Attack On The Sui-ho Dam - Political Effects of June Attacks

Political Effects of June Attacks

What effect if any the attacks had on the communist hierarchy and its representatives at the truce talks was immediately negated by reaction of the left wing in London. In the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Labour Party leaders Clement Attlee and Aneurin Bevan criticized the operation as risking World War III, even though there were no allegations of territorial violations or objections that the plants were non-military targets.

The Labour Party saw an opportunity to cripple the ruling Conservatives and immediately called for a vote in the House of Commons to censure the Churchill government, but based on the British government's "failure to secure effective consultation" from the U.S. beforehand (The Minister of Defence, Lord Harold Alexander, had been in Korea when Clark first approved the FEAF plan but had left Korea before the JCS input). The government barely survived the vote after U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson publicly took the blame, stating the U.S. was at fault for not consulting the British "as a courtesy", although the price for this stance was undercutting Clark and the Panmunjom negotiators. Naval historian James Field commented that cooperation between the services was much smoother than between the allies.

While conferring with Alexander, Clark had already agreed in principle to British requests for a representative of the UN staff, and Churchill's designee was appointed as a deputy chief of staff on July 31, 1952.

The other factor crippling the political effect of the strikes occurred in the United States and was just the opposite of that in Britain. Critics of the Truman administration in Congress quickly seized on the military success of the strikes to question why the attacks had taken almost two years to be approved. General Clark, who agreed, so advised the JCS. Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett, to whom the inquiries were made, cited seven factors, but some were long obsolete by the time of the attacks and others clearly badly estimated.

Despite the lack of political effect on the truce talks, and the widely-publicized negative reactions on both sides, the campaign against the hydroelectric system became an acceptable tactic of UN forces.