Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War (PDF)

6 Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War 1 Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Never had the military gap between a superpower and a non-nuclear state been greater; never was it less likely to be invoked. Henry Kissinger, 19942 Of all cases of Cold War conflict in which t...

6 Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War 1 Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Never had the military gap between a superpower and a non-nuclear state been greater; never was it less likely to be invoked. Henry Kissinger, 19942 Of all cases of Cold War conflict in which the United States could have used nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War provides one of the strongest “tests” of a nuclear taboo. In Vietnam, the United States chose to lose a humiliating and destructive war against a small, non-nuclear adversary while all its nuclear weapons remained on the shelf. During the ten-year military commitment to South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States sustained large losses in men, money, and materiel at tremendous political cost. US officials repeatedly declared that the United States could not tolerate the loss of Southeast Asia to Communism, and that the war was vital for US interests, prestige, and security. As the war escalated, the United States was willing to maintain policies of great destructiveness. Operation Rolling Thunder, begun in March 1965, continued for three years and dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped on all of Europe in World War II.3 Starting in 1969, B-52 raids demolished vast areas in North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. US forces employed herbicides and defoliants to obliterate croplands and forests, dropped flame throwers and napalm, and eventually mined Haiphong harbor. It is estimated 1 This chapter is a revised version of an article first published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 29, Issue 4, August 2006, published by Routledge. 2 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 607–08. 3 Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 174. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 190 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War that some 3.6 million Vietnamese in both North and South, were killed in the conflict, and 58,000 Americans.4 Had US leaders wished to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam, there was no lack of warheads nor any shortage of suitable targets. Ports, landing places, supply lines, bridges, railways, and airfields could all have been hit decisively with relatively low-yield weapons. As McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor to President Kennedy and President Johnson, later observed, such targets could have been hit with nuclear weapons “quite possibly with human losses lower than those of the war that was actually fought.”5 Further, fear of nuclear retaliation was not a prominent concern. Bundy recalled, “Very little, if at all, was [the non-use of nuclear weapons] for fear that friends of [North] Vietnam with warheads of their own, Russians or Chinese, would use some of them in reply.”6 Additionally, as Daniel Ellsberg recalled, one popular lesson the Army (along with some political leaders) had learned from the Korean stalemate was “never again a land war in Asia,” whose real meaning, administration insiders with access to military planning understood, was “never again a land war against China without nuclear weapons.”7 Doctrines of limited nuclear war developed in the mid-to-late 1950s and early 1960s elaborated the necessity of being willing and able to employ nuclear weapons in a local or regional conflict, and in something less than an all-out nuclear exchange.8 Given this context, one of the remarkable features of the Vietnam War is how little serious thought US leaders gave to the possibility of using nuclear weapons. President John Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson gave little serious consideration to nuclear options and declined to make any nuclear threats, despite some recommendations 4 James Blight, ed., Missed Opportunities? Revisiting the Decisions of the Vietnam War, 1945–68. Hanoi Conference, June 20–23, 1997. Transcript, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, April 1998, pp. 9–10. 5 McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Decisions About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 536. 6 Ibid., p. 536. 7 Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002), p. 63. Emphasis in original. For a discussion of the widely perceived analogy between the Vietnam and Korean Wars, see Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 8 See, for example, Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957); Robert Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Morton H. Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age (New York: Wiley, 1963). Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 191 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. The Nuclear Taboo to do so. While President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger more actively explored nuclear options, and engaged in vague nuclear threats, in the end they also did not come close to actually using such weapons in the conflict. Why did US leaders not resort to the use of nuclear weapons? Fear of uncontrolled escalation to war with Russia or China is certainly part of the explanation. However, escalation risks were highly disputed throughout the war, and military and most key political leaders endorsed policies that involved risking war with China if necessary. Given this situation, political and normative constraints on the use of nuclear weapons became particularly salient. Ultimately, while nuclear weapons might have been militarily useful in the war, it was clear that, by the time the war was fought, they were politically unusable, and for some officials, even morally unacceptable. The constraining and constitutive effects of a taboo against first use of nuclear weapons operated powerfully for US leaders during the Vietnam War, both for the majority who shared the taboo and for the minority of those who did not. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Johnson administration and Vietnam In his magisterial history of nuclear decisionmaking, published in 1989, McGeorge Bundy portrayed nuclear weapons as largely a nonissue in the Vietnam War.9 In reality, they were an ongoing subtext of a war that took place in a Cold War context. The issue of nuclear weapons arose under President Johnson in the context of the decision of 1964–65 to intervene militarily in Vietnam, which culminated in the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign and the first major introduction of US troops in March 1965. The Joint Chiefs of Staff then regularly pushed for major expansions of the war, including nuclear options. Both military and political leaders thought that tactical nuclear weapons would be militarily useful, and even necessary, if the conflict expanded to a war against China, and the Johnson administration received recommendations to use or threaten use of nuclear weapons from reputable individuals. The possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in the war was the occasional subject of public rumor and speculation, and emerged as an issue in the presidential campaigns of 1964 and 1968. The Johnson administration’s most extensive 9 He devoted only 8 out of 735 pages to Vietnam. Bundy, Danger and Survival, pp. 535–42. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 192 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War discussions of nuclear weapons took place during the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh, but even these did not get far. There were two sustained critiques of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict: Undersecretary of State George Ball’s famous October 1964 memo, and a recently declassified study conducted by physicist Freeman Dyson and three other scientists in 1966. Both of these papers came down strongly against the use of nuclear weapons in the war. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Background: US nuclear doctrine Appalled by the Eisenhower nuclear doctrine of “massive retaliation,” President John F. Kennedy and his advisors upon entering office had sought more “flexible” war plans that included multiple options and greater emphasis on conventional weapons.10 Doctrines of “limited nuclear war” had been elaborated at the end of the 1950s, most notably by Henry Kissinger, but by the early 1960s their shortcomings, especially in the European context, were becoming apparent.11 It was difficult to determine in what sense such wars would actually be “limited.” Led by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the Pentagon began to revise Eisenhower’s Basic National Security Policy (BNSP), but the process bogged down in several dilemmas, one of which was the puzzling question of when, if at all, tactical nuclear weapons might be used. Walt Rostow, a defense “hawk” who took over the process of revising the plan when he became head of Policy Planning in the State Department in 1962, found the role of tactical nuclear weapons “a tough nut to crack.” It remained an unresolved dilemma because of “differences of view in the Pentagon.”12 Thus a draft of the BNSP was left simply with a statement of the dilemma posed by tactical nuclear weapons: they were extremely important as a deterrent against massive conventional attack in Europe and elsewhere, but their actual use could produce civil and human destruction on a vast scale, in some cases (depending on locale) “tantamount to the strategic use of nuclear weapons.”13 The draft was never adopted. Nevertheless, US war plans for limited war continued to emphasize first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with large Chinese forces in Asia. Pacific Command plans for a major escalation of the Vietnam 10 William W. Kaufman, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s, 1989), 2nd edn, ch. 8. 12 Walt W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 175. 13 Ibid. 11 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 193 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. The Nuclear Taboo War included both nuclear and non-nuclear options. Recently declassified Pacific Command histories confirm the existence of these nuclear war plans, first revealed in the Pentagon Papers.14 A US response to Chinese intervention in hostilities would require implementation of CINCPAC OPLAN 39–65 and/or OPLAN 32–64.15 According to these plans, in the event of Chinese entry into the war, Strategic Air Command (SAC) forces would strike selected targets within China using nuclear and/or non-nuclear weapons, as directed by the JCS.16 Although no nuclear weapons were deployed in Vietnam, they were on board aircraft carriers and stockpiled in the region, increasing in numbers up through mid-1967.17 Additionally, when American Marines arrived in Da Nang in March 1965, they brought 8-inch howitzers that were nuclear-capable, though they did not have nuclear warheads.18 It would thus have been relatively easy for the United States to change the character of the war to a nuclear one. