Now the emphasis would be on infiltration, subversion, and insurgency

Sunday, April 4th, 2021

This Kind of War by T.R. FehrenbachThe Communist powers, T. R. Fehrenbach notes (in This Kind of War), would remember the rapid escalation of Korea from a small, almost civil-type conflict into a large-scale action involving major powers:

After Korea, overt, brutal armed aggression, which had produced so violent — and unexpected — a counteraction from the West, would be avoided. Now the emphasis would be on infiltration, subversion, and insurgency to gain Communist ends in the fringe areas; the trick was never again, as with the South Korean invasion, to give the West a clear moral issue.

Communist planners, studying the lessons of Korea, could not help wondering what the result might have been could they have slipped several North Korean divisions into the South clandestinely, keeping them supplied across a fluid border. They might well wonder if the West would have then sprung to the defense of autocratic old Dr. Syngman Rhee, even though the interests of the West were equally imperiled.

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Within a year after Korean fighting ended, they would succeed in Vietnam, this time without overt aggression.

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