The Boston Globehis column
[Secretary of State Dean] Acheson, under attack for having supported the recently disgraced Alger Hiss, needed to prove his anti-Communist "toughness." He pushed Truman toward war, Truman ordered it, and the decades-long stalemate...was the result. ... If the Koreans themselves had been left to sort out their national struggle, even assuming a Communist victory, contemporary Korea would be (at worst) like China.