For Lt. John A. Sullivan, the reality on the ground in Korea in February 1953 was far different from what he had expected when he arrived in country just a few months earlier. Recently commissioned, Sullivan had spent the early part of his Army career in cadre units stateside, training recruits and reservists. Arriving in Korea in December 1952, he faced a static battlefront that was no less violent than it had been for those who had deployed earlier in the war. By mid-February, Sullivan’s company commander — another lieutenant who had been in command for only a few weeks — felt compelled to plan and execute a “super-patrol” to capture Chinese prisoners. Sullivan’s battalion staff — made up of mid-grade officers rotating into theater for six to 12 months to gain “combat experience” — increased pressure on subordinate formations to patrol beyond the front line to capture prisoners. They would then report the number of prisoners captured to corps headquarters. The super patrol, with experienced soldiers and heavy weapons from each of the company’s platoons, would leave at dusk on Feb. 20 with the express intent of capturing prisoners.
The morning of the super patrol’s departure date, Sullivan lost four men from his platoon for rotation home. Each of these soldiers had about a year of combat experience in Korea and their “green” replacements would not arrive for two more days, guaranteeing that the departing veterans would not have the chance to train their replacements. Now short personnel, Sullivan found himself on the night of Feb. 20 scrambling to find able-bodied men to form a relief force to rescue the super patrol that had set out at dusk. Blundering forward in the dark, Sullivan’s company commander had unwittingly run into a Chinese raid as it attacked the U.S. forward outpost line. Hearing the staccato machine gun fire and matching explosions of mortar rounds, two non-commissioned officers from Sullivan’s partner platoon, with only a few weeks left before they rotated home, refused to go forward. Sullivan’s makeshift force counter-attacked the Chinese forces and, as the chaotic engagement in the dark Korean hills stabilized, Sullivan saved the remnants of the patrol and evacuated them back across U.S. lines. During the worst of the fighting, the regimental headquarters marshaled soon-to-rotate-home soldiers as a last line of defense against the Chinese party breaking through U.S. defenses and reaching the rear area. Once Sullivan reported that the situation had stabilized, these soldiers literally put down their weapons and loaded onto trucks to begin their trip home to the United States.
Two days later, Sullivan received three replacements to make up for the four soldiers who had returned home. Of the three, two were young recruits straight from basic training with no combat experience whatsoever. The third proved even more problematic: a senior non-commissioned officer who had spent the previous 14 years as a mess sergeant at Fort Benning, never having seen combat during World War II or ever having conducted combat training. Sullivan stated that this was the Army “cleaning out the deadwood.” Based on his age and rank, however, this new mess sergeant would become the senior non-commissioned officer in Sullivan’s combat platoon. Realizing that he could not have his combat patrols led by a 46-year-old mess sergeant, Sullivan sent him to the company mess hall behind the front line, his time in a combat unit in Korea amounting to less than a day. In place of four combat veterans, Sullivan received two barely trained recruits. Sullivan was wounded when his combat patrol was overrun by a Chinese ambush on Feb. 24, having just affirmed to one of the new recruits that it was okay to throw grenades in combat. The patrol had almost captured a Chinese prisoner, but he died en route to U.S. lines.1
Sullivan’s memoir, Toy Soldiers, gives a personal account of the last winter of the Korean War. Operating between the lines of the U.S. 7th Infantry Division and the People’s Liberation Army, Sullivan and his unit bore the brunt of China’s attempts to shift the front line ahead of an anticipated ceasefire and armistice. His experience with being under-manned, losing men to rotations home, and combat inefficiency defined his combat tour, as well as the experience of U.S. Eighth Army during the latter stages of the Korean War. Retired Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall, sent to Korea by a U.S. newspaper in spring 1953 to report on the status of the war and the competence of the U.S. soldiers, observed the fighting and noted, “They [the Chinese and North Koreans] sit here year after year. The longer they stay, the smarter they get. Our youngsters keep moving in and out. They’re smart and they’ve got guts, but they don’t stay long enough to learn. You can’t beat Davy Crockett with a boy scout.”2
Marshall’s and Sullivan’s accounts of the last months of the war crystallized the tactical issues facing Eighth Army during the spring of 1953. A force plagued by mandatory rotations, inexperience, and under-manning had a slim chance of defending the front line, let alone regaining the operational initiative in the hope of militarily coercing concessions from China and North Korea at the negotiating table in Panmunjom. In fact, the armistice terms reached on July 27, 1953 were nearly identical to those presented by the U.N. Command — of which Eighth Army was a part — to China and North Korea on April 28, 1952. Fifteen months of fighting had done little to coerce China to accept better or new terms.3 In fact, Joseph Stalin’s death in March 1953, and the possibility that the Soviet Union would focus its attentions elsewhere, likely incentivized China and North Korea to accept the terms.4
Despite their keen observations, what Sullivan and Marshall failed to note was that their accounts represented more than just the tactical failure of the U.S. Army in the last stages of the Korean War. It cast a light on the failure of the U.S. Department of Defense to prepare for protracted war at multiple levels: tactical, operational, and strategic. Having widened the scope and responsibilities of the Army in the late 1940s, the Truman administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff faced the reality of not “being home by Christmas” in Korea. And yet, they did little to either prepare for or ameliorate the tension caused by this protracted conflict. The U.S. Far East Command and Eighth Army compounded the situation at the operational level, maintaining a now-defunct operational approach and doing little to slow the drain of tactical expertise from the battlefront. By December 1952, Gen. Mark Clark, commander of U.S. Far East Command, had little to offer the new president, Dwight Eisenhower, to resolve the situation in Korea. His one proposal, a massive vertical and horizontal escalation, could have unhinged the situation in Asia, and even in Europe. In addition, a flawed force management model had limited the choices available to U.S. decision-makers.
To reinforce the notion that a lack of preparation for a protracted conflict prior to the Korean War limited America’s options for ending the war, this article will analyze three levels of organization during that conflict — tactical, operational, and strategic. While sources contemporary to the war do mention issues relating to the “manpower crisis,” none treat it as a holistic failure that not only impacted the platoons on the front line, but at the strategic level also limited the options available to senior leaders in Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington.
