Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Renown | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael D. Pearlman
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 527640
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0253350662
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.90424092273
EAN: 9780253350664
ASIN: 0253350662
Publication Date: April 2008
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Book Description
Truman and MacArthur offers an objective and comprehensive account of the very public confrontation between a sitting president and a well-known general over the military's role in the conduct of foreign policy. In November 1950, with the army of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea mostly destroyed, Chinese military forces crossed the Yalu River. They routed the combined United Nations forces and pushed them on a long retreat down the Korean peninsula. Hoping to strike a decisive blow that would collapse the Chinese communist regime in Beijing, General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Far East Theater, pressed the administration of President Harry S. Truman for authorization to launch an invasion of China across the Taiwan straits. Truman refused; MacArthur began to argue his case in the press, a challenge to the tradition of civilian control of the military. He moved his protest into the partisan political arena by supporting the Republican opposition to Truman in Congress. This violated the President's fundamental tenet that war and warriors should be kept separate from politicians and electioneering. On April 11, 1951 he finally removed MacArthur from command. Viewing these events through the eyes of the participants, this book explores partisan politics in Washington and addresses the issues of the political power of military officers in an administration too weak to carry national policy on its own accord. It also discusses America's relations with European allies and its position toward Formosa (Taiwan), the long-standing root of the dispute between Truman and MacArthur.
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 The Truth About the Truman-MacArthur Controversy April 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Michael D. Pearlman, PhD, an award-winning historian, surgically dissects the Truman-MacArthur confrontation in his outstanding new book, Truman & MacArthur: Policy, Politics and the Hunger for Honor and Renown. In doing so, he cuts through over fifty years of partisan mythmaking by the champions of both men to present the most accurate and in-depth account to date of what led Truman to relieve MacArthur of command on April 11, 1951 and the firestorm of controversy that act produced. Pearlman's insightful account was not written to please advocates for either Truman or MacArthur. The author set himself a different task: "My job, writing some fifty years after the fact, is not to produce another partisan polemic for one individual or the other;" in short, he did not set out - as many books on this subject have done -- to make a case for justifying the actions of either man. His meticulously documented, painstakingly researched book removes the shroud of folklore that has clouded the controversy for decades and shatters long held myths -- instead of perpetuating them. Despite the fact that any political-military-diplomatic historian of long standing could not possibly embark upon such a book without having at least some preconceptions about the principal actors, Pearlman reveals that "I no longer have certain opinions held when beginning my research several years ago" - evidence of a rare open mindedness about a subject usually dominated by fixed opinions and partisanship. The result, to borrow a well-known news network tag line, is the most "fair and balanced" presentation of this complicated, highly-nuanced civil-military crisis yet published.
Pearlman does history a great service by using well documented facts to destroy the mythology surrounding the controversy, much of it purposely created by Truman and his partisan supporters in the wake of the relief in an attempt to weather the storm of public outrage and to fix the "feisty old Harry" image in the public conscious. Indeed, much of what today is presumed to be "known" about the Truman-MacArthur controversy is little more than myth or folklore, peppered with a scattering of "facts" removed from the context within which they occurred. Those who have accepted the mythology regarding MacArthur's relief and assume they know what really happened would be well advised to read Pearlman's Truman & MacArthur, the most revealing, well written account yet published about this watershed event in U. S. civil-military relations.
 Very critical of Truman March 21, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
According to Michael Pearlman, Truman was one of the main reasons that MacArthur felt free to criticize the government and advance into North Korea and past Pyongyang. Truman had an overly romantic view of war and thought that his heroes Hannibal and Lee were constrained by civilian leaders. This view of military leadership made it possible for MacArthur to support the KMT government contrary to secretary of state Dean Acheson's wishes. Truman gave MacArthur further reign in Korea by letting him cross into the North Korean border and then close to the Yalu river. MacArthur was only stoped and eventually removed by Truman when after the Chinese invasion he suggested that KMT troops should become involved in the Korean War to a member of the Republican party, Joseph Martin. Truman felt that MacArthur was getting innvolved in domestic politics in which generals should avoid. The only weakness of this book is that the last fifty pages of the dragged on, but this is essential reading for those like John McCain and Robert Kaplan, who believe that the military alone should dictate military strategy.
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