No Substitute for Victory: Lessons in Strategy and Leadership from General Douglas Macarthur

The Lessons of Inchon

The story of Operation Chromite is a good place to briefly introduce a few of the many lessons that MacArthur offers contemporary students of leadership. By 1950, MacArthur had had a half-century-long military career that was astonishingly rich in both achievement and diversity of experience. He brought the accumulated weight and integrated application of his experience, learning, and intuition to the conception, planning, and execution of the invasion at Inchon.

Chromite itself dated to the earliest days of the war. Prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, there had been skirmishes on and around the 38th Parallel, the artificial borderline between North and South Korea imposed by the Allies in 1945. But South Korea was ...