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Initial considerations The main scenario for resort to nuclear weapons was a major ground war against Chinese and North Vietnamese troops, although other options were occasionally proposed. Both military and political leaders thought that the use of tactical nuclear weapons in such a war would be likely, and possibly even required, to avoid defeat. Although military commanders were at times divided over whether nuclear weapons would be needed in a wider war, the Joint Chiefs did estimate that tactical nuclear weapons would be militarily useful, arguing in a memo in March 1964 that “nuclear attacks would have 14 CINCPAC Command Histories for 1963, 1964, 1966. I am grateful to the Nautilus Institute for providing copies of these. Excerpts available at www.nautilus.org/Vietnam FOIA/analyses/bulletin.html#cincpac 15 OPLAN 39–65, promulgated September 1964, was the contingency plan for Asian Communist aggression. OPLAN 32–64, promulgated September 1962, was “CINCPACs principal plan for the defense of mainland Southeast Asia up to the point of Gen. War,” CINCPAC Command History 1963 (1964), p. 38. OPLANs were mainly non-nuclear, but had a nuclear annex. I thank Hans Kristensen for discussion on this issue. 16 The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, vol. III (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), Senator Gravel edn, pp. 636, 639. 17 By the beginning of 1963, US on-shore deployments of nuclear weapons to Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Taiwan grew to about 2,400, a 66 percent increase from 1961 levels. The on-shore stockpile in the Pacific peaked at about 3,200 weapons in mid1967, 2,600 of which were in Korea and Okinawa, and began to decrease after that. Robert Norris, William Arkin, and William Burr, “Where They Were,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 55, no. 6 (November/December 1999), pp. 30–31. 18 Ted Gittinger, ed., The Johnson Years: A Vietnam Roundtable (Austin, TX: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, 1993), p. 64. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 194 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War a far greater probability” of stopping a Chinese attack than responding with conventional weapons.19 As a JCS working group put it, “Certainly no responsible person proposes to go about such a war [against the North Vietnamese and Chinese], if it should occur, on a basis remotely resembling Korea. ‘Possibly even the use of nuclear weapons at some point’ is of course why we spend billions to have them.”20 The Joint Chiefs assumed essentially that Eisenhower era policies remained in force – that the United States had undertaken to defend many areas on the assumption that nuclear weapons would be used as necessary and that they would be effective. Military leaders were unsure, for example, whether conventional bombing of Chinese supply lines in North Vietnam would be sufficient and assumed that at least ground forces, and possibly nuclear weapons, would be required. Admiral Harry D. Felt, commander in chief, Pacific (CINCPAC) believed that in the event of a major ground war, there was no possible way to hold off Communist forces on the ground without the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and that it was essential that US commanders be given the freedom to use them as the contingency plans assumed. Chair of the Joint Chiefs General Earle Wheeler opposed using nuclear weapons to interdict supply lines but thought they would be necessary in a major war against China, and should be used only in extreme cases such as to save a force threatened with destruction or to knock out a special target like a nuclear weapons facility.21 However, General Maxwell Taylor, who had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and for a while as US ambassador to South Vietnam, was more doubtful about the need for nuclear weapons.22 Top political leaders did not go as far as the Joint Chiefs. But during their deliberations in 1964–65 over whether to intervene in the war, political leaders raised the issue of nuclear weapons, and seemed prepared to accept that they must be ready for their use. The US ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, during meetings in April and May 1964, raised the question of whether nuclear weapons would be needed to defend South Vietnam.23 In a meeting 19 Memo from the JCS to the Secretary of Defense, March 2, 1964, JCSM-174–64. FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 115. 20 PP, vol. III, p. 623. 21 Ibid., p. 238. 22 Ibid., p. 175. 23 Telegram from the Embassy in Vietnam to the Department of State, Saigon, May 4, 1964, in FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 286. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 195 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo on April 27, Secretary of State Dean Rusk questioned whether this would provoke Soviet intervention, and also noted “Chiang KaiShek’s strongly expressed opposition to the use of nuclear weapons.” William Bundy, assistant secretary of state for the Far East, suggested that “limited use of such weapons for interdiction, in unpopulated areas might be a different story.” Rusk appeared doubtful that this could be effective, although he allowed that some sort of threats might be useful.24 In Pentagon war games, such as one held in September 1964, to determine whether conventional firepower alone would stop a Chinese intervention in a war in Southeast Asia, the answer the game produced was probably not. However, only a minority of the war game’s American leadership voted to use nuclear weapons to destroy Chinese nuclear production facilities and execute a general nuclear attack on China.25 In November 1964, shortly after Johnson was reelected president, an interagency task force chaired by William Bundy was formed to analyze major courses of action for the United States in Vietnam. In written comments on the draft papers laying out three options, A, B, and C, Bundy asked with regard to Option B, the most aggressive course of action, “At what stage, if ever, might nuclear weapons be required, and on what scale? What would be the implications of such use?” He commented, “This is clearly a sensitive issue. The President may want a more precise answer than appears in the papers.”26 On November 23, the JCS, in a memo to McNamara, criticized option A as inadequate and offered their own versions of options B and C which would include “an advance decision to continue military pressures, if necessary, to the full limits of what military actions can contribute toward US national objectives.”27 In the context, the Chiefs clearly meant nuclear weapons. They had argued earlier, on November 10, that the risk of nuclear conflict should deter Chinese 24 Memo for the Record (W. Bundy), “Discussion of Possible Extended Action in Relation to Vietnam,” April 27, 1964, Executive Secretariat Conference Files, 1949–72, Box 343, Manila (SEATO) Taipei and Saigon, April 20–29, RG 59, NA. I thank William Burr for this document. 25 Thomas Allen, War Games (New York: McGraw Hill, 1987), pp. 193–206. 26 Memo from Chairman of the NSC Working Group (W. Bundy) to the Secretary of State, November 24, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 941. 27 David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2000), pp. 366–67. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 196 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War Communist intervention, while expressing a clear willingness to use nuclear weapons should the Chinese intervene.28 During a meeting of the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the NSC on November 24 to discuss the three options, someone asked whether nuclear weapons might be used. McNamara said he “could not imagine a case where they would be considered,” but McGeorge Bundy thought that under certain circumstances there might be political and military pressure to consider their use.29 However, no precise answer was forthcoming, and the Pentagon Papers narrative notes after one such inconclusive mention of nuclear weapons that “again, the point was not really followed up.”30 The ExCom eventually chose option C, the Chiefs’ plan, with some modifications. The final December 2 draft of the paper (approved by Johnson on the 7th) incorporated the Chiefs’ call for aggressive countermoves to North Vietnamese escalation, but emphasized troop deployments and omitted the Chiefs’ language committing the United States to the full range of military actions.31 Perhaps prompted by these discussions, in late November 1964 Rusk, responding to a study by McNamara on the role of tactical nuclear weapons in NATO strategy, suggested that it was of “vital importance” to conduct a similar study “of the utility and limitation of the potential utilization of tactical nuclear weaponry in other areas of the globe,” particularly “the Far East where we maintain the second largest overseas nuclear arsenal and where... the prospect for a major military involvement cannot be overlooked.”32 Rusk approved of McNamara’s emphasis on moving NATO toward greater reliance on conventional defenses and may have sought to encourage a similar shift with respect to US war planning in the Far East.33 Apparently no such study was undertaken as Rusk renewed his suggestion a year later.34 Several considerations constrained the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, including the risk of escalation, political and normative considerations, and perceived lack of military utility of nuclear weapons. I consider these in the next several sections. 28 29 30 Ibid., p. 360. PP, vol. III, p. 238. Ibid., p. x. Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 378. Kaiser provides an extended analysis of the decisionmaking process behind this report. 32 Letter from Rusk to McNamara, November 28, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, 10, Document No. 63, electronic version at “a.” 33 Ibid., at “a” and “b.” 34 Letter from Rusk to McNamara, November 13, 1965, in ibid., Document No. 105. 31 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 197 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. The Nuclear Taboo Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Disagreement over escalation risks The most significant material constraint on using nuclear weapons was the risk of a wider war with China. US leaders worried that a US invasion of North Vietnam or the use of tactical nuclear weapons there could bring China into the war. Winning a war against China might itself require the use of nuclear weapons. In a remote but worstcase scenario, this could provoke Soviet entry into the war, although most US officials judged this unlikely. Thus the United States might be forced to use nuclear weapons first, with unpredictable, and possibly disastrous, consequences. Political and military leaders disagreed strongly about the likelihood and consequences of escalation throughout the war, however. The JCS tended to see the risks of escalation as much lower than did political leaders, and hence were more willing to endorse aggressive policies. The Chiefs, along with commanders in the field, consistently lobbied for expanding the war and removing limitations on the fighting as the only way to achieve victory. On January 22, 1964, they told McNamara that the United States “must be prepared to put aside many of the self-imposed restrictions which now limit our effectiveness, and to undertake bolder actions which may embody greater risks.” They advocated a vigorous bombing campaign against North Vietnam and the introduction of US combat forces in both North and South Vietnam. In response, McNamara directed them to plan a campaign of covert actions and air and sea attacks on North Vietnam up to, but not including, nuclear weapons. The JCS then complained that if China entered the war nuclear weapons might be needed, and submitted a plan culminating in a strike at the Chinese atomic production facility that would produce a bomb in October 1964. McNamara took a similar aggressive stance on this initially, but then scaled it back before presenting it to the president.35 Former President Eisenhower, called in for a consultation on Vietnam in February 1965, shortly before the final decision supporting the first major deployment of American troops, found the nuclear option entirely reasonable. He told President Johnson and senior advisors that he thought the Chinese would not enter the war, but if they did 35 Memo from the JCS to McNamara, January 22, 1964, cited in McNamara, In Retrospect, pp. 107–110; memo from Secretary of Defense to Taylor, February 21, 1964; memo from the JCS to McNamara, March 2, 1964, and memo from Secretary of Defense to president, March 16, 1964, in FRUS 1964–68, 1, pp. 97–99, 112–18, 153–67. