US planned to nuclearise India

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US planned to nuclearise India, bomb China's N-installations

AP

(Washington)

 

ALARMED BY the rapid development of China's nuclear programme from

1960-64, the John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations

considered bombing facilities there and killing the experts, as well

as supplying India with nuclear weapons, recently declassified

documents show.

 

All options were rejected as too risky, according to the documents

obtained by researchers at the Independent National Security Archive

and used as the basis for an article appearing this month in

International Security, a Harvard University publication.

 

Pentagon officials expressed concern about Communist China's nuclear

programme as early as February 1961, when Air Force planners said a

CIA estimate that China could have the bomb as early as 1963 was too

conservative - and predicted bomb testing as earlier as that year.

 

Intelligence reports showed that the Chinese had made significant

progress by 1963, and the issue began to figure prominently in

meetings between President Kennedy and his national security

advisers.

 

In April of that year, the joint chiefs of staff prepared a document

examining all available options - from blockading China and

infiltrating and sabotaging the program, through air attacks on the

facilities, backing a Taiwanese invasion of China and undertaking a

tactical nuclear attack.

 

However, the document rejects direct force as unlikely to wipe out

the Chinese nuclear capability; indeed, it suggested that any

attacks, covert or overt, would probably spur Chinese aggression.

 

It instead recommended cooperating with the Soviet Union and Britain

to contain the Chinese threat through diplomatic activity, for

instance, by offering the Chinese economic assistance as a

disincentive to developing the nuclear programme.

 

Subsequent reports by Robert Johnson, an official of the state

department's policy planning council in both administrations,

suggested that China's nuclear capacity would never be great enough

to threaten US interests and that the Chinese were not disposed to

recklessness in any case.

 

One April 1964 Robert Johnson paper, outlining the range of

"unorthodox" responses should the Chinese ever pose a real threat,

remains classified.

 

The view that it was impossible to wipe out the Chinese nuclear

capability - and unwise to attempt it - prevailed until October 14,

1964, when the Chinese first tested a nuclear device, alarming Lyndon

Johnson's administration and prompting some officials counsel more

direct action.

 

In a paper dated December 14, 1964, George Rathjens, an official of

the arms control and disarmament agency, argues that Robert Johnson's

reports ignored the danger "that relatively weak powers will be able

to inflict very great and totally unacceptable damage on much

stronger ones if they acquire nuclear capabilities."

 

Rathjens counsels "further consideration of direct action against

Chinese nuclear facilities," and even considers a policy of

assassinating Chinese nuclear officials. "For a longer term effect it

would be necessary to destroy research facilities and personnel," he

says.

 

The declassified papers show that officials also considered helping

India develop nuclear weapons as a means of containing its neighbour.

 

 

 

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