By the United States In 1953, during the final phase of active hostilities in the
Korean War and the early period of the
Eisenhower administration, U.S. Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles conveyed messages of nuclear blackmail through indirect channels to the Communists—including the North Koreans, Chinese, and Soviets—warning to put the conflict to an end by using atomic bombs if no progress was made toward a negotiated settlement. Nuclear blackmail may have complicated rather than facilitated an armistice, because the Chinese refused to appease the Americans with their threats and the
United Nations members such as the British did not support a full-scale escalation. On October 16, 1964, when
China became a nuclear power, the Chinese government stated: On April 7, 2026, US President
Donald Trump posted to
Truth Social that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again", causing international concern that Trump would use nuclear weapons in Iran during the
2026 Iran war. The Secretary General of
Amnesty International said that Trump’s statement "may constitute a threat to commit genocide". Multiple
right-wing commentators and many
Democrats condemned the post, and some
called for him to be removed through the
25th Amendment.
By others Following the
2025 India–Pakistan conflict, Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi stated that Pakistan had been engaging in nuclear blackmail, which India would no longer tolerate, adding that the country would not be intimidated by nuclear threats. In 1981, the
US Department of Energy security director Martin Dowd said there had been 75 cases in the last five years of nuclear blackmail by people threatening to release radioactive material on the public, in which almost all of the cases were threats by "cranks and weirdos" but several blackmail attempts were serious. == See also ==