1964 study to arm Japan and South Korea with nuclear weapons

After China successfully tested its first nuclear bomb in 1964, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk initiated a study to provide friendly countries in Asia with US nuclear weapons as a degree of deterrence to possible Chinese threat.

Similar arrangements were actually made for NATO countries. For instance the West German Luftwaffe maintained a few F-104G Starfighters armed with a single 1MT B43 hydrogen bomb on round-the-clock QRA, fully fueled and ready to take off within 17 minutes of authorization during the Cold War period.

Below is from George Perkovich's book "India's Nuclear Bomb" published in 1999.

While the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was contemplating providing Plowshares services to India, advisers to Secretary of State Dean Rusk had requested Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton and his staff to study "the possibilities of providing nuclear weapons under U.S. custody" for use by "friendly Asian" military forces in the event that China threatened or attacked them. McNaughton provided a preliminary version of the requested study to Deputy Under Secretary of State Llewellyn E. Thompson in the late fall of 1964, and Thompson forwarded it to Rusk on December 4. The study, which had not been cleared by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, sought to give the United States means to counter the geopolitical and military gains China might otherwise win through its new nuclear weapon capability.

The basic idea was to make arrangements for friendly Asian countries to receive and militarily deliver low-yield tactical nuclear weapons that the United States would provide to them in the event of Chinese aggression. The study contemplated making nuclear weapons available to Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Pakistan, Thailand, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The authors noted that American personnel would have to train military units in the recipient countries to handle and deliver the weapons.

The study paid special attention to India. The authors estimated that India could produce and test a nuclear device "in one to three years after a decision to do so," and could produce "by 1970 about a dozen weapons in the 20 kt [kiloton] range." While noting that the balance of political opinion in India still inclined against the bomb, the study averred that the "chances are better than even that India will decide to develop nuclear weapons within the next few years." The authors believed that American security assurances in the face of Chinese nuclear threats would not be adequate to stem other Asian countries' demands for "some national capability." Thus, "the primary objective of a U.S. nuclear assistance offer to India would be to preclude an independent national nuclear development program."

The study recognized that providing nuclear weapons to India would complicate American relations with Pakistan. Thus the authors suggested that the offer to India "should be low key." The United States would help India modify its fleet of Canberra bombers, train air crews, provide dummy weapons for exercises, and supply "weapons effects data for planning and necessary target data to support the feasibility and desirability of weapon use." Washington would provide the same basic assistance to Pakistan, too, in part to offset that country's reaction to the proposed U.S. arrangement with India. The United States would not store nuclear weapons in either country but instead would develop facilities in each to handle weapons if and when they were needed.

Beyond reducing the proliferation incentives of China's neighbors, the Defense Department staff argued that the plan would give the "U.S. President . . . the option of allowing controlled use of nuclear weapons" against China, without running the more direct risks of escalation to a global conflict involving major U.S. forces. "It could assist in avoiding a direct confrontation between the United States and the [Soviet Union] in a Far East regional conflict." This suggested a possible way to satisfy the desire to "use" nuclear weapons to deter or prosecute war on foreign soil while avoiding escalation that could lead to attacks on the U.S. homeland. Nuclear deterrence ultimately rests on the threat of massive devastation being visited on combatants' homelands, but the United States sought to escape this pitfall of deterrence by finding ways to contain nuclear exchanges to the foreign battlefield or theater level. This possibility--as much as the aim of stemming proliferation in India and other states--motivated the Pentagon's approach to the problem.