CDKW00314 - Campaign of Attrition

In this top secret cable dated 19 February 1951, the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, Hume Wrong, outlined the current approach to the war effort in Korea. Wrong indicated that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in their acting capacity as unified command for the UN, were thinking of accelerating training and commitments for American forces and other forces to increase the number of ground troops in Korea. To this end, the Canadians training at Fort Lewis could be sent to the front prior to April, when they were anticipating deployment. However, these commitments were not equally dispersed amongst UN members—European countries with commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were not being approached to contribute new troops, as they had other key obligations to fulfill. In particular, this memo is interesting because it contains a clear assessment of the unified command’s strategy going forward: “the objective was to stabilize the front and to continue the campaign(s) of attrition against the Communists until the Chinese Communist Government showed a willingness to negotiation.”