When Russia declares it is ready to use all the weapons at its disposal (in other words, nukes) in the war in Ukraine—the U.S. rulers scream: “Reckless!” “Irresponsible!” When the U.S. threatens war if Iran attempts to build a nuclear bomb, it justifies this by declaring that Iran (or other regimes the U.S. is in conflict with) can’t be “trusted” to have nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, the ruling U.S. capitalist-imperialists and their media mouthpieces assume, and constantly promote the notion, that they and their allies are responsible, are trustworthy, and absolutely should have nuclear weapons, for the good of all!
1949-1959: A Decade of U.S. Threats, Encirclement and Attacks on Revolutionary China
When the revolutionary forces under the leadership of Mao Zedong came to power in China in 1949, the pro-U.S. counter-revolutionary Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, a Chinese island 100 miles east of the mainland. There they set up their own government—the Republic of China (ROC)—which the U.S. fully backed and built into a military outpost against China. These reactionaries also took control of Quemoy and Matsu, a group of small islands just a few miles off China’s coast, and both near important Chinese ports. When China was still a genuine socialist country, it maintained that Taiwan was legally part of China, a position recognized by most of the world. After socialism was overthrown in China in 1976, the new capitalist rulers have continued to claim Taiwan. Taiwan is highly militarized with U.S.-supplied weapons, and its contested status is a dangerous potential flashpoint for a major war.
During the 1950s, the U.S. aggressively threatened, encircled, and at times attacked the new People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially during the 1950-1953 Korean War.1
There had also been a number of naval and artillery battles between the PRC and the ROC forces over Quemoy and Matsu. The PRC rightly considered them part of China’s territory and important to recover from the ROC, which, with U.S. backing, was using them to threaten the new socialist state.
Map of Taiwan Strait showing Quemoy island and Matsu archipelago
The 1958 “Taiwan Strait Crisis” and What It Showed
In 1958, the PRC began shelling Quemoy and Matsu. The U.S. rulers feared the People’s Liberation Army would invade and take over the islands, perhaps as a prelude to a move to take back Taiwan itself.
According to a 1966 study included in secret U.S. government documents (which are still classified secret), U.S. imperialist officials didn’t think they could defend Taiwan in 1958 with only conventional (non-nuclear) weapons. This study was brought to light by courageous whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg (who also leaked the Pentagon Papers exposing the lies and illegitimacy of the U.S. war in Vietnam).
So top U.S. military officials immediately began planning for a nuclear strike on airfields inside China within days of any conventional attack by the PRC on Quemoy or Matsu. And they knew the PRC itself was not going to respond with nuclear weapons—because China had not developed any such weapons at that point! The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared (as paraphrased in the secret study) that if nuclear strikes on Chinese airfields didn’t force the PRC to stop fighting, there would be “no alternative but to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China as far north as Shanghai.”
Chillingly, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also said a U.S. strike would “almost certainly involve nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union (which the U.S. considered to be allied with China at that time) against Taiwan and possibly against Okinawa (where U.S. forces were based).” And U.S. officials coldly calculated that millions would die if the situation developed that way!!
The 1958 crisis over Quemoy and Matsu eased when China broke off the attacks on the islands. But the question remains: Why did the U.S. seriously consider taking the enormous gamble of nuclear war that would have risked the lives of millions of people? Because, according to the U.S. government study, the view of the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was that “if [U.S.] national policy is to defend the offshore islands then the consequences had to be accepted.” Or as then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles put it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (as paraphrased in the 1966 study), “Nothing seems worth a world war until you looked at the effect of not standing up to each challenge posed.”2
In other words, the steps needed to maintain the dominant position of America’s predatory capitalist-imperialist empire in the Asian-Pacific region and worldwide against all other powers trumped any concern for the lives of millions of people.
So who is the “reckless,” “irresponsible,” and truly murderous nuclear power? The US of A!
The imperialist gangster logic of the U.S. rulers is just as much at work today as it was in 1958—now at a time when global contention between the U.S. and its imperialist rivals, China and Russia, is rapidly and dangerously ratcheting up. What Bob Avakian said in his interviews last fall is all the more crucial and urgent:
We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.
—Bob Avakian, The Bob Avakian Interviews
