Korean War
Acheson's speech on January 12, 1950, before the National Press Club did not mention the Korea Peninsula as part of the all-important "defense perimeter" of the United States, an omission that critics subsequently took to mean that the United States would not defend the ROK from communist attack. Critics of Acheson have argued that the speech seemed to say that South Korea was beyond the American defense line, so that American support for the new Syngman Rhee government in South Korea would be limited. Critics later charged that the speech provided Joseph Stalin and Kim Il-sung with reason to believe the US would not intervene if they invaded the South. However, evidence from Korean and Soviet archives provides some evidence that Stalin and Kim's decisions were not influenced by Acheson's speech.
Read more about this topic: Dean Acheson
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)