The Sino-Soviet border clash of March 1969 signaled the militarization of the long standing conflict between two former ideological allies. This was an ultimate manifestation of the unremitting hostility that had characterized their relationship since the early 1960s. However, since the durability of their conflict had already been confirmed previously and the drift toward open military conflict had been all but predictable, the larger historical significance of this incident does not lie in the final collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance in itself. Rather, the truly remarkable consequence of the border war was the subsequent turnabout in their policies toward the United States, leading them to seek an alignment with their foremost ideological adversary.
In this connection, the majority of previous studies on Sino-Soviet relations, particularly in addressing the parallel development of Sino-American and Soviet-American detente in 1972, have rightfully focused on the post-1969 dynamics of the triangular relationship (Bundy 1998; Burr 2001; Cohen 2010; Chen 2001; Chen and Wilson 1998; Gaiduk 1996; Garver 1993; Harding 1992; Haslam 2011; Humes and Ryals 2009; Kirby, Ross, and Li 2005; Kissinger 1979; Macmillan 2007; Robinson and Shambaugh 1996; Shen and Danhui 2011; Tudda 2012; Xia 2006; Yang 2002; Zubok 2009). Two prevailing themes have emerged from these standard accounts. First, changes in Chinese and Soviet positions toward the United States prior to 1969 are not particularly noteworthy since Sino-American and Soviet-American relations basically remained hostile. Second, the Chinese and Soviet pursuit of an alignment with the United States were achievements of the Nixon Doctrine. The focus on the post-1969 turn of events, however, has tended to obscure Soviet and Chinese redefinitions of the primary enemy long before 1969, which had already rendered them unable to focus jointly and primarily on resisting American imperialism. Consequently, against the backdrop of the parallel escalation of the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution from 1965-1968, Moscow and Beijing had already begun to reappraise the weight to be assigned to their contradictions with the United States while focusing primarily on countering the threat posed by each other. This indicated, in no small measure, a subtle yet unmistakable reversal of the earlier Cold War relations sealed as a result of the Korean War: Sino-Soviet anti-imperialist partnership and Sino-American confrontation.1
By looking into the shifts that occurred in the Chinese and Soviet reappraisal of the United States prior to the Sino-Soviet border clash, the present analysis will address the question of how it had become possible for both Moscow and Beijing to adopt a less ideological view toward Washington prior to 1969. In this connection, the present study will identify the Sino-Soviet split as a process by which Moscow and Beijing ended up reappraising the nature and immediacy of the United States as a consequence of redefining each other as the primary adversary.2 This in turn made them willing to address bilateral issues with the United States in disassociation from the situation in Vietnam and the imperative of committing to a joint anti-imperialist partnership. Section II will first advance a conceptual basis for highlighting the relevancy of the United States in analyzing the breakdown of Sino-Soviet relations. Relying on documents from the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) established at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the Foreign Relations of the United States(FRUS), as well as other documents containing official Chinese and Soviet positions, Section III will examine the emergence of a Sino-American tacit understanding in contrast to the primary focus placed on anti-Soviet revisionism. Section IV will explore Moscow’s progressive willingness to accommodate the United States on the questions of Vietnam and arms control while trying to prevent Sino-American rapprochement. Together, the present study will provide an analytic history of how China and the Soviet Union, despite the denial of their leadership, actually had begun to reverse enemies and friends from 1965-1968.
Faced with a deepening American involvement and intent on reasserting its leadership in the international communist movement, the new Soviet leadership under Leniod Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin reversed the previous policy of disengagement toward Vietnam and initially toned down the Khruschevian attack on China starting in late 1964. After the ouster of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union sought to assert its leadership in the international communist movement by strengthening its support for the revolutionary struggle in Vietnam and letting the Chinese Communist Party discredit itself rather than engaging in anti-Chinese polemics. These changes signaled a return of the “Stalinist worldview” among the Soviet leadership who assigned a higher priority on rapprochement with China than detente with the United States (Zubok 2007). An important consequence of this policy was the hardening Soviet position toward the United States during the early phase of the Vietnam War. The U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Council noted in February 1965 that Moscow put relations with the United States in “serious jeopardy” for possible gains in its struggle with China.28
However, a confluence of factors starting in the last four months of 1966 led the Soviet Union to reverse the suspension of anti-Chinese polemics and reconsider the reluctance to promote a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam conflict. The key factors that led to the Soviet policy reassessment toward China and the United States were: first, the extreme and violent manifestations of Chinese anti-Sovietism carried out by the Red Guards during the most radical phase of the Cultural Revolution; second, irreconcilable differences regarding war strategy and tactics in Vietnam; and third, growing signs of flexibility in American policy toward China, including remarks by high-ranking officials calling for containment without isolation and the removal of export restrictions on a large number of nonstrategic items (Zagoria1967, 57). The policy reassessment and reordering of priorities would become increasingly more pronounced after 1967 onward as Moscow increasingly sought to reduce the previous linkage between Vietnam and Soviet-American relations.
