Bruce Cumings > Quotes

“Eventually the Korean War will be understood as one of the most destructive and one of the most important wars of the twentieth century.”
― Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History

“In fact the United States has had no exit strategy since 1945, expect in places where we were kicked out (Vietnam) or asked to leave (the Philippines): American troops still occupy Japan, Korea, and Germany, in the seventh decade after the end of World War II. Policymakers – almost always civilians with little or no military experience (Acheson is the archetype) – get Americans into wars but cannot get them out, and soon the Pentagon takes over, establishes bases, and the entire enterprise becomes a perpetual-motion machine fuelled by a defence budget that dwarfs all others in the world.”
― Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History

“Those who suffer terrible wars have a finer sense of when they begin and when they end.”
― Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History

“It was this war and not World War II which established a far-flung American base structure abroad and a national security state at home, as defence spending nearly quadrupled in the last six months of 1950, and turned the United States into the policeman of the world.”
― Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History

“It was this war and not World War II which established a far-flung American base structure abroad and a national security state at home, as defence spending nearly quadrupled in the last six months of 1950, and turned the United States in the policeman of the world.”
― Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History

“it is difficult to understand that not everyone in the world wants to be an American.”
― Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country

“Americans, even fairly knowledgeable ones, are prey to what might be called the fallacy of insufficient cynicism. Muckraking investigative journalists, now and then exceptions to this rule, lack the patience of the scholar, are completely dependent on their sources, and do not usually understand the minds of politicians in high places. Thus I. F. Stone hinted that Dulles might have been involved in a conspiracy with MacArthur and Chiang to provoke war in Korea, and a gaggle of critics descend on this ridiculous conspiracy theory. It is, indeed unlikely that Dulles was anything more than Acheon’s messenger in June 1950. But he and Acheson were structurally reconstituting a political economy that was a deadly threat to Korean revolutionaries. And conspiracies do exist, even if Foster Dulles was an implausible participant (his countenance was almost as unlikely as Sir John Pratt’s).”
― Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947-1950

“Found this one last year, reading an I.F. Stone book on the forgotten war, in Korea. Doubt that I've ever read a better description of what it's like to ask questions about and be fascinated by history, in a country in which we're taught to wear patriotic blinders.

"People with a built-in indifference to history are ill accustomed to retrospective digging, to lifting up rugs, to searching for subterranean forces and tendencies. Exploring the labyrinth of history is alien to the American soul, perhaps because an optimistic people find knowledge of the past too burdensome in the present." - Bruce Cumings, from the Preface of Stone's Hidden History of the Korean War ('88 edition)”
― Bruce Cumings

“What money is to the son of the west, marriage is to the Korean:”
― Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History