The confrontation has led both parties to move toward the United States, a situation which, I am afraid, we have not taken sufficient advantage of, and it certainly has helped to promote the tendency toward American military disengagement in Asia in which we are now involved.

On the other hand, the Sino-Soviet confrontation and the resulting wooing, by both sides, of the United States has cost the United States something as well, I believe. It has made what I regard as an excessively rapid and somewhat premature military disengagement from both Asia and Europe easier and more tempting, and has contributed to a trend toward accommodation to the Soviet Union in Europe and to China in Asia that at least carries some risks, whatever else one may say about it.

The White House, but not other agencies of the U.S. Government, has tended to overrate the importance of the Sino-Soviet confrontation and the possibility of a Soviet attack on China in explaining the current conciliatory polices of both adversaries, the Chinese in particular, toward the United States.

This certainly is convenient, because it relieves the United States of any imputation of being used by either the Chinese or the Russians, whereas, in effect, they are using us as well as being used by us. The Chinese, for example, have been trying to use us to get concessions with respect to Taiwan, with some success. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it is important to at least be aware that it is going on.

Let me turn now to the possibilities and consequences of a SinoSoviet war. There are many reasons why the Soviet Union ought not to attack China, and therefore probably will not, with either conventional or nuclear weapons or both. In the first place, China has quite formidable defensive capabilities and significant retaliatory capabilities, particularly nuclear but even conventional. The Soviet Union, therefore, would not escape scot-free in such a war.

There would also be very serious political consequences to the Soviet Union, including most obviously serious damage to whatever prospects might otherwise exist for a reconciliation with the Chinese, and very serious damage, presumably, to Soviet-American relations. On the other hand, there is no question that the border confrontation continues and that the possibility of a Soviet attack cannot be ruled

out.

The U.S. Government is, of course, opposed to a Soviet attack on China, and quite rightly so since the Chinese would, presumably, lose in some sense in that war and since the stability and security of the Far East would be very seriously jeopardized or destabilized, as has always been the case in the past when China was unduly weak or victimized by a foreign power. If a war should actually break out between the Soviets and the Chinese, the United States would almost certainly be both unable and unwilling to intervene effectively to help the Chinese or to maintain some kind of balance between the two.

I say this because of various weaknesses in its position and its policies, both domestic and foreign. The result would, therefore, almost certainly be a very major setback to American interests, second only to the setback that the Chinese were also presumably suffering.

What about the possibility, a Sino-Soviet accommodation? It seems very likely that the passage of time-and it may be a considerable amount of time-will dim the personal and ideological hostilities between the two top leaderships by removing, of course, some of their number by death or retirement.

Now, if an accommodation should be seriously contemplated under such circumstances by both sides, it would have, I think, many practical advantages for both, and it would certainly seem likely, therefore, that over the long run, some degree of accommodation would occur. Nobody I know of, however, expects such an accommodation to bring about a full restoration of Sino-Soviet amity and cooperation such as existed in the last years of Stalin.

Now, there is, I think, one caution I might add to that. It is conceivable, and that is all I am saying, that if the United States permitted itself to be overshadowed in international politics by the Soviet Union militarily and politically to a decisive degree, the results would be very disadvantageous to us not only in terms of our direct bilateral relation to the Soviet Union and might even lead the Chinese to conclude that the United States was no longer any help to them in their unequal contest with the Soviet Union. They might, therefore, accommodate on disadvantageous terms to themselves and might even allow themselves to be used by the Soviets against the United States.

Now, this is a rather far-out scenario under present conditions, and I am suggesting it as something that is much better to think about now rather than not to think about now and have to face it at much closer range later on. Thank you.

1

STATEMENT OF HAROLD C. HINTON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

The tensest relationship between any pair of major powers in the world today is the one between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. There is an obvious possibility that they might go to war. Even if they do not, their quarrel will almost certainly continue to have important consequences for the United States and the world, as it has had in the recent past.

