The Great Significance of the Korean War Lies in the Beginning of the Soviet Union's Failure and a Rehearsal for China's Rise

Recently it has become fashionable to discuss the Korean War, so this young lady, having nothing better to do, will chime in. This young lady believes that the great significance of the Korean War lies in the beginning of the Soviet Union's failure and a rehearsal for China's re-emergence.

The Soviet Union was the biggest loser of the Korean War. Before the Korean War even ended, Stalin died, and then everything slowly rotted away. Without the Korean War, the Soviet Union's failure might not have come so quickly. In a certain sense, the Korean War foreshadowed the Soviet Union's ultimate fate of defeat.

For China, the Korean War held decisive significance. Some people with flawed perspectives spend all day shouting that without the Korean War, Taiwan would have been recovered long ago, and similar nonsense. Such talk is utterly meaningless, because viewed from the global strategic environment at the time, the grand configuration among China, the Soviet Union, and the United States was what mattered most. Taiwan was always a minor affair.

The Korean War eliminated the possibility of China tilting too heavily toward the Soviet Union, and planted the seeds for the later Sino-Soviet split. The Korean War also made the Americans truly see China's strength. From then on, in America's strategic calculus, China became a third party, rather than the pre-Korean-War framework of just America and the Soviet Union.

The Korean War transformed a world facing extreme bipolarization into a tripolar one. Although China's pole was very weak, it ultimately became a pole. From then on, no one dared underestimate China. This ultimately led to the Sino-American engagement in the 1970s. Ultimately, the Soviet pole slowly rotted away. Ultimately, China gained a real hope of becoming truly powerful. The seeds of all this were buried deep in the outcome of the Korean War. Without understanding this, one can never understand the significance of the Korean War.