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 198 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War he would use “any weapons required,” including nuclear weapons if necessary. He recommended using carrier-based tactical nuclear weapons for “instant retaliation,” suggesting that they could be used on large troop formations and supply depots. In his view, this would not increase the chances of escalation. Emphasizing the utility of deterrent threats, he recommended threatening China with nuclear weapons.36 Further, as he had done during the Korean War, he explicitly advocated challenging political restraints on the first use of nuclear weapons. The United States, he said, should not be bound by the restrictions of the Korean War, including the “gentleman’s agreement” on not using nuclear weapons. This would keep the Chinese out of the war.37 The former president’s statements suggest that he, like the JCS, perceived few material constraints on the use of nuclear weapons – he believed that nuclear weapons would be useful on the battlefield, saw minimal escalation risks, and demonstrated no evident concern about long-term consequences of their use. The former Allied supreme commander uttered no cautionary words of any kind to Johnson and his advisors. In his view, the main constraint on use of nuclear weapons was a political-normative one – the “gentleman’s agreement” – which he advocated breaking. It might be argued that he was an aging general no longer in the loop, but his statements are entirely consistent with those he made when he was president.38 Eisenhower’s views on the use of nuclear weapons were shared by South Vietnamese leader General Nguyen Khanh, who had told Rusk during the latter’s visit to Southeast Asia in April 1964 that as far as he was concerned the United States could use anything it wanted against China.39 Eager to expand the war to the North, Khanh had no objections to the use of nuclear weapons, noting on another occasion that the decisive use of atomic bombs on Japan had saved not only American but also Japanese lives.40 36 Memo of a meeting with President Johnson, Washington, DC, February 17, 1965. FRUS 1964–68, 2, p. 305. 37 Ibid., FRUS 1964–68, 2, p. 305. In May 1962, Eisenhower had also recommended to Kennedy the use of nuclear weapons in the Laos crisis. 38 See Chapters 4 and 5. David Kaiser argues that Eisenhower showed in the meeting that he had been kept well informed of the administration’s policy and its rationale. Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 403. 39 Memo of conversation between Secretary of State Rusk and Prime Minister Khanh, Saigon, April 18, 1964. FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 244. 40 Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State, Honolulu, June 1, 1964. FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 410. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 199 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo Rusk, for his part, did not share Eisenhower’s views on nuclear weapons, but he endorsed the former president’s recommendations to institute a “campaign of pressure” against North Vietnam. In a strong personal memo to President Kennedy shortly after the meeting with Eisenhower, he wrote, “Everything possible should be done to throw back the Hanoi–Viet Cong aggression – even at the risk of major escalation.”41 At an NSC meeting in May 1964, Rusk had suggested moving a US division in Korea to Southeast Asia, and making a public declaration that any attack on South Korea would be met by the use of nuclear weapons.42 He believed that if escalation brought about a major Chinese attack, it would also involve use of nuclear arms, a risk he was willing to take. But like the military, Rusk thought the escalation risks were low. He thought that the Chinese leaders were “practical men” who would act prudently, in part because of the US nuclear arsenal. As he noted to the Romanian foreign minister in October 1965, “After all, Chinese nuclear capability within the foreseeable future will always be trivial as compared to that of the US.”43 Nevertheless, Rusk vigorously opposed bombing near the Chinese border, and, although he clearly found some use for nuclear threats, unlike Eisenhower, he did not actually advocate the use of nuclear weapons.44 The military’s benign views of the escalation risks were especially alarming to Undersecretary of State George Ball, who worried about a protracted ground war with China, which might produce substantial US casualties. As he wrote in a famous skeptical memo on the US conduct of the war to McNamara, Bundy, and Rusk in October 1964, “At this point, we should certainly expect mounting pressure for the use of at least tactical nuclear weapons. The American people would not again accept the frustrations and anxieties that resulted from our abstention from nuclear combat in Korea.” Ball worried that the fact that there was no longer any shortage of suitable nuclear 41 Dean Rusk to the President, February 23, 1965, “Deployment,” vol. II, tabs 61–87, NSCH, Box 40, NSF, LBJL, quoted in McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 173. 42 NSC Executive Committee Meeting, Washington, DC, May 24, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 371. 43 Memo of conversation, Secretary’s Dinner for Rumanian Foreign Minister Manescu, Washington, DC, October 14, 1965, FRUS 1964–68, 3, pp. 455–56. 44 Rusk’s tragic history on the Korea issue undoubtedly influenced these views. He was haunted all his life by the unexpected Chinese attack across the Yalu river in November 1950, which had occurred on his watch as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs. Because of this, he had a tendency to see all problems of communism in Asia as threats of invasion from the north. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 200 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War warheads removed an important material constraint on their use. “The rationalization of a departure from the self-denying ordinance of Korea would be that we did not have battlefield nuclear weapons in 1950 – yet we do have them today.”45 Given a situation of nuclear plenitude, and the military’s benign assessment of the consequences of a wider war or using nuclear weapons, Ball worried that there were few military or material constraints on the military’s analysis of nuclear options. Ball and others sensitive to escalation risks also worried about the uncertain Soviet reaction to a US use of nuclear weapons. He wrote in his October 1964 memo, “While one cannot be certain, the best judgment is that the Soviet Union could not sit by and let nuclear weapons be used against China.”46 Similarly, in a lengthy memo to Johnson on the same day as the meeting with Eisenhower, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who opposed the 1965 decision to expand the war, cautioned that if a war with China had been ruled out in 1952–53 when only the United States had a usable nuclear capability, it would be even harder to justify such a war now. “No one really believes the Soviet Union would allow us to destroy Communist China with nuclear weapons, as Russia’s status as a world power would be undermined if she did.”47 At the Honolulu conference on June 2, 1964, Rusk had also noted the risk of provoking a nuclear exchange with the Soviets, “with all that this involved.”48 Nevertheless, unlike in previous Cold War crises, during the Vietnam conflict US military leaders did not think war with the Soviet Union was imminent, and were not deterred in their conduct of the war by fear of Soviet entry into the hostilities. This was due in part to the Sino-Soviet split and the highly public animosity between the two Communist great powers by the mid-1960s. It was also due to the relative “detente” between the United States and the Soviet Union in the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Official US intelligence estimates consistently stated that it was unlikely either China or the Soviet Union would intervene unless the United States invaded North Vietnam with a massive show of troops, bombed China, or attacked 45 George Ball, “How Valid are the Assumptions Underlying our Vietnam Policies?” Memo, October 5, 1964. Reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 230, no. 1 (July 1972), pp. 41–42. Emphasis added. 46 Ibid., p. 43. 47 Memo from Vice President Humphrey to President Johnson, Washington, DC, February 17, 1965. FRUS 1964–68, 2, p. 311. In reality, the Eisenhower administration did not rule out war with China in 1953. See Chapter 4. 48 PP, vol. III, p. 175. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 201 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo Soviet supply ships in Haiphong harbor. A Special National Intelligence Estimate of October 9, 1964 stated that “We are almost certain that both Hanoi and Peiping are anxious not to become involved in the kind of war in which the great weight of US weaponry could be brought to bear against them. Even if Hanoi and Peiping estimated that the US would not use nuclear weapons against them, they could not be sure of this...”49 By mid-1965 the administration was convinced that the Soviet Union’s commitment to long-term improvement of relations with the West took precedence over its support for North Vietnam. In spring 1965, after operation Rolling Thunder had begun, Chinese leader Zhou Enlai signaled to Washington through the Pakistanis and the British that Chinese forces would not become involved militarily in Vietnam if the United States refrained from invading North Vietnam or China and did not bomb the North’s Red River dikes. However, should war break out, even nuclear weapons would not force them to quit, and the war would have no boundaries.50 Nevertheless, President Johnson was determined, even obsessed, with keeping the war restrained, a view shared by McNamara and others, who thought that even if the actual risks of a wider war were low, the consequences were unacceptable. Uncontrolled escalation could lead to possibly catastrophic outcomes. Johnson and his advisors, veterans of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, were committed to limiting as much as possible the geographical area of the conflict and the volume of force used. Johnson, in particular, was “haunted by the ceaseless fear” of Soviet and Chinese intervention.51 Nevertheless, although escalation concerns were a constraining factor, they were far from determining.52 In practice, the fear of defeat 49 Quoted in memo from Walt Rostow to Secretary of State Rusk, November 23, 1964. PP, vol. III, p. 645. See also Special National Intelligence Estimate, SNIE 50–2–64, Washington, May 25, 1964, FRUS, 1964–68, 1, p. 380. 