USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969; US threatened to retaliate

[bananas]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969
The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 6:09PM BST 13 May 2010

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating ta

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http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/323529,report-us-threatened-to-retaliate-if-soviet-union-attacked-china.html

Report: US threatened to retaliate if Soviet Union attacked China
Beijing - The United States saved China from a possible Soviet nuclear attack in 1969 by making a direct threat of nuclear retaliation, a Chinese state-run magazine said Thursday....

Posted : Thu, 13 May 2010 13:16:22 GMT
By : dpa

Beijing - The United States saved China from a possible Soviet nuclear attack in 1969 by making a direct threat of nuclear retaliation, a Chinese state-run magazine said Thursday.

Soviet leader Loenid Brezhnev was told by Alexey Kosygin, the state premier, on October 15, 1969, that the United States had devised "detailed plans" for nuclear war with the Soviet Union if it attacked China, the Literary History Reference said in a report on its website.

Kosygin was quoted as telling Brezhnev that the United States had "clearly indicated that China's interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us."

The same day, Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev that he had just met Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser to US president Richard Nixon.

"He clearly indicated that President Nixon considers China's interests closely related to US interests," Dobrynin was quoted as saying of the meeting with Kissinger.

"If China suffers a nuclear attack, they will deem it as the start of the third world war," the magazine quoted him as saying.

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[AllentownJake]

1. Why do you think Nixon went to China

and China was happy to have him there.

[Soylent Brice]

2. to watch Forrest Gump play ping pong. duh.

[Scuba]

4. I always wondered why...

...a disgraced ex-President made that last trip.

Hope the Chinese realize they owe us one.

[AllentownJake]

5. China and Russia hated each other more than they hated us

back in the 60s and 70s. Lots of border disputes.

Nixon was the first US Presdient to figure that out.

[Scuba]

6. He was certainly the first to do anything with it....

... his disgraced legacy aside, what he did with "Opening the Door to China" was a good thing for the planet overall. He understood international relations better than any president since.

[AllentownJake]

7. Man was a genius

Too bad he went crazy after the 1960 election.

[Javaman]

12. Oh he was suitably crazy prior to the '60's elections. nt

[AllentownJake]

13. Anyone who runs for political office is suitably crazy

They believe that they can actually get human beings to behave in a fashion that is contrary to our nature despite all evidence it is not possible.

The sane ones are the ones who get in it just for the bribes and power.

Nixon got in it for good reasons, than became a little corrupt when he met the reality of public office, so you had the crazy corrupt thing going on. Which is what happens with everyone who take power.

[Javaman]

15. that's your take...

my take is: he was on the committee for unamerican activities going after Hiss via the pumpkin papers which were thin evidence at best. And he only "denounced" mccarthy after Ike goaded him into it. While denouncing mccarthy, he never once stated mccarthy's name in his speech.

Also you might want to look into his taking of public funds prior to Ike selecting him as vp. It was only after Ike cleared him of any wrong doing that he was chosen. At the time, anyone questioning Ike's integrity would have been called a commie. So they wall paper over a few little illegal "contributions" ($18,000. big money in those days) to nixon and life goes on.

People just don't go crazy, they either have always been or do the slow wind up. It doesn't drop out of the sky.

[AllentownJake]

16. Look up the Kennedys and Joe McCarthy

Our party leaders at the time weren't exactly great when it comes to that era either.

The Kennedys had more ties to Joe than Nixon. Bobby went to the man's funeral and it was out of respect not to make sure he was dead.

[Javaman]

18. No one was a saint back then and no one is now.

I have this belief that all the presidents have their skeletons, but to claim that nixon only became crazy AFTER the '60 election is only half the story.

Oh I know full well of the Kennedy's and their flagrant use of smoke screens, but it doesn't mean that didn't support their platform.

To me being a liar and a cheat is synonymous with republican considering their platform.

Democrats aren't immune to short comings, lying or cheating, but they at least make the charade of helping the common man.

I'll take that over the repukes any day.

but like every election, it's always a choice between the lesser of two evils regardless of how the admen promote the candidates.

[AllentownJake]

19. We get few Roosevelts and Eisenhowers

Flawed men but Patriots. Jack Kennedy looked like he was evolving into one before the tragedy in Dallas.

Dick Nixon was as crazy as the rest of them in 1960. Losing a close election and than getting trounced in 1962 sent him from the gray to the dark side.

[Javaman]

21. Looking at history...

I wonder what would have became of John Kennedy's older brother, Joe, had he not been killed in WWII.

