ABSTRACT
Political scientist Bruce Cumings (1990) has argued that the 1949 border conflict launched the beginning of the Korean War, which itself was the logical culmination of civil conflict within Korea and the consolidation of the two rival regimes. Cumings's thesis is part of a wider historical debate about the relative role of local and international factors in the Korean War. He stresses the peninsular dynamics of the Korean War and argues that Koreans were the prime historical actors shaping the conflict: each hoped to provoke a counter-offensive from the other side so as to enable its own great power backer to enter into the conflict and unify the peninsula. Stalin understood the logic behind this strategy very well [Doc. 9]. In September 1949 the Politburo refused to support Kim Il Sung's plans partly out of fear that a North Korean attack would invite American intervention. Similarly, as we have seen, the United States was unprepared to be drawn into a war initiated by Syngman Rhee.
