[The Pheonix]

Re your post #24


yes, MacArthur recommended nukes, but General Mattew Ridgeway advised Truman otherwise.

Ridgeway's arguement was: If the US used nuke. Then that, might then trigger off a nuclear exchange with the USSR. If the USSR did not respond with nuke and kept out, then China would be defeated. yes, but, the US would then need to garrison an occupying army inside China,(and face a guerila war), because if the US won't station a garrison, the USSR would, from just across the Border, and then the USSR would instal a puppet Chinese Govt, consisting of the Pro-USSR faction of The ChiComs

And a combined USSR-China would be too strong for the then US to handle. And scare the shit out of the Europeans

[risk]

>>>> And a combined USSR-China would be too strong for the then US to handle. And scare the shit out of the Europeans

Agreed. Truman wasn't irrational when he pulled MacArthur out of his command. We can also speculate the other way, however: the Chinese were weak without their own nuclear weapons, and the Soviet Union would have had to rely on intercontinental strategic bombers to strike American weapons because their missile guidance systems were still crude. We had superb AAA, and we had the will to win a nuclear war (we still do).

I personally think tactical nukes would have shocked the communists and would have given them pause as to what it was really worth in fighting the allies. But the bottom line was that Truman was our commander in chief, and MacArthur was out of line. Who knows, the civilians might have been right.