Spikes placed on the coast of Taiwan's Kinmen islands - located just 3.2 kms (two miles) from mainland China - to help prevent a military invasion. © Sam Yeh
AFP: In 1958 US considered nuclear strike on China over Taiwan: documents
US military planners pushed for nuclear strikes on mainland China in 1958 to protect Taiwan from an invasion by Communist forces, classified documents posted online by Daniel Ellsberg of "Pentagon Papers" fame show.
US planners also assumed that the Soviet Union would aid China and retaliate with nuclear weapons -- a price they deemed worth paying to protect Taiwan, according to the document, first reported by the New York Times.
Former military analyst Ellsberg posted online the classified portion of a top-secret document on the crisis that had been only partially declassified in 1975. Ellsberg, now 90, is famous for his 1971 leak to US media of a top-secret Pentagon study on the Vietnam war known as the Pentagon Papers.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: It was a very different time then.