50 Chen Jian, “China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964–69,” The China Quarterly, no. 142 (June 1995), pp. 366–67; Kaiser, American Tragedy, pp. 439–40. 51 George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (New York: Wiley, 1996), 2nd edn, pp. 5, 46. 52 Both Ball and McNamara later stated that they overestimated the risk of war with China. In his 1982 memoirs, Ball conceded that, in hindsight, he exaggerated the risk of the Chinese threat and possible entry into the war, but that at the time “we knew almost nothing about what was going on in Chinese foreign policy.” George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (New York: Norton, 1982), p. 505, fn. 10. McNamara described later the “totally incorrect appraisal of the ‘Chinese threat’ to our security” but said it was a widely shared view among top officials. McNamara, In Retrospect, pp. 218–19. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 202 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. in Vietnam repeatedly made significant risks of escalation acceptable. On February 9, 1965, McGeorge Bundy wrote to Senator Mike Mansfield that the administration was willing to run the risk of war with China, and implied a willingness to make a sacrifice at least equal to that of the Korean War.53 Further, US officials were not totally averse to making nuclear threats. In a not-for-attribution briefing to US reporters on April 22, 1965, just after the first deployment of US troops to Vietnam, McNamara defended US strategy there and went on to make a not-so-veiled nuclear threat. The Johnson administration was shifting its focus to a greater effort to win the ground war. As recorded by a New York Times reporter, McNamara stated: We are not following a strategy that recognizes any sanctuary or any weapons restriction. But we would use nuclear weapons only after fully applying non-nuclear arsenal. In other words, if 100 planes couldn’t take out a target, we wouldn’t necessarily go to nuclear weapons; we would try 200 planes, and so on. But “inhibitions” on using nuclear weapons are not “overwhelming.” Conceded it would be a “gigantic step.” Quote: “We’d use whatever weapons we felt necessary to achieve our objective, recognizing that one must offset against the price” – and the price includes all psychological, propaganda factors, etc. Also fallout on innocent. “Inconceivable” under current circumstances that nuclear would provide a net gain against the terrific price that would be paid. not inconceivable that the price would be paid in some future circumstances McNamara refuses to predict.54 Appearing in the newspapers on April 25, these remarks provoked concerns about the possible use of nuclear weapons. McNamara sought to quash speculations the next day.55 “There is no military requirement for nuclear weapons” in the present and foreseeable situation, he said, “and no useful purpose can be served by speculation on remote contingencies.”56 Yet, as David Kaiser notes, McNamara’s original threat could not have been accidental.57 53 Letter from the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to Senator Mike Mansfield, February 9, 1965, FRUS 1964–68, 2, pp. 94, 96. 54 “Background Briefing With Secretary McNamara,” memorandum, April 22, 1965, US Policy in the Vietnam War, 1954–68, VI01501, Vietnam Conference, June 1997, Box 3, NSA. Emphasis in original. 55 Tom Wicker, “President Plans No Major Change in Vietnam Policy,” New York Times, April 25, 1965, pp. 1, 3. 56 Jack Raymonds, “McNamara Calls Hanoi Aggression More Flagrant,” New York Times, April 25, 1965, p. 1; April 27, 1965, pp. 1, 36. 57 Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 432. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 203 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo Even McGeorge Bundy toyed with the idea of nuclear threats. In a memo to McNamara in June 1965 criticizing a vast increase in US troops that McNamara was planning, Bundy mentioned Eisenhower’s nuclear threats in the Korean War and suggested that the United States “should at least consider what realistic threat of larger action is available to us for communication to Hanoi.” He added, “A full interdiction of supplies to North Vietnam by air and sea is a possible candidate for such an ultimatum. These are weapons which may be more useful to us if we do not have to use them.”58 McNamara wrote later that he did not share Bundy’s views on nuclear weapons and threatening their use, though he did on everything else – a recollection that is clearly inconsistent with some of his behavior at the time.59 The nuclear threat may have been what Bundy suggested – a strategy of communicating seriousness to Hanoi and Moscow. Soviet leaders indeed got word that US officials were entertaining nuclear options, a prospect they viewed with the greatest alarm. According to historian Ilya Gaiduk, drawing on newly available Soviet documents, in summer 1965 Soviet leaders received regular reports that the United States might resort to nuclear weapons to suppress the insurgency in South Vietnam. In June 1965, Soviet intelligence informed the Kremlin that in a conversation with Italian Foreign Minister Amintore Fanfani, Rusk had admitted that the prospect of using tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam was on the agenda of American policymakers.60 Although it is unclear how reliable the reporting was, or what exactly “on the agenda” meant, the report apparently spurred Soviet leaders to consider seriously the question of US readiness to wage a nuclear war and the Johnson administration’s intentions in this regard.61 There thus appears to have been some pattern of threatmaking, even if it was a bluff. At times during 1964–65, comments by Bundy, Rusk, and other political leaders showed a willingness to run risks that might have led to nuclear war against China, much as the Chiefs were advocating. On balance, however, as the next sections show, top civilian leaders of the Johnson administration strongly opposed the 58 Memo from the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to Secretary of Defense McNamara, June 30, 1965, FRUS 1964–68, 3, p. 391. 59 McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 194. 60 Ilya Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), p. 73. 61 Ibid., p. 47. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 204 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War use of nuclear weapons in the war, not simply because of escalation risks but also because of political and normative considerations. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Political and normative concerns In the face of uncertainty and disagreement over escalation risks, political and normative concerns about using nuclear weapons may have become particularly salient, if not decisive, for many top officials. As in Korea, US leaders worried that, given world public abhorrence of nuclear weapons – even stronger now than in the 1950s – the use of such weapons against Asians would jeopardize the US moral and leadership position in the eyes of friends and allies. In a memo to President Johnson, Undersecretary Ball wrote: “To use nuclear weapons against the Chinese would obviously raise the most profound political problems. Not only would their use generate probably irresistable pressures for a major Soviet involvement, but the United States would be vulnerable to the charge that it was willing to use nuclear weapons against non-whites only.”62 Indeed, foreign leaders privately and publicly cautioned against use of nuclear weapons. President Chiang Kai Shek, leader of nationalist China, told Rusk in Taiwan during Rusk’s trip to Southeast Asia in April 1964 that he was “opposed in principle” to the use of nuclear weapons, “particularly in settling the China problem.”63 Returning to Washington, Rusk reported to the NSC that he had been impressed by Chiang’s “passionate statement” that “nuclear war in Asia would be wrong.”64 Chiang’s opposition to the use of nuclear weapons undoubtedly stemmed from his concern that Taiwan would be the most likely object of a Chinese counterattack, probably an overwhelming one, and Chiang and his regime would be at risk. A month later, in Honolulu, Rusk noted that “many free world leaders would oppose this [use of nuclear weapons].”65 When the French ambassador to Washington suggested to Rusk in July 1964 that a nuclear threat might have a “most sobering effect” on the Chinese, Rusk again responded that Asians were strongly opposed to the use of nuclear 62 Memo from Acting Secretary of State Ball to President Johnson, February 13, 1965. FRUS 1964–68, 2, p. 255. 63 Excerpts from Secretary Rusk’s Conversation with President Chiang Kai-shek, April 16, 1964. At www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/coldwar/documents. 64 528th NSC meeting, April 22, 1964. FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 258; PP, vol. III, p. 65. 65 Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State, Honolulu, June 1, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 410. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 205 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo weapons in Asia.66 Other foreign leaders urging restraint included U Thant, Secretary-General of the UN, Prime Minister Lester Pearson of Canada, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson.67 Mounting public opposition to the war gave US leaders a demoralizing foretaste of the kind of world public outrage that use of nuclear weapons might provoke. It was not only the concerns and abhorrence of others that played a role, however. A nuclear taboo was taking hold among Johnson and his advisors. President Johnson, especially, was obsessed with limiting the war. Like Truman during the Korean War, he abhorred the thought that he might ever have to consider the use of nuclear weapons. His memoirs make no mention of nuclear weapons being considered in Vietnam.68 His senior advisors have testified strongly that by as early as 1964 Johnson was clear in his own mind that he would not order a first use of nuclear weapons except perhaps in the case of overwhelming Soviet aggression in Europe. He never raised with these advisors the question of how far the American people would support a decision to use the bomb in Vietnam.69 Johnson had spoken out strongly during the 1964 presidential campaign when Senator Barry Goldwater, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in May 1964, suggested in a speech that tactical nuclear weapons should be treated more like conventional weapons, and that they should be used in Vietnam. In a speech in Detroit on Labor Day, 1964, Johnson came out strongly against Goldwater’s views. Describing the catastrophe of nuclear war, he said, “Make no mistake. There is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon.” He continued: For 19 peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against another. To do so now is a political decision of the highest order. And it would lead us down an uncertain path of blows and counterblows whose 66 Rusk meeting with Ambassador Alphond, French Embassy, July 20, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 557. 