16. Douglas MacArthur’s Plan to Nuke China
Douglas MacArthur’s successful Inchon landings led to the collapse of the North Korean invasion during the Korean War, and he vigorously pursued the routed enemy northward up the Korean Peninsula. He dismissed warnings that China would intervene if his forces approached the Sino-Korean border, insisting that the Chinese would do nothing. He was wrong: soon after MacArthur’s men reached the Yalu River, marking the border with China, hundreds of thousands of Chinese entered Korea. They struck in November, 1950, and within weeks, had defeated and pushed MacArthur’s demoralized forces out of North Korea.
His judgment proven catastrophically wrong, a humiliated MacArthur reacted with histrionics, and insisted that China be nuked. He wanted to drop up to 50 atomic bombs on Chinese targets, and to seal off the Korean Peninsula from China by creating a radioactive belt, stretching from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea. President Truman, whom MacArthur had assured only weeks earlier that China would do nothing, declined to trust MacArthur’s new assurances that the Soviets would do nothing if America nuked its Chinese ally. When MacArthur disobeyed orders by publicly challenging Truman’s call, the president fired him.
