The Nuclear Confrontation in Europe by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, General, Military, Weapons, Political Science, Public Policy, Military Policy
ISBN: 9781000199284
Google: JA8HEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 53371491
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1985-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

China

The Sino-Soviet nuclear relationship is largely made up of weapons that the West would describe as ‘theatre nuclear forces’. The prime Soviet threat to China is the SS-20, while China’s response is still largely based on medium- and intermediate-range weapons derived from an early Soviet SS-4. It was only in 1980 that China first tested an ICBM, which has yet to be deployed, and its longest-range rockets can barely reach Moscow. However, while essentially regional in nature, to a country operating the most minimum of deterrents, this is very much a strategic capability.

In addition, China does appear to have some nuclear weapons intended for use on the battlefield. Little publicity has been accorded these weapons and their existence has not been officially confirmed. There is evidence that they are caught up in some doctrinal controversy. This controversy is just one part of a fundamental and longstanding dispute over the role of conventional forces in China’s defence. In the 1960s Maoist doctrine in China stressed a combination of two forms of unconventional warfare—people’s war to swamp an invader and nuclear war to deter nuclear attack. There was little tolerance of traditional military formations, and contempt for the notion that advanced technology could give one side a decisive edge. This contempt was only partly based on the political distance that China had placed between itself and the international sources of advanced technology. It also reflected a revolutionary confidence in what a suitably motivated population could achieve against an aggressor, especially with a population as numerous as that of China.

One can set a number of dates for when this approach began to be qualified, but 1969 is as good a year as any. This was long before the underlying ideological conflict was sorted out. That needed the disgrace of the ‘Gang of Four’, but 1969 was the year that the military began to assert itself as it restored order after the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and the year that the leadership discovered that the ‘Soviet threat’ was for real.

Up to that point the Chinese nuclear force had developed according to political as much as military goals. The actual achievement of a nuclear capability was taken to be an important demonstration of the potential of the Chinese revolution, of a capacity for independent action even against the wishes and pressures of the superpowers, and of the impermanence of the superpowers’ nuclear monopoly. The weapon was directed against both the United States, the established enemy, still fighting close by in Indo-China against a fellow-communist state, and the Soviet Union, the former friend now seen as another imperialist power anxious to establish hegemony over China. In the political circumstances, with a full-scale deterrent out of reach for many years, the optimum force structure was one which could pose a tangible if largely symbolic threat to both superpowers simultaneously. Over time this could be expanded into a more impressive deterrent.

The assumptions were of a long-term threat from both superpowers but not necessarily of any immediate danger.

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