ATTITUDES AND POLICIES: THE SOVIET SIDE

Fear, much of it racial and irrational, plays a major role in the Soviet attitude toward China. Like traditional Asian enemies of the Russians, the Chinese are regarded as inscrutable, and their enormous numbers enhance the seeming vulnerability of the Sino-Soviet frontier and the thinly populated lands on the Soviet side of it. Mao Tse-tung's betrayal of the Soviet offer of friendship, as Moscow sees it, his departure from orthodox Marxism-Leninism, his insistence on joining the nuclear club, his questioning of the existing Sino-Soviet border, and his apparent claim to the Mongolian People's Republic contribute heavily to the reaction of fear and resentment that he has evoked. Worst of all, perhaps, is Peking's recent "collusion" with the United States.

As often happens in such cases, however, the Chinese demon is convenient in some respects as well as terrible. Suslov, the elder statesman of the Soviet leadership, genuinely detests what he regards as Chinese ideological deviations, but he also finds Peking a useful adversary against whom to rally the pro-Soviet parties of the international communist movement; his influence appears to be important in explaining the strong Soviet anti-Chinese line since 1969, as well as the occasional spurts of anti-American propaganda apparently aimed at preventing the Soviet-American détente from getting out of hand. Brezhnev, as the presiding officer of the Soviet Communist Party apparatus, objects to the damage that the Chinese have inflicted on their own party apparatus since the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and to Peking's new relationship with the United

States, but he also finds China valuable at home and abroad as a major hypothetical foe now that the West German demon image has become less terrible and even the United States seems less formidable. The Soviet military undoubtedly regard China as a threat, but they also find its existence valuable as a source of higher military appropriations and of military experience.

Moscow probably regards its military strength near the Sino-Soviet border not only as a deterrent to attempted Chinese military expansion in any direction but as a source of possible useful political leverage. More specifically, the Soviet leadership may well hope that after Mao's death it will be able to apply pressure of some sort that will promote the emergence of leaders and the adoption of policies more to Moscow's taste than the present models.

The net effects of these attitudes, which are not necessarily held unanimously by the Soviet leadership, has been a buildup of Soviet conventional forces near the Sino-Soviet border to a strength that now appears to be levelling off at about 50 divisions, by no means all of which are combat ready. These are backed up by massive striking power in the air, naval and nuclear departments. Moscow is most unlikely to modify its current stand on the Sino-Soviet border dispute to any significant extent in the short run and is especially unlikely to alter its refusal to agree that the border treaties imposed on China by tsarist Russia are "unequal," as Peking insists, since to do so would open up other long stretches of the Soviet frontier to territorial revision. To Moscow, Peking is not only its major adversary but its main competitor for influence; the struggle goes on constantly, in Asia and Europe above all.

ATTITUDES AND POLICIES: THE CHINESE SIDE

The Chinese leadership feels a sense of intense, although not necessarily entirely justified, resentment at past and present Soviet-China policy, including what it believes to have been an effort by Moscow to dictate the course of China's development after 1949. Peking feels a sense of current vulnerability, both to possible Soviet military pressures and to Soviet political competition in third areas (notably Asia). On the other hand, Peking also feels that Soviet political clumsiness and ideological errors (especially the "revisionism" that the Maoists among the Chinese leadership so greatly detest) create opportunities that China can exploit, mainly but not exclusively in leftist circles at home and in other countries.

There is no question that most Chinese leaders have been seriously concerned since late 1968 or early 1969 over the possibility of a Soviet attack. This understandable nervousness appears to have contributed significantly to the winding up of the Cultural Revolution and the fall of Defense Minister Lin Piao. It is also true that Peking has exploited the atmosphere of threat and tension for domestic political effect; in particular, Chou En-lai has used it to help promote the gradual disengagement of the army from the enormously important political role that it has played in the regions and provinces since 1967.

Of greater importance for Sino-Soviet relations, Chou and his military counterpart Yeh Chien-ying have reversed Lin Piao's military policy, which was in essence to combine a stress on guerrilla warfare with a loudly publicized ICBM program. They have steadily upgraded the equipment and combat capabilities of China's conventional forces. They have stopped propagandizing the nuclear weapons program and have shifted its emphasis from ICBMs to MRBMs and IRBMS, which are less provocative in Soviet (and American) eyes and yet increasingly effective as a deterrent against possible Soviet attack.

