Dalhousie University Would Living in A Smart Home Is Worth the Risk Discussion Word count: 600 In Unit 2 we discussed both the advantages and disadvantage
Dalhousie University Would Living in A Smart Home Is Worth the Risk Discussion Word count: 600
In Unit 2 we discussed both the advantages and disadvantages of having a smart home. For this second writing assignment, your thesis will need to answer the following question:
Would living in a smart home be worth the risks? Give three reasons explaining why/why not (your 3 arguments).
Reminders:
Remember that your main focus will be on your reasons for your answer to the question, not just listing risks and benefits. Focus on the why.
Introduction must have: hook, background information, thesis (three arguments)
Your three body paragraphs must have three separate topic sentences linking to your three arguments (reasons).
Double spaced
Times new Roman, size 12
Title page must be included
In-text citations must be used properly every time you take an example or an idea from the article provided
You MUST NOT USE any other websites than those provided.
If you use ideas from the articles provided; they MUST BE paraphrased and cited. If they are not, that will count as PLAGIARISM.
You are allowed to use a maximum of 2 quotations from the text that are to be no longer than 1-2 sentences each.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/13/18547235/trus…
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/smart-… Princeton University Press
Chapter Title: The Korean War as International History
Book Title: The Korean War
Book Subtitle: An International History
Book Author(s): WILLIAM STUECK
Published by: Princeton University Press. (1995)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s1ss.15
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The Korean War as International History
KOREA AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR WORLD WAR III
October 1950 was a pivotal month in the Korean War. Despite Chinese warnings, UN ground forces crossed the 38th parallel and pushed their way toward
the Manchurian border. China responded by sending hundreds of thousands of
troops to the peninsula. Unaware of Beijing s decision, President Truman and
General MacArthur met at mid-month on Wake Island in the Paci?c Ocean.
Brimming with self-con?dence,the UN commander assured his commander
in chief and a team of advisers that the war was all but won, that U.S. troops
could begin to be reassigned from the theater by the end of the year.
Secretary of the Army Frank Pace was a member of the Truman team at
Wake Island. On his return to Washington, he went to Secretary of Defense
Marshall s Pentagon of?ce to report General MacArthur s assessment. To
Pace s astonishment, the older man expressed concern. T o precipitate an end
to the war, he opined, would not permit us to have a full understanding of
the problems we face ahead of us.
But General Marshall, Pace queried, do you mean by that the American
people would not have fully had the opportunity to grasp the implications of
the cold war?
I certainly do, Marshall replied. You didn t live through the end of
World War II the way I did, and watch people rush back to their civilian jobs
and leave the tanks to rot in the Paci?cand the military strength that was built
up to fade away.
I know, General Marshall, Pace admitted, but a great deal of water has
passed under the bridge since then. . . . Would you say I was naive if I said that
the American people had learned their lesson?
No, Pace, I wouldn t say you were naive, Marshall answered, Id say
you were incredibly naive.1
Little did Marshall know that, by the end of the year, U.S. units in Korea
would be ?ghting for their survival in the face of a Chinese onslaught. With
the possible exception of a few days in October almost a dozen years later, the
cold war was as close to becoming hot on a global scale as at any time in its
forty-year history.
Yet the Korean War did not escalate beyond the country s boundaries. The
Soviets, while using many of their own planes and pilots to assist their Chinese and North Korean allies, restricted their operations to the extreme northern reaches of the peninsula. Although U.S. ?yers sometimes breached the
Yalu River boundary and even strafed air?elds in Manchuria, such attacks
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policy.2
were limited in scale and clearly contrary to Washington
The leaders
of the two countries with the greatest capacity to expand the warStalin and
his successors on the Soviet side, Truman and Eisenhower on the American
consistently preferred to limit the con?i ct. When pressures on Truman to expand the war became acute in the months following China s intervention in
late 1950, U.S. allies joined with Third-World neutrals in the UN General
Assembly to discourage U.S. adventurism.
All the while, U.S. and allied armed forces expanded by leaps and bounds.
