US planned to nuke China in 1958

[OhioChick]

Source: Times of India

1 May 2008, 0028 hrs IST

WASHINGTON: The United States Air Force had considered a plan to drop nuclear bombs on China during a confrontation over Taiwan in 1958 but it was overruled, declassified documents showed on Wednesday.

When he learned about it, President Dwight Eisenhower instead required the air force to initially use conventional bombs against Chinese forces if the crisis escalated, according to previously secret US air force history.

The president's instructions seemingly astounded the air force top brass but the author of one of the studies released said policymakers recognized that atomic strikes had "inherent disadvantages" because of the fall-out danger in the region as well as the risk of nuclear escalation.

The report on the crisis by Bernard Nalty, a then historian with the air force, included significant detail on nuclear planning, including an initial plan to drop 10-15 kiloton bombs on airfields in Amoy (now called Xiamen) in the event of a Chinese blockade against Taiwan's so-called Offshore Islands.


Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US_planned_to_nuke_China_in_1958/articleshow/2999786.cms

[Omaha Steve]

1. You beat me to the post

K&R!

[maddezmom]

2. CNN: Eisenhower overruled nuke attack against China in

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Eisenhower overruled some of his military commanders in summer 1958, ordering them not to use nuclear weapons against China if communist forces blockaded the Taiwan Strait, according to declassified Air Force documents.


President Eisenhower had the support of a congressional resolution to use force in defense of Taiwan.

Eisenhower "made it clear that the Chinese would be given a warning with conventional explosives before he would authorize dropping of the deadlier ordnance" on Chinese territories, according to the documents made public by George Washington University's National Security Archive.

The president had the support of a congressional resolution to use force in defense of Taiwan. His decision not to use nuclear weapons still left them available if needed for subsequent attacks, according to the newly released narrative by a contemporary Air Force historian, Bernard Nalty.

The top-secret document was one in a collection obtained by a freedom-of-information lawsuit filed by the Archive after more than a decade of requests that the documents be declassified, said William Burr of the Archive.

As the crisis grew, according to the papers, five B-47 bombers on Guam went on alert in mid-August to conduct nuclear raids against Chinese airfields.

more:http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/30/us.nuclear.ap/?iref=mpstoryview

[indepat]

3. Yet another instance in which some right-wing(?) zealot(s) wanted Ike to nuke 'em as they had

in 1954 (DBP, Vietnam). But what the hell, Hillary speaks of obliterating a nation of 70 million (but there I go forgetting she's seemingly a Democrat INO). :shrug:

[rzemanfl]

4. I wrote my master's thesis in history back in 1992 based largely

on declassified Pentagon war plans from the period 1947 to 1953, they had plans to nuke everybody in the Communist block, although for a quite a while they didn't have enough bombs in the stockpile to fulfill all their plans. They also didn't know where some of their targets in the Soviet Union actually were.

[OhioChick]

5. And Just Think....

Now "Communist China" owns us.

[BluePhildog]

13. thesis

hey that thesis sounds very interesting- can I access it at your school library?
jpd

[rzemanfl]

31. There's a paper copy there, if you PM me with your email I will

send you a digital copy, although it didn't survive the transition from a 5 1/2" floppy in WordPerfect 5.1 to MicroSoft Word 2003 in perfect condition. It was written before any materials became available from the former Soviet Union so a lot of it was off the mark. Did did get an A on it back in 1992.

[rzemanfl]

33. I tried to PM you, but you're a newbie and I can't do that, I'm

concerned that you won't be able to PM me either. We may have to wait until you have a higher post count. I did get the diskette out of the box my thesis was in and brought it up in Word. There are a LOT of formatting issues, but it is certainly readable. My iPod shuffle has many times more memory than computer that thing was done on had.

[Octafish]

34. Fascinating subject. Did you see Ira Chernus' recent paper on Ike and the Bomb?

The professor of religious studies said Eisenhower was ready to "throw the bucket" at the Soviets.

The Real Eisenhower: Planning to Win Nuclear War

by Ira Chernus
CommonDreams.org
Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament. He makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. But after years of research and writing three books on Ike, I think it’s time to see the real Eisenhower stand up. The president who planned to fight and win a nuclear war, saying “he would rather be atomized than communized,” reminds us how dangerous the cold war era really was, how much our leaders will put us all at risk in the name of “national security,” and how easily they can mask their intentions behind benign images.From first to last, Eisenhower was a confirmed cold warrior. Years before he became president, while he was publicly promoting cooperation with the Soviet Union, he wrote in his diary: “Russia is definitely out to communize the world….Now we face a battle to extinction.” On the home front, he warned that liberal Democrats were leading the U.S. “toward total socialism.”

Everyone knows that, in his Farewell Address, he warned about the military-industrial complex (MIC). But few recall the words that immediately followed: “We recognize the imperative need for this development . … Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action,” because the danger of the communist foe, “a community of dreadful fear and hate<,> … promises to be of indefinite duration.”

This was not merely rhetoric for public consumption. Eisenhower never saw any hope of rapprochement with the Soviets. He always saw them as irredeemably treacherous, “implacably hostile and seeking our destruction,” as he wrote to Winston Churchill. “Where in the hell can you let the Communists chip away any more? We just can’t stand it,” he complained to a meeting of Congressional leaders in 1954, as he considered intervening in Vietnam. (He held back only because Britain and France refused to support him.)

