Tag: Korean War

Parallels between the old Cold War in the Pacific and the new… (The Hidden History of the Korean War reviewed in ‘Socialist China’)

February 20, 2024

Peace was very much an option…Reading Izzy Stone’s reporting today, it’s striking the extent to which these mechanisms of Cold War still exist and are being used to wage a New Cold War. The military bases, the troop deployments, the nuclear threats that aimed to contain socialism and prevent the emergence of a multipolar world in the 1950s continue to serve the same purposes in 2023.

On Izzy Stone and his analysis of Korean peace negotiations(The Hidden History of the Korean War in ‘Al’s Substack’)

February 20, 2024

As Tim Beal and Gregory Elich tell us in their excellent introduction to the new 2023 edition of the book, by closely examining various sources, Stone found inconsistencies that challenged the official narrative of how and why the war started. Most prominently, Stone found considerable evidence suggesting that U.S. and South Korean officials had probable foreknowledge of the North Korean offensive, which they chose not to try to prevent…

WATCH: The Korean Policy Institute on Izzy Stone’s classic, MRP’s first-ever book

WATCH: The Korean Policy Institute on Izzy Stone’s classic, MRP’s first-ever book

February 20, 2024

At first no one would touch Stone’s findings – they were too hot. But Stone got in touch with Monthly Review — and this was the first book we published. Courageously written at the height of the McCarthy era, officials never refuted nor denied the book’s claims, but Stone’s book still got a real audience due to the durable reputation of the journalist himself. Christine Hong, MR author Marty Hart-Landsberg, and Gregory Elich (each of the Korea Policy Institute) and Time Beal discuss…

The first war the U.S. lost: Korea, not forgotten, hidden (Tim Beal in ‘Pearls and Irritations’)

February 20, 2024

Wars never start on the date given in history books. There is always a pre-history, a series of events and decisions that lead to the outbreak of fighting. The war in Korea has been called in America the ‘Forgotten War’ and it is not difficult to see why it was soon shunted out of public sight, consigned to oblivion. It was the first war that the United States did not win and it ended in an armistice, a concession of stalemate, but also an ominous indicator of unfinished business…

“A skillful, researched warning against the blind acceptance of wartime propaganda” (The Hidden History of the Korean War to appear in ‘Foreword Reviews’)

February 20, 2024

The presentation is novelistic: there is a rising action as tensions build before the war begins. Once the conflict starts, there’s gripping escalation, then brief falling action as the war concludes. Questions posed throughout keep engagement high while also allowing time for contemplating new pieces of information. The result is illuminating…

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