The first component of any concept of war termination is the idea of an agreed
battle. ² An agreed battle is a conflict fought for less than total objectives by
mutual agreement, with deliberately imposed limitations on the extent of fighting
derived from those political objectives. Because it is fought for less than total
objectives, it is conducted within "rules" that may be apparent only as the
fighting unfolds. An illustration is provided by the conduct of the Korean War
on the part of the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Each
government was determined to achieve certain policy objectives but not at the
cost of allowing the war to expand into a total war. The Chinese limited their
acknowledged involvement to "volunteers." The United States intervened in
Korea, and later fought the Chinese who intervened, under the aegis of the
United Nations. There were also important restraints on how both sides conducted
the fighting. The United States did not authorize bombing attacks on targets in
the Chinese mainland, and the Chinese did not contest U.S. Pacific sanctuaries
from which reinforcements and war-supporting materiel were provided. The war
was thus frozen into a more or less tightly bounded geopolitical context, much
to General Douglas MacArthur's displeasure and to the confusion of many Amer-
ican people. ³

The United States "discovered" the idea of limited war in the course of
fighting the Korean war, in some sense. ⁴ It did not plan to include South Korea
within its strategic defense perimeter in the Far East. During the spring of 1949,
General MacArthur, as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in the Far
East, gave a newspaper interview in which he outlined a U.S. line of defense
in the Far East that excluded the Korean peninsula. And in his speech before
the National Press Club of January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
outlined a U.S. defense perimeter, which also left out Korea. Thus President
Harry Truman's reaction to the North Korean invasion surprised not only the
North Koreans and the Soviets but also many of the advisers in his own admin-
istration. At first the United States reacted by providing air support to the be-
leaguered South Koreans, but it soon became apparent that this support would
be insufficient to stem the tide. Accordingly, Truman authorized intervention of
U.S. ground forces, which at that moment were in a preparedness status far
below that required for sustained combat in the Korean peninsula. As the North
Koreans pushed U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK) forces into the Pusan pe-
rimeter in 1950, it soon became clear to Americans that they were in for a
sustained commitment with apparently high costs.

But Truman was determined that those costs not be so high as to preclude the
United States from assisting Europe in a defense against Soviet attack there,
should it materialize. Nor was the United States so plentifully supplied with
nuclear weapons that it could afford to use them in Korea without jeopardizing
the stockpile that might be required for war in Europe. Moreover, nuclear weap-
ons seemed disproportionate to the accomplishment of American objectives in

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