The United States Has "Nuclear Blackmail" Against China Three Times

Source: Global Times

Daniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst, recently disclosed a confidential Pentagon document to the New York Times. The U.S. military study, written in 1966, shows that after the shelling of Kinmen on August 23, 1958, the U.S. military leadership considered launching a "nuclear strike" against Chinese mainland. This is not the first time that China has encountered nuclear blackmail from the United States, which repeatedly clamored for a nuclear strike against China before the explosion of China's first atomic bomb.

The Korean War shrouded in the shadow of a mushroom cloud

The end of the 1940s was the era when the U.S. Air Force's slogan of "nuclear bombing is universal" was most loudly shouted. Therefore, in June 1950, just after the outbreak of the Korean War, MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the United Nations Army, advocated the use of atomic bombs. In mid-July 1950, during a meeting with U.S. Army Chief of Staff Collins, he proposed that the bridges and tunnels connecting the Korean Peninsula with northeast China and Vladivostok be destroyed with atomic bombs. To deter the Soviet Union, 10 B-29 bombers carrying nuclear bombs also entered the Guam base at the end of July 1950.

In October 1950, as the Chinese Volunteers entered the war in Korea, the U.S. nuclear threat was directed at China. On November 8, Emerson, director of the U.S. Department of State's Far East Division, submitted a memorandum suggesting that "the use of atomic bombs against China" could be considered to destroy Shenyang, Anshan, Harbin, Fushun, Luda and other northeastern industrial cities when conventional weapons could not be defeated or required to pay heavy casualties by the U.S. military. However, the memorandum also lists various factors restricting the use of atomic bombs: China's vast land, lack of concentration of industry, and few "ideal targets" for dropping atomic bombs; and the use of atomic bombs against China will be strongly condemned by world public opinion, especially Asian countries.

The First and Second Battles of the Volunteer Army to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea defeated the Us army, and the angry MacArthur advocated "expanding the war to The Chinese mainland" and wanted to use 35-50 atomic bombs to reduce the heavy industrial cities and military bases in northeast China into ruins. MacArthur's crazy claims were not alone in the U.S. military at the time. The U.S. War Department believes that after the Volunteer Army entered the war, "from a military point of view, the situation was more conducive to the use of atomic weapons than in July." They suggested beginning preparations to authorize MacArthur to use nuclear weapons. Against this backdrop, U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly declared at a press conference on November 30, 1950, that "the United States is actively considering the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield" and that the commander of the battlefield would be "responsible for the use of nuclear weapons."

Truman's statement was interpreted as "MacArthur, the supreme commander of the Korean battlefield, has been authorized to use the atomic bomb as he pleases," and an uproar ensued around the world.

Although a few hours later, the White House Press Office issued a "clarification statement" explaining that Truman "did not mean that it had been decided to use the atomic bomb," major newspapers in London, Paris, Rome, and Vienna denounced U.S. attempts to expand the war and expressed strong dissatisfaction with making such a major decision without prior consultation with the Allies. These countries believe that once the United States uses nuclear weapons against China, the Soviet Union will inevitably retaliate, and Europe closer to the Soviet Union will obviously be doomed. The European media criticized that the United States is "dragging us into the abyss of war in Asia under the most difficult strategic conditions of an incredible time and possible possibility."

The most violent reaction was british Prime Minister Attlee, who first agreed with the French side that "the United States should be prevented from extending the war to China", and then personally rushed to Washington on December 4 to meet with Truman. It is not surprising that since the Soviet Union possessed the atomic bomb, britain was very worried that the British mainland, with American B-29 bombers, would be the target of a Soviet nuclear attack.

Under pressure from the outside world, Truman was forced to formally declare that he would not use atomic bombs. But he has not given up on preparations for a nuclear strike against China. On April 6, 1951, Truman agreed to hand over nine nuclear warheads to the U.S. Air Force and to station nuclear-armed B-29 bombers at the Okinawa base. From September to October 1951, with Truman's approval, the U.S. Air Force also held simulated nuclear strike training code-named "Operation Hudson" on the Korean Peninsula, also aimed at China.

