There’s a quote saying ‘History repeats itself’. If we look back on history, there are many failures. Through those failures, we learned and tried to prevent ourselves from repeating the same mistake. There is no exception to U.S. intelligence failure. Failure of U.S. intelligence could be critical to our nation’s security. It could cost not only a failure of a military mission but also cost enormous expense and thousands of lives. In Korean War, U.S intelligence failed to analyze North Korea’s invasion of South Korea and even China entering the war. The result of unsuccessful anticipation was severe to the United States (U.S.) to include a lot of lives of U.S. troops and cost of war. This tragedy could have been prevented if U.S. Intelligence …show more content…
After the Japanese surrender, the peninsula was divided by the 38th parallel between the Soviet controlled north and the U.S. controlled south. On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-Sung, the North Korea’s dictator ordered North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) to cross the 38th parallel to invade South Korea. Kim Il-Sung planned to unite the Korean peninsula under Communist regime. The sudden attack on South Korea was a surprise for both U.S and South Korea. South Korean Army (SKA) were untrained and unequipped even though there were U.S troops prior to this attack. SKA couldn’t stop the marching of NKPA. Within days, NKPA had already taken a hold of Korea, except a very small part of the south-eastern tip. However, with the U.S. and United Nation’s (UN) assistance, SKA could recover its land and advanced across the 38th parallel to defeat the North Korea. But the flash of hope was crushed quickly by China’s intervene and it forced US-UN forces to retreat back to 38th parallel with severe damage to its …show more content…
During June 1950, South Korea and the CIA generated intelligence reports that provided a clear view of North Korea’s plan for war. These reports stated that the control of all transportation were for military use only, relocating civilians, and the movements of military units to the border. Following that, on June 20th, 1950, CIA report recognized that the North Korea had the ability to attack South Korea at any time. Despite of these facts, the leaders in Washington didn’t take these reports seriously because they were trapped into their mindset. The war could be turned out different if the leaders didn’t fall into the mindset. With those reports, U.S. could have trained and equipped SKA better for precaution since U.S. provided SKA with only light weapons and little training. This would have helped South Korea to fight back against the North and stop them to cross the 38th
The Korean War changed the face of American Cold War diplomacy forever. In the midst of all the political conflict and speculation worldwide, the nation had to choose between two proposed solutions, each one hoping to ensure that communism didn?t sweep across the globe and destroy American ideals of capitalism and democracy. General Douglas MacArthur takes the pro-active stance and says that, assuming it has the capability, the U.S. should attack communism everywhere. President Harry Truman, on the other hand, believed that containing the Soviet communists from Western Europe was the best and most important course of action, and that eliminating communism in Asia was not a priority.
The United States vows to protect the democratic South Korea. American forces defend South Korea but are almost pushed on the peninsula . Douglas Mccarthur is in charge of the American forces. He stages an impressive counter attack that pushes the North Koreans all the way back to China. This is when China enters the warand pushes American forces back to the 38Th parallel. In 1953 , the war ended In a stalemate. (document C)
The Korean War began when the North Koreans invaded South Korea across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950. The North Korean forces fought their way to Pusan at the southern edge of the Korean peninsula. With the North Koreans controlling most of the peninsula, General Douglas MacArthur landed an amphibious assault at Inchon on September 15, 1950 and wrested control of South Korea from North Korean forces. After MacArthur’s forces marched to the northern border of Korea, China entered the war. After a major Chinese attack and a major American counter attack, the front of the war had a new stage, the Chosin Reservoir (Henretta, Edwards & Self 768).
The Korean War , although successful in preventing the spread of communism, was one of the first tests of communism in Asia. North Korea was strictly communist while South Korea was democratic. As usual, the United States supported democratic South Korea and the Truman Doctrine was applied to the Korean situation. The North Korean forces crossed the dividing line (38th parallel) and invaded South Korea. Thus, they provoked a war over communism. With the possibility of democratic South Korea falling to the communistic North, the U.S. stepped in and supplied aid mostly through troops. The U.S. then urged the United Nations to support South Korea and fight against the communist North. Once the North Korean forces were defeated at Inchon, they eventually got pushed back to the 38th parallel. However, against President Truman’s word, American General MacArthur decided to keep pushing back the North Korean forces by crossing the dividing line. This caused more trouble because the People’s Republic of China (Communist China) now sent troops to aid the communists against the pro...
... the Korean War." Global Research. Global Research, 03 Sept. 2008. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
...that had helped the United States to be one of the greatest counties that it is today. Within the agency, there was no communications where they kept information from each other. The CIA agency had no idea what they were doing in regards to central intelligence and they were compromised where the enemies knew about the attack before the attack was fully implemented. These examples prove that some leaders had some positive outcomes for the United States, but the agency from within could not stay united as well as keeping communications about what was going on in the world. I agree with Tim Weiner’s thesis that the United States is one of the greatest countries in the world, but we cannot seem to create a great and efficient spy service to benefit the United States.
