of the two institutions had met once or twice a week to discuss politico-military affairs to implement NSC 68. By the way, because of the lapse of the strategic advisory function in the Korean theater mainly conducted by General MacArthur, they paied attention to the Korean War and made important decisions to continue the war. They paved the way to a limited war by exploring a new way of limited war strategy.
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Why is it important?
The meeting between the JCS and State had been a de facto politico-military consultative committee to develop strategies and perspectives to conduct the Korean War in terms of a limited war. The participants produced directives to decide the direction of the war within the frame of bureaucratic procedure. The members were generals and assistant secretary levle officers. They were open-minded and flexible to devise measures to conduct the war. As a result, the meeting shaped a grand design of an American way of war during the Cold War and even continued to work by 1962.
Perspectives
This paper is a military history as well as an organizational history of the Cold War, which sheds light on a de facto institution which had guided the U.S. and the Korean War to a limited war. I hope this article contributes to expand the understanding of the Korean War.
Kyengho Son
Korea National Defense University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Establishment and the Role of the State–Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting during the Korean War, War in History, December 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0968344518782712.
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