Korean War
On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea with Soviet-supplied weapons and Stalin's approval. The United Nations Security Council — from which the Soviet Union was absent, boycotting over the question of Chinese representation — authorised a military response, and the United States committed the bulk of the forces under General Douglas MacArthur. After a stunning reversal from near-defeat at Pusan to a dramatic amphibious landing at Inchon, the UN forces pushed to the Chinese border at the Yalu River, prompting a massive Chinese military intervention that drove them back to roughly the original dividing line. The Korean War was the first hot war of the Cold War era and established the template for how superpower proxy conflicts would be fought: with restraint, limited aims, and careful avoidance of direct superpower confrontation. Truman's firing of MacArthur, who had publicly demanded permission to bomb China and potentially use nuclear weapons, was a defining assertion of civilian control and limited war doctrine. The war ended in July 1953 in an armistice — not a peace treaty — that left Korea divided along roughly the same line at which it had begun, with approximately 3.5 million military and civilian dead. The war permanently reinforced American commitment to Asian containment and tripled the US defence budget.
- Year: 1950 CE
- Category: Military