Whereas in the fall of 1950 the Truman administration contemplated cutting
in half the Pentagon projection of needs for the remainder of the ?scalyear for
fear Congress would refuse to provide funding, the acute crisis created by
Chinese intervention in Korea reinforced the momentum created by the outbreak of war for a rapid increase in defense outlays. By the middle of 1951
NSC-68 was well on the way toward implementation, and actual U.S. military
power had nearly doubled since the outbreak of war twelve months earlier.
The buildup continued until the end of the war, and it was reinforced by efforts in western Europe. Although defense spending declined somewhat in the
aftermath of an armistice, never again would the United States get caught
being as unprepared as it was in June 1950. Clearly the American people had
learned their lesson.
Europe, of course, was the cockpit of the early cold war, the strategic prize
that, in the hands of either of the superpowers, would tip the balance in the
competition. When the war in Korea began, NATO countries had only fourteen undermanned, poorly equipped, largely uncoordinated army divisions,
only two of which were American.3 Those U.S. divisions were not in Europe
as a result of commitments made upon the signing of the North Atlantic treaty
in 1949, but because of America s continuing occupation of a portion of Germany.4 The annual expenditure on defense of the eleven member nations was
less than 5.5 percent of their gross national products.5 Although many regarded a contribution of troops by West Germany as essential to western
Europe s defense, the political rami?cations of such a contribution were so
explosive that no one had of?ciallybroached it. 6 Three years later ?fteenwellarmed divisions were stationed in West Germany alone, six of which were
American, and the total military manpower of NATO countries approached
seven million.7 Greece and Turkey had joined the organization, and Yugoslavia had aligned with them. Tito rejected any formal commitment to NATO,
but he received considerable military aid from the United States.8 Despite the
continued existence of barriers to West German rearmament, the issue was
well advanced toward resolution, with twelve additional front-line divisions
the likely result.9 NATO members now spent more than 12 percent of their
gross national products on defense, a signi?cant portion of which was being
used to construct the infrastructure needed to serve the increase in manpower
and equipment.10 This included, among other items, air bases, port facilities,
oil and gas pipelines, and signal communications units. Finally, the allies had
created an institutional framework to provide for integrated planning on an
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ongoing basis. Most important in this regard was the Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers Europe located outside Paris and headed by a U.S. general.11 In
the context of a crisis thousands of miles away, the United States had transformed a paper commitment to the defense of western Europe, demonstrating
an intention to keep major forces on the continent permanently and taking the
lead in coordinating their operations with NATO partners.
Despite the buildup, U.S. military leaders continued to regard the military
balance in Europe as unfavorable. In his annual report in May 1953 General
Ridgway, Eisenhower s successor as NATO commander, concluded that the
disparity between our available forces and those which the Soviet rulers could
bring against us [is] so great as to warrant no other conclusion than that a
full-scale Soviet attack within the near future would ?nd Allied Command
Europe critically weak to accomplish its present mission.12 Part of the problem was an uncompleted infrastructure, which only recently had received the
necessary ?nancing. This de?ciency would be largely resolved in the next
year. West German rearmament, which Ridgway considered indispensable,
would take three more years before it became signi?cant operationally, by
which time NATO s stockpiling of tactical nuclear weapons helped compensate for any conventional weaknesses in relation to Communist forces to the
east.13 Even then there would be a fair share of pessimists who never regarded
NATO s strength as adequate to meet the Soviet threat.
The end of the cold war in Western victory has resolved such doubts. No
Soviet attack into western Europe ever occurred. In subsequent crises, the
region always held ?rmin the face of Soviet pressure. The integration of West
Germany into the Western alliance through the European Coal and Steel
Community and NATO facilitated peace, prosperity, and stability on the continent and provided a magnet that, in the long term, helped produce the crumbling of the Soviet bloc.