Of even greater importance, perhaps, Chou has been constructing a far-reaching network of international political and diplomatic relationships whose main single aim, although by no means the only one, has been to help restrain and compete with the Soviet Union. By far the most important of these relationships is of course the one with the United States, even though it stops just short of diplomatic relations and even though the United States is not likely, and is not expected by Peking, to give China an alliance or a nuclear guarantee. At the minimum, the Sino-American relationship gives Moscow an additional powerful disincentive to attack China, especially in view of the record of unpredictability in the face of crisis established by the United States in 1950, when it intervened to defend South Korea after announceing that it would not do so. Other especially important relationships are those with Japan and West Germany, both of which are basically obnoxious to Moscow although in the latter case Moscow gave Bonn a reluctant agreement in order to help Willy Brandt's Social Democrats in their

bid for votes against the Christian Democrats. Much to Moscow's distress, Chinese diplomacy is active in both Eastern and Western Europe, in the former to promote (with some success in the case of the Balkan countries) relative independence from Moscow, and in the latter to encourage an anti-Soviet line, a continued American military presence, and distrust of Soviet proposals on European “security," so as to prevent Europe from becoming an area of calm on which Moscow can safely turn its back the better to cope with its Chinese problem. Peking is doing its best to frustrate Soviet overtures for a "collective security" system in Asia, and its objections are a major reason why the idea has not made much headway so far. Peking's constant denunciations of the two "superpowers" are probably designed to reassure the left in China and abroad that Peking is not selling out to American "imperialism," but they actually hit harder at Moscow than at Washington.

ORIGINS OF THE CONFLICT

The Sino-Soviet border dispute in its current form is the outgrowth of the intense ideological and political conflict of the early 1960s between the two Communist adversaries. Soon after becoming Defense Minister in 1959, the late Marshal Lin Piao began to organize violations of Soviet territory by parties of Chinese military personnel, apparently to proclaim defiance of Soviet “revisionism," which the militants in China regarded as a detestable paper bear. Soviet anger at this behavior turned to alarm when Peking, including Mao himself, began in 1963-64 to remind the world that tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union had taken territory from China in the past and to imply, although without quite saying, that Peking hoped to recover that territory in the future.

By that time the Soviet Union had already begun to strengthen its forces near the Chinese border. This process was accelerated after Moscow began in 1965-66 to perceive China as a serious military threat, apparently for two main reasons. One was that China began at that time to construct a range for testing ICBMs, a development with grave implications for Soviet security. The other was that the Japanese government launched a political campaign for the recovery of Okinawa, an outcome likely to degrade the island's usefulness to the United States as the keystone of its regional containment of China and to render non-Communist Asia more vulnerable to possible Chinese expansion. Almost equally unwelcome in Moscow were Peking's menacingly anti-Indian stand during the Indo-Pakistani border war of 1965, Peking's rejection of Soviet overtures for "united action" on Vietnam, and the eruption of the Cultural Revolution in the Spring of 1966. Accordingly, the Soviet Union strengthened its forces near the border and in the Mongolian People's Republic somewhat in 1966 and may even have contemplated intervention in China. If so, it refrained, probably because the speed and storminess with which the Cultural Revolution developed eliminated any possibility of the emergence of an anti-Maoist coalition that might have been willing to cooperate in some way with such an intervention. Moscow was extremely distressed, for a variety of reasons, at the military takeover of 1967 in the provinces of China, nominally in support of the Cultural Revolution, and portrayed China somewhat inaccurately in its propaganda as a country run by an expansionist coalition of extreme Maoists, military leaders, and government officials acting in collusion with the West German "revanchists" against the Soviet Union.

THE 1969 CRUNCH

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the proclamation of the Brezhnev Doctrine startled Peking and apparently convinced the Maoists for the first time that Moscow was not a paper bear but a serious military threat whose next target might be China itself. This nervousness was heightened when, in mid-February 1969 and possibly in anticipation of trouble from the Chinese side, Soviet forces along the Manchurian border stepped up their patrolling.

