After the founding of New China, it faced several nuclear threats from abroad. But for a variety of reasons, this threat eventually became a reality.
The nuclear shadow of the Korean War
On October 20, 1950, China resolutely sent volunteer troops to Korea to resist the United States and aid Korea, defend the homeland, and liberate Pyongyang on December 6, and the front line was also advanced to the vicinity of the 38th Line. Undeterred, U.S. President Harry S. Truman couldn't wait to hold a press conference on November 30, shouting that "the use of the atomic bomb has been actively considered." According to post-war declassified U.S. Army archives, MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army in the Far East, strongly advocated the use of atomic bombs, and in 1950 submitted a list of "retarded targets", estimating that 26 atomic bombs were needed, of which 4 were used to bomb "attacking forces" and 4 were used to attack "important staging areas of enemy air forces". According to another source, in December 1950, the unassembled atomic bomb had been quietly transported to a U.S. aircraft carrier moored near the Korean Peninsula. U.S. planes also conducted a simulated nuclear attack on Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, as part of a contingency plan to fight a nuclear war.
Although, for various reasons, Truman did not dare to use the atomic bomb on the Korean battlefield, nor did He allow MacArthur's adventurous attempt to escalate the war to succeed, the United States was not dead set on the use of the atomic bomb. According to a top-secret 1953 memorandum from the U.S. State Department, when north and South Korea had reached an armistice but fighting was still going on, the newly incoming U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower believed that the endless military stalemate in the Korean War could not be tolerated, so the rationale for the use of nuclear weapons was discussed at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The issue was put on hold again, bearing in mind that if the Soviets decided to fight back with nuclear weapons, U.S. naval forces at busan harbor would be a good target.
A dangerous move that has not been shot
In 1954, during the Vietnam War, France summoned the U.S. ambassador to France to express its hope that the United States would use 2-3 atomic bombs in Asia, as the French government in Vietnam was facing a disastrous defeat. In view of the grim situation, the military leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand held a meeting in Washington, which decided: "If war against China suddenly breaks out due to the Chinese Communist Invasion of Southeast Asia, we will immediately launch air strikes against military targets." In order to achieve maximum and lasting results, conventional weapons, as well as nuclear weapons, are used immediately from the very beginning of the war. ”
The reason why this plan was not put into practice was that the British Chiefs of Staff expressed the real reasons and their concerns in a memorandum submitted to the Cabinet on June 17, 1954: "Although from a military point of view, the use of nuclear weapons in the war against China is obviously more effective than the use of conventional weapons, it will generally have serious consequences for Asian public opinion." "As a result, the plan to carry out a nuclear strike against China is once again stillborn.
The nuclear program to attack China failed
After the end of the Korean War, the shadow of U.S. nuclear power still hangs over China. In 1955, when our People's Liberation Army liberated Yijiangshan Island and Dachen Island, the US Congress formally authorized the president to use nuclear weapons against China, and at that time the US military had studied several plans to attack China's southeast coast with atomic bombs.
On March 10, 1955, U.S. Secretary of State Dulles told the National Security Council: "We will have to use atomic weapons, and only they can effectively deal with Chinese mainland airfields." On March 15, Dulles publicly declared to the press: "We may use certain small tactical atomic weapons." However, due to the consideration of international factors, especially the concern for the sino-Soviet alliance, the United States still does not dare to take risks.
In August 1958, our People's Liberation Army began shelling Kinmen. The Pentagon and the State Department reacted immediately, with Dulles and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff advocating a nuclear strike against China. On September 4, Eisenhower met with Dulles to discuss the feasibility of using nuclear weapons against China. Although in the end, under pressure from all sides, Eisenhower finally gave up the idea of using nuclear weapons. But in the summer of that year, the United States conducted more than 20 nuclear tests, including a naked nuclear threat to China.
U.S. nuclear submarines cruise off the coast of the Asian continent
U.S. government policymakers began to focus on China's development of nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and developed various contingency plans.
In 1963, General Taylor of the United States launched a war plan to arrange a secret raid using non-nuclear bombs or send 100 supporters of China's political independence movement to northern China to plot and sabotage the Nuclear Base in one fell swoop. However, the plan was rejected by Congress.
On October 16, 1964, China announced the completion of its first atomic bomb test. In this regard, Chiang Kai-shek was extremely alarmed and repeatedly demanded that the United States take military action against Chinese mainland before acquiring the technology to project atomic bombs. The U.S. government was also panicked. On December 14 of the same year, Rasjans, an official in the Department of Arms Control and Disarmament affairs, said in a document submission that "further action should be considered against China's nuclear facilities, and even considering killing Chinese nuclear officials." However, President Johnson did not take up these suggestions, and he decided to continue to exert diplomatic pressure to limit China's nuclear expansion. However, shortly after the explosion of China's first atomic bomb, the US Government sent a large number of US troops to Taiwan and held a joint airborne exercise with Chiang Kai-shek's army. On December 26, the United States sailed the USS Daniel Boone, armed with 16 missiles, from Guam to the sea off the coast of the Asian continent. On the third day, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it had sent the submarine "Tecompsa" to cruise the western Pacific.
In the face of the U.S. nuclear threat and war provocations, my Government issued a statement on December 29: "The Chinese Government is unremittingly striving for the complete prohibition and complete destruction of nuclear weapons. However, if the United States thinks that sending a few nuclear submarines and posing some nuclear weapons will scare us down, it will never be able to do so. ”
Threats from the North
The rapid development of China's nuclear weapons also "shocked" the former Soviet Union. In the mid-to-late 1960s, the Soviet Union began to strengthen its military presence on the Sino-Soviet border in an attempt to strike a "surgical" blow to China's nuclear plants before they were too powerful.
To this end, the Soviet Union has transferred a number of nuclear-armed divisions to less than 2 miles from the Sino-Soviet border. From aerial photographs taken in the United States, hundreds of nuclear warheads are stacked on top of each other. The Soviets erected 18,000 tents on the snow overnight. Soviet military attaches in Japan and Australia had contacted U.S. military attaches there to test the United States' intentions in this plan in a very casual way.
In 1969, the former Soviets proposed to the United States several times that a joint "surgical" strike against China be carried out. The Soviets thought that President Kennedy had intended to engage in "some kind of cooperation" with the Soviet Union to destroy China's nuclear program, and naturally thought that their intentions were likely to be tacitly approved and supported by the United States. On August 18, the representative of the former Soviet Consulate in Washington told the relevant people in the United States government almost unabashedly: If the Soviet Union attacked China's nuclear facilities, what attitude would the United States take? Subsequently, the former Soviet Union secretly informed its Eastern European Union countries that it was likely to preemptively strike China's nuclear facilities. At the same time, Pravda in the former Soviet Union also published editorial articles to create public opinion.
But the United States believes that if the "Soviet victory" is successful, it cannot be expected to end there, and then the interests of the United States in Europe, the Middle East and other places will be lost. U.S. President Richard Nixon realized that such a Soviet attack on China would be fraught with a threat to the United States, and replied negatively to the Soviets' temptations.
(Li Jiangyuan/Text)