But was the buildup necessary? Was it needed to contain Soviet expansion
or did it merely exacerbate East-West tensions and divert masses of resources
on both sides from more constructive ventures? In sparking the buildup, not to
mention the tremendous destruction rendered to human life and property,
should the Korean War be viewed exclusively as a tragedy, both to the people
who fought it and the world that endured its results?
No de?nitive answers are possible to such questions. Certainly the Korean
con?i ct had its share of tragedy. But there is also reason to believe that it
played a stabilizing role in international politics, that without the North Korean attack and the Western response to it a tragedy of far greater magnitude
might have occurred.
In developing this hypothesis, Soviet intentions and capabilities following
World War II need to be explored. Neither can be determined with certainty;
both were subject to change, the former overnight, the latter over time. Yet if
we combine what is known about Soviet behavior with what is now suspected
of Soviet capabilities, we at least can construct plausible scenarios.
The ?rstpoint to be made about Soviet behavior is that it was opportunistic,
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that this opportunism frequently involved the use or the threat of use of military force, and that the Soviets always stood prepared to retreat in the face of
superior counterforce or the threat thereof. In Iran and Manchuria during late
1945 and early 1946, the Soviets used occupation forces in attempts to enhance their long-term position. They pulled out in the face of U.S. pressure,
however, despite a local advantage, albeit in Iran only after receiving oil concessions from the national government. With Turkey, the Soviets sought a
share in movements between the Black and Mediterranean seas plus territorial
concessions through aggressive rhetoric and an ominous military presence on
that country s borders. Again, the Americans countered with some posturing
of their own, and the Soviets never acted out their implied threat.14 In Berlin
the Soviets tried to drive the Westerners out through a blockade, again under
favorable local conditions. The Soviets backed down, however, in the face of
a Western airlift. In Korea the Soviets gave a client regime the green light and
the wherewithal to attack a U.S.-sponsored government. When the attack
failed because of U.S. intervention and the United States stood poised to seize
the entire peninsula, the Soviets called on the Chinese to prevent the debacle.
In all these cases Stalin showed a willingness to use his or an ally s armed
forces to expand or to maintain Soviet in?uence, but he also displayed a desire
to avert military confrontation with the United States.
It is not dif?cult to understand why he wanted to avoid such a confrontation. Until 1949 the United States held a monopoly on atomic weapons, and
after that it retained clear superiority in the number of weapons it could in? ict
on the enemy. The U.S. economy could outproduce its Soviet counterpart on
a scale of between three and four to one. With the top leadership in Washington desiring to avoid war with the Soviets, such a con?i ct was unlikely to have
occurred by design.
On the other hand, it could have evolved through miscalculation, all
the more so once the Soviets developed a substantial capacity to deliver nuclear weapons to the U.S. homeland. American planners worried about this
possibility in early 1950, both as an immediate danger and as an increasing
possibility as time passed if the United States failed to augment its military
capability.15 The scenario was a simple one. Holding a local military advantage, Soviet and satellite forces moved into an area outside their sphere, calculating that the United States lacked the ability to respond immediately and
directly. So long as enemy forces on the scene were quickly overwhelmed, the
Americans would concede the area rather than endure a prolonged struggle,
perhaps even a major one. But events did not develop as Moscow anticipated.
One possibility was that the United States would immediately implement
its war plan, the centerpiece of which was an atomic offensive against the
Soviet Union. If this occurred in 1950, the Soviets would lack a major capacity to retaliate against the U.S. homeland, but as time passed the Soviets
would eliminate this weakness and thus might become less inclined to believe
that the United States would launch a ?rststrike on them. This development,
in turn, would make a Soviet probe into western Europe all the more likely.
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Even if the Soviets moved sooner rather than later, the U.S. atomic capability
probably was insuf?cient to quickly knock the enemy out of the war. Soviet
forces would occupy most of western Europe and make it dif?cult for the
United States to use Great Britain as a base for its strategic air offensive. At
best the con?i ct would be long and costly.16
A second possibility was that all-out war would emerge gradually following a Soviet bloc military thrust that the West initially attempted to counter
through piecemeal action. With Soviet bloc forces having a local advantage,
the West escalated its response, and Moscow, already committed militarily,
refused to back down. By the time Moscow was willing to retreat, Washington, intent on punishing the aggressor, stood unwilling to accept a mere restoration of conditions that existed before the Soviet military initiative. Backed
into a corner, Stalin (or a successor) decided to keep ?ghting. Washington,
frustrated by the indecisiveness of the military campaign and pushed forward
by irate public opinion, eventually chose to use all its resources against the
enemy.
