A prospective Chinese MRBM force led INR to consider whether Beijing would believe that it had more freedom of action to step up its involvement in the Vietnam War: it “might feel freer in extending aid to Hanoi and becoming more involved in the war if US pressure on the North Vietnamese seemed to require it.”

Years before Beijing actually deployed an ICBM in 1981, US intelligence estimated the possibility of the deployment of a “few operable, though probably relatively inefficient missiles” as early as 1971.

Prepared by Edward Hurwitz, a Foreign Service officer and future ambassador then on assignment to INR, this report treated ICBMs as China’s main weapons goal, an eventual means for a “credible threat” to Beijing’s U.S. and Soviet “arch enemies.”

Only months after China’s first nuclear test in October 1964, INR looked into whether Beijing would help other nations get the bomb.

This “Limited Distribution” report on possible Japanese reactions did not anticipate that a test would cause basic changes in US-Japan security relations or in Tokyo’s general approach to nuclear weapons.