Douglas MacArthur Starts a Nuclear War
* Famed General Douglas MacArthur Jr. was widely regarded as a military genius, perhaps most of all by himself. He spent almost his entire adult life in the military. Commanding US forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II, he liberated the Philippines and many other Pacific islands from Japanese conquest. After the war he presided over an enormously benevolent occupation of Japan, transforming a fascist state into an officially pacifist liberal democracy, one with an enviable progressive record of environmentalism, feminism, labor rights, and economic prosperity and technological development. In the Korean War, he carried out one of the most astonishing modern military maneuvers, landing behind North Korean lines and driving them almost back to the border with China.
* So how and why did he end his military and then political careers so disastrously? How could he have likely started a nuclear war had he been elected president?
* MacArthur’s military record, while rightly famed, was far from perfect. In charge of US forces in the Philippines when they were surprised by a Japanese attack (happening at the same time as Pearl Harbor), MacArthur's command was a disaster. Caught off guard, he panicked, went into a deep depression, and did little for several days.
* Then he retreated to Bataan. His forces were surrounded and forced to surrender. Melodramatically offering to fight to the end with his troops, MacArthur was ordered by Roosevelt to slip out of the Philippines by submarine.
* Once the tide of the war began to turn for the US, MacArthur pushed for retaking the Philippines. This was militarily unnecessary. The US military could have bypassed the Philippines as it did many other islands, saving tens of thousands of lives by doing do. But MacArthur’s ego wanted to see the shame of his defeat removed.
* An even greater failure was his during the Korean War. By pushing to conquer all of North Korea instead of just retaking all of South Korean territory, MacArthur was not seeing that this provoked newly Communist China. Mao intervened, sending in a huge wave of troops that pushed MacArthur’s men almost all the way back to the old North Korea-South Korea border. Only a massive bombing campaign, including chemical warfare with napalm, slowed and then halted the Chinese armies.
* That was when MacArthur made his third major military (and the first of several huge political) mistakes. He publicly called for nuclear bombs to be used to stop Chinese troops. He proposed that 30 A-bombs be detonated in a line along the border between North Korea and China to prevent reinforcements, along with heavy conventional bombing to break up Chinese troops within North Korea.
* For Truman, these statements were recklessness that could lead to another world war, one involving the Soviets and a nuclear confrontation. He sent a message to MacArthur calling for him to come meet him in Washington. In an episode perfectly revealing his ego, MacArthur sent back a message saying Truman would have to come to Korea. In essence, “I'm too busy, busier than you are, Mr. President. You come see me.”
* In one of the more surreal episodes in US history, Truman and MacArthur's staffs then began negotiating a meeting place. They finally settled on Wake Island, with MacArthur traveling far less of the distance than Truman. What happened next is the subject of a persistent story. Both Truman's aide and a general present denied the following ever happened. But the fact that many believed it did says much:
* Both planes arrived at roughly the same time. The usual protocol is the lower ranking official lands first and is there to greet the President as he comes off the plane. But MacArthur, in a petty gesture of one upmanship, ordered his pilot to circle and force Truman's plane to land first.
* Truman's pilot informed the President as to what was happening. Truman in turn ordered his pilot to circle and force MacArthur's plane to land. But Truman's plane had come much farther and low fuel finally forced them to land first. Truman, furious, was on the ground and there to greet MacArthur as he came off the plane.
* Again, the top people involved say the story is not true. For one thing, MacArthur's plane actually arrived first. But we do know the meeting was frosty. MacArthur did not salute the President, instead shaking his hand, which Truman thought insubordinate. MacArthur listened as Truman ordered him to stay quiet and not provoke a wider war. MacArthur listened, nodded, and went back to Korea. Shortly he ignored everything Truman had said and made a public call for an armistice with China, without consulting or even informing President Truman.