In January 1953, in the face of the stalemate of the Korean War, Eisenhower had just taken over as U.S. president and raised the issue of the use of nuclear weapons at the first meeting of the National Security Council under his auspices. During the Truman era, the U.S. military considered launching a strategic strike against the Chinese mainland with atomic bombs, while Eisenhower advocated first using tactical atomic bombs to gain local superiority, and then seize the initiative on the entire battlefield and the negotiating table.

At a meeting of the National Security Council on February 11, 1953, Unjunct Commander-in-Chief Clarke demanded that the atomic bomb be used to "wipe out the Chinese and North Korean forces surrounding Kaesong." Eisenhower said "agreed in principle." But what prevented the U.S. military from dropping the atomic bomb in North Korea was not the conscience of the U.S. military, but their experiments showed that "if the tunnels are well protected, even the troops very close to the atomic bomb explosion site will not be greatly damaged, and the Chinese and North Korean troops have dug dense tunnels on the 150-mile front," so even if the tactical atomic bombs are dropped, the killing effect will not be too good. On the other hand, the U.S. military is also worried that once the atomic bomb is dropped on the Korean battlefield, the U.S. military concentrated in Busan, Incheon and other places may also become the target of Soviet nuclear retaliation.

Therefore, from the spring of 1953, the United States began to transport atomic bombs to the US military base in Okinawa to prepare for the expansion of the war and the bombing of China, but the question of how to use it remained unresolved. At a March 31 meeting of the National Security Council, Eisenhower acknowledged that there were not many targets on the Korean Peninsula suitable for the use of tactical atomic bombs. Coupled with fears of Soviet nuclear retaliation and the readiness of Chinese and North Korean militaries for a possible nuclear strike, the U.S. military eventually abandoned its intention to use atomic bombs on the Korean battlefield.

In the Battle of Kinmen Artillery, the United States deployed nuclear missiles in Taiwan

After the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States immediately pulled Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang authorities who had retreated to Taiwan into the "anti-communist defense system" and signed the so-called "Sino-US Mutual Defense Treaty" in 1954. In March 1955, U.S. Secretary of State Dulles warned that if the PLA forced Taiwan to withdraw from Kinmen and Matsu, it would "bring a defensive catastrophe to Taiwan and the rest of Asia, and to help Taiwan hold these islands, "the United States considered using nuclear weapons against the PLA." As a de facto deterrent to Chinese mainland, the United States deployed bomb-equipped B-36 bombers at the Guam base.

In August 1958, the Battle of Kinmen began. The U.S. Air Force then proposed at the Joint Chiefs of Staff that "if the People's Liberation Army blockades the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. Air Force should launch a nuclear air strike against China." According to a declassified 2008 U.S. Air Force archive, "History of the U.S. Strategic Air Force, January-June 1958," when the U.S. Air Force proposed a nuclear airstrike on Xiamen Airfield. "Five B-47 bombers stationed in Guam are on standby and ready to drop an atomic bomb equivalent to the Japanese equivalent of Hiroshima at Xiamen Airport." At the same time, Japanese intelligence showed that the US troops deployed at the Kadena base in Okinawa at that time were also ready to participate in the nuclear air strikes against the Chinese mainland. The then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Twenning, briefed U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower on the Air Force's consideration of the plan, adding that "if the airstrikes on Xiamen Airport are still not enough to force Chinese mainland to lift the blockade, similar nuclear attacks could be launched against other airports."

The latest materials disclosed by the New York Times on May 22 show that the nuclear strikes on Chinese mainland planned by the US military at that time were far more than that. On August 25, 1958, Lawrence Coote, then commander of the U.S. Air Force Pacific Command, asked the U.S. government for a nuclear weapons mandate. He believes that if the situation escalates, the US Air Force's plan to "assist in defending Taiwan's outlying islands" with conventional weapons "lacks a chance of success" without the first use of nuclear weapons by the US military. Twenning also expressed his support, declaring that "if the PLA really launches a large-scale attack on Taiwan, the US military should first launch a nuclear strike on the Chinese mainland air base" to prevent the PLA from carrying out a "successful air blockade operation", and the US military strike range "can reach Shanghai as far north as possible". Twenning acknowledged that the U.S. military's first nuclear strike "will almost certainly lead to nuclear retaliation involving Taiwan and may also endanger Okinawa, where U.S. troops are stationed," but that if the U.S. wants to "preserve Taiwan," it is "a consequence that must be accepted."

