Nuclear Citizenry in Motion

SEE THE BOMB
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Nixon Considered Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam

Former U.S. President Richard Nixon suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on North Vietnam in 1972, an idea rejected by then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.

Nixon made the suggestion while discussing ideas with Kissinger to expand the war effort against North Vietnam. Kissinger had suggested such options as attacking North Vietnamese power plants and docks, according to tapes of the conversation released at the National Archives.

“I’d rather use the nuclear bomb,” Nixon said, in response to Kissinger’s suggestions.

“That, I think, would just be too much,” Kissinger said.

“The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?” Nixon asked. “I just want you to think big.”

In May, a month after the conversation, Nixon ordered the largest escalation of the Vietnam War since 1968, according to the AP.

During an interview with Time in 1985, Nixon said he had considered but rejected using nuclear weapons against North Vietnam, saying, “I rejected the bombing of the dikes, which would have drowned 1 million people, for the same reason that I rejected the nuclear option,” Nixon told Time. “Because the targets presented were not military targets.”

In a recorded June 1972 conversation with domestic advisor Charles Colson, however, Nixon said, “We want to decimate that goddamned place,” in reference to North Vietnam.

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“North Vietnam is going to get reordered,” Nixon told Colson. “It’s about time, it’s what should have been done long ago” (Associated Press/Baltimore SUN).

In a recorded May 1972 conversation with Kissinger, Nixon said civilian casualties are a result of all wars.

“The only place where you and I disagree … is with regard to the bombing,” Nixon said. “You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.”

“I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher,” Kissinger said.

Nixon’s suggestion to use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam could have been only a reflection of his frustration with the war, said Vietnam historian Stanley Karnow.

“It was politically unacceptable,” Karnow said. “Just because he said it doesn’t mean it was really an option” (Deb Richmann, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer).

International Response

The world condemnation of the United States for using a nuclear weapon against North Vietnam could have led to an earlier U.S. withdrawal and a faster North Vietnamese victory, said Bui Quang Tha

NUCLEAR BUSH
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the North Vietnamese solider who raised the North Vietnamese flag over South Vietnam’s presidential palace in 1975.

“It’s difficult to know, but peace-loving people around the world would have opposed the use of nuclear bombs, so maybe the war would have ended sooner,” Than said.

The use of nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War “could have escalated the conflict and touched off another world war,” said Seo Byung-chul, president of the Korea Institute of National Unification.

“Nuclear weapons are a tool to prevent war, not a tool to start or escalate a war,” Seo said.

If the United States had used nuclear weapons, it would have angered Japan into re-examining its military alliance with the United States, which allowed U.S. forces to use Okinawa Island as a staging ground, said Makoto Saito of Tokyo University.

“Japan has firsthand experience with the effects of an atomic bomb, so the reaction from the Japanese people would have been severe,” Saito said (David Thurber, Associated Press/Yahoo.com.)

The Bottom line is, Nixon determined that subtrafuge was the "Effect"that the Paris Paeace talks were mandated.

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