The Balkans was the most likely place for the second of these scenarios to
have played out. We know from Bela Kiraly, later an exile but then a member
of the Ministry of Defense in Budapest, that a major military buildup occurred
in Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria from the fall of 1948. Soviet advisers
were intimately involved in the enterprise, which was explicitly directed toward an offensive against Yugoslavia. The preparations culminated in January 1951 in elaborate war games in the Hungarian capital. The plans included
the participation of Soviet divisions in the second-echelon strike force, with
Hungarian, Rumanian, Albanian, and Bulgarian units constituting the initial
thrust. Kiraly observes that Yugoslavia was supposed to succumb to this
anaconda grasp in a matter of daysmost probably as gross a miscalculation
by Stalin as his former ally Hitler had made.17 The U.S. intervention in Korea
to stymie Kim Il-sung s plans for a quick victory undoubtedly discouraged
Stalin from launching an attack on Yugoslavia, although the plans for doing
so proceeded for at least seven months after June 1950. Without a North Korean attack and a determined Western response, however, the Soviet leader
might well have initiated military action to overthrow the wayward Tito.
The United States would not have responded to such an attack with an
implementation of its war plan. Rather, it probably would have supplied the
Yugoslavs with weapons, food, and clothing to help them ?ghta guerrilla war
in their rugged mountainous terrain. It is unlikely that such a con?i ct would
have been short. A protracted war in Yugoslavia, which lacks Korea s measure of insularity, its distance from the key theater of the cold war, or its ethnic
homogeneity eventually could have spread to other areas of the Balkans and
even beyond. In a word, war in the Balkans would have been even more dif?cult than the one in Korea, both to contain and to end.
By July 1953 the Soviet Union was far less likely than before to initiate or
encourage the use of force across established boundaries into areas outside its
sphere of in?uence. Not only had the United States succeeded in preventing
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the North Koreans from uniting their country; it had rearmed itself and its
allies in western Europe, a development that Stalin had neither anticipated nor
desired. In response, he had felt compelled to increase the commitment of his
own bloc to heavy industry and the modernization of armed forces, so much
so that political unrest sprang to the surface in eastern Europe. As a result,
Stalin s successors preoccupied themselves with political and economic reform at home and among the satellites, a measure of détente with the United
States, and the encouragement of revolution in the Third World. Developments in the last area could produce dangerous tensions, as in 1962 when
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to place offensive missiles in Cuba.
Yet the absence of actual combat between U.S. and Soviet bloc forces enabled
the two sides to resolve that crisis relatively quickly.
It was not until 1979 in Afghanistan that the Soviets embarked on a military
venture comparable to the one in Korea, only this time it was with their own,
not proxy, forces. Again, the outcome was anything but to the Kremlin s liking. In 1979, as in 1950, Soviet action accentuated the military dimension of
the cold war. In the earlier case the result was initially to push the world to the
brink of war, but eventually to make war a good deal less likely. In the later
case the immediate result was to heighten superpower tensions, as the United
States provided crucial aid to the Afghan rebels and sharply increased military
spending. In the long run, however, the event contributed mightily to the
weakening of the Soviet empire suf?ciently to end the cold war altogether.
Stalin s immediate successors learned the lesson that to arouse the United
States from a slumber through blatant military action could prove a costly
mistake. It would take more than a generation and a new group of leaders
before the Soviet Union would run a repeat performance.
KOREA AS TRAGEDY
If the Korean War should be viewed in part as a substitute for something as
bad or even worse, it also must be approached as tragedy, as an event that
might have been avoided altoget…
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