This is not to say that there was only one cause for the outcome of the Korean War. Wars involve multiple parties, each with its own capabilities, desired end states, and inherent cultural contexts and values.5 The Korean War was no different. In fact, it provides a striking example of not just one multi-national coalition (U.N. Command) but two (the Chinese-North Korean partnership). Scholarship has gone far to advance our understanding of the relationships within and between each of these coalitions, most recently with regard to China’s role in the conflict and in negotiations.6 We also have a better understanding of the changes to the Chinese-North Korean operational approach after the defeat of their combined offensives in 1951. Rather than pursuing the mass infiltration and “human wave” attacks that defined the Chinese intervention during the winter of 1950, Chinese and North Korean forces utilized new Soviet equipment, adapted to the Korean terrain, and benefitted from a better understanding of the operational environment to develop an approach that frustrated U.N. and U.S. efforts to gain an operational advantage on the peninsula from 1952 onward.7
One also cannot ignore the role of non-U.S. forces in the Korean War, particularly those of South Korea. By the war’s cessation, South Korean formations made up over two-thirds of all ground forces within U.N. Command. Significant progress was made in training and equipping South Korean forces beginning in 1950. Many contemporary and current scholars have commented on the increased combat effectiveness of South Korean forces by the war’s end.8 All told, U.N. Command was made up of 17 nations — including the United States and South Korea — that provided support in a myriad of critical ways, be they combat formations, materiel, or medical support.
Understanding the failure of the Defense Department’s force management system to account for the possibility of a protracted conflict in Korea is more relevant today than perhaps ever before.
What this article does argue is that the strategic manpower decisions and policies made by the United States before and during the war did not give U.N. Command and Eighth Army the capability or the capacity to militarily coerce China and North Korea to agree to a negotiated settlement. Even given the multinational aspects of U.N. Command, the United States provided the momentum for the war’s execution and provided the cultural and intellectual foundation for the pursuance of negotiations at Panmunjom. To this point, the United States, at multiple levels of policy, viewed military coercion as the preferred method of gaining the advantage at the negotiating table and getting the concessions they sought.9 The inability of U.N. Command, and specifically Eighth Army, to gain an operational advantage after 1951 jeopardized the ability of the United States and its partners to contain the conflict. Out of options, America proposed vertical and horizontal escalation at multiple levels, putting at risk the cohesion that defined U.N. Command’s efforts and the ability to limit the war to the Korean peninsula.
Understanding the failure of the Defense Department’s force management system to account for the possibility of a protracted conflict in Korea is more relevant today than perhaps ever before. Confronted with the possibility of a great-power conflict, facing an aggressive and revanchist Russia, and ordered to maintain military superiority over the multi-generational challenge presented by China, U.S. military leaders should reexamine how they man, train, and equip U.S. forces. They should do so in a manner that emphasizes readiness and modernization but also accounts for the potential of a protracted conflict.10
Tactical Shortfalls
The U.S. Army entered the Korean War in the midst of great change. With recent multi-year increases to the defense budget, in mid-1950 the Truman administration began the concrete resourcing of its ideological commitment to containing communism’s spread throughout the world. This entailed massive growth in the size of the U.S. Joint Force, along with a corresponding increase in the defense budget. In his 1949 budget submission, President Harry Truman asked for $279 million more than the year prior, arguing that this amount still did not fully meet the demands of the Defense Department, but that it “emphasizes progress towards a modern and balanced armed force.” The next year, the president sought an increase of approximately $3.5 billion dollars for an armed force that would be the “most powerful this Nation has ever maintained in peacetime,” one that “will permit this nation to maintain a proper military preparedness in uncertain times.”11
For the Army, this required more soldiers and equipment to meet the renewed commitments to the defense of Western Europe and North America, as well as the manning of a contingency force capable of reacting to unforeseen conflicts along communism’s geographic periphery.12 All parties agreed that the Army needed time — and money — to meet these new demands. The Department of Defense and the Army committed to a budget plan and growth model that would begin to reach these goals by 1954. Having enacted a mass demobilization in the wake of World War II, the Army had spent the years prior to 1950 manning units as best it could with the few remaining officers and soldiers it had.13 This demand created a shell game wherein the Army manned and equipped a bulk of the force at a suboptimal level to preserve a core of “ready” combat units. Manpower shortfalls, however, complicated this effort. In the months leading up to the Korean War, the Army fell approximately 40,000 soldiers short of the projected total it would need to meet its operational demands. The National Guard and the Organized Reserve Corps (the precursor to today’s Army Reserve) faced similar issues, with nearly 40 percent of reservists not assigned to drilling units.14 The Truman administration, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army leadership considered this shaky foundation to be the starting point for building for the future.
The Korean War was thus both a strategic surprise and a crisis for the Army’s growth model. Already preparing for the challenges associated with building a larger force, the Army now faced a new reality: Countering North Korea’s aggression would require building and deploying a field army and corresponding subordinate units from little more than scratch. The Truman administration further complicated this process by not pursuing full mobilization of the National Guard and the Organized Reserve Corps, believing this would prove too escalatory and increase the likelihood of the war spreading to Europe or Japan. The Joint Staff and the Army did not complain — full mobilization would have upended any attempts to cobble together the resources and manpower across the total force to meet the new war’s urgent operational demands.15 Pre-war budget cuts had also gutted the on-hand supplies needed to field this force while also mothballing the defense-industrial base.16
Under these constraints, the Army spent the first year of the war focusing on fielding a competent and qualified fighting force. At the war’s outset, the four divisions in Japan were deployed to stop North Korean aggression and set the conditions to reverse its advance. Manned at two-thirds of their authorized strength at the war’s onset, the divisions were rushed to the front with new subordinate units, equipment, and personnel from across the force and on the fly.17 The readily apparent need for combat replacements further exacerbated this manning issue. Meeting these demands, combined with a future operational need to take the offensive in Korea, required gutting the Organized Reserve Corps, including both active and inactive reservists. At the same time, the mobilization of four National Guard Divisions — manned at half-strength prior to the war — required further manpower from the reserves, active duty, and new recruits. Considering all these challenges, the fact that the Joint Force and the Army succeeded in fielding a combat-credible force in Korea capable of regaining the initiative that had been lost to China and North Korea during the winter of 1950–1951 is nearly a miracle. Maintaining this capability in the coming protracted conflict, never mind fielding a force able to respond to any other global crises or contingencies, was another story.18
