Cold War: The Korean War

The Korean War is seen as the “flashpoint” in the Cold War, which made the Cold war a global conflict. North Korea was led by Kim Il-Sung and was communist. South Korea was led by Syngman Rhee and was capitalist. Though it is said that Kim Il-Sung, who headed The Democratic People's Republic, which was created by the Soviet Union, had adopted a policy of opposition to Rhee's government and for the unification of the Korean peninsula by armed force, there are still many other theories as to why the Korean War began. Some say that Kim Il-Sung convinced Stalin that he could take all of Korea, others say that since Europe was not the only area where the Communists were coming to power and that President Truman believed that if Korea fell, then
The US, however, did send troops as part of a UN international-peace keeping force. From the US perspective, the UN force was only in name as to them the troops seemed to be almost entirely made up of American forces, with some forces from the allied powers. The Korean War was the first instance during the Cold War in which it became clear that the UN could be used by the US as a foreign policy tool. It was somewhat surprising considering that it had only a few years after letting China turn into a Communist country without getting seriously involved, as well as watching Eastern Europe fall under the "iron curtain", that the US would then become embroiled in an Asian land war over the fate of a seemingly strategically insignificant Korea. Therefore, the Korean War represented an important shift in the US Cold War policy. By 1950, with Truman’s support people began to go with the idea that a loss to communism anywhere was thought of as a loss
foreign, and defense efforts in the period 1946-1950 and establishing important new lines of policy. However some would argue that Korea was simply an important accident. They argue that we should note that the traditional explanation of the Cold War, which affirms the validity of President Truman's view in which he stated that Korea was a Soviet-designed test of American resolve, implies that there were possible substitutes for Korea. This suggests that the Soviets could have picked another battleground. The United States would have had to fight and rebuild its position, as it did after Korea, if it was to prevent the Russians from dominating the globe. The historians say that even if the war was planned by Russia the cause was linked to the local context and that had it not occurred, it is not likely that the Russians would have posed an armed challenge to the United States elsewhere. It is a theory that very few historians now defend but it does provoke the question of what if the Soviets had picked a different battleground? It poses the idea that perhaps in a different scenario their could have been a Cold War in which there were very few lives lost and sure, they argue that the U.S would have had to make the same, if not similar policy changes, but it still does not cover the fact that the pre-existing factors in the U.S would not have been enough to evoke such a