Taiwan's "Lianhe Pao" recently declared that "it is all up to Chiang Kai-shek's restrained attitude to persuade the US military not to launch a nuclear attack on the mainland." The US military did not lay a fierce hand in the Kinmen Artillery Battle. However, US historical data proves that Chiang Kai-shek was very welcome to the us nuclear strike force at that time. According to the CIA's declassified materials, after evaluating the Asia-Pacific allies who might accept the stationing of US strategic bombers in the 1960s, the United States believed that the wave of opposition from Japan and the Philippines was very large, and only Taiwan had the most positive attitude, and even made the United States worry about "whether it will provoke anger because Taiwan is too active."

When the Kinmen Artillery Battle broke out, the U.S. military had deployed nuclear weapons in Taiwan. Declassified materials from the U.S. Department of Defense in 1978 showed that U.S. military Matador cruise missiles that could carry nuclear warheads were stationed in Taiwan as early as 1957, when the U.S. military built a highly classified nuclear warhead storage warehouse at the Tainan base, allegedly containing 12 nuclear warheads. In May 1958, when the US military conducted a secret test firing of the "Matador" missile stationed in Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek deliberately let the Taiwan media report it in a big way, "which made the US side, who did not want to make a high profile, quite unhappy." Judging by the missile's range of about 1,000 kilometers, the U.S. military aimed at mainland military targets around Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Guangdong. In 1962, the U.S. military withdrew the Matador missile and instead deployed F-100D and F-4C nuclear attack aircraft carrying nuclear bombs at Tainan Air Base, maintaining 24-hour alert. It was not until November 1973, when U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Beijing, that the United States pledged to withdraw the nuclear weapons from Taiwan the following year.

Conspired to destroy China's nuclear facilities along with the Soviet Union

At the end of 1960, the CIA claimed to have "accomplished one of its most significant missions": finally confirming the existence of China's nuclear program. From January 1961 to June 1963, U.S. spy satellites and U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft frequently conducted voyeuristic operations in western China, identifying nuclear facilities such as the Lop Nur base and the Baotou nuclear plant, confirming that China would explode its first atomic bomb years later. Then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy told The New York Times columnist Crock that "the domino effect is obsolete, and China is going to have an atomic bomb." Once China has an atomic bomb, Southeast Asia will fall into the hands of the Ccp."

It was out of this fear that in April 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a lengthy report to the Pentagon outlining a plan to preemptively destroy China's nuclear program, including "selectively attacking Chinese targets with tactical nuclear weapons." In July 1963, U.S. Envoy Harriman briefed the Soviet Union on China's advances in nuclear weapons in Moscow, and Kennedy tried to persuade Soviet leader Khrushchev to take military action against China. However, Khrushchev was unwilling to join the United States, the "world's number one capitalist country," to attack China, and the nuclear airstrike program could not be stopped.

In September 1963, Taiwan leader Chiang Ching-kuo visited the United States and conspired with the CIA and National Security Adviser Bundy to destroy Chinese mainland nuclear facilities. He said that "Taiwan is willing to parachute 300-500 special forces to raid the mainland's nuclear bases, and the United States only needs to provide transport aircraft to transport Taiwan's special forces." However, the internal assessment of the US military believes that the risk is too great, and the plan is stillborn.

Since then, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has drawn up a contingency plan to destroy and paralyze China's nuclear facilities with multiple batches of conventional weapons strikes, but considering that ordinary air strikes are difficult to guarantee the complete destruction of nuclear facilities, the option of using nuclear weapons is once again on the Pentagon table. On September 15, 1964, the U.S. government decided that China's nuclear test was imminent, and the high-level emergency meeting concluded that the latter was more risky between China's atomic bomb test and the U.S. attack on China without declaring war. In October, a U.S. telegram to Taipei said that "the plan to bomb the Chinese nuclear base in Lop Nur would be an extremely risky operation." The hand of the United States reaching for the war button shrank back.

On October 16, 1964, China's atomic bomb test was successful. The combined test of China's missiles and nuclear warheads in 1966 was also successful, marking the end of the era of China's credible nuclear deterrent and the era of nuclear blackmail by major powers against China.