London, 15 October 1967
When one views the terrible footage from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Manchuria, Havana, or Miami, one cannot help but think that the horror of "limited" nuclear warfare might have been avoided if leaders had considered the weapons too terrible to use. Skin burnt in the patterns of clothing -- third degree burns under the dark parts and almost unaffected tissue under the light -- and that is only the beginning. But, having ended one conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, the US did not take up the policy that the use of such weapons was unthinkable... nor did the USSR, after the "Joe-1" test. President Truman's 1949 speech on the US policy towards nuclear weapons ought to have made things plain: the US will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons in any future conflict, and so hoped to avoid conventional conflicts from starting up at all. So, when the Chinese crossed the Yalu River and threatened US positions in North Korea, it was only a matter of policy to deploy the Silverplate B-29s loaded with the same bombs that leveled Nagasaki.
And when the Soviet Union installed nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba in 1962, US policy was so constrained -- especially by the decision to bomb Manchuria -- that a nuclear retaliation was the only possibility. We can, perhaps, be thankful that the US had the element of surprise when it conventionally bombed the MRBM sites in Cuba, or else more than one American city might have disappeared under nuclear fire. As it happened, the exchange was limited to Havana being destroyed as revenge for Miami, resulting in about 3 million deaths.
Now more and more American troops are being committed to the conflict in South Vietnam. One can only imagine what might happen if the North Vietnamese and their guerilla fighters, the Viet Cong, were to mount an extensive offensive against the American and South Vietnamese interests. President Johnson has already made it clear that there is a "line in the sand" that cannot be crossed, and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev has made it equally clear that the Soviet Union also has drawn such a line. As it is now, North Vietnam holds the future of the world in its hands. We can only pray that the line will never be crossed and that Johnson and Brezhnev have in mind another "limited" nuclear exchange...