"The Nukes of October"
Today is Tuesday, 16 February 2010.
In 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger confected the “madman theory” as a tool of superpower relations.
Nixon told H. R.Haldeman, his chief of staff: "I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he is angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button' — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."
Thus, on 27 October 1969, Nixon ordered eighteen B-52 bombers loaded with fused nuclear bombs deployed near the eastern boundaries of the Soviet Union. The planes remained for three days, feinting at the border. The objective was to convince the Soviet leadership that Nixon was demented enough that he might commence nuclear bombing in order to achieve his goals in Indochina.
Some might argue that Nixon and Kissinger were criminally insane. I believe it more likely that, intoxicated by god-like power over life and death, their diseased egos deifying their own imagined brilliance, they concocted a ploy which, due to miscalculation on either side, or mere accident, might have resulted in nuclear holocaust.
Yet another reason that Kissinger, the American Ribbentrop, should rot in prison.
____________________________________________
Read more in this article by Prof. Jeremi Suri:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=1
In 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger confected the “madman theory” as a tool of superpower relations.
Nixon told H. R.Haldeman, his chief of staff: "I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he is angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button' — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."
Thus, on 27 October 1969, Nixon ordered eighteen B-52 bombers loaded with fused nuclear bombs deployed near the eastern boundaries of the Soviet Union. The planes remained for three days, feinting at the border. The objective was to convince the Soviet leadership that Nixon was demented enough that he might commence nuclear bombing in order to achieve his goals in Indochina.
Some might argue that Nixon and Kissinger were criminally insane. I believe it more likely that, intoxicated by god-like power over life and death, their diseased egos deifying their own imagined brilliance, they concocted a ploy which, due to miscalculation on either side, or mere accident, might have resulted in nuclear holocaust.
Yet another reason that Kissinger, the American Ribbentrop, should rot in prison.
____________________________________________
Read more in this article by Prof. Jeremi Suri:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=1
posted by HH at 1:20 PM
3 Comments:
Who is Ribbentrop? Some of us are not at learned as you.
Kissenger is pretty much a beloved guy. You are whistling Dixie if you think he would ever be brought to task for what happened over 40 years ago.
Ribbentrop was Hitler's foreign minister, and was hanged after the war.
Kissinger is not very beloved in most political circles. The ruling elites would never give him up for trial, fearing they could also be held responsible.
But, one can always dream.
For the record: although I was born in Mississippi, I never whistle or sing "Dixie". :-)
not very beloved?
You must have forgotten Henry's stint in the early '70s as a 'babe magnet.'
:)
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