Evening star., 1950-11-12
By Russell Brines

Inc CnlueS6 COMMUNIST CIlTuSt
into Korea may give the Kremlin
the vital manpoWer it needs for
a Thirty Years War" in Asia.
The potentialities are explosive.
They range from an uneasy peace.
anchored to what the Communists
would interpret as concrete gains,
to the outbreak of World War III.
This is the view in Tokyo of
"a last minute military drive that
transformed a United Nations
victory into uncertainty.
The Soviet long has made clear
it's hope of carving out new con-
quests and whiting down West
ern strength by series of wars
throughout the world.
In Asia, where this destructive
alchemy has been working for
years. the decisive factor was the
willingness and ability of the
Chinese Communists to partici-
pate.
The Peiping regime controls the
largest land mass in the Orient
and maintains its largest army
The japanese. like other imperial
lists before them. learned the fu-
tility of trying to conquer China
by land.
The question was whether the
Chinese Reds were too preoccu-
pied with internal problems and
their own conquests to further the
Soviet blueprint. Mao -tung
the Chinese boss. has been called
an Oriental Tito" who would not
take outside orders.
Uncertainty Is Eliminated.
This uncertainty now has been
eliminated by the Chinese Red
drive into Korea under what, in
many respects. are unfavorable
circumstances.
For one thing, the Chinese hit
too late for the decisive military
victory that would have been pos
sible had they struck at weakened
United Nations forces holding the
Pusan beachhead. For that reason,
most American military officials In
Tokyo did not expect more than
token Chinese forces to enter the
campaign after their last big op-
portunity, the shoestring Allied
landing at Inchon September Is.
Now the Chinese have gone into
battle against United Nations air
and land power concentrated in
a relatively small area. This has
cost them far more men than they
would have lost at the outset of
an offensive three months ago.
The major. long-range purpose
evidently is to bog down the West
ern powers in hopeless land
campaign against the massive
Chinese Red army which may total
over 4 million men.
The immediate goal apparently
is to nail down the entire United
Nations force for the winter,
when weather limits offensive pos
sibilities. This would remove the
threat Of this powerful. integrated
U. N. command for defensive
fighting against communist drives
into such other threatened areas
as French Indo- China.
Peiping itself seems to be un-
impressed by the threat to the
Manchurian border or the i'm
portance of the Yalu River hydro
electric plants as basic reasons for
entering the campaign.
Otherwise 1t Is to be expected
Peiping would have made its In
tervention more open and would
have taken more pains to con-
vince its own people they were
fighting defensive war.
Fighting for Hated People.
Communist officials rather eau
tiously have explained to their
people that they are fighting for
the Koreans-whom the Chinese
hate bitterly.
The original Chinese offensive
apparently was designed to force
the Allies sufficiently south for
the Reds to build defensive posi-
tions below the Yalu River boun-
Diary.
BY encirclement and direct
thrust. the Chinese swept out a
buffer stretch of mountainous
borderlandS, then withdrew push
ing their offensive. This points
to bitter defensive battle along
the river, designed to maintain a
beachhead in Korea into which
reinforcements could be con-
stantly siphoned.
A stretch of land south Of the
Yalu would be valueless in itself
but, If successfully defended,
would be highly important in pro-
longing the bitter Korean war.
From 1t. the Communists could
springboard guerrilla raids or brief
offensives. They could provide
sanctuary on Korean soil for the
Pyongyang refugee government,
thereby preserving for it more
prestige than possible through
flight to Manchuria. If the buffer
stretch included the Yalu power
stations, the economic revival of
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