The
U.S. considered preemptive strikes to prevent Mao from attaining nuclear
weapons.
By Franz-Stefan Gady
| The Diplomat
The
People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong was the nuclear
“rogue state” of the 1960s in the eyes of the United States. The PRC was viewed
by officials in two consecutive U.S. administrations — John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson — as both extremist and irrational, a country where the
prevailing U.S. Cold War strategies of containment and deterrence would not
apply. President Kennedy reportedly saw a nuclear China as “the great menace in
the future to humanity, the free world, and freedom on earth.” Lyndon B.
Johnson told a reporter in 1964 during the ongoing presidential campaign that
“we can’t let [Barry] Goldwater [Johnson’s opponent] and Red China both get the
bomb at the same time. Then the shit would really hit the fan.”
Given
the possible disastrous consequences of a nuclear-armed PRC for the United
States, both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations discussed the option of
launching preventive strikes on Chinese nuclear weapon facilities. Amid these
deliberations, a member of the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning
Council, Robert H. Johnson, compiled two studies arguing that a
nuclear China will not significantly alter the military balance of power in
Asia and that, as a corollary, the United States would not need to take radical
steps, including military action, in the foreseeable future. Johnson’s papers
helped to broaden the discussion about possible policy options vis-à-vis China
and may have contributed to the United States not launching a preventive
attack on Chinese nuclear facilities in the early 1960s.
China:
The Rogue State of the 1960s
The
PRC was seen by the United States as both aggressive and expansionist in the
1960s. It had attacked India in 1962; continued to threaten Taiwan with
invasion; and was supporting both North Vietnam and North Korea. China had also
denounced the burgeoning détente between the United States and the Soviet Union
following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. One 1964 U.S. government analysis
stated that China appeared “determined to eject the United States from Asia”
and “would exploit their nuclear weapons for this end.” Mao’s open bravadoabout “the inevitability of nuclear war,” made
a nuclear confrontation with China “almost inevitable,” according to a
presidential adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson.
While
U.S. policymakers were divided over how to respond to China’s burgeoning
nuclear weapons program, they were united in their conclusion that a
nuclear-armed PRC would threaten U.S. national interest across the globe.
“In
sum, China’s ascension to the nuclear ranks threatened to weaken the United
States’ position in Asia, unleash worldwide proliferation, and undermine
geopolitical stability in the heart of Europe,” writes Francis J. Gavin in his book Nuclear
Statecraft. The last point in particularly worried the United States in the
1960s. If the United States was not able to prevent China from getting the
bomb, the thinking went, other states including allies such as West Germany
would follow suit and go nuclear, with detrimental effects on the U.S.-Soviet
relations. “German national nuclear capability is virtually a Soviet obsession,
based upon a deep-seated emotional fear of resurgent German militarism,” one
U.S. official noted.
Military
Options
The
United States knew by 1959 that Mao Zedong had initiated a nuclear weapons
program. (Mao had in fact given the order to build an atomic bomb in 1955.) The
U.S. intelligence community estimated that China would test its first weapon in
1963 or 1964. According to a 1960 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE),
“[China’s] arrogant self-confidence, revolutionary fervor, and distorted view
of the world may lead [it] to miscalculate risks. This danger would be
heightened if Communist China achieved a nuclear weapons capability.” The
United States faced a ticking time-bomb scenario, with many policymakers seeing
a war with China as inevitable. “In anticipation of eventual Chinese nuclear
capability, the natural answer was sooner rather than later,” acting chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Curtis LeMay said at the time.
Kennedy
was mulling the use of “an anonymous airplane to go over there,” and “take out
the Chinese facilities.” The United States also sought to explore military
options with the Soviets but were rebuffed. While the American president was
pursuing diplomatic options to stop the Chinese nuclear weapons program,
including a Limited
Test Ban treaty initiative, he asked the Pentagon to prepare a list of
military options to take out China’s nuclear capability. According to Lyle J. Goldstein, choices included
“infiltration, sabotage, invasion by Chinese Nationalists, maritime blockades,
South Korean invasion of North Korea, conventional air attacks on nuclear
facilities, and the use of tactical nuclear weapons on selected targets.” The
Pentagon stressed, however, that without Soviet cooperation, military action
will not prevent a nuclear China in the long run.
