Brothers in Arms (61 page)

Read Brothers in Arms Online

Authors: Odd Arne Westad

Tags: #Political Science, #International Relations, #General, #test

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tially and new areas of cooperation for instance, in nuclear technology were opened up. It was also an era of remarkable calm in international affairs in East Asia, probably the only such season of tranquility between 1945 and the end of the Cold War. Mao used this time to radicalize the revolution in China through large-scale collectivization of agriculture and to formulate plans for industrialization that although much indebted to Soviet models imagined a pace that would eclipse the Soviet experience.
During this period, Mao gradually revised his perception of an impending American attack against China. The imperialists had accepted cease-fires albeit of a temporary character in Korea and Vietnam, and the Taiwan campaign of the People's Republic had taught Washington a lesson, Mao believed. The chairman was very hopeful that the talks that began in Geneva in August 1955 between the United States and China would lead to U.S. concessions with regard to Taiwan as relations between the blocs continued to improve. As long as he still harbored some hope of a settlement with Washington concerning Taiwan, Mao remained a vocal supporter of Khrushchev's policy of international détente. He lauded the Soviet leader's visit to Britain in the spring of 1956, telling Ambassador Pave Iudin that "with the help of England [we can] make a rapprochement with the United States as well; this is also not hopeless."

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The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in early 1956 made Sino-Soviet relations more complicated and influenced the policies of both countries vis-à-vis the United States. Mao at first responded positively to Khrushchev's criticism of Stalin and the Soviet past, sensing that he finally could vent his own anger at the way he had been treated by the Soviets up to 1950. Although he was annoyed that Khrushchev had not informed the Chinese party in advance (or, for that matter, consulted with him afterward), Mao viewed Khrushchev's speech as giving the CCP latitude to construct its own history and therefore to place himself as a theoreticist and political leader at least on par with the Soviet leader himself. China could take on a new importance in international affairs, inside the Communist bloc and in the East Asian region.
Although Mao's sense of having been liberated from Soviet tutelage persisted, not least in terms of the political experiments he embarked on in the late 1950s, his views of the
effects
of de-Stalinization changed dramatically after the Polish and Hungarian rebellions against Soviet control in the fall of 1956. The East European events fed straight into Mao's fear of U.S.-assisted counterrevolution in China and brought him closer to more "conservative" leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, who had been more skeptical of Khrushchev's plans than the chairman had been. Mao also interpreted the public criticism against the CCP leadership that came into the open during the 1957 Hundred

 

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Flowers campaign as part of an American-led conspiracy. Together with the lack of progress in the Sino-American talks and the high level of negative U.S. rhetoric directed against China, by late 1957 Mao apparently concluded that any normalization of relations with the United States was out of the question, at least for the time being.

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The period "from June 1956 to June 1957 were difficult days both in international and domestic affairs," Mao complained to Ambassador Iudin.
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During the meeting of Communist parties in Moscow in November 1957, Mao wanted to stress watchfulness and determination against the United States as a way to underline China's need to benefit directly particularly with regard to Taiwan from the U.S.-Soviet détente. Mao's main problem then was that he wanted to stress this aspect while generally supporting Soviet foreign policy, and thereby convince the Soviets that supporting China's aims would not endanger their attempts to lessen U.S.-Soviet confrontation. But the Soviet leaders were shocked by Mao's talk about not fearing nuclear war and belittled the chairman's understanding of international relations in conversations with leaders of other fraternal parties. Mao determined not to be humiliated during his second visit to Moscow insisted that the Chinese delegates introduce several amendments to the final resolution that reinforced criticism of the United States. The outcome was a compromise, in which the Soviet leaders accepted several of the Chinese suggestions. Mao saw the conference as at least a partial victory and, on his return home, was convinced that he had reinforced his position as a leader of the world Communist movement.
The End of the Alliance
The second offshore islands crisis in 1958 should be understood in terms of the lack of progress in Sino-U.S. relations and the growing Chinese disenchantment with U.S.-Soviet détente. But it was also related to Mao's wish to firm up his position as an authority on international affairs in the Communist movement and to shore up national mobilization for his new economic experiment, the Great Leap Forward.
The timing of the crisis was interestingly enough connected to Mao's reading of the international situation and what he viewed as setbacks to the U.S. position in the Middle East. Both within his own party and in talking to the Soviets he used Lebanon as a metaphor for Taiwan: The Arab peoples were dealing a blow to U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, and it was China's duty to join in this baffle by attacking the offshore islands. It was a challenge to both Moscow and Washington, indicating that China's claims to Taiwan could be ignored only at their own peril for Khrushchev at the risk of his leadership of the Communist movement, for Eisenhower at the risk of creating a permanent area