The Defense Department, and the Army in particular, spent most of the war not only fighting China and North Korea, but also waning domestic support for the war. In the summer of 1951, Gallup polling found that more than 40 percent of all Americans believed that going to war in South Korea had been a mistake, with fully half of respondents reportedly feeling this way by late winter 1952.19 The Truman administration strove to make the case for continued military action in Korea — and the corresponding men and materiel this would require — but it also contended with the demand to man and forward deploy military formations in Europe to bolster NATO. Sens. Tom Connally and Richard B. Russell convened a joint committee in early 1951 to review proposals from then-Gen. Eisenhower to send up to four divisions to Western Europe. The final draft of the Connally-Russell Report, published July 2, 1952, supported Eisenhower’s request, thus further fragmenting the overall manning effort faced by the Defense Department, and the Army in particular.20
The unpopularity of the war corresponded to the general unpopularity of Army service during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The reinstitution of a peacetime draft through the Selective Service Act of 1948, intended only to meet near-term growth demands for the Army, generated a political firestorm.21 The Korean War now forced the Army to rely on this unpopular program to man its expanding force, both in Korea and now, also, in Europe. This move, along with the Truman administration’s decision to meet existing manpower shortfalls in the active force, increased the demand across the entire military manpower enterprise, a demand that the 1.5 million inductees who joined during the Korean War did not meet.22 The Korean War forced the Army to contend with one of the unanticipated realities of the draft: It generated a recruitment surge, but one that favored the Navy and the Air Force over the Army. The Army also found itself picked last when it came to the young men contemplating military service. This hard reality helps explain the Army’s initial reliance on the inactive reserve to fill the gaps in Korea: There were simply not enough quality recruits to go around.23
Forced to contend with a protracted conflict in Korea while still seeking to expand the conventional force to provide a credible deterrent in Europe and protect the homeland, the Army exacerbated issues further by instituting a points-based rotation system for individual soldiers and officers in Korea. It awarded points for service in Korea, with service along the front line counting more than in rear areas. A servicemember in Korea served a 12- to 16-month “combat tour” prior to rotating back to the states. Infantry soldiers rotated the quickest due to their regular proximity to the front.24 The Army also commissioned and funded a study, Project Doughboy, an analysis of combat infantry performance during the winter of 1950–1951 (led by Marshall), that argued that incoming replacements should be rotated in groups, most likely at the fire team level. This would prevent replacements from feeling isolated and alone during their initial combat experiences. If “the four-man teams went through the pipeline as one man now moves, they could be fitted into a front-line organization, ready to fight, without the feeling of being personally lost.”25 The idea proved convincing enough that the report’s recipient, Brig. Gen. H. Roper, included it in his forwarding memorandum. He indicated that the Army would experiment during the fall of 1952 with sending three companies of replacements (two to Far East Command and one to U.S. Army Europe) in the four-man team grouping.26
By 1952, many of them had moved junior leaders into positions above their experience levels, with lieutenants serving as company commanders and corporals, sergeants, and staff sergeants serving as squad leaders and platoon sergeants.
It is unclear if the Army ever instituted Project Doughboy’s recommendation. The Army had not adopted the four-man fire team rotation model by early 1953, at least not fully. The demand for replacements generated by the rotation system and the manpower deficit that the Army faced more than likely proved too staggering to accommodate such a system. During the fall of 1951 and the winter of 1952 (the first months wherein soldiers rotated home under the policy), between 15,000 and 20,000 soldiers rotated home each month.27 As a case in point, the 65th Infantry regiment rotated home 8,700 enlisted soldiers and 1,500 non-commissioned officers between January and September 1952. They received about two-thirds of their needed replacement soldiers and only 435 non-commissioned officers in return. After repeated issues of combat refusals, absence without leave, and other indicators of combat ineffectiveness, the 65th rotated from the front line and direct combat, unable to meet its mission and requiring complete reorganization and remanning.28 The rotation policy had proven such a drain on combat efficiency that, toward the end of the war, Marshall would state to then-incoming Chief of Staff of the Army Matthew Ridgway, “[R]otation, never do it again. This is a certain way to destroy an army.”29
The shortfall in replacing non-commissioned officers is particularly striking. By early 1952, the rotation system guaranteed that the bulk of Eighth Army’s small unit leaders — junior officers and non-commissioned officers forming the backbone of platoons and squads — began to redeploy stateside. So, too, did many of the activated reservists who had combat experience from World War II or post-war training. Units scrambled to compensate for these shortfalls. By 1952, many of them had moved junior leaders into positions above their experience levels, with lieutenants serving as company commanders and corporals, sergeants, and staff sergeants serving as squad leaders and platoon sergeants. Although many units established “leadership academies” to train soldiers forced to serve in positions above their grade, the demand proved too great. At the same time, establishing these training centers required redeploying experienced junior leaders from the front line, further exacerbating the problem.30
This outflow of tactical experience could not have come at a worse time. Having recovered from China’s surprise entry into the war in late 1950 and then repelled its 1951 spring offensive, Eighth Army spent most of the summer and early autumn of 1951 counterattacking and routing Chinese and North Korean forces. First as Eighth Army commander, then later as commander of the Far East Command, Ridgway had focused operations on destroying the Chinese army in deliberate battles that brought the preponderance of America’s firepower on Chinese and North Korean forces attempting to reestablish a new front line. Ridgway and his replacement as Eighth Army commander, Lt. Gen. James Van Fleet, sought to maintain the pressure on Chinese and North Korean forces throughout the early summer of 1951, using limited offensive action to gain control of critical terrain and further destroy elements of each of the armies.31
By late autumn 1951, the parties returned to the negotiating table, now at Panmunjom, after initial missteps had frustrated the first set of armistice meetings. Both sides agreed to stabilize the front along the current line of contact. U.S. leaders on the Korean peninsula and in Tokyo and Washington became convinced that the military successes of late 1951, though limited, had pressured China and North Korea to seek renewed negotiations. Recounting the U.N. Command campaign of late 1951, Ridgway stated, “I do not question that our success meanwhile in taking and holding all the high ground in the strategic areas along the front had helped to persuade the enemy that he was not going to push us back and had better prepare to settle.”32 The agreed upon stabilization of the front, along with Ridgway’s orders to Van Fleet to shift to an “active defense” in October/November 1951, limited large-scale offensive operations and increased the importance of small unit actions — raids, ambushes, and patrolling.33