67 Memo of conversation between President Johnson and Prime Minister Pearson, Hilton Hotel, NY, May 28, 1964. FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 395; Telegram from the secretary of state to the Department of State, Honolulu, June 1, 1964, ibid., p. 410. 68 Lyndon Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984, 1971). 69 Bundy, Danger and Survival, p. 537; Robert S. McNamara, “The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 62, no. 1 (Fall 1983), pp. 58–80. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 206 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. outcome none may know. No President of the United States can divest himself of the responsibility for such a decision.70 Johnson’s statement is a powerful one and emphasizes both the “tradition of non-use” and the danger of uncontrollable escalation. Bundy wrote later that although there was politics in Johnson’s speech, there was “passionate conviction” as well.71 Two factors appeared to be key in Johnson’s thinking: the long-term effect of any use of the bomb “on the survival of man” – a prudential consideration – and the desire not to be the first president in twenty years to use nuclear weapons, that is, to break the powerful “tradition” of non-use that had now developed – a taboo consideration. For Johnson, it appears, the use of the bomb in Vietnam was quite literally “unthinkable.” Many of Johnson’s advisors – especially Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk – already possessed a set of strongly held beliefs about nuclear weapons by this time. Cold War crises over Berlin and Laos (1961) and Soviet missiles in Cuba (1962) had already forced them to confront the possibility of using nuclear weapons. Further, in the early 1960s, an emerging debate among the fledgling group of civilian arms control analysts on the merits of a “no-first-use” policy began to challenge the logic of the prevailing US deterrence policy based on the threat to use nuclear weapons first.72 The growing opposition to the policy of use of tactical nuclear weapons significantly reflected McNamara’s personal views. From early in his tenure as secretary of defense, McNamara opposed the use of nuclear weapons, viewing them as morally objectionable and lacking in utility, issues he often ran together. He had been horrified by the briefing he received in early February 1961, after only two weeks in office, from General Thomas Power, commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), on Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) No. 62, the US plan for nuclear war inherited from the Eisenhower administration. It called for “an all-out preemptive first strike on the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, involving a 70 “Remarks in Cadillac Square,” September 7, 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, vol. I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1965). 71 Bundy, Danger and Survival, p. 538. 72 See Morton Halperin, “Proposal for a Ban on the Use of Nuclear Weapons,” Institute for Defense Analyses, Special Studies Group, Study Memorandum No. 4 (Washington, DC: IDA, 1961); Thornton Read, A Proposal to Neutralize Nuclear Weapons: Pros and Cons, Center of International Studies, Policy Memo No. 28 (Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School, 1961); Robert Tucker, Proposal for No First Use of Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School, 1963). Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 207 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo million times as much explosive power as used in Hiroshima, in response to an actual or merely impending invasion of Europe by the Soviet Union that involved no nuclear weapons at all. Millions of Chinese would be destroyed for no obvious reason.”73 Returning to Washington, McNamara ordered a review of the nuclear stockpile, which eventually resulted in a unilateral 50 percent cut in stockpile megatonnage. He also ordered an increase in non-nuclear capabilities for countering conventional aggression so that the United States would not be forced to rely on tactical nuclear weapons.74 McNamara apparently decided very early on that the United States should never strike first with nuclear weapons. This was made clear in policy documents he sent to the JCS chairman shortly after the war plan briefing that so disturbed him.75 In later years he stated frequently that he had privately advised both Kennedy and Johnson never to initiate the use of nuclear weapons, and they had agreed.76 Daniel Ellsberg, a Pentagon planner who disagreed with McNamara’s strong advocacy of bombing North Vietnam, and who later became famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press, nevertheless felt that McNamara shared his strong personal abhorrence of nuclear weapons. Recalling a private meeting with McNamara in 1961 in which McNamara spoke with “great passion” about the dangers of nuclear weapons and US nuclear war plans, Ellsberg wrote that “he impressed me strongly and positively that day with his conviction that under no circumstances must there be a first use of US nuclear weapons in Europe.” He added, “I’ve never had a stronger sense in another person of a kindred awareness of this situation and of the intensity of his concern to change it.”77 After the meeting, McNamara’s assistant told Ellsberg that Johnson’s thinking on this subject was “not one iota” different from McNamara’s.78 This meeting took place 73 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 270–72. Physicist Herbert York, a weapons consultant for the government who accompanied McNamara on the trip to SAC, recalled that the visitors were “just as impressed, awed, and even stunned” as he had been when he first heard the war plan briefing a year earlier. Herbert York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 185, 204. 74 York, Making Weapons, p. 204. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, ch. 2. 75 Memo, McNamara to Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Task Force Reports,” February 10, 1961, US Nuclear History, 00307, NSA, p. 1. This is discussed at greater length in Chapter 7. 76 McNamara, “The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons,” and McNamara, In Retrospect. 77 78 Ellsberg, Secrets, pp. 57, 59. Ibid., pp. 59, 60. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 208 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War even before the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, an event which drove home to McNamara the dangers of uncontrolled escalation. Like McNamara, Dean Rusk, secretary of state to both Kennedy and Johnson, found nuclear weapons abhorrent. With a background in international law, he took a strongly principled approach to diplomacy and America’s role in the world. George Ball, who disagreed with Rusk’s fairly aggressive views on the war, nevertheless described him as a man of “extraordinary integrity and selflessness.”79 According to Rusk, “we never seriously considered using nuclear weapons in Vietnam.” He advocated aggressive uses of force but opposed use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam and elsewhere because of fallout risks, political costs, lack of good targets in Vietnam, adequate conventional alternatives, but especially because of the unacceptable killing of civilians.80 It is clear that Rusk had been impressed by the opposition to the use of nuclear weapons he had encountered during his trips to Asia. He noted that many Asians seemed to see an element of racial discrimination in the use of nuclear arms. Was it something the United States would do to Asians but not to Westerners?81 He wrote later, “Under no circumstances would I have participated in an order to launch a [nuclear] first strike, with the possible exception of a massive [Soviet] conventional attack on West Europe,” which he thought unlikely.82 “The only rational purpose of nuclear weapons is to ensure that no one else will use them against us.”83 These are remarkable admissions from McNamara and Rusk. In effect, top US officials harbored private commitments to “no first use,” in part for moral reasons, despite the fact that such views directly contradicted official US deterrence policy relying on a threat to initiate use of nuclear weapons. (These views also contradicted US plans for limited war emphasizing first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with large Chinese forces in Asia.) McGeorge Bundy wrote later that he believed that McNamara and Rusk would have resigned if President Johnson had asked for a decision to use the bomb in Vietnam, and that Johnson “quietly appreciated this.”84 79 Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern, p. 384. Dean Rusk, As I Saw It (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990), p. 457. 81 Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State, Honolulu, June 1, 1964, FRUS 1964–68, 1, p. 410. 82 Rusk, As I Saw It, p. 248. 83 84 Ibid., p. 366. Bundy, Danger and Survival, p. 537. 80 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 209 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. The Nuclear Taboo Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The 1964 Ball memo: The political costs of using nuclear weapons The most systematic analysis of the political consequences of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam came from Undersecretary Ball in his October 1964 memo criticizing the war. In a section on “Pressure for Use of Atomic Weapons,” more than a dozen paragraphs long, he focused entirely on the political costs for the United States of any use of the bomb. Notably absent was any attention to military consequences – the risks of either nuclear retaliation or escalation to a wider war, with only a one-sentence mention of the danger of Soviet intervention following a US use of nuclear weapons. Nor was Ball concerned with the military utility of nuclear weapons, which he appeared to assume. The political, not military, consequences of a US nuclear attack were the salient issue for him. In his analysis, Ball noted the lack of meaningful distinction between tactical and strategic weapons in the eyes of the public, and the “profound shock” that would follow any use of nuclear weapons “not merely in Japan but also among the nonwhite nations on every continent.” He predicted that “our loss of prestige” in the non-aligned and less-developed countries would be “enormously magnified if we were led to use even one nuclear weapon.”85 Most significant, however, was an analysis of the consequences of legitimizing use of nuclear weapons. If the United States used such weapons, Ball wrote: our action would liberate the Soviet Union from the inhibitions that world sentiment has imposed on it. It would upset the fragile balance of terror on which much of the world has come to depend for the maintenance of peace. Whether or not the Soviet Union actually used nuclear weapons against other nations, the very fact that we had provided a justification for their use would create a new wave of fear... The Communists would certainly point out that we were the only nation that had ever employed nuclear weapons in anger. And the Soviet Union would emphasize its position of relative virtue in having a nuclear arsenal which it had never used. The consequences of this could not be overstated, he wrote. The first use of the bomb since August 1945 by the United States would set back all the progress made in superpower relations over the previous 85 Ball, “How Valid,” p. 42. