The 1969 Sino/Soviet Border Conflict

Podcast Transcript

Many people think that the closest the world ever came to nuclear war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

To be sure, that was a very tenuous point in history.

However, there is a good argument to be made that the closest the world has come to nuclear war actually took place in 1969. The reason most people are unaware of what happened is that it had nothing to do with the United States.

It was two other nuclear powers who almost went to war.

Learn more about the 1969 Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, how it changed the course of the Cold War, and almost led to a nuclear disaster on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The 1969 Sino-Soviet Border Conflict was one of the most significant events of the 1960s. Most people aren’t even aware of this event because it took place in a relatively remote area between two countries, which didn’t have a free press.

Even though most of the world didn’t know it at the time, the border conflict almost erupted into a full-scale war between two nuclear powers.

However, the border conflict wasn’t a simple spat over a line on the map. It was the culmination of over a century of contentious Chinese-Russian relations, which predated the establishment of their communist governments.

As I covered in previous episodes, the 19th century was not a good century for China. The period starting in 1839 marked the beginning of what became known as the Century of Humiliation.

The Qing Dynasty was weak and getting weaker. It suffered from a series of lopsided trade treaties with European powers, in which it was forced to open its markets and cede control of trading ports.

Of all the European powers that took advantage of China, no one took greater advantage, at least in terms of territory, than Russia.

In particular, two 19th-century treaties laid the foundation for the border problems that arose over a century later: the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Convention of Peking in 1860.

These treaties established the border between Imperial China and Imperial Russia, but they also transferred enormous amounts of land, primarily in Outer Manchuria, from China to Russia.

The amount of territory transferred was equivalent to a third of the continental United States.

It also established a border along several rivers, which will become relevant shortly. It is essential to note that the Chinese-Russian border was extremely long, poorly marked, and in most places, sparsely populated.

Fast forward to the 20th century. Both China and Russia had communist revolutions, and both countries eventually saw the establishment of communist governments.

On paper, and in public, both countries extolled the virtues of international communism and pretended to be close allies. Behind the scenes, reality was quite different.

During the Chinese Revolution, when the communists were making large advances against the nationalists, Stalin actually encouraged Mao to stop. The reason was that Stalin preferred a divided China that was half capitalist, rather than a unified China that was communist.

This had nothing to do with communist theory and everything to do with great power politics.

When North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, the decision had been encouraged and approved by Joseph Stalin without consulting Mao Zedong, which irritated Beijing.

When UN forces pushed to the Yalu River in the fall, Stalin refused to commit Soviet ground troops and instead pressured China to intervene, offering only limited air cover from bases in Manchuria. Mao viewed the Soviets as being willing to fight to the last Chinese soldier without sacrificing anything themselves.

The Soviets charged steep prices for weapons, ammunition, and even the use of their air force, insisting these were loans to be repaid rather than fraternal aid.

Despite the issues between Mao and Stalin, relations deteriorated further after Stalin’s death in 1953. Mao had serious disagreements with Khruschev’s policy of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with the West.

Moreover, now that Stalin was gone, Mao felt that he should be the senior communist on the world stage. He led a revolution, he unified the largest country in the world, and his resume was far greater than that of Khruschev.

The Soviets had one thing the Chinese didn’t….nuclear weapons.

The Chinese established their own nuclear program in the 1950s, which was heavily supported by the Soviet Union. However, in 1959, the Soviets tore up an agreement to help China develop nuclear weapons, and in 1960, they withdrew all technical advisers and abrogated aid deals, which Beijing treated as a humiliating breach of socialist solidarity.

The Chinese continued on their own, and in 1964, they detonated their first nuclear weapon at the Lop Nur test site in Western China.

Now that they had nuclear weapons, China no longer saw itself as the junior partner of the Soviets or a minor power, as it had been in the 19th century.

Things got even worse between the Chinese and the Soviets when Mao denounced the Brezhnev Doctrine after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as a warning that the USSR might police other socialist states. In particular, Mao thought the Brezhnev Doctrine could be used as a justification for a Soviet invasion of China.

This increase in tensions led to an increase in armed patrols along the very poorly demarcated border between China and the Soviet Union. The increase in Chinese patrols was also in part due to the zealous activity of the Cultural Revolution at the time.

The spark to the conflict began on March 2, 1969. Chinese border troops lured a Soviet patrol onto Zhenbao Island on the frozen Ussuri River and opened fire at close range. The initial ambush killed and wounded Soviet border guards and triggered hours of fighting with reinforcements on both sides, using small arms, machine guns, mortars, and armored vehicles moving over the ice.

Tension remained high for days, and on March 15th, a larger Soviet counterattack brought heavier weapons onto the island, including tanks and supporting artillery from the far bank. Casualties were significant for a clash of this size; each side accused the other of starting it, and the political shock was immediate because the firefight occurred between two nuclear powers.

The number of casualties reported by both sides varied dramatically. For example, the Chinese reported they had 29 fatalities, the Soviets reported that the Chinese had 248.

