Congressman Mike Gallagher says the Korean War offers many lessons for America as it enters an era of revived great-power competition with China.
Congressman Mike Gallagher says the Korean War offers many lessons for America as it enters an era of revived great-power competition with China.
O n July 27, the somber notes of a bugle call commemorated a milestone that often goes ignored on the home front: the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice. This date, marking the impermanent end of hostilities that resulted in more than 40,000 American dead and 100,000 wounded, rarely echoes loudly in our collective memory. But it resounds clearly elsewhere. In China, Mao Zedong’s decision to send “volunteers” to Korea is celebrated, while here in America, the “forgotten” conflict’s legacy languishes.
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) is trying to change that. As the chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, he thinks the Korean War offers many lessons for America as it enters an era of revived great-power competition with China. In collaboration with Aaron MacLean, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former senior foreign-policy adviser and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), Gallagher is doing his utmost to share the essential insights that can be drawn from the Korean War. At the end of last month, together with MacLean, the congressman authored a piece in Foreign Affairs about the war and taught a weeklong seminar on the conflict to college and graduate students through the Hertog Foundation’s Security Studies program.
In an interview with National Review, Gallagher explained why he’s on a crusade to jog America’s memory on Korea. “A priority of our foreign policy should be the deterrence of war,” Gallagher said. “Anytime you have a deterrence failure, like on the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s, we should seek to understand why deterrence failed so as not to repeat that failure in the future.”
Gallagher also emphasized that China’s attention to the Korean War should alert America to its importance. “Our primary adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, is intensely studying the Korean War and promoting it and celebrating it and forcing its citizens and party members to study it,” he stated, implying that this is part of China’s preparation for a potential conquest of Taiwan. “If our foremost adversary is paying attention to something, we ought to as well.”
The congressman was clear about why the Korean War might be forgotten in the U.S., pointing to America’s preference for clear victories and comfort with grand causes. He remarked, “A war that ended in an armistice or a stalemate, a limited war, is not something Americans, who have a very clear sense of right and wrong, are very good at grappling with. This is precisely why we need to make sure that we study it.”
Gallagher sees several lessons that can be gleaned from the war. “I think the Korean War shows that our enemies, particularly the Chinese Communist Party, make no such distinction between the pure battlefield and the political elements of warfare,” he explained. “I mean, it’s almost a truism to say that war is an extension of politics by other means, but while we may tend to distinguish between the two, we need to understand that for the Chinese, politics and combat are deeply intertwined.”
Gallagher’s emphasis on the lessons of the Korean War serves as a reminder of the importance of understanding history, not just for its own sake but the insight it provides into present-day struggles. In discussing the technically ongoing Korean conflict, Gallagher expressed concern over what he perceives as the Biden administration’s lack of clarity about the Korean Peninsula. “I’m not sure we know what the Biden administration’s policy towards North Korea is at present.” He also expressed concern over the ways in which China has been shielding the regime in Pyongyang from accountability. “I think it’s clear that China is not interested in stability on the Korean peninsula,” he says.
The Korean War’s ambiguous conclusion, far from diminishing its importance, only adds to its significance as we navigate increasingly complex and volatile global currents. China’s keen focus on this conflict is a reminder that America must approach the world with the same vigilance and historical awareness.