Van Fleet possessed a storied track record of aggressive combat leadership during World War II, and his previous success fortifying the Greek army to defeat that nation’s communist insurgency seemed to augur well for his current operational role.34 Van Fleet would redouble the pressure for units to execute near-constant small-unit actions, putting his stamp on the last several years of war in Korea. Constrained from launching large offensive operations, Van Fleet believed that patrolling and ambushes served two critical purposes. First, bereft of operational intelligence from the Chinese and North Korean forces, he thought patrolling would allow his commanders to gather information regarding the disposition of the adversary — location, types of fortifications, and the morale and well-being of enemy soldiers. Second, Van Fleet hoped that tactical actions would help the Army maintain its combat effectiveness. He ordered his corps commanders to “keep the Army sharp through the smell of gunpowder and the enemy.”35
Van Fleet’s guidance translated at the operational level to an increased demand to take prisoners. Van Fleet drove his corps commanders — and their subordinate units — to capture an ever-increasing number of Chinese and North Korean soldiers. In December 1951, Eighth Army captured a paltry 247 prisoners, only a quarter of the number that the Army had captured the month prior. Feeling the pressure, by early 1952, Eighth Army was sending out daily and nightly patrols focused on ambushing Chinese and Korean formations and seizing prisoners. Not needing to coordinate large offensive maneuvers, Army, corps, and division staffs began to track individual patrols in their respective sectors (I Corps staff even directed each squad-sized patrol to make contact with the enemy). The Chinese and North Korean armies noticed this new trend and kept their own patrols closer to their main defensive line, using them as bait for Eighth Army units in the hope of intercepting an enemy patrol of their own. By June 1952, with prisoner numbers still not meeting Van Fleet’s expectations, Eighth Army ordered each of its divisions to capture a prisoner every three days. Junior leaders began to grumble that their combat performance was being weighed solely on their prisoner totals.36
What Van Fleet and his commanders may not have realized — or did and were trying to compensate for — was that, as the war dragged on, Eighth Army was losing the tactical experience necessary for this operational approach. By the fall of 1951 (at about the same time as officer and non-commissioned officers began to rotate home), cracks were beginning to appear at the small unit level. An Army-commissioned report, executed by the Center of Military History toward the war’s end, examined small unit engagements to understand the problem. The report chronicled an increase in issues with integrating replacements, adjacent unit coordination, fire support and maneuver planning, lack of training on new equipment, and a myriad of other small unit miscalculations and shortcomings beginning in late summer 1951. Most notably, the report highlighted the tendency of small units to simply stop moving if one of their junior leaders was wounded or killed. Recounting the death of a recently arrived, combat inexperienced lieutenant during an attack, the report observes, “Although Gano [platoon leader] had told High [assistant patrol leader] to continue to run the platoon, to the members of the platoon Lieutenant Gano was an officer and the platoon leader. When he stopped, they stopped.”37
To compensate for the lack of tactical experience and skill while still hoping to meet Van Fleet’s directive to capture prisoners, several units began to experiment with “special patrol groups.” Regiments put together special light infantry formations composed of volunteers skilled in light infantry and patrolling tactics. These groups received further intensive training on patrolling, raids, and ambushes. The special patrol groups would not relieve units of their own patrolling requirements, but they would execute long-duration patrols and raids with the goal of capturing prisoners. While these groups found some localized success in 1952, they appear to have gone out of fashion by 1953. The rush to deploy replacements to Korea meant that many new recruits lacked the patrolling and night training required for the special patrol groups. More importantly, the rotation policy gutted the special patrol groups just like other frontline formations in Eighth Army. Manpower deficiencies and a lack of combat-experienced veterans meant commanders lacked both the raw material to form the groups and the trainers needed to prepare the groups for operations.38
By late 1952, Van Fleet and the Eighth Army lacked enough combat-experienced junior leaders to enact their “active defense” operational approach. Just at the time that the leadership in Korea was emphasizing small unit tactics and capturing prisoners, it lost the foundation that the force needed to execute these types of operations. “The army’s great manpower crisis,” one historian noted, “exacerbated Van Fleet’s deficit of combat experience as experienced commanders eventually rotated out of Korea and were replaced.”39 Although special patrol groups were an interesting tactical development, the inability to build these formations uniformly and at scale prevented them from having a larger impact. Moreover, they suffered from the same strategic manpower deficits as the rest of the forces in Korea. By the war’s last year, Eighth Army’s tactical approach was focused on massing imprecise artillery fires to cover deficiencies in its combat performance. Eighth Army had lost the ability to maneuver.40
Fumbling Operational Execution
At approximately nine at night on Oct. 5, 1951, portions of three regiments from the U.S. Second Infantry Division attacked to seize a hill complex that embedded reporters came to call Heartbreak Ridge. Officially named Operation Touchdown, the assault proved a masterstroke of combined arms warfare. Establishing a series of successive and supporting objectives, the division linked infantry assaults with planned fires, close air attack, and engineering support to overcome Chinese forces who had set up complex defensive positions on North Korea’s difficult terrain. The coup de main of the attack was a combined tank-infantry assault that struck deep into the rear of the Chinese defenses, breaking the main defensive line.41
The seizure of Heartbreak Ridge proved not only an operational success: Ridgway and others believed that a direct line could be drawn from Heartbreak Ridge’s seizure to China and North Korea agreeing to return to the negotiating table. Two weeks after the conclusion of Operation Touchdown, the Chinese and North Korean negotiators agreed to resume armistice talks after having not met for over two months. All sides would agree on Nov. 17 to “freeze” their forces in place and establish a military demarcation line on which to base further negotiations. Some believed they could see the light at the end of the war’s tunnel.
The rotation policy and strategic manpower decisions had begun to strip Eighth Army not only of its junior officers and non-commissioned officers, but of its operational staffs and leadership as well.
None may have known it at the time, but the fighting at Heartbreak Ridge represented the apogee of Eighth Army’s “elbowing forward” campaign — a deliberate series of attacks that massed firepower to defeat enemy forces and allow ground maneuver forces to seize positions of advantage without worrying about large enemy counterattacks. Restrained from seeking a total defeat of the Chinese army the previous summer, Van Fleet and his operational commanders pursued a series of limited objectives intended to improve the tactical and operational security along the front line and, hopefully, coerce China and North Korea to return to the negotiating table. While not a peninsula-wide offensive, these operations exhibited the ability of corps and division commanders and staffs to work together and sequence regimental and battalion assaults.
The success at Heartbreak Ridge had, unfortunately, come only after prior failure. Second Infantry Division had assaulted the ridge complex a month prior without luck, suffering staggering casualties. Successive waves of disjointed company- and battalion-sized attacks slammed into the craggy terrain, making minimal progress. Nearly a month of hard fighting yielded few results, and it took the assignment of a new commander to the division to break through.
