American military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China, accepting the risk that the Soviet Union would retaliate in kind on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die, dozens of pages from a classified 1966 study of the confrontation show. The government censored those pages when it declassified the study for public release.
In his book The Doosmday Machine Ellsberg revealed that in the 1950s the US military nuclear war plan was to immediate bomb both parties regardless of which one started a conflict (or responded to American provocation). He also revealed that many senior commanders and even some field commanders were operating under the assumption that Eisenhower had delegated to them authority to use nuclear weapons without higher approval in the event of communications being cut off in a conflict - suppose you were in or around Taiwan or some other place where an incident like this is taking place and the radios go out for any number of reasons, what could have happened?
In his book The Doosmday Machine Ellsberg revealed that in the 1950s the US military nuclear war plan was to immediate bomb both parties regardless of which one started a conflict (or responded to American provocation). He also revealed that many senior commanders and even some field commanders were operating under the assumption that Eisenhower had delegated to them authority to use nuclear weapons without higher approval in the event of communications being cut off in a conflict - suppose you were in or around Taiwan or some other place where an incident like this is taking place and the radios go out for any number of reasons, what could have happened?