Ike wanted to avoid nuclear war, but not at all costs. He told his National Security Council (NSC): “If the Soviets attempt to overrun Europe, we should have no recourse but to go to war.” The U.S. must be “willing to ‘push its whole stack of chips into the pot’ when such becomes necessary,” he told Congressional leaders, adding, “We are going to live with this type of crisis for years.” If World War III erupted during his term in office, he boasted, “he might be the last person alive, but there wouldn’t be any surrender.”

In private conversations with foreign leaders he said: “To accept the Communist doctrine and try to live with it” would be “too big a price to be alive. He said he would not want to live, nor would he want his children or grandchildren to live, in a world where we were slaves of a Moscow Power.” “The President said that speaking for himself he would rather be atomized than communized.”

Eisenhower signed NSC 5810/1, which made it official U.S. policy to treat nuclear weapons “as conventional weapons; and to use them whenever required to achieve national objectives.” “The only sensible thing for us to do was to put all our resources into our hydrogen bombs,” he told the NSC. He found it “frustrating not to have plans to use nuclear weapons generally accepted.” He and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, were “in complete agreement that somehow or other the taboos which surround the use of atomic weapons would have to be destroyed.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/18/7742/

Ike warned us. But he was there when it was growing.

Full article here: http://hnn.us/articles/47326.html

[Uncle Joe]

6. I imagine that was in the back of his mind when he made his farewell address warning

against too power in the hands of the military industrial complex.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/jus_the_facts/64

January, 1961 - President Dwight D.
Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the
Nation -

EISENHOWER ADDRESS...

"The conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American
experience. The total influence -
economic, political, even spiritual -
is felt in every city, every
statehouse, every office of the
Federal Government... In the councils
of government we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist... We must never let
the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic
processes. We should take nothing
for granted..."

Thanks for the thread, OhioChick.

[liberal N proud]

7. If they had, who would cover our debt today?

:sarcasm:

[liberal N proud]

8. If they had, who would cover our debt today?

:sarcasm:

[Psephos]

28. If no one would cover our debt, then the douchebags in Congress wouldn't be running one up n/t

[ohio2007]

9. breaking news ?

kinda like saying
US planned to invade Iran in 2004,2005,2006,2007 and 2008 but the plan was actually revealed to be a "misinformation" attack

[OhioChick]

11. I Cleared it With a Mod.

The information was recently declassified.

[redqueen]

23. "declassified documents showed on Wednesday" (nt)

[Infinite Hope]

10. Say what you want about him, but Eisenhower had tremendous forsight. n/t

[cascadiance]

12. It seems like we need a thread of the times we are now thankful Bush wasn't president then!

This would be one of them. The Cuban Missile Crisis would be another. The time when Nixon was considering nuking North Vietnam before protests and impeachment threats had him stop doing that. And of course the worst would be how he would have handled taking over the country in place of FDR. Other countries would now be leading the free world.

[youcangetholdofjules]

14. hmmmmmmm

One questions the timing of such a release...

Seems like most countries are keen to rattle a few sabres with the Olympics coming up.

[Thothmes]

17. What is your source that Nixon

considered using nuclear weapons against North Vietnam.

[cascadiance]

19. Daniel Ellsberg has spoken about this recently...

He noted this here in San Diego and has in other places. I'm not sure if he was held back from revealing this earlier in the Pentagon Papers or if it was newer information he had access to or not, but it was documented that Nixon had plans for a nuclear attack on North Vietnam that was subverted.

You can google for Ellsberg probably to find more articles on this. Here's one that has a relevant paragraph in it that I found quickly:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200210u/pp2002-10-23

The Temptation of War
A new memoir by Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, warns that Presidents will do anything to avoid losing wars

Reading the complete Pentagon Papers for the first time in the summer of 1969, Daniel Ellsberg had two revelations. One, of historical interest today, concerned the character of the Vietnam War; the other was about the war powers of the presidency, and how they corrupt Presidents. The relevance of this second revelation, as President Bush decides whether to exercise the authority Congress has given him to attack Iraq, is profound.

...

Over the next year, he shared parts of the study with anti-war politicians, with negligible results. Then, through sources within the Nixon Administration, he learned that Nixon planned to intensify the lethality of the war if the North Vietnamese did not bend to his will. There was talk of using nuclear weapons. Ellsberg had to act. With a Rand colleague he gave the study to The New York Times. On June 13, 1971, the world first learned of the Pentagon Papers.

...

[Thothmes]

21. Thanks, had not heard that before.

[tuckessee]

22. The late Col. David Hackworth talks about it

and other times when the US seriously considered using nukes in his classic autobiography About Face.

[dbt]

15. K & R

"Duck and cover" woulda saved us all.

[RantinRavin]

16. Then not only would all the toys be made of lead

But they would glow in the dark on thier own.

[Blue_Tires]

18. that plan had to have been drawn up by "Bombs Away" LeMay

[LynnTheDem]

20. Terrorist State.

And I don't mean China.

[Psephos]

29. You might find a few in Tibet who disagree. n/t

[LynnTheDem]

30. I can find a few Americans who disagree, too.

[hunter]

24. 231 years suffering this sort of malignancy...

The USA is one tough cookie.

[Robb]

27. Good point.

Somehow we've stepped back from the brink, more times than I'm the least bit comfortable with.

Lucky? :shrug:

[eppur_se_muova]

25. About the same time we were planning to nuke Alaska --

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/6703/1/327/

[ckramer]

26. That's why everyone today wants to get their hands on nukes

this is called level playing field.

Can you blame them?

[slackmaster]

32. Good decision

:hi: