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BOSTON (AP) - 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 likely have to use nuclear weapons to enforce the commitment, according to a newly declassified tape recording.
George Ball, undersecretary of state in the Democratic administration, also warned in what today would be considered insensitive language that a nuclear response could subject the United States 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 defense against the Chinese in the Far East, 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."
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