Was Korea a necessary war for the United States? What would have happened if Americans had stayed out?

Answer 1

You do not seem to have a good grasp of that event and your question belays a political bias. The US ended up in the Korean War becaue the United Nations voted to intervene and we are, and were, an active member of the UN. Korea was the first challenge for the UN and while the US did a lot as did England, Turkey, Greece and others the United Nations failed its first test of will. Korea was not a US war it was a UN war. The US served as the military arm of the UN. Had the UN not intervened, millions of South Koreans would have lived lives of slavery and poverty for the last six or seven decades and the tremendous talent of the Korean people would have been deprived to the world. South Korea is a technologically and socially advanced society and they live, with courage, on the edge of hell which is North Korea.

Answer 2

Had the US stayed out the UN would have most likely followed the path of the League of Nations and have been a thing of the past by 1955. Korea would be one country similar to what North Korea is today, unless China and the USSR and a falling out about Korea. Then it might have been part of China or the USSR.

Answer 3

Two possibilities:
1) The 'nut' in North Korea would be starving twice the amount of people.

2) A united Korea in the same place as Vietnam is today (growing economy, good relations with the west).

Since these two viewpoints are polar opposites, the only thing I can say is it was the right thing at the time, and it worked out better than Vietnam. Today, South Korea is a vibrant, technologically advanced nation, thanks in large part to U.S. intervention during the war.

Answer 4

The United States entered the Korean conflict in order to curb the growth of Soviet power in the region and to consolidate Japanese influence in the region. Furthermore, it has become quite clear that NSC-68 played a key role in determining that any and every corner of the earth was relevant to US interests, so that any change in government that did not please the US' government would be eradicated. These premises were substantial to US international policy in the early cold war and the making of the unipolar world.
First, the belief of the Truman-Eisenhower administrations that there was a monolithic Sino-Soviet block intent on taking over the world have been proved wrong not only by the Sino-Soviet rift in policy but also by documents released after the fall of the Soviet Union which clearly demonstrate both Mao and Stalin were more interested in national security than the expansion of empire. If anything, Chinese commitment to aiding revolutionaries was perceived as a matter of ideological solidarity rather than as a resource to empire.
In the case of Korea, it was divided in order to allay US fear of an imaginary Soviet expansion. It is now clear that the Korean nationalist movement was indigenous and the S. Korean Syngman Rhee was clearly US imposed.
The UN was driven by the US to enter this Civil War in order to secure an outcome agreeable to the US. While inconsistent with self-determination, the backing of brutal dictator Rhee was essential to the US' commitment to the extermination of non-capitalist strategies of development.
COunter-factual history is not useful, but i will venture into it. Given the nature of early S. Korean and N.Korean governments, when S. Korea was a torturer's paradise and the North was trying to unify the peninsula under social justice and sovereignty.... it seems quite clear to me that had the US not intervened we might have found out what happens when communist governments develop without war and economic aggression. An attacked government is always repressive, as the Bush administration demonstrates, I would have liked to see an unhindered Soviet Union. But the again, to try to figure out Europe and the US wihtout an imperial attitude is to work on a counterfactual history of about 500 years...

Answer 5

if the Americans had stayed out, i believe that north korea would have eventually conquered all of south korea and today the whole korea would be like what north korea is today.

i would have to say its a good thing American got involved.

i think that because of the United Nations, America and other allies were bound to get involved to help out other democratic countries.

Answer 6

Then North Korea might take over South Korea and unite it one under communist administration. america tried to offer up the North Korean aggression against South Korea under a chilly conflict "containment" coverage. chilly conflict s frightening and letting North Korea take over South Korea might additionally threatened Japan and it is pacific peninsula.

Answer 7

At the time, Korea was a necessary war for the United States (using the criteria of national interest defined as national strategic necessity). In the context of the early Cold War, the Korean peninsula was a geopolitical pivot in Northeast Asia and the forward position (in relation to the USSR and China — in October, 1949 the Communist People's Republic of China was declared and in June 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea, thus cfreating the impressioin that the Sino-Soviet bloc was on the move throughout Asia — see below for post-Cold War revelations from the Soviet archives). The U.S. was just buiilding up its alliance system (NATO, 1949) and positions were shifting with regard to the occupation policies in Japan — in 1952, the U.S. and other western Contries (but not the Soviets) signed a peace treaty with Japan and Japan, as early as 1950, was seen as a base for American strategy in the Northern Pacific area. Thus credibility was seen to be at stake when the U.S. was faced with the outbreak of hostilities in Korea.

Fortunately for the Truman administration, the Soviet Uniion was temporarily boycotting the U.N. Security Council (the only time that this was to occur). It was possible to get a "Police Action" resolutiion through the Security Council that enlisted the hellp of friendly powers (even India, which was neutralist under Nehru, contributed a medical contingent to the U.N. forces). This was not just a good thing in terms of international support, it also helped with regard to the sustainability of American policy. At that time, Republican leaders, though they largely supported bipartisanship in foreign policy, also had reservations about extending commitments overseas. Robert Taft, the Republican leader in the Senate, was cosidered to be a neo-isolatioinist and was potentially a strong contender for the Republican nomination in 1952 (Republican internaitonalist opponents of Taft enlisted Eisenhower, who was a very popular general, to run for the nomination as a way of blocking Taft).

An interesting sidelight emerges from the post-Cold War release of part of the Soviet Archives. Mao had met with Stalin in a series of negotiations in 1949 and 1950 and had asked for reassurrances that there would not be war with the West in the next 5-10 years. China needed a period of peace to consolidate the regime and pursue its economic reconstruction. Stalin said that as far as he was concerned, he saw no sign of war. At the same time, he was secretly encouraging Kim il Jung, the North Korean Communist leader (father of the current dictator) to attack the South, promising him arms, economic support, and advisors and technicians (including Korean pilots from the Soviet Air Force). This was kept secret from Mao. Stalin also assigned a Soviet general, based at Khabarovsk, the Soviet military center in the Far East, to coordinate planning and logistics for the North Koreans The general kept secret journals which were published by his soon, in Russian, also in the post-Cold War period.

There has been some speculation as to why Stalin did this. One theory I've read is that he thought of it as an action that would deal with two problems at once. On the one hand, he reasoned that the build up of NATO and the American forces in Europe was the greatest danger to the Soviet Union and that a "little war" in Korea would serve to draw the Americans away from the European front. He also was not too happy about the presence of a victorious Communist regime on his Asian frontier (Stalin had, in fact, supported the Chinese nationalist regime until late in the period of the Maoist revolution as a "safer" regime from the perspective of Soviet national interest) and the possibility that they would be drawn into war against the Americans suited him to a T as lng as the Soviets could stay out of open conflict. Perhaps (think I) this may be one of the reasons that Stalin, who was usually cagey in these matters, had decided on the UNSC boycott in the first place.

Answer 8

We wouldn't have Hyundai cars, cargo ships, consumer electronics (including a lot of personal computer products), heavy industrial equipment. All of these have been important to the world's economy.

.

Answer 9

south korea and north korea would become part of china