Trump and Acheson
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The thing to remember about President Trump’s threats in respect of Korea is the bitter lessons of history. The Korean war happened after, among other things, a famous — or infamous — speech by an American tribune. It left the communists with the impression that we might not view our vital national interests as extending to Korea. Before you could say Jack Robinson, we were at war.
Not only that but the speech was made by no less a Panjandrum than Secretary of State Acheson. He spoke in January 1950 at the National Press Club in Washington. One scholar, Jas. Matray, calls it “among the most important and controversial US policy statements in the early history of the Cold War in East Asia.” That’s because Acheson defined our “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific in a way that excluded Korea.
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