The main dispute concerned the location of the boundary on the river. The Chinese claimed that the border was down the center of the main channel, which is how most river borders are defined around the world. That would place the island as Chinese territory.

FYI, for all you crossword puzzle players out there, the center of a navigable river channel is known as a Thalweg.

The crisis then jumped two thousand kilometers west to the region of Xinjiang. On August 13th, 1969, Soviet border troops and armor struck Chinese positions Lake Zhalanashkol, on what is today the border with Khazakstan, after a night of close patrolling and fence cutting.

The Soviets reported routing a thirty to forty-man Chinese detachment and capturing several soldiers. For both capitals, the fact that firefights were now occurring on opposite ends of the frontier suggested that an incident could spiral into a broader war.

Washington learned about the March 1969 fighting almost immediately through its normal intelligence pipeline. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research circulated a March 4th Intelligence Note summarizing the clash, and the CIA’s Top-Secret “Weekly Review” briefed senior officials later that month.

By late summer, U.S. analysts were also watching for signs that the border skirmishes could widen. An August National Intelligence Estimate judged that a conventional Soviet air attack on Chinese nuclear and missile sites was a plausible option, even if not the most likely one.

The United States reacted on two tracks: crisis management and strategic opportunity.

Within the government, Henry Kissinger ordered an interagency study on how to handle possible Sino-Soviet war scenarios. The Washington Special Actions Group then laid down guidance stating that the U.S. should strongly oppose any nuclear use and, if intelligence suggested imminent attack, consider discreetly warning the target to reduce the chance of surprise.

At the same time, Moscow quietly probed Washington about a strike on China’s nuclear complex. On August 18, Soviet Embassy official and KGB officer Boris Davydov asked a State Department officer how the U.S. would react if the USSR attacked Chinese nuclear facilities.

It was extraordinary evidence that the Soviets were considering attacking China and were concerned about the American response.

Nixon and Kissinger also attempted to exploit the split to America’s advantage. During and after the spring and summer clashes, they pursued quiet feelers to Beijing through Pakistan and Romania, judging that Chinese fear of the Soviets opened space for rapprochement with the United States.

Finally, as part of a broader signaling effort toward Moscow during the tense autumn of 1969, the administration authorized a global readiness test that included a secret nuclear alert, popularly known as “the madman alert” or Operation Giant Lance.

I should also note that the Soviets were trying to drag India into this as well, as they had their own border clashes with China. In May, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin flew to India and met with Indira Gandhi and discussed the topic.

Everyone was now concerned about the potential escalation of the conflict and the risks that nuclear weapons might be used.

The event that de-escalated the situation was, oddly enough, the death of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam on September 2.

Both Kosygin and the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai attended, but not at the same time, to avoid each other.

Kosygin used the trip to propose direct talks. Sources indicate he asked the Vietnamese to convey a request for a high-level meeting with Beijing while he was in Hanoi.

The Vietnamese, fearful that their two benefactors might go to war with each other, served as a trusted middleman between the two parties.

Kosygin was denied the ability to fly back to Moscow over Chinese airspace and instead flew to India. When he landed, he received notification from the Indians that the Chinese were willing to talk. He then flew to Beijing, where he met Zhou Enlai in person on the airport tarmac.

The two agreed to cool military activity and to restart boundary negotiations, which effectively ended the shooting phase of the border war even though the legal dispute remained.

The legal dispute over the border took far longer to settle. After years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Moscow and Beijing delimited the eastern section in 1991, completed the western section in 1994, and in 2004 signed a complementary agreement that divided the final contested islands.

The final demarcation was implemented in 2008 with on-site ceremonies and a modest transfer of river territory to China, ending the chapter opened in the nineteenth century and inflamed in 1969.

The repercussions of the 1969 border conflict reshaped the Cold War. Both China and the Soviet Union undertook massive troop movements and fortification programs along the border and in Mongolia.

U.S. assessments counted several dozen Soviet divisions that moved east by 1969 and more by 1970 to 1972. China stationed dozens of infantry-heavy formations of their own opposite them. The militarization locked the Soviet Union into a costly posture for the next two decades, weakening its military efforts in Europe.

At the same time, the shock of 1969 turned diplomacy on its head. Beijing began exploring a counterweight to the Soviet threat, resumed quiet contacts with Washington in 1969, hosted Henry Kissinger’s secret visit in 1971, and eventually received President Nixon in 1972.

Nixon’s visit to China will be the subject of a future episode.

The Kremlin responded to the improvement in Sino-US relations in part by accelerating détente with the United States.

While it hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as other events of the Cold War, the Sino-Soviet border conflicts of 1969 were one of the most important events of that period.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was certainly a dangerous period, but fighting never broke out. In 1969, however, at least a few hundred people were killed in skirmishes between two nuclear powers and the use of nuclear weapons was actively being considered.

The events of 1969 not only brought China and the Soviets to the brink of war, but also completely rearranged the geopolitical landscape of the world.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

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From my 10-year-old, who is your biggest fan! No joke – he loves your show.

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We listen most days, and both of us enjoy the history episodes a lot. I vote for one on Cornwall, England, or bicycle motocross (BMX).

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