MacArthur may not have crossed the moral event horizon, but he orbitted closely enough to get quite a show from nearby Hawking radiation. However necessary it might have been, he essentially took Hirohitos place as God Emperor of Japan, almost singlehandedly writing the Japanese constitution still in effect. You should have heard my dad describe how the Japanese spoke of MacArthur, and that was in the late '50s, well after the end of both WWII and the Korean Conflict. Had MacArthur told them to sacrifice their first born children by the light of the full moon, most would have done it.

I concede part of what annoys me about that is that MacArthur did not win the Pacific war, Nimitz and Halsey did; MacArthur just reaped most of the benefits, especially after the Navy man in the White House was succeeded by an Army man (reading contemporary analysis of the inside debate over whether US air superiority should be a function of carriers or bombing groups is both interesting and illuminating.) That said, the biggest problem with MacArthur was the same as with Ike: The use of military exploits as means to a presidential end. MacArthur releasing the nuclear kraken on China (and thus inevitably on the Soviets) was as strategically unassailable as it would have been politically disastrous.

A Douglas MacArthur who came home apparent victor over both Imperial Japan and the Communist menace would have been "American Cæsar" in fact as well as name. His conflict with Truman was always more about that than military policy. This was the same Douglas MacArthur who ordered Patton to drive tanks over the veterans families camped in front of the White House. Had MacArthur been allowed to insubordinantly disregard Americas civilian authority US democracy would no longer be. That left Truman no choice but relieving him; I recognize that as well as the enduring and serious negative consequences of their strategic disagreement.

China cannot afford to stand aside in any armed conflict between the US and any East Asian nation, especially in Korea. The geographic and historic context would send precisely the wrong message to the world, the US, the ASEAN and Chinas own people. I keep drawing the parallel between the Korean Conflict and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that really does not work, simply because the Soviet Union had not run roughshod over the US throughout the Americas for an entire century before that. Even if North Korea were not three minutes by missile from Beijing, letting the US dictate policy in Chinas backyard would almost automatically reinstate the Open Door Policy, which China cannot allow.

The US would take it as carte blanche to do whatever we like in East Asia; if China is so frightened of the US they will not oppose us occupying a bordering country so close to their capital, they will not oppose us ANYWHERE. The long simmering and difficult question of whether ASEAN countries should look first to the US or China would be definitively settled in favor of the latter. Both the rest of the world and the Chinese people instilled with aggressive nationalism over the past generation could not help but notice both developments. To many young Chinese the current regime would instantly look as weak, decadent and subordinately complicit with the West as the Manchus were during the Boxer Rebellion. China just cannot go there; it would be like hanging a "Welcome home, Queen Elizabeth" sign on Hong Kong.