New Book Examines America's "Forgotten" War With China in North Korea

At a Glance

• Col. Thomas Dale Smith (USA, Ret.) has released "America's Only War With China 1950-1953," positing that the Korean War was two separate conflicts

• The book contends American invasion planners ignored a top-secret CIA report and misjudged Mao Zedong's willingness to enter the war

• A central focus is General Matthew B. Ridgway, credited with saving the Eighth US Army from collapse after China's counterattack

Colonel Thomas Dale Smith (USA, Ret.) has published America's Only War With China 1950-1953, a military history stating that what is commonly remembered as "the Korean War" was actually two separate conflicts fought back to back. Smith distinguishes between the 92-day North Korean-American war that began with Kim Il Sung's invasion of South Korea in June 1950, and the 33-month Sino-American Korean War that followed after President Truman ordered US forces across the 38th parallel that October, a decision that drew China directly into the fighting.

An American-Initiated War

The book's central position is that American miscalculation, not Chinese aggression, triggered the second war. Smith contends that US invasion planners ignored a top-secret June 1950 CIA report detailing China's economic dependence on its resource-rich Manchurian border provinces and failed to anticipate that Mao Zedong would view an American advance toward the Yalu River as an existential threat to his eleven-month-old Communist regime. The CIA report revealed expected Chinese maneuvers, but was ignored or buried.

According to the book, this blind spot proved catastrophic. Two days after Thanksgiving in 1950, Mao's People's Volunteer Army launched a massive counterattack that nearly annihilated General Douglas MacArthur's Eighth US Army, an event Smith describes as one of the largest ambushes ever inflicted on an American military force.

Ridgway's Turnaround

A significant portion of the narrative centers on General Matthew B. Ridgway, who assumed command of the battered Eighth Army on December 26, 1950, following the accidental death of his predecessor. Smith argues that Ridgway's tactical reforms, combining close air support with concentrated artillery, stabilized the front and reversed the Chinese offensive, an achievement many military historians regard as more consequential than his celebrated WWII airborne command.

The book draws on personal correspondence Smith exchanged with Ridgway decades earlier, along with hundreds of endnotes, official records, memoirs, and multiple perspectives, including those of Ridgway, Chinese commander Peng Dehuai, and contemporaneous journalists.

The Cost of Miscalculation

The Sino-American phase of the war resulted in an estimated 28,000 American combat deaths over 33 months, compared to roughly 8,000 in the initial 92-day conflict with North Korea, according to the book. Smith also examines counterfactual scenarios in a closing section, considering how the war might have unfolded differently under alternate command decisions.

America's Only War With China 1950-1953 is published by AHA Publishers and is available in paperback (ISBN: 9798995104841) and as an eBook on Amazon. It follows Smith's earlier book, Declassified: Over the Fence Secret Ops. The author currently lives in Florida with his wife, Christine.