Eisenhower overruled nuke attack against China in '58

[WalkinTarget]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/...ef=werecommend

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.


We would have had a lot less lead painted toys coming out if China ... only ... they'd be radioactive instead.

[-Bar]

should have nuked them....

[Trooper110]

Agreed I'm sure India or some other place with excess population would be happy to take over making cheap mass products

[-IRC-MIKE]

should have nuked them....

It's never too late!

[mapes]

Honestly.... Nuking people is not funny....Go rent White Light Black Rain....pretty grim stuff.

[Hammy]

Honestly.... Nuking people is not funny....Go rent White Light Black Rain....pretty grim stuff.

You have got to be kidding me.
War is grim, and if we ever enter the level where conflict occurs, my intent is to neutralize the enemy. Not airdrop pink teddy bears with notes tied around them written 27 dialects of Chinese which say "please stop".

Nuking is not funny. It is effective.

[xGoblin013x]

Honestly.... Nuking people is not funny....Go rent White Light Black Rain....pretty grim stuff.

I have seen the movie. What happens in a nuclear attack and after is pretty nasty.
But so is the Rape of Nanking. And Okinawa. And Iwo Jima. And Operation Olympic would have been nasty to the tune of one million American deaths alone. Hence, Little Boy and Fat Man.

With the Chinese it would be much worse. China has a rich history of mass attack warfare and using dirty tactics. Our military, even under a draft, is miniscule compared to all the forces China could muster.
IF we ever got in a war with China, it would be the only way to win quickly. I would not be in the least bit shocked to be told by an expert that we would run out of conventional ammunition if nuclear war with China was not an option.

[mapes]

I have seen the movie. What happens in a nuclear attack and after is pretty nasty.
But so is the Rape of Nanking. And Okinawa. And Iwo Jima. And Operation Olympic would have been nasty to the tune of one million American deaths alone. Hence, Little Boy and Fat Man.

With the Chinese it would be much worse. China has a rich history of mass attack warfare and using dirty tactics. Our military, even under a draft, is miniscule compared to all the forces China could muster.
IF we ever got in a war with China, it would be the only way to win quickly. I would not be in the least bit shocked to be told by an expert that we would run out of conventional ammunition if nuclear war with China was not an option.

The only thing I'm talking about is idle chitchat flippantly talking about dropping a nuke here or there. I'm not talking about justifications for dropping one. Fine if we need to sure.... but, we had better be friggin sure.

[Rand{CLR}]

Alrighty. First, if you're a historical president and want to "send a message" or whatever the motiviation may have been back then, we should have dropped a nuke on Kiev or someplace like that before Russia perfected their A-bomb.

Patton for one actively argued in favor of continuing the war in Europe against the Russians, and most of the high level German generals we captured at the end were trying to get us to ally with what was left of their military against Russia. The world would be a much different place now, that's for sure. Whether it would be better or worse is anyone's guess.

Second, the way things stand and given current trends, it has long been my belief that it is highly likely we will fight a war with China before perhaps 2022-2025 at the latest. This excludes the chance of something early (Taiwan decides to declare independence tomorrow) or say, Chinese revolution/civil war.

Even if this war were to happen tomorrow, it's not as simple as you may like to believe on the conventional vs. nuclear option. Keep in mind that China has somewhere between 200 and 400 nukes right now. AT LEAST 10 of those are on ICBMs--probably more by now. Certainly more by 2025, including at least one nuclear sub.

Despite their numbers and our strain, we can still beat China in a conventional war for at least the first half of that 15 year period. In the second half, it becomes much closer than many of you may want to believe. We would certainly defeat them in a nuclear war, but not without a heck of a lot of casualties. We would probably lose about 20-30 million people even in a best case exchange. My guess is that they would hit NYC, DC, LA, Taipei, Houston, Omaha, Norfolk, San Diego, Honolulu, and Tokyo. They take out governments and a big chunk of the population, send a message to allies, and knock out SAC HQ, our three most important naval facilities, and our most important Oil hub (they could hit Galveston instead of Houston to make sure).

In return, we could take out maybe 600,000,000, basically everyone living in a city larger than 50,000 people in China. Think about those numbers. I'm not willing to make this exchange (unless there were absolutely, positively no alternative. And I recognize that sometimes there are not). Are you?

These are the kinds of things you have to keep in mind when talking nukes. Sending messages back when nobody else had them is one thing (note that I believe Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved far more US and Japanese lives than they took by allowing us to avoid Olympic), but talking about exchanges against a country that has hundreds of the, and the ability to get a portion of that number to our shores, is something else.

-Rand

[WalkinTarget]

Reagan pretty much took care of the Russians with his distrust and hate, and he had them so worried about his military ramblings that they spent 4x what our military budget was at the time trying to keep up, bankrupting their government, and effectively causing the breakup of the USSR, altho the individual states remain.
Gotta hand it to him .. he took a while to do it, but rather than a nasty conventional war to hammer them into submission, he just kept spouting off about 'Star Wars' defense initiatives, and the Russians could never find a proper offensive threat to a defensive plan we never really put into full effect anyhow.

[BigTwinky]

Wow...just wow. Good to see some true colours in here.

[Hammy]

Reagan pretty much took care of the Russians with his distrust and hate, and he had them so worried about his military ramblings that they spent 4x what our military budget was at the time trying to keep up, bankrupting their government, and effectively causing the breakup of the USSR, altho the individual states remain.
Gotta hand it to him .. he took a while to do it, but rather than a nasty conventional war to hammer them into submission, he just kept spouting off about 'Star Wars' defense initiatives, and the Russians could never find a proper offensive threat to a defensive plan we never really put into full effect anyhow.

Let's not forget the World Weapons Show we put on in Panama.
We had all kinds of experimental weapons deployed, and I guarantee that the Soviets saw that.

THAT is when they say the USSR got very reactive with their military spending.

[BenKenobi]

Good posting in here ..... like seriously though, a few of you guys would make excellent presidents

[thedeadlyassassin]

Nuking should be a last resort, and never thought of unless a mass invasion was happening or some similar crap.

From what I've learned, nuking Japan (or Atoming) caused less losses on BOTH sides, plus it made them surrendor with ease. The only reason we didn't drop anymore was because at that time we didn't have anymore, now we have more than enough to destroy this planet and other planets (if we could reach them)

[mapes]

Reagan pretty much took care of the Russians with his distrust and hate, and he had them so worried about his military ramblings that they spent 4x what our military budget was at the time trying to keep up, bankrupting their government, and effectively causing the breakup of the USSR, altho the individual states remain.
Gotta hand it to him .. he took a while to do it, but rather than a nasty conventional war to hammer them into submission, he just kept spouting off about 'Star Wars' defense initiatives, and the Russians could never find a proper offensive threat to a defensive plan we never really put into full effect anyhow.

the weird thing is Reagan is credited with being very anti nuke. I heard some dude on NPR talking about how he hated nukes and how he was very intrumental in getting the Soviets to the bargaining table... which was news to me.