Non-IA Event: “Reassessing Ike: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Korean War”

Event: Non-IA, “Reassessing Ike: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Korean War”

Date: December 3, 2018 at 12:30 PM-2:00 PM

Location: Mershon Center

       For this month’s non-IA event, I went to a lecture about Eisenhower’s actions leading up to and during the Korean War and how this affected not only his eventual presidency, but the entirety of the Cold War era. The lecturer, Zachary Matusheski, is the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency Post-Doctoral Historian in Residence in the Department of History here at Ohio State. His work has contributed to the recovery of many missing American soldiers that disappeared during the Korean War, specifically The Battle of Pork Chop Hill. The lecture consisted of six main facts that allowed him to come a couple of conclusions: that Eisenhower’s life fits into a grander scheme of U.S. intervention in East Asia, throughout the war there was growing tension in military affairs (specifically between Eisenhower and MacArthur) impacted Eisenhower’s future, and that Eisenhower’s willingness to discuss nuclear weapons as an active option underscore how dangerous the last moments of the Korean War were. Eisenhower’s main beliefs that nuclear weapons should have been used during the Korean War and that Asia was vital to U.S. national security explained the basis of the growing arms race in the ‘50s and the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis. The point of his presentation was to emphasize how important the Korean War was as a Cold War crisis which could have turned out very differently had nuclear weapons gotten involved.

       Before attending this lecture, I knew very little about the Korean War and only could remember bits and pieces from what I had learned from my U.S. history classes from high school. I feel like in school it is not something that my teachers placed much importance on so it was only glossed over when it was taught to me. Listening to this lecture made me reconsider the actual implications that the Korean War had on major future events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and just the Cold War in general. I thought it was interesting to hear about how this war played such an important part in greater world events. This relates to international affairs because the war itself and the events that emerged from the war are still relevant in international relations today. At the time it constrained the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which laid the foundation for the Cold War and the present day suspicions each country has for each other. Also, the Korean War was settled with an armistice, so it is still technically happening, and tensions between North Korea and the Western world (mainly the U.S.) continue to grow. In recent years, this has become especially apparent as North Korea experimented with nuclear missiles. Nuclear weapons have continued to be a cause of many unfriendly relations in the world and the Korean War could be argued to explain this. Overall, I thought this lecture was an educational experience that has helped me learn more about the Korean War and the global consequences that came with it.

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