The
State Department Responds
While
Kennedy was considering preventive war against China’s nuclear weapons
capability, several U.S. State Department officials grew skeptical about the
White House’s alarmism and militancy. The then-head of the State Department’s
Policy Planning Council (PPC), Walt Rostow, noted in July 1963 that even if Beijing developed
nuclear weapons, its “desire to preserve its nuclear force as a credible
deterrent might tend to make China even more cautious than it is today in its
encounters with American power.” Rostow’s opinion was influenced by the first
draft of a study titled “A
Chinese Communist Nuclear Detonation and Nuclear Capability,” compiled
by PPC staffer Robert H. Johnson in close cooperation with officials from the
Pentagon, the CIA, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the U.S.
Information Agency.
A
100-page version of the paper was distributed in October 1963 to select
officials. It is unclear, however, whether Kennedy ever saw it. Its conclusion
was distinctly non-alarmist. Most importantly, the report concluded that “apart
from serving as an additional inhibition on some levels of U.S. attack upon the
mainland, a Chinese nuclear capability need impose no new military restrictions
on the U.S. response to aggression in Asia (…)” Even intercontinental ballistic
missiles would not “eliminate this basic asymmetry.” Furthermore: “The basic
military problems we will face are likely to be much like those we face now:
military probing operations (…) relatively low-level border wars” and “‘revolutionary
wars’ supported by the ChiComs [Chinese Communists].”
In
short, the study suggested that the United States pursue status-quo
policies vis-à-vis China (“present policies require no change”) anchored on
nuclear deterrence.
The
Impact
According to the scholars William Burr and Jeffrey T.
Richelson, the study had an immediate impact. It was received favorably by
then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and, according to National Security
Council staffer Robert Komer, made the issue of preventive war against China
largely irrelevant at the State Department. Komer reported to National Security
Advisor McGeorge Bundy, a proponent of preventive actions, that should
Johnson’s conclusion be correct, “there would be less incentive for us” to
strike Chinese nuclear facilities. And while the study did not stop military
planning at the Pentagon at CIA, “it may have been enough to give some senior
officials pause for thought about the policy implications of the use of force,”
Burr and Richelson argue. “For all of the talk about taking out Chinese nuclear
facilities, no one on the civilian side had subjected the idea to a detailed
analysis,” they add.
As
a result of the study’s impact and his expertise, Johnson was tasked with
preparing a more substantive paper in the fall of 1963 on policy options
regarding a nuclear-armed China. (The report remains classified, although
Johnson published declassified portions of it.) While he was working on the
study, again in close coordination with the CIA and Pentagon, Kennedy was
assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in as president. President Johnson
made no public comments about the PRC’s nuclear program. However, privately he
did not rule out preventive strikes.
The
second study, published in April 1964, laid out various military options,
concluding, however, that they merely would delay the nuclear weapons program
by four or five years. An attack would also carry enormous political risks and
possibly force China to retaliate against Taiwan and U.S. bases in Asia. The
Soviet Union’s position was also unclear and the possibility of “retaliatory
action (…) could not be ruled out.”
While
Johnson stated that covert military action was “the most politically feasible
form of action” (no one was seriously considering a ground invasion) he
cautioned using it only in the event of open Chinese aggression. Indeed,
his conclusion reflects his first report: “The significance of a [Chinese
nuclear] capability is not to justify the undertaking of actions which would
involve great political costs or high military risks.” At the end of April
1964, Dean Rusk sent a condensed version of the study to the president. President
Johnson’s reaction is not recorded, although he presided over a
principal’s meeting in September with the group ruling against “unprovoked
unilateral U.S. military action” against Chinese nuclear facilities unless
military hostilities between the United States and China where to break out, or
the Soviets would agree to joint military action. While the upcoming
presidential elections in November influenced Johnson’s more dovish stance, as
he was campaigning against hawkish Barry Goldwater, the conclusion drawn from
the meeting also reflected Robert H. Johnson’s recommendations in his report.