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 210 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War few years. It would also generate domestic “resentment against a Government that had gotten America in a position where we had again been forced to use nuclear power to our own world discredit.”86 Ball’s concern about the dangerous precedent set by the use of even a single nuclear weapon was not primarily because it would demonstrate that such weapons were militarily useful or that it would invite Soviet retaliation. Rather, it would suggest that nuclear weapons were legitimate. If the US resorted to the bomb, the Soviet Union would then feel free to use it “against other nations.” Legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons would undermine a major normative inhibition on resorting to them in war. Such an inhibition was an important factor stabilizing successful nuclear deterrence (“the balance of terror”). In other words, a shared normative expectation of non-use was an essential element of, not an alternative to, stable nuclear deterrence. Because of this, Ball wrote, the country that broke the tradition of non-use of nuclear weapons would be stigmatized as a pariah among nations. Ball’s memo – or at least parts of it – were not well received. Rusk and McNamara entirely rejected his questioning of the administration’s arguments for conventional bombing of North Vietnam. It is likely that they were quite sympathetic to his arguments about nuclear weapons, however, which accorded substantially with their own views.87 Challenging the taboo As in Korea, those who disagreed with official policy thought that normative concerns inhibited policymakers from thinking “rationally” about nuclear options. Senator Barry M. Goldwater’s public attempts during the 1964 presidential campaign to reintroduce the notion of “conventional nuclear weapons” – the same notion that Eisenhower and Dulles had sought unsuccessfully to promote ten years earlier – ran up against the taboo. In May 1964, Goldwater argued publicly that nuclear weapons should have been used at Dien Bien Phu to defoliate trees, and that, in similar fashion, “low-yield atomic weapons” should be used as defoliants along South Vietnam’s borders, along with an expanded conventional bombing campaign of North Vietnam. 86 Ibid., p. 42. The memo as a whole did have an important effect on William Bundy’s drafting of the options papers the following month, where option C more or less followed Ball’s arguments regarding Vietnam strategy. Kaiser, American Tragedy. 87 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 211 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo UN Secretary-General U Thant immediately criticized the idea, while the Pentagon responded to “Goldwater’s folly” by describing technical characteristics of nuclear weapons, arguing that it was absurd to call them conventional weapons.88 McNamara wrote later that Goldwater’s statements “implied that he saw no real difference between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. He went so far as to suggest the president should instruct commanders in Vietnam to use any weapons in our arsenal. I profoundly disagreed and said so.”89 Goldwater’s effort, like Eisenhower’s and Dulles’ before him, to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons represented an attempt to challenge the growing taboo on the use of nuclear weapons. The strong government and public reaction illustrated how anathema his view was to most people. The Johnson administration used the controversy to political advantage, and Goldwater’s pro-nuclear views contributed significantly to his landslide defeat.90 By the mid-1960s, advocating use of nuclear weapons in a campaign speech was beyond the bounds of acceptability for most people. Samuel Cohen, the weapons physicist at the RAND Corporation who had advocated use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Korean War, and who was one of the rare enthusiasts for such an option in the Vietnam War, also ran up against the taboo mindset. As he recalled, “anyone in the Pentagon who was caught thinking seriously of using nuclear weapons in this conflict would find his neck in the wringer in short order.”91 He nevertheless attempted to interest Washington in the virtues of “discriminate” nuclear weapons in Vietnam. He recalled, “I put my mind to work on how nuclear weapons might be used to thwart the Vietcong.”92 His account of his efforts to promote tactical nuclear options during the war, as well as his analysis of policymakers’ and scientists’ resistance to this option, provide a fascinating window into the operation of the taboo. As he recalled later, during a presentation on tactical nuclear weapons he gave to key planners in the State Department in 1965, 88 New York Times, May 27, 1964, p. 1; White, The Making of the President 1964, pp. 315–16. McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 150. 90 Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 438. Johnson received 61.1 percent of the popular vote and 90 percent of the electoral vote. White, The Making of the President 1964, pp. 315–16. 91 Samuel Cohen, The Truth About the Neutron Bomb (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1983), pp. 84, 95. 92 Ibid., p. 84. 89 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 212 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War it quickly became evident that however intrigued his audience was from a technical point of view, they were “adamantly opposed to the development and use of such weapons from a political point of view.” During the talk he described several hypothetical weapon systems in which low-yield nuclear weapons would be used to propel metal projectiles or massive conventional weapons payloads to the battlefield. In one example, the nuclear explosion would take place over the battlefield but would give “only conventional effects on the target.” He expected that there might be some interest in these options, which he argued were more effective and discriminating than standard high explosive attacks. Instead, “the opposition remained unanimous, for the simple reason that it was not really the nature of the effects that counted. Rather, it was the fact that a nuclear explosion was taking place over the area of theater operations.”93 Even if the nuclear explosions took place in the United States, as in another example, his audience remained adamantly opposed. These reactions impressed upon Cohen the depth of official feeling against the military use of nuclear explosives. “By now I realized that as long as a nuclear explosive was used in anger, US policy held the type of explosive and geographical location of detonation to be absolutely irrelevant. The cardinal point was that it was the act of detonating the explosive in anger that was a political taboo.”94 Cohen’s fictitious weapons amounted to an explicit – and ingenious – device for exploring the scope and content of the nuclear taboo, a belief which he did not personally share. It was becoming increasingly clear that, in contrast to the Korean conflict ten years earlier, use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam was indeed increasingly “unthinkable,” with a mounting burden of proof for the use of such weapons. The operation of a nuclear taboo was visible in a variety of ways. Political leaders rebuffed in outrage overt attempts to erode the taboo, such as Goldwater’s effort to promote the notion of “conventional nuclear weapons.” Not only were top officials privately opposed to use of nuclear weapons, but – consistent with taboo thinking – even the mere analysis of such weapons in the de rigueur cost-benefit fashion for which the Kennedy administration was famous was essentially taboo. Samuel Cohen’s formerly good relationship with Pentagon officials had plummeted because of his pro-nuclear weapons views. He complained later, “When the Kennedy 93 Ibid., p. 93. 94 Ibid., pp. 93–94. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 213 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. The Nuclear Taboo guys came in, my relationship with the Office of the Secretary of Defense dropped off to approximately zero. Those in key positions... had no use for my views.”95 On December 2, 1965, McNamara referred in a telephone conversation with Johnson to certain “very dangerous alternatives that we can’t even put in writing around here, [and] certainly don’t want to talk to anyone else about.”96 One interpretation of McNamara’s phone call is that there was a taboo in the Johnson administration against writing anything down on the issue of nuclear options. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The 1966 Jason Report: Assessing the military utility of tactical nuclear weapons Throughout 1966 and into 1967, both the Joint Chiefs and General William Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, pressed for a more ambitious bombing program. They lobbied for a major escalation of the war and more troops in 1966, after the muchcriticized Christmas 1965 bombing pause. By the early summer of 1966, increasing frustrations over the inability of the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign to interdict the Ho Chi Min Trail led to both public and internal pressure to reevaluate the bombing strategy. It was in this context that four civilian scientists consulting for the US government conducted the only known systematic study of the military utility of tactical nuclear weapons in the war. They were part of the JASONs – a group of some forty young scientists who had met each summer since 1959 to consider defense-related problems for the Pentagon.97 As the war escalated in the spring of 1966, some of the scientists heard a high-ranking Pentagon official with access to President Johnson say, “It might be a good idea to toss in a nuke from time to time, just to keep the other side guessing.”98 Physicists Freeman Dyson and Steven Weinberg, along with Robert Gomer and S. Courtenay Wright, both at the University of Chicago at the time, were so appalled by this statement they decided something must be done. 95 Ibid., pp. 95, 84. LBJ, taped conversations, 1995 release; as quoted in Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 433. 97 For more on the JASONs, see Gregg Herken, Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising from the Atomic Bomb to SDI (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 152–56. The discussion in this section draws on Peter Hayes and Nina Tannenwald, “Nixing Nukes in Vietnam,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 59, no. 3 (2003), pp. 52–59. 98 Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 149. 