CHAPTER 6
China Confronts Both Superpowers
OTTO VON BISMARCK, probably the greatest diplomat of
the second half of the nineteenth century, once said that in a
world order of five states, it is always desirable to be part of a
group of three. Applied to the interplay of three countries, one
would therefore think that it is always desirable to be in a group
of two.
That truth escaped
the chief actors of the China-Soviet-U.S. triangle for a decade and
a half—partly because of the unprecedented maneuvers of Mao. In
foreign policy, statesmen often serve their objectives by bringing
about a confluence of interests. Mao’s policy was based on the
opposite. He learned to exploit overlapping hostilities. The
conflict between Moscow and Washington was the strategic essence of
the Cold War; the hostility between Washington and Beijing
dominated Asian diplomacy. But the two Communist states could never
merge their respective hostility toward the United States—except
briefly and incompletely in the Korean War—because of Mao’s
evolving rivalry with Moscow over ideological primacy and
geostrategic analysis.
From the point of
view of traditional power politics, Mao, of course, was in no
position to act as an equal member of the triangular relationship.
He was by far the weakest and most vulnerable. But by playing on
the mutual hostility of the nuclear superpowers and creating the
impression of being impervious to nuclear devastation, he managed
to bring about a kind of diplomatic sanctuary for China. Mao added
a novel dimension to power politics, one for which I know of no
precedent. Far from seeking the support of either superpower—as
traditional balance-of-power theory would have counseled—he
exploited the Soviet-U.S. fear of each other by challenging each of
the rivals simultaneously.
Within a year of the
end of the Korean War, Mao confronted America militarily in a
crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Almost simultaneously, he began to
confront the Soviet Union ideologically. He felt confident in
pursuing both courses because he calculated that neither superpower
would permit his defeat by the other. It was a brilliant
application of the Zhuge Liang Empty City Stratagem described in an
earlier chapter, which turns material weakness into a psychological
asset.
At the end of the
Korean War, traditional students of international
affairs—especially Western scholars—expected that Mao would seek a
period of respite. Since the victory of the Communists, there had
been nary a month of even apparent tranquility. Land reform, the
implementation of the Soviet economic model, and the destruction of
the domestic opposition had constituted a packed and dramatic
domestic agenda. Simultaneously the still quite underdeveloped
country was engaged in a war with a nuclear superpower in
possession of advanced military technology.
Mao had no intention
to enter history for the respites he availed to his society.
Instead, he launched China into a set of new upheavals: two
conflicts with the United States in the Taiwan Strait, the
beginning of conflict with India, and a growing ideological and
geopolitical controversy with the Soviet Union.
For the United
States, by contrast, the end of the Korean War and the advent of
the administration of Dwight Eisenhower marked the return to
domestic “normalcy” that would last for the rest of the decade.
Internationally, the Korean War became a template for Communism’s
commitment to expansion by political subversion or military
aggression wherever possible. Other parts of Asia supplied
corroborating evidence: the guerrilla war in Malaysia; the violent
bid for power by leftists in Singapore; and, increasingly, in the
wars in Indochina. Where the American perception went partially
awry was in thinking of Communism as a monolith and failing to
understand the depth of suspicion, even at this early stage,
between the two Communist giants.
The Eisenhower
administration dealt with the threat of aggression by methods
borrowed from America’s European experience. It tried to shore up
the viability of countries bordering the Communist world following
the example of the Marshall Plan, and it constructed military
alliances in the style of NATO, such as the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO) between the new nations bordering China in
Southeast Asia. It did not fully consider the essential difference
between European conditions and those at the fringe of Asia. The
postwar European countries were established states with elaborated
institutions. Their viability depended on closing the gap between
expectation and reality, caused by the depredations of the Second
World War—an expansive project that proved manageable, however, in
a relatively brief period of time as history is measured. With
domestic stability substantially assured, the security problem
turned into defense against a potential military attack across
established international frontiers.
In Asia around the
rim of China, however, the states were still in the process of
formation. The challenge was to create political institutions and a
political consensus out of ethnic and religious divisions. This was
less a military, more a conceptual, task; the security threat was
domestic insurrection or guerrilla warfare rather than organized
units crossing military frontiers. This was a particular challenge
in Indochina, where the end of the French colonial project left
four countries (North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos)
with contested borders and weak independent national traditions.
These conflicts had their own dynamism not controllable in detail
from Beijing or Moscow or Washington, yet influenced by the
policies of the strategic triangle. In Asia, therefore, there were
very few, if any, purely military challenges. Military strategy and
political and social reform were inextricably linked.