US considered nuclear strikes 'deep into China' in 1958 over Chinese Taipei: Top-secret document

US military leaders considered launching nuclear strikes “deep into China” in 1958 to protect Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) from a possible invasion, according to a top-secret classified document.

American officials and military planners doubted they could defend the territory with only conventional weapons.

They were pushing for the extreme option even as they had established at the time that the Soviet Union would most likely come to China’s defense and retaliate with a nuclear strike of its own—a scenario that would have killed millions of people, the documents posted online by Daniel Ellsberg show.

But American military officials preferred that risk to the possibility of losing the so-called offshore islands of Chinese Taipei to mainland China, The New York Times reported.

Ellsberg, a former military analyst, was catapulted to fame when he, in 1971, leaked to the US media a top-secret Pentagon study on the Vietnam War that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

Ellsberg told the Times that he copied the study on the Taiwan crisis at the same time but did not disclose it until now. He is now releasing the classified portion of the top-secret document as tensions escalate afresh between the United States and China over the self-ruled Chinese territory.

“While it has been known in broader strokes that United States officials considered using atomic weapons against mainland China if the crisis escalated, the pages reveal in new detail how aggressive military leaders were in pushing for authority to do so if Communist forces, which had started shelling the so-called offshore islands, intensified their attacks,” the Times said in its reporting.

In the event of an invasion, General Nathan Twining, the then-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, “made it clear that the United States would have used nuclear weapons against Chinese air bases to prevent a successful air interdiction campaign,” the document's authors wrote.

If that did not deter an invasion, there was “no alternative but to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China as far north as Shanghai,” the document said.

The 1958 crisis, however, dissipated when Communist forces halted artillery attacks on the so-called offshore islands, leaving the area under the control of Nationalist forces based on Chinese Taipei.

“More than six decades later, strategic ambiguity about Taiwan’s status — and about American willingness to use nuclear weapons to defend it — persists,” the American daily pointed out.

China’s sovereignty over the self-ruled Chinese Taipei is recognized by almost all world countries under the “One China” policy.

China says US threatening peace in Taiwan Strait

China says the United States threatens the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait, shortly after the US military sent yet another warship to the sensitive waterway.

While the United States officially recognizes that sovereignty, it frequently draws China’s ire by selling weapons to Chinese Taipei and staging shows of military force around the island.

Washington has recently stepped up support for the self-governed island amid rising tensions with Beijing, including record arms sales and visits by high-ranking officials in violation of Chinese sovereignty and its own stated policy.

China has, in response, ramped up military patrols and drills near the island, asserting its sovereignty.

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