Korea
East Asian peninsula partitioned 1945; site of the Korean War
Also known as: Korea
East Asian peninsula partitioned in 1945 and site of the Korean War (1950–1953) — the first hot conflict of the Cold War (T&H 203).
Quigley's Framing
Korea enters T&H as the casualty of the 1945 partition between Soviet and American occupation zones — a decision Quigley reads as one of the more careless of the late-wartime great-power settlements, splitting a single historically integrated polity along an arbitrary parallel. The 1950 North Korean invasion and the resulting U.N./American intervention are treated as the inevitable consequence: the first major test case of Cold War containment doctrine and the first American war fought without a formal declaration of war.
Strategic Role
T&H's Korean War chapters give particular attention to the MacArthur–Truman conflict, the Chinese intervention, the stalemate around the 38th parallel, and the 1953 armistice. The war is read as the model conflict of the early Cold War: limited in geographic scope, limited in weapons used, fought through proxies and direct great-power commitment, and concluded by negotiated stalemate rather than victory. The post-war South Korean trajectory — authoritarian developmentalism evolving toward democratic capitalism under American security guarantee — becomes one of the Cold War's eventual success stories.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 203 Quigley
Korea, partitioned in 1945, was the casualty of one of the more careless of the late-wartime great-power settlements.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 988 Quigley
The Korean War was the model conflict of the early Cold War — limited, fought through proxies, concluded by negotiated stalemate.