On India support in ’63, JFK faced N-dilemma

Top advisers to President John F. Kennedy warned him in 1963 that if he pledged to defend India against any attack by China, the United Stat...

Top advisers to President John F. Kennedy warned him in 1963 that if he pledged to defend India against any attack by China, the United States would have to use nuclear weapons to enforce the commitment, according to a newly declassified tape recording.

George Ball, Under Secretary of State in the Democrat administration, also warned the President—in what would today be considered insensitive language—that a nuclear response could subject the US to charges of racism following the two atomic bombings of Japan that ended World War II.

‘‘If there is a general appearance of a shift in strategy to the dependence on a nuclear defence against the Chinese … we are going to inject into this whole world opinion the old bugaboo of being willing to use nuclear weapons against Asians when we are talking about a different kind of strategy in Europe,’’ Ball told the President during a May 9, 1963, national security meeting in the White House. ‘‘This is going to create great problems with the Japanese—with all the yellow people.’’

The recording is the latest to be released by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the official repository for Kennedy administration documents. A six-page summary of the top secret meeting was released in 1996, but a tape of the conversation was made available only after it was subjected to a national security review .

In one exchange on the tape, Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is heard telling Kennedy, ‘‘This is just one spectacular aspect of the overall problem of how to cope with Red China … I would hate to think that we would fight this on the ground in a non-nuclear way.’’

Later, when Kennedy begins discussing the idea of guaranteeing India’s security, Defence Secretary Robert McNamara steers the conversation back to China. He is heard reiterating the need to use nuclear weapons, saying, that ‘‘this is to be preferred over the introduction of large numbers of US soldiers.’’

The Harold Macmillan government in Britain was unwilling to offer India a similar security guarantee. That vexed Kennedy, according to the tape, and he asked Secretary of State Dean Rusk why it was important that the United States seek validation from its ally.

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Rusk said, ‘‘I think we would be hard pressed to tell our own people why we are doing this with India when even the British won’t do it or the Australians won’t do it and the Canadians won’t do it. We need to have those other flags flying on these joint enterprises.’’

Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, before he could issue such a guarantee.