What are the similarities between the Korean War and Vietnam War?

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October 11, 1964, Section E, Page 6Buy Reprints

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 —Republican headquarters here, let it be known this week that there is, after all, one echo that it wished to keep reverberating in this Presidential campaign. It is the echo of Korea, as felt in Vietnam.

In studied imitation of Dwight D. Eisenhower's campaign promise of 12 years ago—if elected, “I shall go to Korea“—Senator Barry Goldwater issued a statement saying that, if elected, he would ask General Eisenhower ”to go to South Vietnam.”

Now, as then, the purpose would be to let a highly respected American military man survey the scene and suggest a way out of a bad situation.

Now, as then, the political impulse arose from the desire to move beyond criticism of Democratic policy toward an answer to that difficult question, “What would the Republicans do?”

And, as Senator Goldwater had already suggested, now, as then, the Republicans expected support from those who were angered by an ugly, inconclusive and distant war.

Thus far, the Goldwater statement has not had the galvanizing effect of the Eisenhower pledge in 1952. That is probably because the mood of the country has changed along with the cast of political characters and the actual position of the nation abroad.

But the memory of Korea haunts not only the candidates. It haunts the generals who vow, as they study Vietnam, never again to take on China's millions on the Asian mainland.,

There are certain similarities between Korea and Vietnam and they help to explain the revival now of previously heard debates in the war rooms of the Administration and on the political stump. But there are also important differences that tend to vitiate the lessons of the past.

Some of the similarities are striking. In both Vietnam and Korea the Communist and Western powers had divided their cold war ambitions by making two countries out of one, artificially setting the boundary along a mythical line of latitude. In each case, the Communist North vowed sooner or later to “liberate” the South, which, in turn, fell under the loosely defined protection of the West.

The Communist offensive in Korea in 1950 was sudden and direct, while in Vietnam a decade later it was gradual and corrosive. But in each case, the attackers and the victims were initially “proxies” for larger powers, fighting for relatively small pieces of Asian territory whose strategic value for Moscow or Peking or Washington far exceeded their intrinsic worth.

Distance, therefore, in no way diminished the United States commitment in both contests, even though the commitment in Korea was assumed almost overnight while that in Vietnam simply came upon us by circumstances. Yet, despite some momentary confusion in Korea, the United States' commitment in both places was defensive,

Washington's objective was not the retrieval of Communistheld territory nor the punishment of the organizers of aggression. It was the frustration of aggression.

Partly because of these narrowly defined objectives, the United States was squeamish about calling either contest a war. In Korea, the official language was “police action.” In Vietnam, the American mission is described as “advisory.” The word “war” was avoided precisely because it had come to bear a connotation of all‐out effort and unconditional victory —means and ends that did not seem to suit the situation.

Hence the debates. Should American soldiers die in remote places for stalemate, at best? Should the real plotters of aggression go unpunished? Is it practical, indeed, is it moral, to fight with less than all your might?

But the differences between Korea and Vietnam are greater than the similarities. And the differences suggest why the experience of the 1950's, even if it could so soon be accurately gauged, is thought here to be inapplicable in the 1960's.

Korea was an unusual but still fairly orthodox kind of war. It had a front line separating friendly from hostile territory. It was fought by soldiers in uniforms in more or less conventional formations. Advance and retreat and most other military concepts still had some meaning there.

South Vietnam is threatened by a nibbling army of guerrillas, full‐time and part‐time, alien and indigenous. The guerrillas seize splotches of territory here, then there. They strike by ambush and by terror, by battalion in a jungle or through a lone saboteur in the city. ‘

Even the invisible enemy in Korea was presumed to be known. Behind the North Korean armies there appeared all too soon and surprisingly the masses of Chinese “volunteers”; behind them, it was thought, stood the Soviet Union. In due course, after Stalin's death, Korea became an important element in the worldwide EastWest negotiations.

Behind the guerrillas in South Vietnam are the North Vietnamese and behind them, but still in uncertain proximity, are the Chinese. Soviet influence in Southeast Asia seems to be waning, and it is unclear who would negotiate with whom and for what, even if the combatants in South Vietnam were suddenly to be exhausted.

All these factors, of course, account for the most basic of all the differences between Ko rea and Vietnam: the size of the actual American commitment. In 1953, after three years of war, the United States had 275,000 men stationed in Kos rea plus tens of thousands more at nearby Navy and Air Force bases. The casualty records listed 33,629 dead and 103,284 wounded.

Today, three years after massive American intervention, there are about 20,000 men stationed in South Vietnam. The casualty records list 196 dead and 1,170 wounded from “hostile” causes plus 90 dead from other causes.

Hence, the doubts that the lessons of Korea mean anything in Vietnam. Can Western white men, even with endless resources, fashion an Asian government where there is none? Can the modern army of a nuclear power prevail in an alien jungle?

When General Eisenhower returned from his celebrated trip to Korea after his election in late 1952, all that he could really say was: “We must go ahead and do things that induce [the Communists] to want peace also.”

That, precisely, is what every student of the Vietnam problem has suggested and what the Administration believes it is doing. The questions are, what next? Where? How? And against which Communists? So far, no one here has discovered in Vietnam either a first line of defense or a point of last resort. As so often before, policy is not drawing upon history, it is waiting for it.