Maj. Gen. Robert Young, the mastermind of Operation Touchdown, spent several weeks after he took command developing a deliberate, combined-arms approach to attacking the complex. Part of the problem with the first attempt, one of Young’s regimental commanders noted, was the lack of experience in the division. The men of the single attached French battalion were the division’s longest-serving members — having served approximately 18 months. The rotation policy and strategic manpower decisions had begun to strip Eighth Army not only of its junior officers and non-commissioned officers, but of its operational staffs and leadership as well.42 Eighth Army never again achieved a success comparable to Operation Touchdown during the war.
The war wore on after the success at Heartbreak Ridge, growing more frustrating as the armistice negotiations stalled over the issue of prisoner-of-war repatriation.43 The president, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Clark (Ridgway’s replacement at U.S. Far East Command) all reached the conclusion that suspending negotiations and pursuing limited offensive actions would pressure China and North Korea to accept U.N. Command’s repatriation plan. The Joint Chiefs of Staff messaged Clark in late September 1952 and, acknowledging the current deadlock with negotiations and on the fighting front, said “that it may become advisable to recommend removal of all restrictions now currently in force except: a. Attacks on the USSR proper. b. Use of atomic or CW [Chemical Weapons] weapons other than now authorized.” They then proceeded to request that Clark develop three courses of action to militarily coerce China and North Korea into agreeing to an armistice — the first course was to be pursued with only the available forces on hand in Korea.44 Mere days later, Truman authorized Clark to suspend the negotiations if no common ground was found but to ensure that “throughout this coming period the military pressure which you are so effectively applying against the enemy should not be lessened.” Clark assured him the next day that this would not be an issue. He would suspend armistice talks on Oct. 8, 1952 after a final attempt at negotiations.45
For Clark, the timing of Eighth Army’s next offensive — Operation Showdown — could hardly have been more fortuitous. Van Fleet had briefed Clark on Operation Showdown late in the summer of 1952, arguing the need to stabilize IX Corps’ front around the city of Kumhwa. Clark had demurred over the summer, not seeing the need to waste troops on an operation intended to move the front line forward by a few miles. Now, beyond a simple tactical gain, Showdown could be the tool to pressure China and North Korea back to the negotiating table. The initial plan for Showdown, set to begin on Oct. 14, had two battalions — one American and one South Korean — assaulting and seizing the Triangle Hill complex outside Kumhwa within five days of the operation’s start at the estimated potential cost of 200 casualties. By the start of the attack, corps planners had doubled the number of battalions to four in the hope of accelerating the seizure of their objective.
After 42 days of continuous fighting, however, the operation had stalled and the inability of the U.S. and South Korean forces to gain significant headway had led to the employment of the entire U.S. Seventh Infantry Division and South Korea’s Second Division just to shore up the front line. The casualty toll reached over 9,000. For all this time and effort, South Korea’s army held only a small, tenuous foothold in the Triangle Hill complex, which required the deliberate rotation of fresh combat troops and a concerted sustainment effort. Writing a year after the war’s end, Clark would claim that the fighting represented “a loss out of proportion to our gains.”46
What had gone wrong? What had changed in Eighth Army during the year between Operation Touchdown and Operation Showdown? In simple terms, Eighth Army lost the ability to conduct operational maneuver. IX Corps ham-handedly managed the preparation for Operation Showdown, which given the necessary integration of elements from two divisions — of a multinational nature, no less — should have been the command’s primary responsibility. Instead, each of the divisions planned its own attack independently, or more accurately, performed initial planning steps. Neither the IX Corps’ plan nor the corresponding division plans included any “branches” — options to be considered in the case of unplanned contingencies or opportunities. Much as during the first weeks of the attack on Heartbreak Ridge a year prior, planning culminated with the notion that successive, barely coordinated battalion attacks would seize their intended objectives. Seventh Infantry Division cut short a two-week training period for the battalions earmarked for the assault, and the regimental rehearsal the day ahead of the attack was canceled. Artillery and air preparation of the objectives was delayed and incomplete. None of the company or battalion commanders slated for the assault against Triangle Hill had ever attacked a fortified Chinese position, nor did their higher headquarters provide them with adequate time for thorough training or for a rehearsal.47 Finally, planners realized almost too late that the nature of the terrain required a larger assault force but did not change the command relationship on the ground. Core elements of the operational planning process went unheeded.48
The rotation policy exacerbated issues of staff execution that were already apparent in early 1951. In his report on combat efficiency during the winter of 1950–51, Marshall saw fit to open his chapter titled “Strain” by focusing on battalion, regimental, and division staffs. Noting the Chinese army’s inclination to attack at night, Marshall painted the picture of undermanned operational-level staffs breaking under the pressure of executing near continuous operations:
As now established, the staff is much too light for the demands of operations under a 24-hour day. Though it has seemingly stood the test in Korea [as of early 1951], it has done so on raw nerves. That showing should not be given an exaggerated significance. One cannot stay long in the average headquarters in Korea without observing that the staff is badly overworked and strained to the breaking point.49
The memorandum that forwarded Marshall’s report to Army headquarters, the same that outlined the fire team replacement experiment mentioned earlier, made no mention of the staff shortfalls that Marshall highlighted. Marshall wrote his observations regarding the staffs in Korea before the rotation policy began to have a serious effect there. As Operation Showdown went on to show, staff shortfalls grew along with the rotation policy.
The Army further exacerbated issues with operational-level staff execution in February 1952 by implementing a career management program that provided combat experience to officers deemed to have potential, but who had not commanded a combat formation during World War II. Literally called “Using Far East Command as a Training Ground for Selected Personnel,” this program inaugurated six- and 12-month rotations of mid-grade and senior officers to Korea. These men often served in division and corps staffs but, at times, also at the battalion and regimental level. Senior commanders in Eighth Army had to demote or laterally assign officers with combat experience to make way for “selected personnel” and ensure they met Department of the Army guidance. Such transfers not only meant that operational experience at the battalion and regimental level was transferred out of Eighth Army throughout 1952 and 1953, but it also impacted the morale of officers in theater and the soldiers they led.50
Having been tested that autumn at the tactical and operational levels, Eighth Army had been found wanting.
