NEW YORK -- Former President Richard Nixon said he considered using nuclear weapons four times -- during the Vietnam War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the 1971 India-Pakistan war and during a Soviet-Chinese border dispute.
In a Time magazine interview on nuclear diplomacy, published Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Nixon said the world is safer than in 1945 and 'the bomb made us a world power.'
Nixon, president from 1969 to 1973 and vice president from 1953 to 1960, also called the late Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev 'the most brilliant world leader I have ever met. ... He scared the hell out of people.'
Nixon said the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when Khrushchev backed down in the face of a superior U.S. nuclear arsenal, marked a turning point in atomic diplomacy by prompting a Soviet buildup that gave Moscow nuclear parity.
One of his top priorities upon entering the White House in 1969, Nixon said, was bringing an end to the Vietnam War while seeking improved relations with the Soviets.
'One of the options was the nuclear option, in other words, massive escalation: either bombing the dikes or the nuclear option,' Nixon said, adding, however, 'Nobody was exactly saying, 'Pave 'em over!''
Nixon said he rejected both a nuclear attack and a bombing of the dikes in North Vietnam, where he estimated a million people would have drowned, 'because the targets involved were not military targets.'
He also said conventional weapons could have accomplished the same military objectives as nuclear arms, and that 'massive escalation ... would destroy any chances for moving forward with the Soviets and China.'
Nixon said he also considered nuclear weapons when the Soviets threatened to intervene in the Middle East during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and that it was his decision to order U.S. nuclear forces on alert.
'There's been a lot of second-guessing that it was someone else's. It was mine,' Nixon said.
The third consideration of nuclear options came during an intensification of the Soviet-Chinese border dispute. Nixon said the United States indicated to Moscow it 'would not tolerate' a move to destroy China's nuclear capability.
Finally, Nixon said, during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the United States was concerned that China might intervene on the side of Pakistan, triggering a Soviet intervention for India.
'There was no question what we would have done,' Nixon said.
Nixon also said he now favors President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as 'Star Wars,' that he thinks the strategy of mutually assured destruction 'obsolete' and the bombing of civilian populations 'morally wrong.'
