What Now?

The first phase had gone better than the U.S. had dared to hope. The Reds not only agreed to negotiate; they also decided to have the Chinese commander take part in the talks. Washington had feared that the enemy would carry the Chinese "volunteer" pretense to the point of forcing U.S. representatives to deal only with Korean Communists.

Only a First Step. But it was only a first step. There was bound to be trouble over some of the West's terms for a ceasefire. The Communists were certain, for example, to raise stiff objections to a buffer zone which would leave the U.N. forces in their positions and force the Communists to move back 15 or 20 miles. It would not be easy to talk the Communists into letting a truce team travel behind their lines. The Communists have opposed all the supervisory commissions and truce teams the U.N. has attempted, and met most with boycott.

Only an Armistice. At best, the ceasefire could bring an end only to the fighting in Korea. There would still be the problem of millions of Korean refugees with no place to live and not much to live for. There would still be the Korean political problem--and beyond it, the worldwide struggle with Communist aggression which would be gravely affected, for better and for worse, by a Korean settlement. A cease-fire near the 38th parallel was not a victory for the West in the usual sense. The enemy had not surrendered, was not broken ; he was to be allowed to keep most of what he had when he started the war, including a good chance to start the same one again.

On the plus side of a settlement were these factors:

1) The Reds had paid a staggering cost in blood and prestige;

2) They had failed in their objective--to gulp down South Korea;

3) They had, by their aggression, hurt their chance for gains most of the West had been ready to hand them only a few months ago by default--possession of Formosa and membership in the U.N. Even Britain, which had insisted on Red China's right to both, even while Britons were being killed in Korea, decided last week to side with the U.S.--at least for the present. Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison told the House of Commons: "In view of [Red China's] persistence in behavior which is inconsistent with the purpose and principles of the United Nations Charter ... consideration of this question should be postponed."

4) Above all, their attack on Korea had cost Communism the flabbiness and indecision of the West. The West had been scared into action, convinced of the need for collective defense against an antagonist whose intent had now been proved beyond a doubt. Western armies were growing, defense production was burgeoning. The U.S. now packed more power in Korea alone than it possessed throughout the world before June 23, 1950.

Bone-Dry Tinder. All of those advantages, so painfully won, could be lost in a few months after a Korean cease-fire if the West lapsed into complacency. If rearmament slackened off, if the U.S. reduced its efforts to bolster up threatened Asiatic countries, if the West made concessions on Formosa or U.N. membership for Red China--then the Korean War would not have been worth the West's fighting.

If the Reds were ready to quit in Korea, the West could be sure it was only because they wanted to use their energies elsewhere. With their armies no longer bleeding, the Chinese Communists could now push harder at Indo-China and the rest of South Asia. Relieved of the burden of supplying a deadlocked war in Korea, world Communism could now turn more energetically to the tactics that suited it better. The world was speckled with bone-dry tinder piles--Berlin, and all of Germany, Yugoslavia and, on top of the list, Iran.

It was with the knowledge of other bonfires ready for the lighting that the West watched the hot embers fade in Korea.

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