Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 In the shadow of Hiroshima: the United States and Asia in the aftermath of Japanese defeat
- 2 The Korean War, the atomic bomb and Asian–American estrangement
- 3 Securing the East Asian frontier: stalemate in Korea and the Japanese peace treaty
- 4 A greater sanction: the defence of South East Asia, the advent of the Eisenhower administration and the end of the Korean War
- 5 ‘Atomic Madness’: massive retaliation and the Bravo test
- 6 The aftermath of Bravo, the Indochina crisis and the emergence of SEATO
- 7 ‘Asia for the Asians’: the first offshore islands crisis and the Bandung Conference
- 8 A nuclear strategy for SEATO and the problem of limited war in the Far East
- 9 Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
- 10 The second offshore islands crisis and the advent of flexible response
- 11 The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
- Conclusion: from massive retaliation to flexible response in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
11 - The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 In the shadow of Hiroshima: the United States and Asia in the aftermath of Japanese defeat
- 2 The Korean War, the atomic bomb and Asian–American estrangement
- 3 Securing the East Asian frontier: stalemate in Korea and the Japanese peace treaty
- 4 A greater sanction: the defence of South East Asia, the advent of the Eisenhower administration and the end of the Korean War
- 5 ‘Atomic Madness’: massive retaliation and the Bravo test
- 6 The aftermath of Bravo, the Indochina crisis and the emergence of SEATO
- 7 ‘Asia for the Asians’: the first offshore islands crisis and the Bandung Conference
- 8 A nuclear strategy for SEATO and the problem of limited war in the Far East
- 9 Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
- 10 The second offshore islands crisis and the advent of flexible response
- 11 The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
- Conclusion: from massive retaliation to flexible response in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For President Kennedy, the insurgencies in Vietnam and Laos, even though the latter was temporarily stifled by the neutralization agreement reached at Geneva in July 1962, were potent signs of the immediacy of the Communist threat facing the fragile states and societies of South East Asia, and tests of how the United States would meet the danger to regional stability they represented. Indeed, the ideological struggle of the Cold War showed every sign of intensifying across the decade to come, with Khrushchev's acceptance of peaceful coexistence, and recognition that a direct military clash between the United States and Soviet Union was a quick route to mutually assured destruction. In this context, the battle for ‘hearts and minds’ in the developing world held even greater significance, by moving areas notionally on the periphery to the centre of conflict. As far as the Kennedy administration was concerned, this had been the main import of Khrushchev's ‘wars of national liberation’ speech in January 1961, which signalled a transfer of the major battleground of the East–West competition to regions newly liberated from overt Western domination (though as we have already seen worries over Soviet inroads being made in the developing world had first emerged in Washington in the mid-1950s, and economic aid to key non-aligned states such as India had been enhanced as a result).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- After HiroshimaThe United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–1965, pp. 401 - 449Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010