20th+: Paranoid Ruscist Aggression

2. Truman's November 30 1950 press conference about use of nuclear weapons in Korea; 3. Eisenhower's secret threats to China in 1953 which lead to the Korean armistice;

4. Dulles offering to use 2 tactical nukes in 1954 to save the French at Dien Bien Phu;

5. Threats to use nukes against China in 1955 during first Quemoy crisis (China vs Taiwan);

6. "Diplomatic use of the Bomb" (Nixon's term) to deter USSR during Suez Crisis;

7 and 8. The 1958 and 1961 Berlin crises;

9. The 1961 Cuban missile crisis; 10. Public reports of Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Johnson of likely need for nuclear weapon use to save the marines at Khe Sanh in 1968; 11. Secret threats by Nixon to deter USSR attacking the Chinese nuclear capability 1969-1970;

12. Nixon's secret threats of nuclear attacks on North Vietnam from 1969 to 1972;

13. Nixon's threats (according to him to deter Soviet response to possible Chines intervention against India in Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 (possibly also to push India to end the war);

14. Nixon ordering DEFCON 3 to deter USSR during 1973 Arab-Israeli War;

15. Ford ordering DEFCON 3 in 1976 over skirmish in Korean DMZ;

16. 1980 Carter doctrine in the Middle East;

17. August 1980 secret nuclear warnings to USSR to not invade Iran (it was building up it's military on the border at the time);

18. Reagan reaffirming Carter Doctrine in January 1981;

19. Bush Senior threatening nuclear response if Iraq used chemical weapons during Desert Storm;

20. Clinton secret nuclear threats against North Korea in 1995 over it's development of nuclear weapons;

21. Public nuclear threats by Defence Secretary Perry against Libya's Tarhuna underground chemical weapons facility in 1996.

These are just the American examples, but others have also done so:

Israel loaded nukes onto it's Jericho missiles in 1973;

Modi and Khan warning each other in 2019 (India v Pakistan); Khrushchev's "We will bury you!" in 1956;

Stalin about to launch an attack on the West before he died (as he believed one was inevitable anyway);

Mao's declaration that China could lose 300 million and still win;

2006 Chirac threatening nuclear attack on any country that used terrorism against France. Reagan pulled back his rhetoric and brinkmanship once he was informed that the USSR actually believed he was about to launch a first strike in 1983 ("The Evil Empire", Exercise Able Archer, the shoot-down of KAL 007, and Operation RYAN - see https://coldwarconversations.com/episode229/ for more information on that dreadful year);

Reagan truly believed the USSR was an Evil Empire and they truly believed he was a madman about to attack. The USSR so believed the West would launch a decapitation First Strike they developed Perimeter, a dead hand retaliation system, but never warned the West about it (Doctor Strangelove for real).

There never was a taboo against nuclear weapon threats, except that leaders have always held back on following through due to the assumption of massive worldwide condemnation, but it only takes one lunatic unable to win his trumped up war to decide NOT using them is an even GREATER risk to HIS hold on power. South Africa disarmed in 1989 because it improved their security position in Southern Africa and de Klerk saw they had no useful military value to South Africa. Unfortunately we can't, as a planet, decide the same thing. Nuclear weapons are too powerful a tool for countries to give up, yet if we don't, then sooner or later they will be used again.

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Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Paranoid Ruscist Aggression

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