[timschmidt]

China was already sending troops and material to the front lines when MacArthur was ordered to stand down. Pushing further would have meant a hot war with China.

[petcat]

A hot war with China in 1950 was going to end quickly with the firepower USA had on-hand.

[nl]

In what way?

The US nearly lost the Korean war.

The US army was nearly overrun at least once.

The US airforce never achieved air superiority, and Soviet aircraft were better in most ways.

The only undisputed advantage the US had was nukes, which is why MacArthur wanted to use them tactically (!)

[beachy]

The subsequent Vietnam war reinforced this even more.

The only path that America had to win in Vietnam was to destroy it, including the population they were allegedly there to protect. Hence they lost.

[timschmidt]

There is no way we could match them in numbers on the ground. Such a conflict would have inevitably led to us nuking them as a result. Which is probably the reason decision makers chose not to.

[petcat]

And maybe that's really the humanitarian failure. That USA didn't nuke China in 1950 or 1951. Would have solved a lot of problems for generations of people.

[yongjik]

Wow, just half a dozen comments from why we're not saving North Koreans to "we could've nuked China and solved a lot of problems."

Some Hacker News threads are on their own level.

[petcat]

Well we know what happened to North Korea after China "won". And it's pretty fucking god-awful for 10s of millions of people for 80+ years.

USA dropping nukes probably would have been the better outcome for humanity.

[nl]

Wait - you think the solution to some people having a lower standard of living and others being persecuted is to kill them all?

[gpm]

USA dropping nukes would have prevented the convention against using nukes in wars from being started. I think there's a pretty good chance we wouldn't have any civilization left by now if we went down that fork in history.

[TheBicPen]

Maybe the real humanitarian failure is that the US didn't nuke everybody and start over from the stone age. Can't any societal problems if no societies exist, right?

[noobr]

wtf