New Clear New Look.
Prompted by Kenneth Roberts' Oliver Wiswell (1940), a lengthy novel about the American Revolution told from the point of view of a Loyalist (i.e., the losing side), I dug out Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984), intending to reread only the relevant section ("Chapter Four: The British Lose America"), but rereading, in the event, a good deal more.
I ended up rediscovering a historical tidbit I'd forgotten: under the Eisenhower administration, certain elements -- "a committee of strategists and Cabinet chiefs," but largely Ike's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles -- concluded that, "in the confrontation with Communism, [nuclear] weapons offered a means to make prospective American retaliation a more serious threat and war itself sharper, quicker, and cheaper [emphasis added] than when it relied on vast conventional preparations and 'outmoded procedures'" (p. 259 [Chapter 4, Part 2: "Self-Hypnosis, 1946-54"]).
This stance essentially entailed a stated willingness for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons first if a conventional conflict that the U.S. was either directly involved in or felt that it had a stake in was going badly for the U.S.; this stance was called "the New Look."
Tuchman continues:
"Eisenhower was deeply concerned about the prospect of deficit budgets, as was his Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who said flatly that not defense but disaster would result from 'a military program that scorned the resources and problems of our economy -- erecting majestic defenses and battlements for the protection of a country that was bankrupt.' (That was thirty years ago.) The New Look was motivated as much by the domestic economy as by the cold war [emphasis added]."
-- pps. 259-60
See any parallels with today's state of the union...?
While I remembered, vaguely, that the use of nukes in Vietnam was bruited about semi-seriously off and on throughout the 1960s, I'd also forgotten that the earliest the U.S. had done so was at the tail end of France's ill-advised attempt to regain control of her Indochina colony after the Second World War:
"General Paul Ely, French Chief of Staff, arrived [in Washington, D.C.] with an explicit request for an American air strike to relieve Dien Bien Phu. The emergency moved [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Admiral [Arthur W.] Radford to offer a raid by B-29s from Clark Field in Manila. He had tentatively raised among a few selected officials at State and Defense the possibility of asking for French approval in principle of using tactical atomic weapons to save the situation at Dien Bien Phu. A study group at the Pentagon had concluded that three such weapons properly employed would be sufficient to 'smash the Viet-Minh effort there,' but the option was not approved and not even broached to the French.*"
-- p. 262
This was in 1954.
Tuchman offers a bit of the old "world turned upside down" in the following footnote:
"Radford had in mind, it has been said, provoking a Chinese military response in order to precipitate a war with the United States before China was strong enough to threaten American security. His suggested use of A-weapons in Indochina was submitted orally by the Admiral's assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, then acting as Counselor to the Defense Department, who firmly discouraged the idea. 'If we approached the French,' he wrote to Dulles, 'the story would certainly leak....and cause a great hue and cry throughout the parliaments of the free world,' particularly among the NATO allies, especially Britain. America would then be pressured to give assurances that she would not use A-weapons in the future without consultation. Furthermore, Soviet propaganda would portray 'our desire to use such weapons in Indochina as proof of the fact that we were testing out [sic] weapons on native peoples.' According to an attached note by one of Dulles' staff, 'Sec did not want to raise this now with Adm. R -- and the latter I gather did not raise it with Sec.'"
-- pps. 262-63
That MacArthur, an old "let's conquer China for America and Christ" hand (see also: Henry R. Luce) who wanted to unlimber America's nukes after the Chinese pushed his troops south of the 38th parallel in Korea, was the voice of reason here is a perfect example of "world turned upside down" surrealism; I suppose it's also a demonstration of the principle that even a stopped watch is right twice a day.
But, gawd: that someone that highly placed in U.S. government could even think about using nukes to pull the French hash out of the fire at Dien Bien Phu is mind-boggling, not to mention armpit-dampening. Okay, granted, the full effects of nuclear weapons were just beginning to be understood at the time, and then more in the scientific community than in the military or political spheres -- to most people in the latter two, nukes were still just glorified regular ol' bombs, and cheaper ones at that -- but, still.