* That was the final straw. Truman fired MacArthur. (Or “relieved” if you prefer the official euphemism.) There was a huge public uproar, congressional hearings, even calls for Truman's impeachment. But the consensus of most is clear, that Truman made the right decision. Generals cannot undermine presidents, and civilian command over the military is a principle that goes back to the founding of the US, preventing the military from intervening in politics as happened so often in Latin America.
* One of the lesser known facts is that MacArthur actually had requested the right to use nuclear weapons without needing the President's approval. The Joint Chiefs of Staff turned him down. Subsequent accounts, including that of a MacArthur meeting with Richard Nixon, claimed MacArthur opposed using nuclear weapons. That is based on a misunderstanding. He opposed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was targeting civilians. But MacArthur had submitted a list of 26 “retardation targets” for A-bombs plus four more A-bombs to target Chinese ground troops and four to use against Chinese air power concentrations.
* MacArthur had run in three Republican Party primaries, in 1944, 1948, and 1952. The chance of anyone unseating Franklin Roosevelt during World War II was remote. In 1948 MacArthur declined to actively pursue the nomination since he was an active general. In 1952 he did very poorly because Eisenhower also ran. Like him, Eisenhower was a conservative (though not by today's standards) general with an impressive wartime record. Unlike MacArthur, Eisenhower did not possess such negative qualities as egomania and a tendency to speak without thinking. In fact Ike's cautious and diplomatic nature had led to his rise as a general.
* MacArthur could possibly have won in 1948 by resigning to devote full time to campaigning, arguing that his leadership was necessary to save the country. Truman was enormously unpopular and only narrowly won. His civil rights program angered southern racists, and despite using fear, Cold War propaganda only somewhat helped rally Americans to his side. Ironically many Americans, driven by the fears Truman helped create, felt he had not gone far enough in fighting Communism.
* In 1952 MacArthur would have a much better chance to win had Eisenhower not run. Ike only reluctantly entered the race, having turned down the chance in 1948. He had also been approached by both parties, and though a conservative was rightly worried about the effect fanatic McCarthyist anti-Communism was having on the country.
* Had MacArthur been president in 1948, he would have been in office at the start of the Korean War. Thus there is little doubt he would have authorized nuclear weapons against China, likely in December 1950 as he proposed.
* Had he been elected in 1952, taking office January 1953, the war was in a stalemate by that point. Peace talks had been in a stalemate for months, though they would finally conclude in July. But there was a offensive launched by the Chinese in early July. MacArthur may choose to simply threaten nuclear war to break the stalemate. Or he may decide this is the chance to do what he had tried early on as general, take all of Korea all the way to the Chinese border.
* Either the first or second scenarios would lead to several hundred thousand Chinese and North Korean troop losses. The China-North Korea border is not heavily populated, but perhaps as many as 100,000 civilians, both Chinese and Koreans killed. Radiation-related deaths will push that higher over time, and contamination will prevent Chinese reinforcements.
* But it is likely that UN troops, mostly from the US, would then push into Chinese and North Korean lines, walking through radioactive clouds. US nuclear testing had done this to troops before. Still, the immediate death toll would be far lower than the Communist side, allowing a “win” even if at least one quarter of the territory of the small Korean nation suffers from fallout and radiation-related deaths for the next half century.
* Korea is reunited, but at a heavy price. And what sort of nation would it be? South Korea was not even remotely a democracy. Contrary to Cold War propaganda, this was a battle between two dictatorships. Syngman Rhee's South Korean dictatorship was made up of many fascist pro-Japanese collaborators. It also included the landlord class, who held power over Korean peasants in an almost feudal relationship.
* Finally, Rhee himself was the product of US education and missionaries' influence. He was one of a small group of largely Protestant and pro-capitalist rebels who had fought against the Japanese. He maintained power both through sheer brutality and by enormous corruption. Other parties were often banned, and opponents assassinated. Just two years prior to the North Korean invasion, Rhee led a brutal campaign that destroyed most of the island of Cheju, killing 75,000 and rounding up 100,000 dissidents. Rhee actually launched attacks on North Korea first. Thus some scholars argue Rhee partly caused the Korean War, sharing as much responsibility as North Korea's dictator Kim Il Sung.