 

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of conflict that could be exploited whenever the United States had problems elsewhere.
As in 1954-1955, Mao had no intention of going to war with the United States or of invading Taiwan itself. As often during Mao' s career, the shelling of Jin-men and Mazu was a military action with an immediate political purpose. He underestimated, however, the Soviet response to his challenge. For Khrushchev the new Taiwan Straits crisis came on the heels of his "peace offensive" toward Washington and his visit to Beijing in late July 1958, a visit that he undertook to make sure he brought the Chinese onboard in his policies toward the West. Mao did not tell Khrushchev in advance of the Chinese artillery attacks on Jin-men and Mazu instead the discussions in Beijing centered on Chinese demands for further Soviet aid and on Soviet plans for integrating China further into its system of military preparedness. Although the Soviet side, again, was willing to concede much in terms of economic and technological assistance although not on the core issue of fully sharing nuclear weapons technology China strongly objected to the Soviet military plans for a submarine fleet under joint command and construction of shared military communication systems in northern China. In the wake of his visit, Khrushchev viewed the renewed attacks on the islands as a form of coercion by China.

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The Soviet reaction after the attacks began on August 23 was very swift. While warning the United States against going to war with China, the Kremlin leveled a barrage of criticism against the Chinese leaders, accusing them of playing into the hands of the enemy and misjudging the international situation. To underline its position, the Soviet Union even withdrew some of its military special advisers from China. Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi responded that China would be able to manage the crisis and asked for Soviet assistance in bringing pressure on Washington for a negotiated settlement of the Taiwan issue. After the Warsaw consultations between the two sides began in late September, the Chinese leadership defused the crisis simply by reducing the shelling of the islands. "We could use this method," Mao suggested to Zhou Enlai, "not to fire on even-numbered days, so that Jiang's troops could come out and have some sunshine; this is favorable for protracted War."
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The second straits crisis had two main effects on Mao's view of international relations. First, it convinced him that the American threat against China was considerably reduced "the American capitalists are scared and passive," he wrote in November 1958. He even considered a more flexible tactic against Washington, for instance when he rejected Chen Yi's proposal to publish an article condemning some of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's views. "Dulles is ill," Mao said. "Recently the American government has not criticized us very much. It is not suitable to publish this article now.
30

 

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Mao and other Chinese leaders also felt that they had pushed the Sino-Soviet relationship to the brink and that it was time to take a step back. The chaos created by the policies of the Great Leap Forward contributed to this sense of restraint, as did Mao's subsequent stepping down as head of state in December 1958. At the Twenty-first CPSU Congress in January-February 1959, Zhou Enlai's greetings did not contain any hints of criticism of Soviet-U.S. policies. In his writings, Mao returned to the themes of learning from the Soviet Union and being "modest" in promoting the Chinese experience.

