One thing that puzzles me is that there seems to be a bit of a double standard with regards to things like total war, using nuclear weapons and the importance of saving American lives.
The U.S. has fought wars since the 1940s and refrained from using nuclear weapons. I question the necessity of using atomic bombs once but never again in future wars. One could certainly argue that going nuclear would have saved American lives in Korea and VietNam.
Not if the enemy (or one of their allies) nukes us back…
Yup, completly agree. While Cojimar has an excellent point, the difference between any war after WWII that the US fought was that another side could have nuked us back and started WWIII (of course, I can’t imagine that the nuclear weapons of the USSR in the very early 1950s (1950-1951) were nearly as operationally ready to be used as the US’ nuclear weapons). Who knows what would have happened if Macarthur had his way and began a-bombing China and North Korea (my guess is the Soviets and Chinese wouldn’t have been too happy but I don’t know if they would have had the capacity to do much).
By the Vietnam War, using nukes was out of the question…they were way too powerful by that point and the Russians and probably Chinese could have easily retaliated.
Also, since it is relevant…don’t forget - the original plan was to use the a-bomb on the Germans (which would have freaked out the Soviets even more than it did being used over Japan) and not the Japanese…it was only used in Japan because the Germans surrendered before the A-bomb was ready to be fielded.
I don’t think the USSR had many nuclear weapons in 1950 (certainly far fewer than the United States). They had only tested their first bomb the previous year. The Chinese didn’t have any nuclear weapons and I don’t see how the Soviets would deliver a bomb to the U.S. anyway given that they lacked bombers with the range to reach the U.S. and they did not yet have any ICBMs. On the other hand the U.S. had the means to nuke the Soviets. I don’t see the risk in nuking China/north Korea in the Korean war. If the Soviets tried to intervene it would appear to me they were in for a hammering without any means of retaliation.
But what if the Soviets delivered a nuclear weapon to a hub of UN forces in Korea and wiped out tens of thousands of Western troops in a literal flash? What then? I recall that being one of the main concerns. Secondly, you’re still risking nuclear war and–in the very best scenario–killing millions of innocent Chinese and Russians over a third world backwater…
What would A-bombing North Korea have achieved? Using expensive industrial high-tech weapons on an agrarian backwater society? Mac’s blustering over nuclear weapons was due to a good deal of his own incompetence, agedness, and miscalculations betraying a very real weakness, if not outright complete ignorance, of actual conventional war-planning within the United States and NATO at large. The truth was that by even mentioning nukes after a serious of very successful Chinese PLA offensives only belied a weakness and the extent that the U.S. had allowed her conventional forces to rot in favor of an expensive nuclear trump card that no longer existed–implying that capitalist democratic powers could not stand up to the onslaught of the Red bogeymen. This was clearly demonstrated when (perhaps the most underrated U.S. Army generals of the 20th century) Gen. Matthew Ridgway almost singlehandedly reconstituted the fighting skills and spirit of his men in a few weeks merely by retraining them in basic (especially defensive) infantry tactics and combined it with a renewed emphasis on combined arms warfare and firepower to scuttle the myth of the Red Chinese/Soviet conventional superiority forever with minimal additional equipment or even funding. He inflicted serious defeats and casualties that even the Red Chinese PLA could not sustain indefinitely and transformed the U.S. Army into a vastly superior conventional force than it had been in 1950…
Millions of innocent Chinese? The Chinese were killing Americans in Korea. Japanese civilians killed in bombing raids were personally innocent of crimes against Americans but that didn’t stop the U.S. from bombing them. Yes, nuking China would not be fun for Chinese people in major cities but I would think that such a move or the threat of it could cause the Chinese to back down in Korea.
And Americans were killing vastly more Chinese and N. Koreans. So what?
Japanese civilians killed in bombing raids were personally innocent of crimes against Americans but that didn’t stop the U.S. from bombing them.
The USAF did significantly bomb North Korea and had a difficult time finding industrial targets on a strategic or concentric level, although we did kill more than a few civilians, but it was largely pointless as it was. Against Japan, you could make the argument that we were facing an industrial power waging total war. I think one would be hard to say that about China, which had only effectively unified under the Communist party in 1949. What specific targets would you find in China worth an expensive nuke? Which PLA units, who were in deep underground in extensive bunkers designed exactly to mitigate atomic bombs, would be worth it? Risking either indirect or direct Soviet retaliation against Europe or the US?
Yes, nuking China would not be fun for Chinese people in major cities but I would think that such a move or the threat of it could cause the Chinese to back down in Korea.
We didn’t even bomb China proper with conventional bombs. The UN couldn’t even fly fighter missions north of the Yalu (legally, though many pilots did anyways). The Chinese did back down in Korea, largely after 1951. Why would anyone risk nuclear warfare spreading to the continental US to force China to “back down” when a large part of the ‘war of movement’ was done by 1952 and we were inflicting a heavy toll on the PLA as it was? What would one have gained by using nuclear weapons in Korea?
Great discussion here guys! So, it seems like the USSR wouldn’t have had much power to nuke the US mainland but did have power to possibly use nukes in Korea and probably Europe.
It could also be argued that if nukes were used by either side, it would make nuclear weapons more “conventional.” In other words, if the US nuked North Korea and/or China (forgetting about the political ramifications for now), it would “desensitize” the world to them, which would mean that they would be used much more often and obviously cause much higher casualities.
About the casualties - if you think about it, up through WWII, each war being fought was causing an exponentially larger amount of death. By using nukes, the higher casualty rate could just be attributed to “the next step of technology.” In other words, even though millions could potentially die, it would still probably be less than WWII and might have been accepted at the time since each war brought more powerful weapons (in less than 50 years, the world went from Roosevelt’s Rough Riders to a B-29 dropping a bomb that killed 200,000 people at one time, so if that was accepted during WWII, why wouldn’t a 1 or 2 (or however powerful bombs were in the early 50s) megaton nuke that can kill 400,000-500,000 people at once be accepted?
Another point worthy of note: Macarthur started talking about using nuclear weapons in the press, not to the President - part of the process that eventually got him fired for insubordination. For political reasons, the US wanted to fight the war under the cover of the UN in Korea - which meant that they had to take their views into account. Furthermore, this was in the very early days of NATO, and the new allies were watching how the US behaved in Korea for pointers as to how they would behave if their own countries were ever invaded. Leaning that your US “allies” would use nuclear weapons on your territory if you were ever invaded in order to keep their own casualties down suddenly makes such an alliance look massively less attractive. This is a big part of the reason why, when Macarthur was fired, there was celebration among the troops of most US allies.
Or, in some respects worse and longer lasting from a national viewpoint, international outrage results in embargoes on trade with and to the US, with the US becoming an international pariah.
With regards to what the U.S. would target in China I would think a likely target would be large cities like Shanghai and Beijing.
Rising Sun makes the best point-MacArthur was a maniac who needed the ground jerked out from under him real fast.
The President is the boss and Mac was thumbing his nose at him.
He had a long history of pushing things further than authorised.
A good example is his assault on the “bonus army.”
He was supposed to stop short of an actual assault.
To his credit, he had a lot to do with pacifying Japan.
I think that Truman did very well to remove Mac Arthur…
The General was losing the self-control and an absurd and criminal nuke war would legitimate a retaliation to the first able to do that.
Even a new “preventive” atomic attack against USA.