* Thus if South Korea ”wins” the war, for the rest of the decade Rhee would stay dictator over all of Korea. In actual history, Rhee, then military dictators, and then autocratic rulers ruthlessly ruled South Korea for almost four decades more. South Korea did not become a democracy until the late 1980s. Contrary to what one may wish to believe, Korean democracy did not come from US influence. In fact Korean democracy came largely due to radical student protests, many of them strongly anti-American.
* If MacArthur uses nuclear weapons, Korea certainly does not become free, and it is nuclear contaminated as well. Nuclear weapon use may have the same effect on their population as it did on Japan's, a nation calling for official pacifism, or at least an end to military aggression as policy.
* But that assumes the war ends with US nuclear weapon use. It is quite possible the Soviets may step in. MacArthur thought they would not, that the Soviets and China disagreed too much for the Soviets to take a risk for China. MacArthur was at least partly wrong. The two Communist nations often did quarrel, but the end of their mutual alliance was almost a decade away.
* China could call on its Soviet ally to step in. The Chinese may simply ask to send their troops through Soviet territory, be ferried by Soviet ships, have Soviet aircraft fight UN forces, or some combination. China could strike at the US by trying an attack on Taiwan, or attacking French forces in Vietnam. The Soviets may even try an attack on northern Japan, or provoke a confrontation in Europe, especially Berlin.
* The more daunting possibility is nuclear war. Any of these confrontations could lead to an all out nuclear war between the US and USSR. China at that time was years away from its own nuclear weapons, though the Soviets may choose instead to give them the means. So what would a full scale nuclear war look like in 1950, or 1953?
* The US at the time had a little over 400 nuclear weapons, the USSR perhaps 25. Clearly the US would “win.” Several hundred weapons would be used against the Soviets, destroying perhaps 100-200 cities plus an equal number of military targets. The Soviet death toll likely would be at least 50 million, perhaps double that.
* Success is far from guaranteed, even with so many Soviet deaths. The USSR is huge, and the nation had just survived perhaps 20 million deaths in World War II, plus 20 million deaths earlier in Stalin's purges, without any serious attempt to remove him from power. Perhaps the best that could be hoped for is a USSR too weak to try anything aggressive for some time. Stalin was quite ailing by this time, and a successor would be more reasonable.
* Perhaps two dozen Soviet nuclear weapons can do an enormous amount of damage to the US. If the Soviets retaliate solely at military targets, deaths may be “only” a few hundred thousand. An attack on the US itself could easily kill 5 million Americans. Think of the effect of the largest two dozen US cities crippled and radiated. MacArthur himself may be killed and the government thrown into chaos. Civil defense emergency plans for nuclear war were only three years old in 1953, only a few months old in 1950.
* So what if the Soviets had not retaliated? Then we are left with an almost as disturbing scenario and precedent, that “limited” nuclear war become a regular practice when the US gets bogged down in a war. Imagine nuclear weapons used against North Vietnam. Imagine them used against Cuba or Nicaragua or Angola, or against Communist (or those falsely perceived to be Communists) guerillas virtually anywhere in the world.
* Of course, radiation travels. Its particles are carried by the wind. “Limited” nuclear wars would lead to a worldwide spike in deaths from cancer, leukemia, and other illnesses. Sites that have been bombed can stay radiated for decades. Even today, testing sites in Micronesia are too dangerous to live on. (See Section Five.)
* It is quite possible nuclear weapon use could lead to a worldwide campaign for disarmament. Japan's constitution renounced war partly because of the A-bomb attacks. Nuclear weapon use may also lead to a great deal of hostility against scientists, even science itself. There are few things grimmer than imagining what MacArthur's miscalculation and ego could have done to the world.