Nuclear blackmail is a form of
nuclear strategy in which one of states uses the
threat of use of
nuclear weapons to force an adversary to perform some action or make some concessions. It is a type of
extortion that is related to
brinkmanship.
History
In 1950, US president
Harry S. Truman publicly stated that the use of nuclear weapons was under "active consideration" against Chinese targets during the
Korean War.[1][2][3][4]
In order to support the continued existence of the
Republic of China government, the United States issued several nuclear threats against the
People's Republic of China in the 1950s to force the evacuation of outlying islands and the cessation of attacks against
Quemoy and
Matsu.[8][9][10][11][12]
Declassified documents from the
UK National Archives indicate that the
United Kingdom considered threatening
China with nuclear retaliation in 1961 in the event of a military reclamation of
Hong Kong by China.[13]
In 1981, the
US Department of Energy said there had been 75 cases of people attempting nuclear blackmail against the US but only several were serious attempts.[14]
In 2002, the
George W. Bush administration declared that it was prepared to strike with nuclear missiles against Iraq if biological or chemical weapons were used against American troops or their allies during the
Iraq War.[16]
In 2005, Chinese major general Zhu Chenghu said that China might retaliate with nuclear weapons if the United States attacked Chinese forces in a conflict over Taiwan.[17]
On January 2, 2018, US president
Donald Trump threatened
North Korea by pointing out that the US has much more nuclear firepower than North Korea, in response to a press release stating that a "
nuclear button is on
Kim Jong-un's desk at all times."[18]
On February 24, 2022, in the TV address where
Vladimir Putin announced
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin warned that any countries interfering would face consequences they had never encountered in their history. This was widely interpreted
as being a threat of nuclear attack. Several days later, Putin put Russia's nuclear forces on a higher state of alert.[19][20]