@oristarA,
The communists had hardly begun to consolodate its hold on China when our aggression occured in Korea, and the defeat of the Americans, and the real defeat of the PLA as the stalemate there reflected gave the Communists every real excuse they needed to liquidate the wealth and the wealthy of China... MacArther did not really want to go into Korea, and he did not want to give the Chinese interior lines... For one, He missed the massing of Chinese troops, and he very much lost control of his troops during retreat... Only the death of the General in actual command, and his replacement with a better man made our limited victory possible... And we could have gone further, but we would have had China on the border rather than a buffer state... What MacArther considered an option, the use of nuclear weapons, the Chinese did not -since it was enlikely to be decisive, would possibly widen the war, and did not account for the fact that Chinese Communist strength lay primarily in the country rather than the cities... It was the threat from the United States that made the victory of the Communists in China complete... We think of war as a creator of malcontents, and certainly Korea and Vietnam were that... We do not consider the extent to which war can be a place to dump ones malcontents to die or defend themselves with force... The suffering of U.S. troops was often excessive and unendurable, but that of the Chinese was often many times worse... A better place to die cannot be imagined... It was not a war won by propaganda... It was not won at all... It is still an open sore...