ABSTRACT
In responding to the North Korean invasion, US officials assumed the attack was directed by the Soviet Union in an effort to establish Communist control over all of Korea while testing American will to act in East Asia. Although US forces in Korea were driven back into a narrow redoubt around the port of Pusan, officials in Washington concentrated on expanding defenses in Europe. The most important outcome of the Korean War build-up for national security policy was the development of the strategy of nuclear deterrence of the Soviet Union. The Korean War caused a major expansion of the size and nature of intelligence operations sponsored by the United States. When the fighting in Korea came to a stalemate at roughly the 38th parallel where it had begun and truce negotiations started in July 1951, the Truman administration began to slow its military build-up.