...e community have had conflicting views and opposing agendas. Lack of cooperation and communication between intelligence agencies; such as the FBI and the CIA refusing to share information prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001, resulted in limited information and failure on the part of the intelligence community and policy decisions regarding US safeguards against terrorist.
According to one source, after September 11, 2001, intelligence budget grew more. But now we are in another cycle of budget cut again. It is said President Obama proposed the budget amount of $52.6 billion for fiscal year 2013 to fund the National Intelligence Program. This budget amount is said to be less than the $55 billion sought last year. The unstable budget is believed to be hampering U.S. intelligence missions. As the budget pressure mounted, the redundancy in US intelligence increased too, according to the same source. With the budget deficits, the DIA budget didn’t authorized to expand its payroll. It is said DI...
The United States has endured numerous security breaches and high security threats over the past two decades. After the attacks on 9/11, the office of Intelligence became a vital source in retrieving sensitive data and tracking down potential terrorists and their networks which could pose a threat to the American people and then forwarding that vital information to the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies. Intelligence became a key role in “assessing threats to critical American infrastructures, bio-and nuclear terrorism, pandemic diseases, threats to the borders to the nation, and radicalization within American society” (Randol, 2009, p. 7). The sharing of homeland security intelligence has become a precedence for Congress and the government. Our nation must be one step ahead of any potential terrorists that want to harm our turf. Within this text the capabilities and limitations of both domestic and foreign intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts will be explained;
North Korea, with the Soviet Union’s support, attacked South Korea because they wanted South Korea to become communists. In June 1950, North Korea (who was supplied strongly by the Soviets) launched a massive attack on South Korea. The reason behind this attack was that North Korea wanted to unite the whole of Korea under communism. The United Nations responded to this attack by gathering a great army, which was led by General Douglas MacArthur of the United States to defend South Korea. China threatened that if the United Na...
June 25, 1950 marked the day in which fighting between the North Koreans and South Koreans started. 135,000 North Korean troops crossed the border into South Korea while others attacked by sea. In several hours North Korea had successfully detained the South Korean city of Kaesong and in the next couple hours South Korea’s capital, Seoul, was under attack. Things were not looking good for Korea.
One of the main failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies identified by both the authors of “The Cell” and Senator Richard Shelby was that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. acted in competition with one another to produce results, as opposed to in centralized collaboration. Gladwell points out that the intelligence community was structured in this manner in response to the failures of the Bay of Pigs operation, which had been based on highly centralized intelligence gathering. In turn, the structure of intelligence agencies at the time of the Bay of Pigs was in response to the failure of decentralized intelligence to identify the threat of an attack on Pearl Harbor. The iterative cycle of intelligence failures and subsequent reform efforts ignores the premise that the failures do not represent evidence of the limitations of intelligence agencies, but rather the limitations of intelligence itself. As Gladwell states, “in our zeal to correct what we believe to be the problems of the past, we end up creating new problems for the
By the summer of 1950 after the successful landing at Inchon by the US X Corps which led to the destruction of the North Korean Army, the Korean War seemed to be in the final phases of completion. United Nations (UN) forces spearheaded by the US Eighth army and X Corps were advancing northward with the goal of completely reuniting North and South Korea. The Taebaek Mountains which are an extremely rugged north –south oriented mountain range divide Korea. The UN forces split in to two groups during their advance with the Eighth Army advancing along the west coast and the US X Corps moving north along the east coast. On 19 October 1950 after repeated warnings to the United Nations Massive amounts of Chinese Forces crossed the border into North Korea.[2] After several minor skirmishes with X Corps, the Chinese Peoples Volunteer Army (PVA) decisively engaged the US X Corps in the vicinity of Chosin Reservoir.
On June 25th, 1950 at 4 a.m. the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) attacked across the 38th parallel, implementing a well-developed invasion plan (Lewis p.1). The KPA had a huge number of military men compare to the South Koreans. It had about 135,000 soldiers in 10 divisions, five separate infantry brigades, and one armor brigade with 120 soviet-made-T-34 tanks (Lewis p.1). The Republic of Korea (ROK) was taken by surprise and was not fully equipped with weapons like the KPA (Lewis p.1). So for that matter the ROK could not halt the invasion. But if the South Koreans would have had heavy artillery like the KPA then maybe the KPA’s invasion plan would had been a failure. The United Nations Security Council approved a US sponsored resolution that called fo...
Politically, the Soviet Union considered the Korean peninsula as a springboard to attack Russia and asserted that the Korean government should be “loyal” to the Soviet Union, this was where the United States stepped in, realizing that they were in a competition for world domination with the USSR and the Korean War was just simply an excuse to trigger this race.... ... middle of paper ... ... The current situation regarding both nations remains under pressure; however, no major threats have been made by the North that would be of great peril to the South. The Korean War, initiated by the heated tension between the ideological and political differences of North and South Korea, was a battle that had no real outcome.