To the more primitive mentalities in the Soviet leadership, the myth of SinoWest German collusion probably appeared to be validated when Chinese troops ambushed a Soviet patrol on a frozen island on the Ussuri River on March 2, 1969, at a time when Moscow seemed to be involved in a crisis of sorts over West Berlin. Furthermore, the Ninth Congress of the Communist Party of China was approaching, and Lin Piao may have been suspected in Moscow of staging this incident in order to dramatize once more his defiiance of Soviet "social imperialism" and pave the way psychologically for his proclamation at the congress as Mao's heir.

Rapidly disengaging from the Berlin crisis, Moscow turned its full attention to its Chinese problem. On March 15, on the same island, Soviet troops virtually annihilated a Chinese unit in a carefully prepared operation, while Soviet propaganda mounted an anti-Chinese offensive that exceeded in shrillness even the broadsides that Peking was hurling against Moscow.

Seriously worried, the Chinese postponed their party congress until the balance had tipped in favor of the doves in what was evidently a policy debate within the Soviet leadership, the decisive consideration probably being the danger of pushing Peking into the arms of the United States, and until Premier Kosygin at the end of March had proposed “consultations" on the border crisis. The party congress then convened, but it was still thought wise for Lin Piao to include in his report an explicit denial, the first of its kind, that Peking wanted the return of any Soviet-held territory, except for minor adjustments in areas where Moscow was alleged to have gone beyond the boundary established by the tsarist treaties.

After the congress Chou En-lai emerged as the spokesman for Peking and as the architect of a new model foreign policy designed to cope with the Soviet threat by broadening and deepening China's diplomatic relationships and, eventually and most important, by "tilting" toward the United States. Distrustful of Soviet intentions and hampered by political pressures from some of his colleagues, he evaded Kosygin's demand for "consultations."

Dissatisfied with this approach, the Soviet Union rapidly built up its forces near the border during the spring and summer of 1969, staged occasional frontier classes, gave Peking a virtual ultimatum to begin consultations" by August 13 or September 13 at the latest, and backed up this demand by various threats to invade China or knock out its nuclear installations or both. For reasons already suggested, Peking continued evasive until a combination of these pressures and the good offices of the North Vietnamese, North Korean, and Romanian parties produced first talks between Chou and Kosygin on September 11 and then on October 7, following another round of Soviet pressures, an agreement to hold negotiations on the border question at the Deputy Foreign Minister level. These began on October 20, 1969, in Peking and have continued intermittently since then.

DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1969

Except for some progress in sorting out historical claims to particular places along the current border, the talks appear to have been essentially deadlocked, despite occasional reports to the contrary. The Soviet position is that there can be no more than marginal boundary adjustments. The Chinese position is that the tsarist border treaties are "unequal" because extracted by force and must be recognized as such in a new treaty, which however need not return to China more than the Soviet-occupied areas (along the Manchurian border and in Central Asia) claimed to lie beyond what was conceded in the original treaties. In addition, Peking demands a cease-fire agreement and a mutual troop withdrawal from the border, which Moscow rejects under present conditions because it does not wish to eliminate a major source of its leverage.

Both parties have conducted their relationship, including the border talks, with one eye on the United States. The Soviet Union was probably influenced by ra secret American warning in the summer of 1969 not to attack China, among other considerations. Moscow felt unable, for reasons of international communist propriety, to start the SALT talks with the "imperialist" United States until after the beginning of its border talks with Peking. In May 1970 Peking chose to become involved in a row with the United States over Cambodia and thus to jeopardize the outcome of the secret overtures that the Nixon administration had been making to it since early 1969. Shortly afterward there was a major, unpublicized, clash on the Sino-Soviet border, whether at Soviet initiative because China was considered especially vulnerable or at Chinese initiative because Lin Piao was temporarily in the saddle is not clear. In July the Soviet Union proposed to the United States at the SALT talks that both parties take joint action against any "provocative" move or attack, presumably nuclear, by any third power, meaning obviously China; the United States refused. Alarmed by this trend and somewhat mollified by the withdrawal of American ground forces from Cambodia at the end of June, Peking resumed its indirect contact with the United States, and Soviet behavior moderated itself correspondingly. In October-November the two sides agreed to exchange ambassadors for the first time since 1966, and a new