Had the weapons been used, it would have added to the horrors of one of the most tumultuous and violent years in modern American history. Johnson announced weeks later that he would not run for re-election. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated shortly thereafter.
The story of how close the United States came to reaching for nuclear weapons in Vietnam, 23 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender, is contained in “Presidents of War,” a coming book by Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian.
“Johnson certainly made serious mistakes in waging the Vietnam War,” said Mr. Beschloss, who found the documents during his research for the book. “But we have to thank him for making sure that there was no chance in early 1968 of that tragic conflict going nuclear.”
The new documents — some of which were quietly declassified two years ago — suggest it was moving in that direction.
With the Khe Sanh battle on the horizon, Johnson pressed his commanders to make sure the United States did not suffer an embarrassing defeat — one that would have proved to be a political disaster and a personal humiliation.
The North Vietnamese forces were using everything they had against two regiments of United States Marines and a comparatively small number of South Vietnamese troops.
While publicly expressing confidence in the outcome of the battle at Khe Sanh, General Westmoreland was also privately organizing a group to meet in Okinawa to plan how to move nuclear weapons into the South — and how they might be used against the North Vietnamese forces.
a-r-c on October 6th, 2018 at 17:38 UTC »
Nixon wanted to nuke them.
Kissenger was like "well idk if that's really appropriate"
Oznog99 on October 6th, 2018 at 17:11 UTC »
There's one worse than that.
Gen MacArthur wasn't just fired for "insubordination" in the Korean War.
Atomic scientist Leo Szilard wrote a public magazine article about how to actually build a doomsday weapon, a cobalt bomb, that, with enough of them, would exterminate humanity for realz because the resulting neutron-activated cobalt-60 would be the most deadly fallout imaginable. It was intended to be a warning about restraint.
MacArthur saw this and said "what a great idea!" and opined that not only could he use nuclear weapons in the military's possession in this authorized conflict without President Truman's permission, but he was trying to get them modified by just strapping cobalt to them in hopes of making cobalt-60 bombs and rendering the border region with China not just unlivable, but impassable, for decades. Isolating the north Korean rebellion from Chinese support.
After Truman gave him a "hard no", he started asking other military brass for support if he were to just do this anyways despite the rejection.
It is implausible that the cobalt-60 fallout would remain isolated to the target zone. It would go airborne and spread over the globe, nonlethal concentration but carcinogenic.
And the local dusting would leach off the target zone into the ocean.
It's also questionable if it would work. Korea's northern border is huge and would be hard to irradiate enough of it. And while unlivable, putting on a mask so you don't inhale dust and wearing disposable clothing would probably mean you could drive through it fast enough that you don't get radiation sickness
pipsdontsqueak on October 6th, 2018 at 16:01 UTC »
General Westmoreland considered moving nuclear weapons to South Vietnam during the Battle of Khe Sanh, based on correspondences that were declassified two years ago. He was ultimately overruled by President Johnson. The plan was called Operation Fracture Jaw and illustrates how close the United States came to using nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War.