The Okinawa missiles of October 1962
"Why target non-belligerent countries?"<p>Worth noting that until not long before the Cuban missile crisis there was only one single unconditional plan for the US fighting a nuclear war: the first version of SIOP -<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Integrated_Operational_Plan#The_first_SIOP" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Integrated_Operational_...</a><p>This targeted the Soviets, China, Warsaw Pact countries and even the likes of Yugoslavia and Albania. There was an exchange between General Power and David Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps, that went as follows:<p><i>"What would happen if Beijing was not fighting; was there an option to leave Chinese targets out of the attack plan?" Power was reported to have said that he hoped no one would think of that "because it would really screw up the plan"—that is, the plan was supposed to be executed as a whole. Apparently Shoup then observed that "any plan that kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan. This is not the American way."</i><p>Edit: For anyone interested in the Cuban Missile Crisis I can strongly recommend "One Minute To Midnight" by Michael Dobbs - it is full of episodes like this (some even more alarming).