during the cold war, the United States considered various options for the attack against the Soviet Union and China, including nuclear strikes on major cities of the two countries to destroy a significant portion of the urban population. This writes the American magazine The National Interest, citing documents provided by national security Archive of the United States.
In particular, the publication refers to the number of documents 1960-ies, were part of the secret Single integrated operational plan (Single Integrated Operational Plan, SIOP). They provided several options for the development of a military conflict with the Soviet-Chinese bloc. One of them suggested nuclear strikes exclusively on nuclear and military installations of the enemy with minimal damage to cities and civilian populations. But the other meant the deliberate destruction of enemy cities, which was to result in the liquidation of viable companies in China and the Soviet Union.
On the idea of the Pentagon, the second option was to demoralize the USSR and the PRC and to deprive them of the ability to continue the war, to exclude them from the major industrialized powers, and to provide “favorable to the U.S.,” the postwar balance of power in the world. The American military command acknowledged that in the case of China, this tactic would be uneconomical: because in those years the majority of citizens lived in rural areas rather than cities, to destroy a third of the Chinese population, the US army would have to spend too many nuclear warheads.
At the same time, notes The National Interest, the United States was not a nuclear attack on the allies of the Soviet Union in Europe: Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania.
Earlier in June, military expert Vladislav Shurigin determined the optimal direction for making the United States the attack on Russia. According to him, the logical thing would be to organize an attack over the North pole.
