In 1958, the U.S. came closer to waging nuclear war against China than anybody outside the Eisenhower Administration or anyone for decades afterwards, realized.
Morton Halperin, the author of the still partially classified 1966 Rand Corporation study that was leaked by Daniel Ellsberg and recently highlighted by the New York Times, stressed in a May 26 interview with the National Security Archive at George Washington University that the U.S. military was so structured at the time that it would have had little choice but to use nuclear weapons at the outset of a conflict.
“As the documents I cite and quote make clear, the Administration labeled nuclear weapons as ‘conventional’ weapons, and what we know as ‘conventional’ weapons were called ‘obsolete iron bombs,’ he said. “U.S. military forces including those engaged in the Taiwan Straits were equipped and trained only to fight a nuclear war and had nuclear weapons on board and ready. As the Joint Chiefs kept reminding the President, they could only fight for a few hours without using nuclear weapons.”
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff told President Eisenhower that the U.S. had to intervene immediately if the Chinese Communists attacked the Nationalist-held Quemoy Islands, he responded by authorizing the military to resist an invasion but not to use nuclear weapons without his permission, Halperin reported. The JCS again reminded him that once they started fighting they would quickly run out of “obsolete iron bombs” and would need to use nuclear weapons.