The resumption of Soviet anti-Chinese polemics from this point on centered on the charge that the CCP leadership practiced “great power chauvinism” (Radchenkov 2009, 185). The first official attack on Mao Zedong at a plenary session of the central committee of the CPSU from December 12-13, 1966 signaled the launch of this new course of anti-Chinese polemics. Following the siege of the Soviet Embassy in Beijing, the tone of anti-Chinese polemics became even more implacable. The February 16, 1967 analysis of the Cultural Revolution published in Pravda was the most important among the series of attacks that appeared in the Soviet press following the siege of the Soviet embassy in Beijing.
There is no longer any doubt that the desire to divert the Chinese people’s attention from the privations and difficulties which they are enduring, and the many mistakes and failures in China’s internal and foreign policies, is one of the immediate causes of the present Chinese leadership’s anti-Soviet policy and propaganda. It is not accident that they fired the first shots in their political war against the Soviet state and the party shortly after the failure of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy and the people’s communes of unhappy memory. Soon afterwards purely nationalist and even racialist elements had already become obvious in Chinese propaganda. By making the Chinese people believe that they are surrounded by enemies on all sides, the leaders in Peking are trying to organize them on a nationalist basis. They wish to divert the worker’s attention from the real problems facing the country and justify the military and bureaucratic dictatorship of Mao Tse-tung and his group (Editorial Staff of Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 1969, 101-102).
The resumption of Soviet anti-Chinese polemics, coupled with the policy of containment that took more concrete shape in the early months of 1967 with the stationing of troops in Mongolia and military buildup along the Sino-Soviet border, indicated the Soviet Union’s increasing concerns about China as a strategic threat.29 A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) at this time noted the hardening public posture of the Soviet Union toward China and its implications for the Sino-Soviet split in the months ahead.
The Sino-Soviet dispute has greatly intensified in recent months. Peking has stepped up the frequency and fury of its attacks on the USSR. Moscow, which for almost two years sought to convey an image of reason and restraint in the dispute, has since August begun to reply forcefully in kind. China accuses the USSR of acting in collusion with the US, and Moscow charges that Peking serves the imperialist cause by refusing to cooperate with the rest of the Communist world. China claims that the Soviet leadership is deliberately transforming the USSR into a bourgeois society, Moscow asserts that current developments and policies in China have “nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism.” And each side now publicly contends that the other is beyond redemption so long as its present leaders are in control.30
As the Sino-Soviet competition headed toward an open conflict and Soviet anxieties about hostilities with China worsened, Moscow began to reconsider the earlier posture of rigidity toward the United States, particularly over the Vietnam War starting in late 1966. To be sure, a growing Sino-Soviet friction “did not automatically assure a commensurate Soviet effort to improve relations with the West.”31 However, as “China has become more and more isolated and discredited, the Soviet Union became less sensitive to Chinese accusations and perhaps less responsive to Chinese pressures for militancy.”32 But more importantly, as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Llewellyn Thompson noted, the Soviet Union was “genuinely worried about the chaotic situation inside Communist China and would like better relations with us not only in the event of unforeseen contingencies but also to deter us from any inclination we might have to get together with Communist China in opposition to the Soviet Union.”33
In this connection, several indications of this changing position toward the United States became more notable since late 1966. In particular, the Soviet side began making a less explicit linkage between Soviet-American relations and the Vietnam War. This marked a shift from the previous Soviet position of placing an immediate priority on aiding the DRV at the risk of undermining detente with the United States. During Andrei Gromyko’s meeting with Lyndon Johnson on October 10, 1966, Gromyko “declared on behalf of the Soviet Union that it was in our mutual interest to work for better relations. If the United States Government and Mr. Johnson, as President, were willing to take steps to promote international detente to improve relations, they would not find the Soviet Union lacking in response as this was in accord with the wishes of both the Soviet Government and its people.”34 According to the observations by Thompson, “it was striking that Mr. Gromyko avoided all polemics and was most careful not, in any way, to antagonize the President. He made the flat statement that the Soviet Union wished to improve relations which is a considerable change from their recent standard line which is that this could only happen after Viet-Nam was settled.”35 Gromyko stressed Soviet readiness to sign a nuclear nonproliferation treaty.36 According to American officials, the Gromyko-Johnson talks were the “most direct, honest, objective, and nonideological in several years” (Chang 1990, 275). In a related vein, Brezhnev’s speech on November 2 made only a “perfunctory reference to Vietnam in contrast to much sharper sloganeering in the past” (Zagoria 1967, 25).
