"If the president had his way," Kissinger growled to aids more than once, "There would be a nuclear war each week!" This may not have been an idle jest. The CIA's top Vietnam specialist, George Carver, reportedly said that in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a U.S. spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike.... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning."
This particular allegation of flirting with nuclear weaponry is not an isolated one. Nixon had been open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam as early as 1954 and as president-elect considered striking "a blow that would both end the war and win it." A Kissinger aide who moved over to the White House, David Young, told a colleague "of the time he was on the phone [listening] when Nixon and Kissinger were talking. Nixon was drunk, and he said, 'Henry, we've got to nuke them.'" -- Anthony Summers, "The Arrogance of Power" p. 372, 2000
Summers quotes Kissinger as saying that it may have been a good thing that Watergate happened because if it hadn't, getting Nixon out of the White House, it might have been something far worse.
Someone wrote that the main accomplishment of the 1960s antiwar movement may have been to keep Nixon from nuking North Vietnam.
http://www.amazon.com/Arrogance-Power-Nixon-Watergate/dp/1842124315/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1426815514&sr=8-2&keywords=the+arrogance+of+power+summers
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