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Abstract
During the Korean War, the U.S. government failed again, as it did in Pearl Harbor, to predict disaster: it completely miscalculated China's intention to enter the Korean War, underestimating the size and quality of the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) and suffered the longest retreat in American military history. Why did this happen? While some have found critical flaws with China's signaling of its intentions, many have criticized the American leaders for their failure to accurately assess China's intentions and capabilities. Richard N. Lebow, one of the severest critics of MacArthur and the Truman administration, has gone so far as to argue that American intelligence failure was due to a lapse of rationality on the part of American decision-makers. By closely examining and refuting Lebow's interpretation of the Sino-American conflict, this paper questions the judgments of those scholars who have criticized American leaders and demonstrates that it would be inappropriate to call MacArthur and the Truman administration "irrational" and their decision to cross the 38th parallel a "gross foreign policy errror."
Key Words: The Korean War, Chinese Intervention in the Korean War, Deterrence Theory, MacArthur, The Truman administration
I. Introduction
During, the Korean War, the U.S. government failed again, as it did in Pearl Harbor, to predict disaster: it completely miscalculated China's intention to enter the Korean War, underestimating the size and quality of the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) and suffered the longest retreat in American military history. Why did this happen? While some have found critical flaws with China's signaling of its intentions,1 many have criticized American leaders for their failure to accurately assess China's intentions and capabilities.2 George and Smoke have suggested that America's miscalculation of Chinese resolve was a "gross foreign policy error."3 And recently, Thomas J. Christensen argues that "while historians and political scientists generally view the October deterrence failure as a tragedy of bad timing and poor signaling, responsibility for the second set of deterrence failures in November of 1950 has been firmly laid on Truman's and MacArthur's shoulders."4
One of the severest critics of MacArthur and the Truman administration is Richard N. Lebow. Utilizing motivational model,6 one of psychological approaches to decision-making process,7 Lebow has gone so far as to argue that American intelligence failure was due...