John F. Kennedy had threatened to nuke China if it attacked India (the '62 sino-India War)

Top advisers to President John F. Kennedy warned him in 1963 that if he pledged to defend India against any attack by Communist China, the United States would likely have to use nuclear weapons to enforce the commitment, according to a newly declassified tape recording.

George Ball, Under-Secretary of State in the Democratic administration, also warned in what today would be considered insensitive language that using a nuclear response could subject the country to charges of racism following the twin atomic bombings in Japan that ended World War II.

"If there is a general appearance of a shift in strategy to the dependence on a nuclear defence against the Chinese in the far East, we are going to inject into this whole world opinion the old bugaboo of being willing to use nuclear weapons against Asians when we are talking about a different kind of strategy in Europe," Ball told the President during a May 9, 1963, National Security meeting in the White House.

"This is going to create great problems with the Japanese- with all the yellow people."

A tape of the conversation was made available only after it was subjected to a National Security review based on updated federal guidelines.

Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is heard telling Kennedy: "Mr. President, I had hoped before we get too deeply in the India question, we take a broader look at where we are coming, the attitude we're going to maintain versus red China.

...This is just one spectacular aspect of the overall problem of how to cope with red China politically and militarily in the next decade. ...I would hate to think that we would fight this on the ground in a non-nuclear way."

John F. Kennedy had threatened to nuke China if it attacked India

Agencies
Posted online: Thursday, August 25, 2005 at 1136 hours IST
Updated: Thursday, August 25, 2005 at 1230 hours IST

Boston, August 25: Top advisers to President John F. Kennedy warned him in 1963 that if he pledged to defend India against any attack by Communist China, the United States would likely have to use nuclear weapons to enforce the commitment, according to a newly declassified tape recording.

George Ball, Under-Secretary of State in the Democratic administration, also warned in what today would be considered insensitive language that using a nuclear response could subject the country to charges of racism following the twin atomic bombings in Japan that ended World War II.

"If there is a general appearance of a shift in strategy to the dependence on a nuclear defence against the Chinese in the far East, we are going to inject into this whole world opinion the old bugaboo of being willing to use nuclear weapons against Asians when we are talking about a different kind of strategy in Europe," Ball told the President during a May 9, 1963, National Security meeting in the White House.

"This is going to create great problems with the Japanese- with all the yellow people."

A six-page summary of the top-secret meeting was released in 1996, but a tape of the conversation was made available only after it was subjected to a National Security review based on updated federal guidelines.

In one exchange on the tape, Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is heard telling Kennedy: "Mr. President, I had hoped before we get too deeply in the India question, we take a broader look at where we are coming, the attitude we're going to maintain versus red China.

...This is just one spectacular aspect of the overall problem of how to cope with red China politically and militarily in the next decade. ...I would hate to think that we would fight this on the ground in a non-nuclear way."

Later, when Kennedy begins discussing the idea of guaranteeing India's security, then-Defence Secretary Robert McNamara steers the conversation back to China.

"Mr. President I think General Taylor is implying that before any substantial commitment to defend India against China is given, we should recognise that in order to carry out that commitment against any substantial Chinese attack, we would have to use nuclear weapons.... Any large Chinese communist attack on any part of that area would require the use of nuclear weapons by the US, and this is to be preferred over the introduction of large numbers of US soldiers."

The recording, released by John F Kennedy Presidential Library- the official repository of Kennedy Administration documents, runs 165 minutes, of which 33 are devoted to the National Security meeting. The tape also includes meetings about civil rights issues and NATO issues.

The then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk had said "I think we would be hard pressed to tell our own people why we are doing this with India when even the British won't do it or the Australians won't do it and the Canadians won't do it. We need to have those other flags flying on these joint enterprises."

Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, before he could issue such a guarantee. The minutes paraphrase him saying, "it was obvious we would defend India if attacked," so the US "should go some of the way now towards gaining the benefits prior to an attack of a Defence commitment."

"If we were overrun in Korea, in Formosa or in Western Europe, we would obviously use nuclear weapons." If the United States was braced for that commitment, he asked why "we should not be prepared to commit ourselves to defend

Nope. India hadn't yet begun ggetting close with the Soviets then. It was after an incident where Britain wasn't willing to supply India certain weapons systems, during the late 60s, which the Soviets offered immediately after that, that India began to drift towards the Russians.

IIRC, until that incident, India was pretty close to the US, with both countries conducting joint spying operations against China on the Himalayas overlooking Tibet, and China.

Extract:

http://www.indiadefence.com/himalayas.htm

In Cold War parlance, post-1962 India was a frontline state and Indo-US interests converged. This sudden change in political alignments led to many material benefits. A few years ago I visited the frontline Indian Army positions in Arunachal Pradesh and was outfitted with a silk lined US Army great coat to protect me from the cold and howling winds. The coat has lasted long after the interests ceased to be convergent.

