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The Balance Of Power In The Korean War

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In addition, the role of power has an impact on war and its ending. The effectiveness and the perception of the different sources of power that intervene in a conflict (military, economy, diplomacy, technology, information, population/society, natural resources, political system, and ideology) makes it difficult to achieve a balance of power that can bring war to a stable end. Each part involved in the conflict generally aims to improve its relative position on the international arena with a clear victory and is unwilling to accept worse peace terms or even status quo ante. Due to this reason, tolerance of costs and losses may increase during war and the objectives may shift trying to overcome the opponent and achieve the victory. This is …show more content…

In the case of the Korean War, North and South Korea became the field for a confrontation between major powers: the US and the United Nations on one side, and China and Russia on the other. The war started as a relatively small and confined conflict between communists and nationalists to gain control of the entire country, but rapidly escalated with the intervention of the world powers (including China), and with the possible threat of the employments of nuclear weapons by the US. At the end of the kinetic part of the conflict, it took two years to reach the final settlement (mainly due to the POW [prisoner of war] issue) that was the status quo ante -the separation of the country at the 38th parallel, a solution that favored the interests of the major powers involved (with the agreement on the spheres of influence) over the local populations’ interests for the unification of the country. The use of the military instrument of power not adequately matched by the others –diplomacy, economy, information, and culture awareness- may also protract the military operations. Military effectiveness decreases without international diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, blockade, propaganda, control of the media, and intelligence

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