From all indications he was to be groomed as a presidential candidate by the Kennedy's father.

[Poll_Blind]

3. Whatwhatwhat?!? WTF? n/t

PB

[PVnRT]

8. "publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party"

Statements like that tend to make me think this is either entirely fictional or blown way out of proportion.

[happyslug]

9. This is old news, it was the main reason we pulled out of Vietnam

By 1968 it was clear that the Chinese and Russians had had a serious break in their relationship, but the one thing keeping them together was the US War in Vietnam. Vietnam asked for assistance from both, and both provided such assistance, the Chinese in the form of AA batteries weapons and supplies, the Russians in jut Weapons and supplies (With a good bit of training in the use of those weapons).

What the US was facing in 1968 onward was a fundamentally different world from the 1950s. US Troops in Vietnam came to be seen as tying up Chinese Troops in North Vietnam AND Southern China, when the Chinese needed to along the Soviet Border AND where it was to the US best interest to have those Chinese troops along the Soviet Border. In many ways Vietnamiztion was a cover story to pull US Troops out of Vietnam so that China could send more troops to the Soviet Border. By 1969, a non-communist South Vietnam was less important to the US then Chinese troops on the Soviet Border. The Chinese could NOT send the troops do to US troops being in Vietnam, thus the US HAD to pull its troops out (Even if that meant that South Vietnam would fall).

Now, the GOP had made a good deal out of preventing the fall of South Vietnam in the 1964 and 1968 Campaigns, thus a sudden pull out was NOT politically possible without some sort of "Peace Treaty", thus Nixon re-started the peace treaty talks with North Vietnam which finally lead to the peace treaty of 1972 which the US Forced South Vietnam to accept for the simple fact South Vietnam could NOT survive without US support and all the US had to do is threaten to withdraw support and South Vietnam would fall. The Peace treaty gave the US Political cover to withdraw the last US Troops and then two years later to cut off all supplies, dooming South Vietnam.

Yes, South Vietnam was sacrificed for better relations with China. With the fall of South Vietnam, the US and China had no direct conflict (Korea had been divided on the 39th parallel and had been stable for decades as far as China and the US are concerned). Thus the US and China grew closer to each other with the US even terminating recognition of the Nationalist Government in Taiwan as the real government of China under Carter. The Right wing hates to admit it, but it was the Right Wing that decided that good relations with China was more important then anything else on the Asiatic Continent (off shore the US dominates, but on the mainland it had been China since 1969). Since 1969 the US has refused to do anything that undermines China, and will continue with that policy as the US has since 1969.

[Roon]

10. Now Russia and China are buds

They are teaming up and holding wargames.

[glitch]

11. There's a lesson in that: Never nuke a future friend. nt

[uponit7771]

14. Unnn, why would Russia do that?! They were bored?

[ParkieDem]

17. Because the Russians hated the Chinese

Stalin (and, to a lesser extent, Lenin) knew that the Russian people would never go for communism unless they could appeal to the raw emotion that is canned up in hardcore Russian nationalism. They were able to cast communism in this light, where the notions of pan-slavism were combined with the goal of global communism.

When Mao came to power, these plans were drastically threatened. They pretended to be "socialist brothers," but no Russian leader wanted Maoism to be the dominant form of world communism. The scary truth is, had China and Russia been friends, who knows where the Cold War might have gone.

[Xithras]

20. True, and remember that China and Russia fought border wars.

The nation of Mongolia only exists because the USSR wanted it as a buffer with China (Mongolia had been part of China proper since the 1600's, and was intermittently under their rule since the 1200's). China made land claims running well into Russian Siberia in the north, and nearly to the Caspian Sea in the west.

Mao, in addition to being a dedicated communist, was staunchly anti-colonialist. His position was understandable given China's history with colonialism. He always believed that the USSR was simply the next of a long line of colonial powers trying to control China, and cited the USSR's "occupation" of Chinese lands as an example of that.

The USSR loved its client-states. China had no interest in becoming a Russian client-state, so the two nations rarely got along.

[ParkieDem]

22. Exactly.

No matter what you think of Marxism, there's no denying that the USSR was a brutal, oppressive, morally bankrupt regime that in practice rarely if ever implemented what a true Marxist would advocate. It was pretty much a half-communist, half-Russian nationalist/colonialist state that made Western European colonialism look downright friendly. And let's not forget the forced labor, human rights violations, environmental degradation, etc.

And, as one American leader said back in the 1960s: The United States has a military-industrial complex. The Soviet Union is a military-industrial complex.