Conforming to the foregoing analyses, the Soviet Union increased cooperation with the United States on a limited number of issues. On January 18, 1967, the Soviet government issued a statement proclaiming its willingness to engage in dialogue with the United States on the “question of reaching a mutual under-standing with respect to anti-missile systems could be considered simultaneously with a solution of the problem of offensive means of delivering nuclear weapons and in close association with the problem of general and complete disarmament.”37 On January 27, the Outer Space Treaty limiting military uses of spaced was signed by the United States, the Soviet Union and 60 other nations. In 1968, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) was signed in August. These agreements did not mean that the Soviet Union was willing to throw its full weight behind cooperation with the United States on a comprehensive program of strategic arms control.38 However, even though the Soviet Union and the United States could converge only on a limited form of controls such as the nonproliferation treaty, it nonetheless signaled a departure from the deterioration of Soviet-American relations during the 1965-1966 period due to the Vietnam War. From 1967, each side became more inclined to engage in consultations on bilateral issues despite difficulties in Vietnam. By January 1968, a paper prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) noted that despite the Soviet Union’s public posture of hostility toward the United States, Moscow did not let the Vietnam War dictate the state of its bilateral relations with Washington. It read:
Soviet leaders have publicly asserted that no resolution of basic differences with the US is conceivable so long as the US is involved in the war in Vietnam. But they have also indicated (and, during the Middle East crisis, demonstrated) a strong desire to keep the lines open to Washington. And though they have at times insisted that US-Soviet relations must remain frozen for the duration, they have been willing to conclude specific agreements (e.g., on the peaceful uses of outer space) and to negotiate about others (e.g., nuclear proliferation) when they saw larger advantage to Soviet policy.39
In addition to increasing consultations with the United States on the question of arms control and disarmament, the Soviet Union exerted intensified efforts to promote a political settlement to the Vietnam conflict in 1967. In 1967, the Soviet Embassy in Hanoi advised Moscow to inform the North Vietnamese leaders that the “USSR could not afford to pursue a policy of brinkmanship with respect to the United States by getting more deeply involved in the Vietnam conflict, and that therefore the best plan for both the Soviet Union and Vietnam would be if the hostilities drew to a close in 1968” (Gaiduk 1995/96, 254). A May 1967 U.S. Special National Intelligence Estimate projected that “there would also be a good chance that at some juncture the Soviets would exert strong efforts toward a political solution, but they would probably not make Hanoi’s acceptance of talks an explicit condition of continued material support.”40 That said, the efforts to convince Hanoi to change its intractable position regarding talks with the United States was not very successful in 1967 and its ability to wield influence on Hanoi on negotiating with the United States remained limited at that time.41 In particular, since the Soviet Union did not want to open itself up to charges of playing the role of an “appeaser,” it was not likely to try to bring any real pressure on Hanoi to modify its terms for a settlement with Washington.42 It was not until after the start of peace talks in May 1968 that the Soviet Union played an important de facto intermediary role between the DRV and the United States, and also worked closely with the DRV on negotiation strategies (Khoo 2011).43
In broadening dialogue with the United States, Moscow’s anxieties about Sino-American rapprochement weighed heavily. Moscow’s interactions with Western leaders in 1967 were marked by harsh anti-Chinese references. In 1967, Soviet diplomats in the West were instructed to solicit opinions of Western politicians regarding the possibilities of Sino-American rapprochement (Radchenko 2009). During Kosygin’s visit to London from February 6-13, he urged “Soviet-Western cooperation to contain the Chinese threat and particularly stressed the need to keep any kind of technology of military application out of the hand of the Chinese.”44 Likewise, during the Glassboro Summit in June 1967, Kosygin stated, “Viet-Nam had destroyed much that had developed between the United States and the USSR and had given China a chance to raise its head with consequent great danger for the peace of the entire world.”45 By late 1968, after the election of Nixon, Soviet officials made it clear that an improvement in Sino-American relations would be completely incompatible with progress in Soviet-American relations. During a conversation between a second secretary of the Soviet embassy (Boris Davydov) and Governor Averell Harriman’s special assistant (Daniel Davidson) in December, for example, Davydov said that “it was no secret that the Soviet Union was greatly concerned over the possibility of a U.S.-Chinese alliance.”46