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But the lull in Sino-Soviet tensions did not last long. During the second straits crisis in 1958, the Soviet leaders had begun worrying about the possible effects of their nuclear cooperation with China. In late June 1959 Khrushchev chose to inform the Chinese that the Soviet Union was unilaterally scrapping the remaining parts of the program because of its support for a nuclear-free zone in East Asia. A few weeks later, Mao shot back for the first time branding the Soviet leaders' thinking as "right-deviationist" in an inner-party circular. The CCP leadership suspected that the canceling of the nuclear programs had much to do with Khrushchev's forthcoming visit to the United States.
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We still do not know if Mao's strong reaction against stepped-up Indian activities along the disputed border with China was related to his suspicions on the outcome of Soviet-U.S. summitry. The Chinese never attempted to enlist their Soviet allies who had increasingly close relations with the government of Jawaharlal Nehru as mediators. Just as Mao was assuring Khrushchev that he viewed the forthcoming summit as "a victory for the peaceful Soviet foreign policy," Chinese troops occupied an Indian border post and claimed that India had intruded on Chinese sovereignty. The Chinese actions puzzled Soviet observers, who concluded that Beijing aimed at destabilizing Soviet-Indian relations as a form of punishment for Khrushchev's meeting with Eisenhower. The Soviets decided on strict neutrality in the conflict a Tass statement pointed out that the Soviet Union "maintains friendly relations with the Chinese People's Republic and the Republic of India.
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Immediately after returning to Moscow from the United States, Khrushchev left for Beijing to discuss his U.S. policy and Sino-Indian relations with Mao Zedong. These meetings, of which we still do not have a verbatim record, constituted the final break in personal relations between the two leaders. "To Mao there are no laws, no lasting agreements, no word of honor," Khrushchev concluded in his memoirs. "Khrushchev is very infantile," Mao maintained. "He does not understand Marxism and Leninism [and] he is easily cheated by the imperialists. If he does not correct himself, he will be destroyed some years (eight years) from now. He is afraid of two things: Imperialism and Chinese Communism."
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In December 1959 Soviet Ambassador Stepan Chervonenko for the

 

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first time warned the Chinese that attempts to sabotage Soviet foreign policy would affect all sides of the bilateral relationship.

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At the end of 1959, both Mao and the Soviet leaders had concluded that the international position of the United States was weakening. However, they drew opposite tactical conclusions from this observation. Khrushchev wanted to regulate Cold War competition from a position of Soviet bloc strength. He wanted to impress on Western leaders the increasing power and ideological attraction of communism and the need for the West to find practical compromises that would avert nuclear war. Mao, on the other hand, argued to the Soviets and to his own colleagues that this was the time to confront imperialism abroad, especially in the Third World. The socialist cause would suffer considerably, Mao felt, if Communist and anti-imperialist parties did not make use of the "high tide of socialism" to push their enemies back and aim at grabbing state power for themselves. For the chairman, the global trend was consistent with his observations inside China, where the policies of the Great Leap Forward set the pattern for the future, in spite of obstructions and temporary setbacks.
The Chinese policies on Cuba and Vietnam in 1959-1960 show how Mao's thinking came to influence Chinese foreign policy. Mao viewed the victory of the Cuban revolution as another sign of U.S. weakness and a harbinger of similar revolts in other Latin American countries. He instructed the Foreign and Defense ministries to prepare plans for how to best support the Cuban revolution.
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The attitude of the People's Republic to North Vietnamese plans for armed struggle in the South also went through a sea change in late 1959. While many Chinese shared Moscow's skepticism about the prospects of guerilla warfare against the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in the early part of the year, by December Beijing had come to support the plans that were in the making in Hanoi for a speedy reunification of Vietnam.
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It was Mao's attempts to win over other Communist parties to his views on international affairs that provoked the defining crisis in Sino-Soviet relations in 1960: Angered at Chinese behavior at the Bucharest conference of Communist parties in June, Khrushchev abruptly withdrew most Soviet advisers from China in July and early August. In their conversations with the Soviet ambassador in August, Chinese leaders tried to link the controversy directly to differing views of the United States. China will continue the struggle against the United States, declared Foreign Minister Chen Yi to Ambassador Chervonenko on August 4. "The deep hatred of the Chinese people toward American imperialism. . . will not disappear even in twenty-thirty years.
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For the Soviet leaders, too, the relationship to the United States was at the core of their perception of the ideological changes that Mao was promoting inside and outside the People's Republic. In his speech to the CPSU Central Corn-

 

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