I ended up rediscovering a historical tidbit I'd forgotten: under the Eisenhower administration, certain elements -- "a committee of strategists and Cabinet chiefs," but largely Ike's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles -- concluded that, "in the confrontation with Communism, [nuclear] weapons offered a means to make prospective American retaliation a more serious threat and war itself sharper, quicker, and cheaper [emphasis added] than when it relied on vast conventional preparations and 'outmoded procedures'" (p. 259 [Chapter 4, Part 2: "Self-Hypnosis, 1946-54"]).
This stance essentially entailed a stated willingness for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons first if a conventional conflict that the U.S. was either directly involved in or felt that it had a stake in was going badly for the U.S.; this stance was called "the New Look."
Tuchman continues:
"Eisenhower was deeply concerned about the prospect of deficit budgets, as was his Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who said flatly that not defense but disaster would result from 'a military program that scorned the resources and problems of our economy -- erecting majestic defenses and battlements for the protection of a country that was bankrupt.' (That was thirty years ago.) The New Look was motivated as much by the domestic economy as by the cold war [emphasis added]."
-- pps. 259-60
See any parallels with today's state of the union...?
While I remembered, vaguely, that the use of nukes in Vietnam was bruited about semi-seriously off and on throughout the 1960s, I'd also forgotten that the earliest the U.S. had done so was at the tail end of France's ill-advised attempt to regain control of her Indochina colony after the Second World War:
"General Paul Ely, French Chief of Staff, arrived [in Washington, D.C.] with an explicit request for an American air strike to relieve Dien Bien Phu. The emergency moved [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Admiral [Arthur W.] Radford to offer a raid by B-29s from Clark Field in Manila. He had tentatively raised among a few selected officials at State and Defense the possibility of asking for French approval in principle of using tactical atomic weapons to save the situation at Dien Bien Phu. A study group at the Pentagon had concluded that three such weapons properly employed would be sufficient to 'smash the Viet-Minh effort there,' but the option was not approved and not even broached to the French.*"
-- p. 262
This was in 1954.
Tuchman offers a bit of the old "world turned upside down" in the following footnote:
"Radford had in mind, it has been said, provoking a Chinese military response in order to precipitate a war with the United States before China was strong enough to threaten American security. His suggested use of A-weapons in Indochina was submitted orally by the Admiral's assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, then acting as Counselor to the Defense Department, who firmly discouraged the idea. 'If we approached the French,' he wrote to Dulles, 'the story would certainly leak....and cause a great hue and cry throughout the parliaments of the free world,' particularly among the NATO allies, especially Britain. America would then be pressured to give assurances that she would not use A-weapons in the future without consultation. Furthermore, Soviet propaganda would portray 'our desire to use such weapons in Indochina as proof of the fact that we were testing out [sic] weapons on native peoples.' According to an attached note by one of Dulles' staff, 'Sec did not want to raise this now with Adm. R -- and the latter I gather did not raise it with Sec.'"
-- pps. 262-63
That MacArthur, an old "let's conquer China for America and Christ" hand (see also: Henry R. Luce) who wanted to unlimber America's nukes after the Chinese pushed his troops south of the 38th parallel in Korea, was the voice of reason here is a perfect example of "world turned upside down" surrealism; I suppose it's also a demonstration of the principle that even a stopped watch is right twice a day.
But, gawd: that someone that highly placed in U.S. government could even think about using nukes to pull the French hash out of the fire at Dien Bien Phu is mind-boggling, not to mention armpit-dampening. Okay, granted, the full effects of nuclear weapons were just beginning to be understood at the time, and then more in the scientific community than in the military or political spheres -- to most people in the latter two, nukes were still just glorified regular ol' bombs, and cheaper ones at that -- but, still.