Washington:
US military planners pushed for nuclear strikes on mainland China in 1958 to safeguard Taiwan from an invasion by Communist forces, classified documents posted on the net by Daniel Ellsberg of “Pentagon Papers” fame show.
US planners also assumed that the Soviet Union would help China and retaliate with nuclear weapons — a price tag they deemed worth paying to safeguard Taiwan, according to the document, initially reported by the New York Times.
Former military analyst Ellsberg posted on the net the classified portion of a best-secret document on the crisis that had been only partially declassified in 1975.
Ellsberg, now 90, is popular for his 1971 leak to US media of a best-secret Pentagon study on the Vietnam war identified as the Pentagon Papers.
Ellsberg told the Times that he copied the best-secret Taiwan crisis study in the early 1970s, and is releasing it as tensions mount amongst the United States and China more than Taiwan.
Had an invasion taken spot, General Nathan Twining, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, “made it clear that the United States would have used nuclear weapons against Chinese air bases to prevent a successful air interdiction campaign,” the document’s authors wrote.
If this did not cease an invasion, then there was “no alternative but to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China as far north as Shanghai,” the document mentioned, paraphrasing Twining.
In the occasion, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to rely initially on standard weapons.
The 1958 crisis ended when Communist forces halted artillery strikes on islands controlled by Taiwan, leaving the location beneath the handle of Nationalist forces beneath Chiang Kai-shek.
China considers Taiwan to be a rebel province that will one day return to the mainland’s fold, by force if important.
Washington has recognized Beijing considering that 1979, but maintains relations with Taipei and is its most essential military ally.
Tensions stay higher
In current months the Chinese air force has improved incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.
The United States also often conducts what it calls “freedom of navigation” operations in the flashpoint Taiwan Strait waterway.
US President Joe Biden is anticipated to announce his method toward China quickly, and calls are increasing for him to make a clear public commitment to defend Taiwan militarily.
A US law needs Washington to support the island defend itself in the occasion of a conflict, but the United States has pursued a policy of “strategic ambiguity” for decades, refraining from clearly stating what situations would lead it to intervene militarily on Taiwan’s behalf.
()