Tom Ricks did a little “light” reading, the decades-long trove of Army War College studies.

I also was surprised at how little written about the Korean War. It just seems never to have been foremost in the collective mind of the Army. Indeed, Vietnam seems to get almost as much attention in the mid-’50s, with papers such as Richard Stilwell’s “The Indochina Contest,” done in 1955, and another paper in 1958, “Military Strategy in Southeast Asia.”

I wonder why? Was it because the Korean War was a commitment President Truman and his administration espoused, and in which the U.S. Army discovered a new foe, the Chinese? Was it just not that compelling tactically? It’s surprising this is the case, given the debacle of Task Force Smith and its impact on the Army’s personnel policies. Hmmm…

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Filed under: Academia, Korea, Military, USA Tagged: army war college, korean war, us armyvietnam war