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Extract from Mr. E. Bollands Letter to Mr. T. Elliott, Hong Kong dated 21/6/67 copied to Mr. Carter.
3. I agree that the sentence on nuclear retaliation avoided mentioning the important fact that a nuclear deterrent would only be credible to the Chinese if it came from the Americans . as well as ourselves. This was the subject of a long domestic discussion in the Far East Section of J.I.C. Most people thought that the Chinese were unlikely to go so far as military invasion but that, if they did so, the only thing likely to deter them would be a credible threat of nuclear retaliation against China. We did not however wish to start a series of false hares by saying in a J.I.C. assessment (which is available to the Americans and the Canadians as well as most of Whitehall). that only an American nuclear threat would do the trick. This would obviously lead some people to believe that there already had been discussion about such possibility, which there has not, or at the very least cause them to ask whether there had been. In fact, this will be one of the subjects we shall be considering here when discussing the future of Hong Kong.
I should say however that I am myself very doubtful whether we could ever manage to persuade the Americans to give some form of open-ended. guarantee to Hong Kong even if the word nuclear was not used.
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I agree though that any discussion about the long term future of Hong Kong must take into account American interests there and what they would be prepared to do to protect them. There is also the additional point of trying to decide whether the beneficial effect on morale in Hong Kong of some form of American guarantee (that is supposing we could get one) would be outweighed by the provocative effect that such a move would have, on the extremists in China.
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