Signs of combat ineffectiveness appeared across Eighth Army in 1952 and into 1953. Van Fleet visited the 45th Infantry Division ahead of the fall fighting associated with Operation Showdown. The 45th was a National Guard division that had been mobilized at the outbreak of the war and was then shipped to Japan for training prior to deploying to Korea in December 1951. Upon the arrival of the two divisions in Korea, Eighth Army’s chief of operations assessed that “the combat effectiveness of the two new [National Guard divisions] after a short period in combat was equal to the old divisions that had been decimated by the rotation program.”51 Time worked further against the 45th as the rotation policy impacted them the same as other combat formations. By late summer 1952, the cadre of experienced officers and non-commissioned officers who had made up the core of the 45th when it arrived in Japan had rotated home or demobilized. At the time of Van Fleet’s visit on Aug. 29, the division commander complained of a “shortage of experienced people in the junior grades,” as well as shortfalls in qualified battalion and regimental commanders and staffs. By the time of Operation Showdown, the 45th would also experience the rotation home of the draftees and recruits who had brought the division to full strength at the war’s onset. By late 1952, Van Fleet would rate the 45th and its fellow National Guard division (the 40th Infantry Division) at the bottom of Eighth Army’s readiness rating, requiring rotation from the line and significant reequipping, rest, and training.52
Van Fleet, writing to a friend during 1952’s malaise of combat ineffectiveness, stated, “[I]t’s a damn hard job to keep an army ever fit, ready, and eager to fight — especially when they go home faster than we can train them. It is a real challenge to every commander in Korea.”53 His letter came as court-martials surged across Eighth Army, with the majority relating to charges of combat refusal or being absent without leave. By early November 1952, the front calmed, and small unit engagements again became the norm.54 Having been tested that autumn at the tactical and operational levels, Eighth Army had been found wanting. “[T]he art and skill of coordinating division and corps artillery, tank, and air support with a regiment-sized infantry assault over difficult terrain against a skillful enemy had atrophied,” one historian would later write, further stating, “Van Fleet missed the essential change to this war’s character and conduct.”55 Whether anyone wanted to admit it, Eighth Army was stuck.56
Losing Strategic Options and the Burden of Escalation
“What began as a limited objective attack,” Clark, commander of Far East Command, wrote in 1954 regarding Operation Showdown, “developed into a grim, face-saving slugging match with each side upping the ante when the other gained a temporary advantage.” Clark admits in his memoir that he “chafed under the conditions of defensive war” but agreed with his predecessor Ridgway’s approach to limiting needless offensive action to gain a relatively meaningless hill or ridge. Considering the operational environment and his manpower shortfalls after Operation Showdown, Clark noted, “At no time while I was in the Far East could I have launched successfully a large offensive.”57
The pessimistic tone in Clark’s memoirs reflects his belief that he was not allowed to “win” in Korea. For Clark, winning was the defeat of Chinese and North Korean forces through a maneuver campaign and, although not necessarily seeking regime change, forming a new armistice line further north at a narrow spot on the peninsula. The failure of Operation Showdown in the fall of 1952 proved that this would not be possible with the forces and capabilities available to Van Fleet in Eighth Army and Clark in Far East Command. Operation Showdown also exhibited something even worse: Van Fleet and Clark lacked the necessary forces and capabilities to coerce China and North Korea back to the armistice negotiating table. Eighth Army, with a blunted tactical edge and incapable of operational maneuver (let alone limited offensive actions), could not change the strategic environment in favor of the United States and the United Nations.58
Following the failure of Operation Showdown, Clark ordered Far East Command staff to begin preparing a plan for an “all-out offensive to the win the war,” expanding loosely on his previous guidance from the president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Clark and his planners realized they could not pursue such an offensive with the forces they had on hand. Labeled OPLAN 08-52, Clark’s “victory” plan required significant manpower reinforcement — including two Chinese Nationalist divisions from Taiwan — to provide the necessary combat power to break the Communist defensive front, mainly through amphibious and airborne operations. It also outlined an expanded bombing campaign extending beyond the Chinese border into Manchuria and northern China.59 “I have had this subject under active study,” Clark wrote the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “to determine the extent of aggressive action in Korea nec[essary] to establish conditions whereby the enemy will be compelled to seek or accept an armistice on our terms.”60 Far East Command planners included as part of OPLAN 08-52 a plan for the potential use of up to 480 atomic weapons, primarily for targets within China.61
This was not the first time that Clark and his staff had pursued escalation, even in a limited manner. Upon taking over for Ridgway in the spring of 1952, Clark surveyed the military stalemate on the front line and the diplomatic stalemate at Panmunjom and believed that applying America’s asymmetric advantage in air power would pressure China and North Korea into engaging in earnest armistice negotiations. While Douglas MacArthur and Ridgway had both pursued air campaigns in the past, they tended to focus on tactical level targets or harassing and interdicting known lines of communications and resupply points.62 Clark broadened the scope of the air campaign and conceived it, from the beginning, as being more about applying political pressure than gaining tactical or operational advantage.63 The targets surely conveyed this notion. After receiving specific approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to break the previous 12-mile buffer around the Yalu River, a combined Air Force and Navy attack on June 23 and 24, 1952 hit 13 hydroelectric plants along the Yalu River, plunging North Korea into darkness. Clark followed this up with a multinational bombing of Pyongyang in July and again in August. These attacks, while somewhat relating to military capabilities, focused more on applying psychological and political pressure on China and North Korea.64
The escalation that Clark pursued with his spring 1952 air pressure campaign, and the further vertical and horizontal escalation he proposed in OPLAN 08-52, betrayed the new reality that Clark, Van Fleet, and Eighth Army contended with in late 1952. Facing increased combat ineffectiveness at multiple levels within Eighth Army and bereft of manpower, resourcing, and training options at the strategic and institutional levels to rectify the situation within his command, Clark proposed an overtly escalatory approach that would change the context of the war in Korea. But it would also increase the potential risk for a wider war against China and, as some feared, the Soviet Union. What most observers fail to recognize is that Clark’s plan mirrored that of MacArthur in early 1951 in many ways, particularly the proposed inclusion of Nationalist Chinese forces, the expansion of the air campaign outside of Korea, and the anticipated use of atomic weapons beyond the option of last resort. Granted, he did not publicize it as MacArthur had. But he also did not face a surprise attack from massed Chinese forces that might push U.N. forces off the peninsula. Instead, facing a stagnant front and a military force incapable of coercing its adversary into modifying its behavior, Clark opted to take on the burden of escalation — risking moral, political, and military positions of advantage — in the hope that he could coerce China and North Korea into accepting an armistice or, if needed, pursue “victory” on the peninsula.65
In ordering the development of OPLAN 08-52, Clark assumed that his good friend and soon-to-be president-elect Eisenhower would agree to his proposal to escalate the war beyond Korea in order to end it on terms more favorable to the United States and the United Nations.66 To his disappointment, the Joint Chiefs of Staff reviewed OPLAN 08-52 and provided little feedback to Clark, possibly recommending that Eisenhower avoid the issue during his November 1952 tour of the Korean battlefield.67 Eisenhower’s visit left Clark, who was hoping to shape the war’s end, empty-handed and frustrated. He later wrote, “The question of how much it would take to win the war was never raised…. It soon became apparent … that he [Eisenhower] would seek an honorable peace.”68 For Clark, “honorable peace” indicated less than victory, or at least less than the escalatory campaign he sought to pursue.
