The communists had good intelligence on our side. They knew in advance Truman would not nuke them. If Truman had instead told his staff that he was just waiting for the chance to send China to hell, the war would have ended with a united free Korea.
Yes, if Truman had been more militant the war would have ended earlier, but there are a number of factors which have been hidden from U.S. citizens. The Chinese were certainly there goading the North Koreans on and providing troops in the later stages of the war. But the role of the Soviets is largely glossed over by the liberal media. You don’t here those folks on M*A*S*H mentioning the Soviets unless they are razzing Frank about his anticommunism.
It wasn’t really a war. It was a “conflict” under to auspices of a U.N. directive. The participation of the U.N. could have been prevented by a single veto by any permanent Security Council member. The Soviets were conveniently boycotting the Security Council when the crucial vote came. I have yet to see a political analyst comment why they sat it out and allowed the U.N. to come into the fray. They clearly WANTED U.N. participation!
Second, as my father used to point out to me, the North Koreans were using a boatload of U.S. military gear. This was courtesy of Roosevelt and the lend-lease program. The Soviets supplied the North Koreans with the gear that we had manufactured. Lenin used to say that the West would sow the seeds of their own destruction. How prescient!
After the death of Stalin the Soviet people were restless due to the amount of their industry diverted to the war effort. Kruschev came to power promising more butter and fewer guns. The Koreans came to the bargaining table within a few months. Apparently, the Chinese were not capable of supporting the war effort on their own.
This is not surprising given the primitive condition of the Chinese economy. Even in the late 1970’s my company delivered computers to China and had infrastructure problems during the installation. The units were the size of refrigerators and were crated in wood. The Chinese not only did not have simple crowbars, there were no hardware stores where equipment could be acquired. Our field engineers had to open the crates using their screw drivers for levers.