96 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 214 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War Worried that nuclear weapons were not “unthinkable” enough, the scientists obtained permission from the Defense Department to carry out a systematic study of the likely consequences of using tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. They explicitly intended it to put a definitive end to any lingering thoughts that such weapons might be useful in the war. Weinberg wrote later: Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. I, and I believe others as well, felt that the use of nuclear weapons would make the war even more destructive than it had already become; it would create a terrible precedent for the use of nuclear weapons for something other than deterrence; it wouldn’t help much with the war; and it would open up the possibility of nuclear attacks on our own bases in Vietnam. All this was an immediate reaction, not based on any careful analysis. So we decided to do the analysis.99 Whereas Ball’s 1964 memo had emphasized political consequences, this study focused on the military utility of nuclear weapons in the conflict. After “three man-months” of work, the authors produced a highly classified study which presented their analysis and conclusions in what Dyson later described as “a deliberate hard-boiled military style.” The study sought to demonstrate “that even from the narrowest military point of view, disregarding all political and ethical considerations, the use of nuclear weapons would be a disastrous mistake.”100 Recently declassified, the 55-page study makes a strong case against the utility of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam.101 The analysis focused on whether there would be suitable targets for the tactical use of nuclear weapons and on the effects on enemy ground operations. The report identified numerous targets against which, in principal, tactical nuclear weapons would be useful. Airfields were “ideal targets for TNW [tactical nuclear weapons] and are expensive targets for conventional bombing.” Use of TNW would quickly render the ten remaining operational airfields in North Vietnam inoperable.102 Other potential targets were bridges, large troop concentrations, missile sites, tunnel systems, and Viet Cong bases in South 99 Steven Weinberg, communication with Peter Hayes, December 25, 2002. Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 149. F. Dyson, R. Gomer, S. Weinberg, and S. C. Wright, “Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia,” Study S-266, Jason Division, DAHC 15–67C-0011, Washington, DC, March 1967 (hereafter Dyson report). Declassified December 2002. I am grateful to Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute for providing a copy of it, and for his nineteen-year effort to get it declassified. 102 Ibid., pp. 4, 12. 100 101 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 215 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo Vietnam. “TNW can be very effective if the position of bases are known accurately, especially if attacks can be delivered without warning.” Nevertheless, the analysis highlighted numerous military obstacles to effective use: the difficulty of target acquisition, and the fact that even when good targets existed, the use of tactical nuclear weapons would not substantially affect enemy operations. In some cases, more effective alternatives were available. “So long as the enemy moves men in small groups and uses forest cover, he would offer few suitable troop targets for TNW,” the study noted.103 Destroying Viet Cong bases in South Vietnam with tactical nuclear strikes, “would require large numbers of weapons and an accurate location of targets by ground patrols.”104 Tactical nuclear strikes could also block roads and trails in forested areas by blowing down trees, but fallen trees could be relatively easily cut through and cleared. Using fallout from groundburst weapons to make trails impassable would require repeated use of nuclear weapons and “would not by itself provide a long-lasting barrier to the movement of men and supplies, without endangering civilian populations at up to a distance of 200 miles.”105 The study estimated that it would take 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons per year to interdict supply routes like the Ho Chi Minh trail. In conducting their analysis, the authors drew in part on findings from RAND and Research Analysis Corporation nuclear war-gaming studies from the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the 1965 Oregon Trail studies, which revealed the difficulties of timely troop target acquisition. More problematically, US forces might become vulnerable to a Soviet-orchestrated counterattack, and first use of tactical nuclear weapons against guerrillas might set a precedent that would lead to the use of similar weapons by guerrillas against more vulnerable US targets.106 The report came to a strong conclusion: “the use of TNW in Southeast Asia would offer the US no decisive military advantage if the use remained unilateral, and it would have strongly adverse military effects if the enemy were able to use TNW in reply.”107 Although the analysis was intended to be purely technical, in fact it included strong judgments about the political costs and consequences of using nuclear weapons. In a section toward the end, on 103 106 Ibid., pp. 4, 15. Ibid., p. 47. 104 107 Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 7. 105 Ibid., p. 4. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 216 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War “Political Consequences,” the authors outlined escalation scenarios in response to a US use of tactical nuclear weapons, although without estimates of the scenarios’ relative probabilities. “The ultimate outcome is impossible to predict,” the authors noted. “We merely point out that general war could result, even from the least provocative use of NW that either side can devise.”108 Most significantly, they argued that even if massive retaliation did not result, US first use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam would have serious long-range consequences: Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The most important of these is probably the crossing of the nuclear threshold. As Herman Kahn points out, abstention from the use of any NW is universally recognized as a political and psychological threshold, however rational or irrational the distinction between “nuclear” and “non-nuclear” may be. Crossing it may greatly weaken the barriers to proliferation and general use of nuclear weapons. This would be to the ultimate disadvantage of the US, even if it did not increase the probability of strategic war.109 Whether or not the adversary or its external allies countered with the use of nuclear weapons of their own, the authors argued, the effect of a US nuclear first use on world opinion in general and on US allies in particular would be “extremely unfavorable. With the exception of Thailand and Laos, the reaction would almost certainly be condemned even in Asia and might result in the abrogation of treaty obligations by Japan.”110 The effect on public opinion in the United States “would be extremely divisive, no matter how much preparation preceded it.” In sum, the authors concluded, “the political effects of US first use of TNW in Vietnam would be uniformly bad and could be catastrophic.”111 In short, even if the target acquisition problem could be solved (and that was not evident), for tactical nuclear weapons to be effective they would have to be used in such large quantities, and with such great frequency, that political costs would outweigh military benefits. When US vulnerability to retaliation was added in, along with the danger of the weapons spreading to guerrilla forces around the world, it amounted to a strong argument against the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the war. The report is curious in some respects. It focused on scenarios that were already at the time widely regarded as unlikely, such as the use 108 Ibid., p. 49. 109 Ibid., p. 50. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., p. 51. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 217 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo of nuclear weapons against insurgents. The Soviet supply of tactical nuclear weapons (the report mentioned atomic mortars or recoilless rifles) to North Vietnamese forces was also an unlikely scenario, given how tightly the Soviet Union controlled its nuclear weapons. Further, the report paid no attention to what was actually in the US nuclear war plans for Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s. These puzzling features can perhaps be explained by the circumstances which motivated the scientists to undertake the study (and the Defense Department to agree to it), discussed further below. Also notable is how the four scientists, who personally found nuclear weapons morally objectionable, took pains to couch their argument against the use of nuclear weapons in purely military terms, believing that this would enhance its reception with military planners and decisionmakers in the Pentagon and CIA, its most likely audience. As Robert Gomer explained later, “It was our purpose to show that using nuclear weapons would be immoral folly, and would set an awful precedent but we realized that these arguments would cut little ice with the powers that then were.”112 Weinberg, too, thought that using nuclear weapons in Vietnam would be “a terrible idea for a host of ethical and moral, but also possibly political reasons.” He also thought it likely that a good case could be made against it on purely military grounds and he participated in the study with an expectation that this would be the case.113 The authors viewed their report as offering a powerful critique of the utility of nuclear weapons. “That paper gives all the reasons why you wouldn’t use nuclear weapons in Vietnam,” observed one of its authors in a later interview.114 Did the study have any effect? The fate of this report, and its role, if any, in influencing the administration’s thinking on the role of nuclear weapons in the war, remains vague. The authors handed it to their sponsors in the Defense Department, never to hear of it again.115 However, Seymour Deitchman, at the time at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a federally funded research center under contract to the Defense Department, 112 Gomer commentary on Dyson report, December 2002, at www.nautilus.org/Viet namFOIA/report/JASONs.html#gomer. 113 Author interview, Austin, TX, December 2, 1998. 114 “Jason Division: Division Consultants Who Are Also Professors are Attacked,” Science, February 2, 1973, p. 461. 115 Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 149. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 218 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War and acknowledged in the report, wrote later that the report went to McNamara’s office. IDA provided administrative and technical support for the JASON group. Deitchman recalled briefings on the JASON studies of that summer to three audiences: the JASONs themselves, John McNaughton – then assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs, who managed the JASON relationship with McNamara – and McNamara himself.116 Deitchman recalled clearly the nuclear weapons study briefing to the JASONs. “I remember being struck by the main conclusion, that if we started down that route [using nuclear weapons] we risked being hurt much more than the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong...” McNamara received briefings on the JASON studies every year, and, according to Deitchman, was likely briefed in late August or early September 1966. This probably included a briefing on the nuclear weapons study, although Deitchman did not remember for sure. According to Deitchman, after the briefings, the report was never circulated. Since the Defense Department had to sign off on the topics for the JASON studies (which were chosen by the JASONs themselves), why would it agree to a study on tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam? Here we have only faint but intriguing outlines. Deitchman recalled recurring talk around the Pentagon that spring and summer about using tactical nuclear weapons to block passes between North Vietnam and Laos, especially the Mu Gia Pass, a key part of the supply route heading south. The pass was heavily and unsuccessfully bombed by B-52s starting in July 1966, with heavy losses for the United States.117 Thus when the JASONs proposed the nuclear weapons study topic, McNaughton and McNamara might have found it a useful device for showing what a bad idea using nuclear weapons would be. It thus remains unclear what effect the report had. It is likely that it had little or no influence on McNamara himself because he was already adamantly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons. By this point in time, he was also increasingly skeptical that the war could be won by deploying more troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam (he offered his resignation to Johnson in November 1967, largely over disillusionment with the war). 