Clark’s disposition might have improved had he known that Eisenhower and his national security team debated escalation after his return. Perhaps gathering a fuller sense of the frustration created by the stalemate during his visit, Eisenhower returned to Washington and began to discuss the use of atomic weapons to break the political and diplomatic deadlock. While cursory discussions regarding a renewed campaign to reach the “waist” of the Korean peninsula did take place, much of the deeper conversations involved the potential use of atomic weapons: how and where to use them and how many to use. A U.S. Air Force study had found a dearth of sufficient tactical targets for atomic weapons within Korea. Airfields in Manchuria also did not provide adequate targets, leaving air planners to assess Chinese cities as the most valuable targets.69
Strategic manpower decisions made before the war and during its earlier stages, combined with the improved military capabilities of Chinese and North Korean forces, left the burden of escalation squarely in the laps of Clark and Eisenhower.
By May 1953, Eisenhower and his administration had decided to plan for the eventual use of atomic weapons in Asia if China and North Korea refused to agree to further armistice negotiations.70 The key element of this decision involved communicating the threat to China and North Korea. Here, the history remains clouded: Although the administration conveyed to India and through the Panmunjom talks that the United States reserved the right to pursue vertical or horizontal escalation to end the Korean War, it remains unclear if such threats were conveyed to Chinese, Soviet, and North Korean leaders. It is also unclear if the full weight of the atomic threat was conveyed and, if it was communicated, what role this threat played in their decision-making processes. We do know that Stalin’s death in March 1953 and unrest in East Germany and Czechoslovakia changed the Soviet Union’s desire to continue supporting an unending war that drained its military stockpiles. Perhaps feeling the shift in Soviet support and the Soviet leadership’s mindset, China and North Korea accepted armistice terms in the summer of 1953 that almost mirrored those offered in 1952.71
Much as Clark had assumed while developing OPLAN 08-52, Eisenhower and his advisers assessed Eighth Army as incapable of placing adequate pressure on China and North Korea. The manpower and materiel issues within the U.S. Joint Force, which was still ill prepared to meet the demands of a protracted conflict, prevented the ready reinforcement of Eighth Army without either stripping forces in Europe or using the global contingency force. Strategic manpower decisions made before the war and during its earlier stages, combined with the improved military capabilities of Chinese and North Korean forces, left the burden of escalation squarely in the laps of Clark and Eisenhower.72 Eisenhower and his administration believed that their own atomic “saber rattling” had worked. In 1954, a full year after the end of the war, the president stated that the “the doctrine of hot pursuit — that is, of using our full strength to destroy bases used against us [in Korea],” provided a solid deterrent against further Chinese interference on the peninsula.73 Without a conventional military option, Eisenhower and his staff found themselves forced to reckon with the risks and contingencies associated with a wider, and potentially atomic, conflict.
Lessons from the Korean War and the Future of Great-Power Conflict
Eighth Army’s operational difficulties starting in 1952 mirror many of the same issues that Russia and Ukraine are experiencing during the current protracted conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s reorientation of the conflict to the Donbas region in the summer of 2022 concealed a fact that was growing more evident as the war dragged on: The initial invasion and the 2022 defeats around Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson had attrited Russia’s elite and well-trained forces at an alarming rate. Not anticipating a protracted conflict, Russia had not pursued national mobilization prior to the invasion. Unable to militarily coerce the Ukrainian government with the forces at hand, Russian leader Vladimir Putin sought a moderate escalation of the conflict by ordering a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists during the fall of 2022. These forces might have stabilized the front line but appeared to do little else. In 2022 and 2023, it became apparent that the Russian army, much like Eighth Army in Korea in 1952, has lost the ability to execute operational maneuver. As it became clear that Russian forces would not defeat Ukraine easily, Putin began to make bellicose nuclear threats, perhaps to coerce the West to force its proxy to come to terms. Eisenhower and his advisers proposed the same in spring 1953.
Ukraine has had its own issues managing a protracted conflict. The country’s much-trumpeted summer 2023 counteroffensive sought to break the deadlock in eastern Ukraine and bring the war to a decisive conclusion. Instead, it stalled out before reaching Russia’s second set of defensive lines. The inclusion of new Western materiel and munitions did not provide the necessary advantage to break the Russian lines. By the autumn of 2023, the then-commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces — Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi — appealed to Ukraine’s sponsors in the West not only to increase their support, but to provide further modernized weapons that might break the stalemate by allowing Ukraine to extend the battlefield deeper into Russia and overmatching Russian forces at the tactical level.74 The May 2023 U.S. and European decision to supply Ukraine with F-16s and extended-range missiles gives Ukraine the capability to extend its operational reach into Russia.75 Much as Clark did, Zaluzhnyi and the Ukrainian Armed Forces are pursuing escalatory capabilities and approaches in the hope of achieving a level of military coercion heretofore missing from the battlefield.
The struggles of both sides in Ukraine does more than just affirm the lessons of protracted conflict from the Korean War. It serves as another historical touchstone for U.S. strategic planners as they reckon with how to resource, man, and equip the future force for such a conflict. The Russian army that invaded Ukraine in 2022 shares a surprising number of similarities with the ground components of the U.S. Joint Force. The Russian army’s doctrinal shift from smaller counter-insurgencies and proxy conflicts to regional wars against near-peer adversaries mirrors a similar shift in U.S. doctrine from counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism to great-power conflict and large-scale combat operations.76 More striking is Russia’s complete strategic failure to plan for, resource, and win a protracted conventional conflict against a near-peer adversary (or one armed as such). This has less to do with tactical proficiency and operational execution than with strategic decisions regarding force structure and design. In the wake of Russia’s continued failures — and now Ukraine’s — U.S. strategic planners ought to explore how to build and maintain a force that enables strategic and operational flexibility in a manner that preserves a range of options and lessens the need for escalation outside the context of the conflict.
