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Worst Idea Ever: Dropping Nuclear Bombs During the Vietnam War
http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/worst-idea-ever-dropping-nuclear-bombs-during-the-vietnam-13668
Worst Idea Ever: Dropping Nuclear Bombs During the Vietnam War
A crazy idea that would have broken the "nuclear taboo."
Steve Weintz
August 23, 2015
By February 1966, frustration with the U.S. bombing campaign against North Vietnam rose high enough to spur talk of going nuclear. Throughout the Vietnam War, such talk was mostly just that, but in 1966, it worried certain people enough to gin up a classified study of tactical nuclear weapons use in Southeast Asia. The study's authors—members of the JASONs, the Pentagon's "wise men"—concluded that any way you looked at it, nukes in 'Nam were a very bad idea.
<snip>
All four men entered the project believing that nuclear weapons would only make a brutal war more terrible. But they faced a rhetorical dilemma: if they addressed ethical and moral issues around tactical nuke use, they risked being dismissed as "soft" and unreliable. Therefore, they chose to explicitly exclude ethical and moral issues and focus solely on military and political ramifications. Steven Weinberg said the analysis was "…honestly done, but I have to admit that its conclusions were pretty much what we expected from the beginning."
<snip>
When he received the report, Defense Secretary McNamara dispensed with a briefing and asked pointed questions. By all accounts, further consideration of nukes in 'Nam ended there. The JASONs’ hope that their study's findings would take nukes off the table seemed borne out.
<snip>
Nuclear weapons still engender deep contradictions. The most powerful weapons ever devised serve no other purpose but to prevent their use by others. Some people in Washington, Moscow and Islamabad may still view them simply as extraordinary munitions and tilt towards their use, but the arguments the JASONs made in 1966 still hold up. And casual talk about "tossing a few nukes around" is as crazy now as it was then.
Worst Idea Ever: Dropping Nuclear Bombs During the Vietnam War
A crazy idea that would have broken the "nuclear taboo."
Steve Weintz
August 23, 2015
By February 1966, frustration with the U.S. bombing campaign against North Vietnam rose high enough to spur talk of going nuclear. Throughout the Vietnam War, such talk was mostly just that, but in 1966, it worried certain people enough to gin up a classified study of tactical nuclear weapons use in Southeast Asia. The study's authors—members of the JASONs, the Pentagon's "wise men"—concluded that any way you looked at it, nukes in 'Nam were a very bad idea.
<snip>
All four men entered the project believing that nuclear weapons would only make a brutal war more terrible. But they faced a rhetorical dilemma: if they addressed ethical and moral issues around tactical nuke use, they risked being dismissed as "soft" and unreliable. Therefore, they chose to explicitly exclude ethical and moral issues and focus solely on military and political ramifications. Steven Weinberg said the analysis was "…honestly done, but I have to admit that its conclusions were pretty much what we expected from the beginning."
<snip>
When he received the report, Defense Secretary McNamara dispensed with a briefing and asked pointed questions. By all accounts, further consideration of nukes in 'Nam ended there. The JASONs’ hope that their study's findings would take nukes off the table seemed borne out.
<snip>
Nuclear weapons still engender deep contradictions. The most powerful weapons ever devised serve no other purpose but to prevent their use by others. Some people in Washington, Moscow and Islamabad may still view them simply as extraordinary munitions and tilt towards their use, but the arguments the JASONs made in 1966 still hold up. And casual talk about "tossing a few nukes around" is as crazy now as it was then.