116 Seymour Deitchman, commentary on Dyson report, February 25, 2003. See “Targeting Ho Chi Minh Trail,” at www.nautilus.org/VietnamFOIA/back ground/HoChiMinhTrail.html 117 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 219 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. The Nuclear Taboo In a later interview, McNamara did not remember the study or the briefing, but conceded that the briefing could have happened. He said that he himself would have had no need for such a study, since he and his assistant McNaughton were already totally opposed to nuclear weapons, but that did not mean it was not useful.118 It might have, for example, helped him put an end to loose talk about nuclear options. When Deitchman returned to the Pentagon in the fall of 1966, he heard no further talk of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. “Although I don’t know,” he recalled, “I think it is reasonable to conclude from that that if consideration had been given to the idea before the study, Mr. McNamara simply dismissed it as something not to think about seriously, and therefore the talk simply went away.”119 The acuteness of the conclusions of the study regarding US vulnerabilities, both military and political, may bear some credit for this. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The war escalates The Joint Chiefs, however, continued to advocate aggressive measures to bring the war to an end. In May 1967 they proposed increased air attacks on North Vietnam, and stated their belief that invasions of North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia might become necessary, involving the deployment of US forces to Thailand, mobilization of reserves, and, quite possibly, the use of nuclear weapons in southern China.120 For political leaders, on the other hand, a nuclear option had become largely inconceivable. In a memo on September 12, 1967, to Walt Rostow, who had replaced McGeorge Bundy as national security advisor, Robert Ginsburgh, Rostow’s deputy, listed seven military measures to achieve a “more spectacular rate of progress” in the war. The last was “Create wasteland with low yield nuclear weapons in southern part of North Vietnam – virtually unthinkable.”121 McNamara later described how he was “appalled” by the “cavalier” way in which the military recommended aggressive 118 Personal communication with author, March 3, 2003. Seymour Deitchman, commentary on Dyson report, February 25, 2003. McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 275, citing JCSM-286–67, Memo for the Secretary of Defense, Subject: Operations Against North Vietnam, May 20, 1967; and JCSM-288–67, Memo to the Secretary of Defense, Subject: Worldwide US Military Posture, May 20, 1967, CF, VN, NSF, LBJL. 121 Memo for Rostow from Robert Ginsburgh, September 12, 1967. Folder: Robert S. McNamara–SEA, NSF, Files of Walt Rostow, Box 3, LBJL, p. 2. 119 120 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 220 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War policies, which in his view raised unacceptable risks of war with China including possible US use of nuclear weapons.122 Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Khe Sanh The one attempt by the Johnson administration itself to look closely at the military utility of nuclear weapons – to relieve the siege of the Marine garrison at Khe Sanh in early 1968 – aborted quickly in a public relations nightmare. This was perhaps the moment of gravest risk of the kind anticipated by the JASONs. New evidence suggests that top administration officials discussed the topic at several meetings throughout the tense key days of late January and early February 1968, albeit with a tone of the greatest reluctance.123 Johnson made it clear he had no wish to face a decision on the use of nuclear weapons and repeatedly sought assurance from military leaders that they had adequate conventional forces to defend Khe Sanh. In a memo to General Wheeler on January 31, 1968, Robert Ginsburgh, Walt Rostow’s deputy on the National Security Council and its liaison to the JCS, noted that if a desperate situation developed at Khe Sanh, where 6,000 Marines were besieged by 15,000–20,000 North Vietnamese troops, “the issue of TAC NUCS will be raised.” Ginsburgh asked Wheeler whether contingency target analysis would be in order. Handwritten on the memo were notations that plans should be “very very very closely held.”124 Ginsburgh and Rostow had apparently already been discussing the issue for a week or so.125 The next day Wheeler solicited the views of General Westmoreland and Admiral Ulysses Sharp, American commanders in Vietnam, on whether nuclear weapons should be used if the situation became desperate. Noting the perceived parallels between Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu, he asked whether there were suitable targets for nuclear strikes, whether some contingency planning might be in order, and “what you consider to be some of the more significant pros and cons.” He cautioned them to “hold this subject very closely.”126 Westmoreland and Sharp had apparently already discussed the need 122 McNamara, In Retrospect, pp. 160–61, 275. Walt Rostow Papers, Tom Johnson Papers, LBJL. Memo to General Wheeler from Robert N. Ginsburgh, January 31, 1968, NSF, Walt Rostow Papers, Box 7, LBJL. 125 Memo from Walt Rostow to President Johnson, February 3, 1968. NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL. 126 General Wheeler to General Westmoreland and Admiral Sharp (JCS 01154), February 1, 1968, NS Files, NSC Histories, “March 31st Speech, Volume 2,” Box 47, LBJL. 123 124 Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 221 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. The Nuclear Taboo for some planning on the issue, and had already instituted it “under the strictest need to know basis,” Sharp wrote back the next day.127 All three military leaders thought the use of nuclear weapons an unlikely eventuality but felt military prudence alone required some such planning.128 As requested, Westmoreland began to convene a secret study group to analyze nuclear options. But almost immediately Washington quashed it, fearing – too late – that it would leak to the press. Johnson’s political advisors reversed course, moving rapidly to forestall any request for a nuclear option from the JSC by making sure Westmoreland had all the conventional forces he needed to defend Khe Sanh. Rostow suggested in a memo to the president on February 2 that Westmoreland be offered an extra reserve division, explaining his “desire to avoid a situation of battlefield crisis in which Westy and the JCS would ask you to release tactical nuclear weapons.” He also urged that General Wheeler be informed that it was his duty to minimize the likelihood that the Chiefs would raise the nuclear issue.129 In a memo the next day, General Wheeler sought to reassure the president, writing that “the use of nuclear weapons should not be required in the present situation.” But he did not rule them out. “Should the situation in the DMZ area change dramatically, we should be prepared to introduce weapons of greater effectiveness against massed forces. Under such circumstances I visualize that either tactical nuclear weapons or chemical agents would be active candidates for employment.”130 In a memo to Johnson the same day, apparently spurred by suggestions in the press and in other parts of the government that high-level considerations of nuclear weapons were under way, Rostow apologized for his blunder in raising the issue with General Wheeler and the commanders, which inadvertently created the impression that the government was thinking about using nuclear 127 Cable from General Sharp to General Wheeler (JCS 01154), February 2, 1968, NSF, NSC Histories, “March 31st Speech, Volume 2,” Box 47, LBJL. 128 Handwritten memo to Walt Rostow from Robert Ginsburgh, transmitting copies of Wheeler cable. Undated but sometime before February 10, 1968. Also memo from Walt Rostow to the President, February 10, 1968. Both in NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL. 129 Memo to the President from Walt Rostow, February 2, 1968. NSF, Rostow, Box 7, LBJL. 130 Memo for the President from General Wheeler, February 3, 1968, CM-2944–68, NSF, NSC History, March 31st speech, vol. 6, Khe Sanh reports, A-S, Box 48, LBJL. John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Seige of Khe Sanh (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), p. 291. Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo : The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, 222 Cambridge University Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=328894. Created from kcl on 2023-11-19 09:39:22. Copyright © 2007. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War weapons. He explained that it was never his intent that any “formal staff work” be done on the nuclear issue, adding that “the fault, therefore, is mine.”131 On February 11, Johnson ordered the termination of contingency planning on the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam.132 In other words, not only should nuclear weapons not be used, nuclear options should not even be studied. No analysis should be permitted, nor even the appearance of it. The taboo qualities emerge sharply here – something that is not done, not said, not analyzed, not thought about. Not even Walt Rostow should be permitted to analyze the issue. Johnson was later furious about the “irresponsibility with respect to our planning to use nuclear weapons.”133 Westmoreland, a consistent advocate of greater force in Vietnam, wrote in his memoirs that he thought consideration of tactical nuclear options at Khe Sanh a prudent idea. The region around Khe Sanh was virtually uninhabited so civilian casualties would be minimal. He saw analogies to the use of atomic bombs in World War II to send a message to Japan, as well as to the role of US nuclear threats to North Korea which many thought had ended the Korean War. He wrote that “use of a few small tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam – or even the threat of them – might have quickly brought the war there to an end.” If Washington officials were so intent on “sending a message” to Hanoi, surely small tactical nuclear weapons would do this effectively. Westmoreland felt at the time and even more strongly later that failure to consider the nuclear alternative was a “mistake.”134 Despite the administration’s efforts, rumors that it was contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam swirled nonetheless, and the r