As can be well imagined there were more lethal benefits as well, of which India’s intelligence community too got its share having forged a close working relationship with the CIA. In fact this lasted long after the Chinese threat receded and even when India’s political relationship with the USA was once again headed back for its familiar rocky course.

The CIA’s relationship with our Intelligence Bureau (RAW came later) was forged soon after the 1962 war when India and the USA agreed to establish a 5,000 strong commando force of Tibetan fighters. This was the RAW’s Special Frontier Force (SFF), which while no longer an all-Tibetan unit is still as secretive as it was in the early 60’s. The SFF was headquartered in Chakrata near Dehra Dun and was then commanded by Major Gen. Sujan Singh Uban, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All through the 1960’s the Chinese used to complain about the depredations of Khampa tribesmen in Tibet, which tells you a little about what the SFF was up to.

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/kohspi.html

Spies in the Himalayas
Secret Missions and Perilous Climbs
M. S. Kohli and Kenneth Conboy
March 2003
248 pages, 28 photographs, 8 maps, 6 x 9
Modern War Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1223-8, $29.95 (t)

In the towering mountains of northern India, a chilling chapter was written in the history of international espionage. After the Chinese detonated their first nuclear test in 1964, America and India, which had just fought a border war with its northern neighbor, were both justifiably concerned. The CIA knew it needed more information on China’s growing nuclear capability but had few ways of peeking behind the Bamboo Curtain. Because of the extreme remoteness of Chinese testing grounds, conventional surveillance in this pre-satellite era was next to impossible.

The solution to this intelligence dilemma was a joint American-Indian effort to plant a nuclear-powered sensing device on a high Himalayan peak in order to listen into China and monitor its missile launches. It was not a job that could be carried out by career spies, requiring instead the special skills possessed only by accomplished mountaineers. For this mission, cloaks and daggers were to be replaced by crampons and ice axes.

Spies in the Himalayas chronicles for the first time the details of these death-defying expeditions sanctioned by U.S. and Indian intelligence, telling the story of clandestine climbs and hair-raising exploits. Led by legendary Indian mountaineer Mohan S. Kohli, conqueror of Everest, the mission was beset by hazardous climbs, weather delays, aborted attempts, and even missing radioactive materials that may or may not still pose a contamination threat to Indian rivers.

Kept under wraps for over a decade, these operations came to light in 1978 and have been long rumored among mountaineers, but here are finally given book-length treatment. Spies in the Himalayas provides an inside look at a CIA mission from participants who weren’t agency employees, drawing on diaries from several of the climbers to offer impressions not usually recorded in covert operations. A host of photos and maps puts readers on the slopes as the team attempts repeatedly to plant the sensor on a Himalayan summit.

An adventure story as well as a new chapter in the history of espionage, this book should appeal to readers who enjoyed Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and to anyone who enjoys a great spy story.

“A riveting first-hand account of one of the darker moments of Cold War espionage, with plenty of James Bondian flourishes: a CIA-backed spy mission to the roof of the world . . . snowstorms and deadly frostbite . . . and a missing nuclear-powered eavesdropping device that threatens to leak lethal contamination into the Ganges. What a ride!”--Frank Snepp, former CIA agent and author of Decent Interval and Irreparable Harm

“A marvelously detailed account of one of the most exotic and hazardous intelligence operations of the Cold War. . . . A rare treat for anyone interested in mountaineering, secret intelligence, or tales of high adventure.”--William M. Leary, author of Project Coldfeet: Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station

“A lively and fascinating account that rivals Fleming and le Carré.”--David Rudgers, author of Creating the Secret State

M. S. KOHLI, India’s most eminent mountaineer, led the successful Everest Expedition of 1965 that put nine men on the summit—a world record that stood for seventeen years. His books include Mountaineering in India and The Himalayas.

KENNETH CONBOY is a former policy analyst and deputy director at the Heritage Foundation whose other books include The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet and Spies and Commandos:How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam.

We see what the pre-Vietnam Democratic Party was like. The ultimate "what if" would be if Truman had acted to keep Mao from taking over China.

Scenerio:

Instead of using atom bombs on Japan, US paratroopers and Marines land on Formosa (now Taiwan) and seize Taipei. That campaign is followed up by assaults on the mainland. The Americans drive northwest to Shaghai and Nanking while the British liberate Hong Kong (and possible French action in Indochina). Ultimately, the allies link up with Chinese Nationalists and push north to Peking (now Beijing). Allied forces strike out across the Yellow Sea to Korea in order to cut off a retreat of the Japanese army from Manchuria. Wanting a piece of China for himself, Stalin sends the Red Army into Manchuria from Siberia. The Japanese would thus be surrounded and trapped by American, British, Chinese and Russian troops. Refusing to surrender, the army is annihilated. Now Emperor Hirohito is faced with the prospect of Operation Khan- an invasion of Honshu by irrate Chinese looking to revisit the Rape of Nanking upon Japan. There is no Korean War. There is no Vietnam War. There is no Khymer Rouge. There is no pending Sino-American War.

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