Back in the early 1860s, the government of Mexico stopped making interest payments on their debts to their biggest creditors, France, Spain and Britain. Emperor Napoleon III decided to take advantage of America’s Civil War by launching a full scale invasion of Mexico. On June 7, 1863, French troops entered Mexico City; on October 3, 1863, Maximillian, younger brother of Austrian Emporer Franz Joseph, accepted the French offer of the crown of Emporer of Mexico. (This is an example of how the political machinations of the 19th century boggle the mind of a modern reader. Maximillian accepted the crown of Mexico- a land he had never seen- at his castle in Trieste, on the shores of the Adriatic, thousands of miles from Mexico City). The French intervention in Mexico is now remembered for the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo, afdter the Battle of Puebla, where Mexican troops first fired up on the French, and the skirmish at Camerone, where only 3 out of 65 French Foreign Legioniares survived fighting a much stronger Mexican force. (This upheld the Foreign Legion’s tradition of taking horrible losses fighting over godforsaken real estate no sensible Frenchman would want).
Shortly after the end of the Civil War, the administration of President Andrew Johnson ordered an army of 50,000 men under General Phillip Sheridan to the Rio Grande. The message to Napoleon III was clear: you are messing about on America’s front doorstep, you have *long* outstayed your welcome, it is way past time for you to get your collective derrieres out of here. Very shortly thereafter, the French started withdrawing their troops. Sadly, Maximillian could not read the writing on the wall; he stayed in Mexico too long, was captured by Mexican forces, and on June 19, 1867, he faced a firing squad.
A somewhat similiar situation arose between the US and the People’s Republic of China in 1950. General of Army MacArthur’s UN forces had achieved a crushing victory over the North Korean Army after the amphibious landing at Inchon September 15th. After MacArthur’s forces crossed the 38th parallel, the US State department started receiving messages through the Indian government that if UN forces continued advancing north (as opposed to only Republic of Korea (ROK) units), the Chinese would intervene. MacArthur ignored these warnings and no one in Washington was inclined to rein him in. MacArthur assured Truman that there was no possibility of Chinese intervention and that the war would be over by Christmas. He was every bit as confident , and every bit as mistaken as he’d been in his ability to defend the Philippines from Japanese attack nine years earlier.
To Mao, MacArthur’s moves looked quite different from the end of a successful “police action”. Mao had only won his 4 year Civil War against Chiang kai-shek’s Nationalist forces 13 months ealier- proclaiming the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Before that, Mao’s Army had opposed the Japanese invasion of China for 8 years, and before that another bloody conflict with Nationalist forces, culminating in the Long March. It appeared like another invasion of Manchuria, like the one Japan launched in 1931.
Chinese forces first made contacxt with American and South Korean troops in late November. The US led 8th Army was seriously overextended, and low on supplies; the next month was a very unpleasant time to be frontline soldier in Korea. I highly recommend S.L.A. Marshall’s excellent book “The River and the Guantlet” for it’s harrowing description of what befell the US 2nd Infantry Division. Two and a half years later, there were 36,000 US dead, and an Armistice Line just slightly north of the 38th parallel. If MacArthur had had a modicum of diplomacy- if he’d limited himself to a triumphal entry into Pyongyang, and let ROK forces “mop up” to the Yalu, perhaps the PRC and the US would’ve been spared a bitter war and the people of northern Korean spared the tyranny of the Kim il-Sung dynasty.
Today, we find the prospect of a naval conflict over islands in the east and south China Sea, possibly involving Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the PRC…and possibly the United States. The exact details of each potential claim might require a multivolumne text; however, I believe it is essential for the parties involved to mmake their positions clear to avoid the possibility of a war based on a misunderstanding.\
– KENT MITCHELL