PE> They stopped at the halfway mark when the US threatened to go nuclear.

KR> not quite, the chinese + the n koreans nearly drove the un out, the
KR> un fought back up to the 49th parallel. there then were several months
KR> (years?) of talks leading to an armistice which is still in force today.

PE> If the UN had managed to fight back up,
PE> they wouldn't have needed to threaten nuclear,

They never did. It was only even considered by some when they
managed to get china into the war at the yalu river and were
doing very badly there for a while. They never did threaten tho.

PE> and they probably could have continued to the top, no?

No, not without a cost in piles of corpses that wasnt acceptible.
The problem was that once the chinese were involved, they had a
lot they could turn into corpses without giving a damn.

Mao really did claim that a nuke on a chinese city was just what he needed.
It wasnt bluff either, he basically didnt give a damn about the losses.
He gave even less of a damn about the many many millions he turned into
corpses during the Cultural Revolution to maintain himself in power.
@EOT:

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