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“If MacArthur hadn’t botched the approach on the Yalu”

I’m not sure what you mean by botched. Supply lines too strung out?

“and ignored the warnings of the Communist intervention”

It is not altogether certain that he received those warnings. The information that MacArthur received was filtered through Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach, the son of Baron von Tscheppe-Weidenbach from Baden, Germany, and Emma Willoughby. After attending the University of Heidelberg, Adolf moved to the United States in 1910 and became known as Charles Willoughby—and, much later, became MacArthur’s Chief of Intelligence.

It is said that Willoughby suppressed an analysis by a junior officer that predicted the North’s attack, and tried to have that junior officer given the bum’s rush out of the military. It is also rumored that MacArthur later heard of that report, which may have had something to do with Willoughby’s rather abrupt resignation. Willoughby may have decided that “the General” didn’t need to hear about those warnings from the Chinese.

Another theory is that MacArthur, being a Machiavellian SOB, was trying to force Truman’s hand vis a vis the Red Chinese.

One thing I do think is true: it would be exceedingly odd if a genius like MacArthur were to blunder as you imply.

“we might not have a North Korean leadership in Pyongyang now”

I don’t quite understand how MacArthur reining in at the 38th parallel would have prevented that. How much further north could he have gone without bringing the Chicoms in? Pyongyang? How close to the Yalu?

“As a West Point historian noted in a lecture I attended, “MacArthur thought he understood the Asian mind. He was wrong.’ “

I won’t argue with that. I’ve often said the same thing myself. However, that was one of the very, very few things that he didn’t understand.