How the Research Is Empirically Examined 129
stiff Soviet line that resulted from Stalin’s death. It is quite clear that nei-
ther party was prepared to pay the price to unite the country and each of
the sides was determined to prevent the other side from doing so.^148 Once
the war broke out with direct involvement of the United States—one of the
two polar powers constituting the system—parties at the system level
started to act in order to restore the former state, maintain the territorial
status quo preceding the war, and prevent the strengthening of one of the
two strong players in the system and its rise to potential hegemon status
in the system.
The Korean War could be defined as a victory, a loss, or a draw. Some
researchers have categorized the Korean War as a tie,^149 whereas others
have defined South Korea as the victor. However, the main test for meas-
uring war according to the current theory is the degree of territorial expan-
sion of the polar power in that war. According to this test, the United States
did not expand at the end of that war and the territorial status quo was
maintained in a tangible, prominent, and even defiant manner. One can-
not ignore that the war started when the border between North Korea and
South Korea was the 38th parallel and ended at the same 38th parallel.^150
The U.S.-Vietnam War (1968–1975)
The traditional way in which the U.S. military operated in the war
against Vietnam included using American advantages in power and
mobility to isolate the enemy’s armies.^151 The United States implemented
the lesson that it had learned from the Korean War of not threatening the
existence of Chinese buffer states, which in that war was North Vietnam,
and in that war the U.S. military was prohibited from using those advan-
tages against North Vietnam. Following this, the restrictions against trans-
ferring the land war into North Vietnam made this war an unwinnable
one. The great failure, or even catastrophe, of the Vietnam War would not
have occurred had the United States better understood the importance of
the regional influence areas and the balance of power.^152
The results of the Vietnam War serve as an important lesson concern-
ing the relations between events in military terms and political ones. In
military terms, Vietnam did not defeat the United States but the United
States, which was at that time one of the two superpowers dominating the
international system, lost politically. Such a phenomenon was not known
in classic strategy in which it is inconceivable for a power to be defeated
and expelled from territory by a smaller local force. The United States had
enormous military superiority over Vietnam whether this superiority was
exploited or not. It was found that practically the unequivocal military
superiority that it enjoyed relative to Vietnam is relevant to the results
of the war, which were determined by other factors outside the military
scene, which also forced a superpower to act in contravention to the way