Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia by Thomas J. Christensen

Author:Thomas J. Christensen [Christensen, Thomas J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Technology & Engineering, Politics, History & Theory, Political Science, Asia, History, Military Science, General
ISBN: 9781400838813
Google: Z1v2pqaOmuEC
Goodreads: 11800257
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2011-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

THE EFFECTS OF THE SINO-SOVIET DISPUTES ON THIRD-PARTY COMMUNISTS IN ASIA

In July 1964 relations between the Chinese and Soviets would become so poor that Mao began considering the possibility of armed conflict between the two communist states in discussions with the CCP Politburo.47 It would take nearly five more years for Sino-Soviet relations to deteriorate to that degree and, when they did, the United States was a major beneficiary. But while the Sino-Soviet rivalry was escalating (1960–69) and the two communist nations’ competition for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese was heating up (1964–69), the biggest beneficiaries would clearly be the Vietnamese communists. Until the early 1970s the big losers of this Sino-Soviet competition were Saigon and Washington, who were facing a determined group of Vietnamese enemies who were receiving much more material assistance from abroad and much more international political backing for the continued spread of revolution to the South than they received in the mid-1950s, when the Sino-Soviet house was in much better order and the movement as a whole was, therefore, more transparent, more willing to negotiate, and more moderate overall.

Vietnam 1959–61

Sino-Soviet tensions and the rebellion against Khrushchev’s policy line of peaceful coexistence and peaceful transformation perhaps affected Southeast Asia most dramatically. After months of consulting with Beijing and keeping Moscow in the dark, in May 1959 Hanoi would agree to assist the South Vietnamese communist cadres in national unification by all means necessary. The National Liberation Front (NLF) was born. North Vietnam’s secrecy and prevaricating toward Moscow and its relative openness with the CCP demonstrated how much more conservative Moscow was than Beijing about revolution in the South.48When the Soviets discovered the North Vietnamese designs on the South, they were surprised and upset at the provocative behavior of their Vietnamese comrades. As Gaiduk writes, “[T]he Soviet Union, as a great power, had to take into account geopolitical considerations, not only ideological preferences.”49

The Chinese Communists, on the other hand, promised political, economic, and military support for the NLF effort in 1959. It is notable that this backing occurred well before the United States began increasing the number of military advisors in South Vietnam in the early 1960s and almost six years before the United States would send in a large number of ground troops. In the late 1960s Beijing’s relatively active support for belligerence in Vietnam in comparison with the Soviets’ desire for restraint would be affected at least in part by national security concerns in Beijing about U.S. activity in Southeast Asia that were not fully shared in more distant Moscow. But it is very difficult to sustain an argument that Chinese support for the NLF in the period 1959–64 was driven by standard realpolitik concerns about friendly borders. After all, North Vietnam, the bordering state, was solidly under Ho’s control. U.S. military activity in South Vietnam was still very limited (with hundreds, not even thousands, of advisors on the ground). Moreover, the 17th parallel separating North and South Vietnam was distant from the Chinese border.

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