China
Goes Nuclear
On
October 16, 1964, China detonated its first nuclear weapon at the Lop Nor test
facility in Xinjiang. Hours after the detonation, President Johnson issued a
statement reaffirming the United States’ defense commitments in Asia:
“Even if Communist China should eventually develop an effective nuclear
capability, that capability would have no effect on the readiness of the United
States to respond to requests from Asian nations for help in dealing with
Communist Chinese aggression.” A week later, the president commissioned a
high-level group of “wise men” to work on recommendations on “means to prevent
the spread of nuclear weapons.” Robert H. Johnson’s papers were severely
criticized during the meetings and his conclusions questioned by proponents of
nuclear rollback (i.e. preventive strikes). The Pentagon had also circulated a
paper in December 1964 that tried to refute Johnson’s analyses.
Nonetheless,
Burr and Richelson emphasize that the committee rejected a radical
anti-proliferation policy and “tacitly followed [Robert H.] Johnson’s approach
by eschewing proposals for attacks on China’s nuclear facilities.” This did not
prevent the U.S. Navy from conducting its first nuclear deterrent patrol by a
ballistic missile submarine in the Pacific in December 1964 and the dispatch of
15 B-52 nuclear-capable bombers to Guam. In January 1965, the committee
proposed a reexamination of U.S. policy toward China and recommended efforts to
negotiate a nuclear non-proliferation agreement as well as a comprehensive test
ban treaty, next to several other suggestions. President Johnson, however, did
not immediately follow-up on the recommendations as his administration got
sucked deeper and deeper into military engagement in South Vietnam. (Though he
would eventual negotiate the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968.)
While
fears over China’s burgeoning nuclear capabilities would periodically pop up in the years and decades after
1964, preventive strikes were no longer seriously considered by the United
States. Indeed, China and the United States would enter a tacit anti-Soviet
alliance in 1972, a mere eight years after the PRC acquired a nuclear weapons
capability.
Conclusion
There
are numerous reasons why the United States did not choose to attack China. First,
it remains unclear how committed the U.S. government really was to a military
option in the run-up and right after China’s first nuclear test. Second, there
was a high chance that military strikes against nuclear facilities would end in
failure due to logistical difficulties as well as targeting problems due to
missing intelligence. Third, military strikes could only postpone and not stop
China’s nuclear weapons program. Consequently, it was always only a short-term
solution.
Fourth,
there remained the chance that the Soviet Union would intervene on the Chinese
side in the event of an attack. Fifth, the United States would have violated
its own norms against Pearl Harbor-like sneak attacks and the use of nuclear
weapons in the event of a preventive strike. Sixth, based on conversations the
president had with his military advisers, the United States was deterred not so
much by possible Chinese nuclear retaliation, but by Chinese manpower — “650
million people of strong unity and consciousness” with which it “can defeat any
enemy,” as the front page editorial of the People’s Daily emphasized
six days after the China detonated its first atomic bomb in October 1964.
Robert
H. Johnson’s reports helped accentuate the reasons against preventive war. They
offered U.S. policymakers alternatives to more hawkish views on how to deal
with a nuclear China. The direct impact of his studies on U.S. policy is
impossible to ascertain with certainty as it is not known to what degree it
impacted Lyndon B. Johnson. However, without a doubt, the study succeeded in
presenting a nuanced and non-alarmist assessment of the implications of a
nuclear-armed China for the United States. “The point was to assure, as far as
possible, that all parts of the government were singing from the same sheet,”
Robert Johnson said in a 1999 interview. And that was not “going to happen automatically.”
Considering
the current U.S. administration’s disjointed responses to North Korea’s nuclear
weapons program and the repeated talk of the possible necessity of military
action, getting the government to “sing from the same sheet” on a very complex
issue is no minor achievement. Indeed, our best hope may be that somewhere in
the D.C. bureaucracy a 21st century incarnation of Johnson can get the ear of a
senior administration official with access to U.S. President Donald Trump and
offer a nuanced perspective on the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula.
Photo:
Chinese Leader Mao Zedong smiles and waves in 1969.| Image Credit: AP file photo
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