This will prove no easy task. Balancing the current demands of the operational environment with the need to modernize for potential future conflicts against a near-peer adversary has strained both the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps. Compounding this, both services face serious near-term recruiting shortages and retention shortfalls that portend long-term problems, not just in terms of manning the force, but also in preparing the U.S. Joint Force to meet the demands of a protracted conflict against a near-peer adversary. Achieving new force-design objectives will require foresight, deliberate planning, and execution to prepare for future conflict.
Although not intuitive, the challenge of great-power conflict will not be solved by simply creating a larger force. Such a force is unsustainable and soaks up resources needed for modernization. A large, lightly trained, poorly equipped — or “hollow”— force creates cascading strategic issues, as seen in both Korea and Ukraine. A nucleus of highly trained and ready forces provides the best option for near-term conventional deterrence. This requires balancing readiness and modernization demands with assessing the total required end strength of the force.
Such a force must also be able to build depth. The only thing worse than a hollow force may be a small, highly trained, well-equipped force that is incapable of meeting protracted operational demands and providing options for military coercion over time. In their current configurations, the ground components in the U.S Joint Force lack the ability to expand in size while maintaining a high level of professional training and experience across the force. If faced with a conflict against a near-peer adversary that saw levels of attrition akin to those in the conflicts in Ukraine and Korea, the current U.S. Joint Force would struggle to refit and re-man its existing ground combat formations. If new formations were necessary, the cupboard would be shockingly bare. Lacking a deep bench of conventional military power, the United States would find itself, as it did in 1953, forced to contemplate escalation to achieve its strategic goals — but this time without the nuclear supremacy of the early Cold War era.
The good news is that steps can be taken now, outside of a conflict, to reorient the force toward this future. To begin, the Defense Department should adapt its ground components to meet the requirements of the current global operating model, but with an eye toward the possibility of protraction. The Army and the Marine Corps ought to emphasize current force readiness alongside future force modernization, understanding this may mean a smaller total force. The force should focus on maintaining a credible deterrence within a given theater and transitioning to expeditionary campaigning if deterrence fails. Follow-on, or “surge,” forces, composed of Active and Reserve Component formations, require nearly the same level of readiness and modernization. The Army and the Marine Corps should also identify manpower demands linked to critical combat capabilities that would provide the U.S. Joint Force with an early and marked advantage in an armed conflict (e.g., targeting, intelligence, cyber capabilities, and electromagnetic warfare) and keep these positions maximally manned and those in them highly trained.
To ensure strategic and operational momentum against such an adversary, the U.S. Joint Force should develop a “force in being” concept that, in the case of protracted conflict against a near-peer adversary, enables future force fielding and growth.
A smaller force would lessen the current recruiting demands while allowing for the services to find innovative ways to recruit and retain critical capabilities and occupational specialties. Resources could go toward further incentivizing enlistment by offering increased signing bonuses, education and credentialing assistance, better quality of life on installations, and programs to better integrate families into military life. The same goes for the Reserve Component, although planners ought to consider the unique issues associated with their recruiting, retention, and training. Altogether, such an approach may prove to be the only means of maintaining the all-volunteer force over the next several decades.
What Ukraine and Korea have shown is that forces, no matter how well trained or tactically proficient, will attrit at an alarming rate when facing a near-peer adversary. To ensure strategic and operational momentum against such an adversary, the U.S. Joint Force should develop a “force in being” concept that, in the case of protracted conflict against a near-peer adversary, enables future force fielding and growth. There are two elements to this “force in being.” First, the training component for the ground forces should be optimally manned and resourced to allow for the expansion and acceleration of basic training for new soldiers and marines to meet the manpower demands of armed conflict against a near-peer adversary. Second, the services should expand the number of “cadre” formations — composed of experienced officers and non-commissioned officers — that would form the core of the new ground combat formations, much like the U.S. Army’s current Security Force Assistance Brigades. Not only would this provide a foundation on which to build new combat formations, but it would also prevent the practice of taking experienced personnel from existing formations and weakening intra-unit cohesion.
Under the “force-in-being” concept, the U.S. Joint Force would deploy early entry forces into a crisis scenario to deter a potential adversary’s aggression and deny its initial strategic and operational objectives. Meanwhile, surge forces — composed of active, National Guard, and Reserve formations — would prepare for follow-on operations. The new cadre formations described above would then gain new trainees and spend six to eight months prior to deployment building cohesive teams. Thus, the U.S. Joint Force would have a “third wave” of fresh, trained ground combat forces, not yet depleted by ongoing combat operations, that could deploy into a protracted conflict to continue the fight. These forces would allow operational commanders to pursue operational and strategic objectives over time while setting the conditions for the reconstitution of the force.
Finally, at the strategic level, the United States should realize that armed conflict against a near-peer adversary requires not just new forces, capabilities, and plans — it requires a culture shift in the approach to and preparation for future conflicts. The attrition in Ukraine, if applied to the current U.S. Joint Force, would gut the ground component and leave it struggling to regain a position of military advantage, much as Russia and Ukraine continue to do in Donbas and Eighth Army did in Korea. U.S. strategic planners directed to “pace” to the operational problems that China presents should assume casualties during such a conflict would mirror the losses incurred during these two conflicts. The strategic threats of 2024 may appear different from those 70 years ago, but the challenge of losing combat effectiveness during a protracted conflict and the risks associated with escalation are the same. Making hard decisions now with regard to the size and composition of the ground components of the U.S. Joint Force will create more options than the limited ones that U.S. decision-makers found themselves considering and debating in 1953. While in some sense replacing four seasoned combat veterans with a career cook and two green recruits may seem trivial, the decisions that put those replacements on the front line in Korea are not. They have everything to do with winning a war and how to do so.
Col. Andrew J. Forney is an active-duty U.S. Army strategist currently assigned to the XVIII Airborne Corps. He has served in a range of assignments, including within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Policy), NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, and U.S. Army Futures Command. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University, and his writings have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Reviews in History, The Strategy Bridge, and other peer-reviewed journals. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent the positions of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or the XVIII Airborne Corps.
Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank John Manza, John Mikolashek, and the other faculty members from the Joint Advanced Warfighting School for their help developing an earlier version of this paper. I’m also grateful for the patient ear of Gian Gentile who listened to me discuss this project for the last two years. Thanks must also go to the America in the World Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin for allowing me to receive constructive feedback and recommendations on the early foundations of this paper at their February 2023 “Young Scholar’s Conference.” Finally, this paper would be nowhere near as readable if not for the awesome and diligent work of the editorial team at the Texas National Security Review — thank you.
Image: PFC E. E. Green, U.S. Army
