In the middle of August 1952, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai traveled nearly 4,000 miles to Moscow to meet with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Zhou was acting as an emissary for the leader of China, Mao Zedong. The two Communist powers were allies at the time, but it was not a partnership of equals: the Soviet Union was a superpower, and China depended on it for economic assistance and military equipment. Two years earlier, Mao and Stalin had embarked on a joint venture of sorts, giving their blessing to the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung when he invaded South Korea. Their hopes had been high; even though the United States immediately rushed to South Korea’s aid, Stalin telegrammed Kim in the wake of the invasion to tell him that he had “no doubt that in the soonest time the interventionists will be driven out of Korea with ignominy.”
Things had not gone according to plan. In the fall of 1950, as troops led by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur advanced through North Korea, China directly intervened. By the middle of 1951, a bloody stalemate had set in along the 38th parallel, the line that had delineated North from South Korea before the invasion. Negotiations between the opposing sides began in July of that year. Their purpose was to reach an armistice and set the stage for discussions about Korea’s future. The talks had deadlocked, however, over the details of exchanging prisoners of war.
When Zhou traveled to Moscow in the summer of 1952, the situation was looking grim for the Communists. Airstrikes had destroyed the North’s industrial facilities and heavily damaged every city. Food was short. In February, Kim told Mao that he had “no desire to continue the war.” Around five months later, Kim pleaded with Stalin to bring about “the soonest conclusion of an armistice.” But Stalin did nothing. Like Stalin, Mao was determined to stand fast in the face of U.S. demands, and he was less worried than Kim was about the battlefield. Like Kim, however, Mao knew that his country was suffering.
Over the course of the Cold War, Zhou would earn a reputation as a cool diplomat. Yet arriving in Moscow as the bearer of bad news, he could not have been at ease. His task was to sound out Stalin’s openness to a truce. Stalin had been behind the war, and it seemed reasonable to assume that talk of shutting it down would displease him.
The meeting took place on August 20. Stalin wanted to know if the Chinese and North Koreans could increase the military pressure on the United States. Zhou expressed confidence that “both sides are about equal in strength” but noted that a Chinese “general offensive would be difficult to carry out.” In other words, there were no good military options for coercing the United States. To exude confidence, Zhou reassured Stalin that “Mao believes that the continuation of the war is advantageous to us, since it [distracts] America from preparing for a new world war."
“Mao Zedong is right,” Stalin affirmed, according to Russian archival documents. “This war is getting on America’s nerves. The North Koreans have lost nothing, except for casualties. . . . [The] Americans understand that this war is not advantageous and they will have to end it. . . . Endurance and patience [are] needed here.” Zhou praised “the truth of comrade Stalin’s observations.” Then he tried again. The North Koreans are “wavering somewhat,” he said. “They are in a slightly unsteady state. Among certain elements of the Korean leadership one can detect a state of panic, even.” This seemed to annoy Stalin, who replied that he had been “already informed of these feelings.” Zhou backed off.
A month later, Zhou broached again with Stalin the possibility of accepting a cease-fire and putting off contentious details regarding prisoner exchanges. Stalin dismissed the idea as “one of [several] possible scenarios, but America is not likely to agree to it.” It was clear that Stalin wanted the Chinese and North Koreans to press on and forgo compromise. Zhou was left with little choice but to assent to Stalin’s counsel, which he praised as “valuable instructions.”The fighting would rage for another ten months before the two sides would agree to an armistice, albeit on terms that were slightly worse for China and the Soviet Union than those that Zhou and Stalin had discussed. During that time, tens of thousands died, and tens of thousands more were wounded. Ultimately, 36,574 Americans were killed in the war and 103,284 were wounded. China lost an estimated one million people, and four million Koreans perished—ten percent of the peninsula’s population.
The armistice ended that bloodshed, establishing a demilitarized zone and mechanisms to supervise compliance and mediate violations. But the Korean War did not officially conclude. The major political issues could not be settled, and skirmishes, raids, artillery shelling, and occasional battles broke out. They never escalated to full-blown war, however. The armistice held—and 70 years later, it still holds.
Today, the Korean Peninsula remains a site of high geopolitical tension. North Korea is governed by a dictator who brutally represses his citizens and regularly threatens his neighbors with nuclear weapons. But the carnage of the Korean War is now a distant memory, and the peace produced by the armistice allowed South Korea to develop a robust economy and, eventually, a stable liberal democracy. For all its flaws, the armistice was a success.
The war ravaging Ukraine today bears more than a passing resemblance to the Korean War. And for anyone wondering about how it might end, the durability of the Korean armistice—and the high human cost of the delay in reaching it—deserves close study. The parallels are clear. In Ukraine, as in Korea seven decades ago, a static battlefront and intractable political differences call for a cease-fire that would pause the violence while putting off thorny political issues for another day. The Korean armistice “enabled South Korea to flourish under American security guarantees and protection,” the historian Stephen Kotkin has pointed out. “If a similar armistice allowed Ukraine—or even just 80 percent of the country—to flourish in a similar way,” he argues, “that would be a victory in the war.”The negotiations that produced the Korean armistice were long and difficult and took place alongside heavy fighting, before the war’s costs were clear enough to persuade either side to compromise. The same would likely be true today. The Korean experience also suggests that the obstinacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin—who, like Stalin, seems averse to compromise of any kind—could be especially obstructive. On top of that, domestic politics in the United States and the gap between Washington’s and Kyiv’s legitimate but distinct interests could trip up a cease-fire.
At the moment, debate in Washington often focuses on the question of when would be the right time to start pushing Ukraine to negotiate, and the consensus answer has generally been, “Not yet.” The Korean War shows that, in a military stalemate, it can take a very long time for both sides to clearly see that the costs of continuing to fight are outweighing the benefits. And by the time they do, a great deal of death and destruction can occur without producing any meaningful advantages.
If the United States, NATO, and other supporters of Ukraine do decide to work toward a cease-fire, the end of the Korean War offers three practical lessons. First, they must be willing to fight and talk simultaneously, using battlefield pressure to enforce demands at the negotiating table. Second, they should include the United Nations in any negotiations, since neutral arbiters are an asset. Finally, they should condition future security assistance and postconflict support for Ukraine on Kyiv’s willingness to make some concessions.
A complete victory for Ukraine and the West and a total defeat for the other side would be a welcome end to the Ukraine war, just as it would have been in Korea. And as in Korea, the risk of escalation confounds such an outcome. Kyiv, Washington, and their partners in opposing Moscow’s aggression should understand that an armistice that both Ukraine and Russia can accept—even if it fails to settle all the important questions—would still be a win.
Submission Statement
CARTER MALKASIAN is Chair of the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School and author of The Korean War, 1950–1953. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Special Assistant for Strategy to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As General Mark Milley has stated, this war will end, one way or another, at the negotiating table. I found this article fascinating not necessarily for its parallels to Ukraine, but for its insights into decision-making in authoritarian nations, especially in the context of operational/strategic setbacks.