Gerard C. Smith Quotes
Current war plans call for the defense of Quemoy and Matsu by nuclear strikes deep into China …. The United States does not have a politically feasible capability to defend Quemoy and Matsu. I question whether, in the event of an attack on Quemoy and Matsu, we should or will run the very grave risk of general nuclear war attendant on our present military planning.
With the successful Chinese Communist Revolution, the Nationalists were driven off the mainland of China and occupied the island of Formosa (Taiwan) and had a small garrison of soldier on two tiny islands off the Chinese Coast, Quemoy and Matsu. The communist Chinese government wanted control of all three of the Nationalist held islands. U. S. Military doctrine at the time planned for nuclear retaliation against China for an attack on either of these two tiny islands which had no resources and no population other than a garrison of nationalist Chinese troops. This was the first time that American officials came to grips with a problem that nuclear weapons were so powerful a weapon that it was practically impossible to use them on a limited basis. The threat by any of the nuclear powers of nuclear attack for minor problems simply became not credible. No country would risk a nuclear war for two uninhabited islands in this case and Smith was one of the first leaders to perceive this.
Gerard C. Smith, 1914-1994, Assistant Secretary of State, Chief U. S. Arms Control Negotiator, Top Secret Memorandum to Undersecretary of State Christian Herter, August 13, 1958
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
One of the many Goldwater statements that made most Americans believe he was not prudent enough to trust with the nuclear “trigger”, See {622850}.
The President had asked for the views of the Joint Chief’s of Staff. At the time, the major U. S. defense doctrine depended on our nuclear deterrent which if used against the Russians would have meant mutually assured destruction since they had enough of a nuclear arsenal to destroy America as we know it.
Kahn was the leading scientist behind the Pakistan nuclear weapons program. However, he then was personally involved in not only selling nuclear secrets to other counties but to terrorists as well. He personally enriched himself while enabling nuclear proliferation in the world. The article was an expose of his dishonest and illegal activities. The Pakistan government was in a bind. Kahn was a national hero, the only Pakistani who had ever won the Nobel Prize in a Scientific Field. Convicted and then pardoned by the President, but he was put under house arrest and surveillance and banned from any activity involving technical assistance to others. Kahn’s religious bigotry towards Hindus as disclosed by his letter made him even more of an international pariah. See {586386} for other attacks on his critics.
Gerard Coad Smith was an American attorney and defense expert who served as the chief U.S. delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in 1969 and the first U.S. Chairman of the Trilateral Commission. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 16, 1981 by President Jimmy Carter.
