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The Third Vietnam War

On February 17, China mounted a multipronged invasion of northern Vietnam from southern China’s Guangxi and Yunnan provinces. The size of the Chinese force reflected the importance China attached to the operation; it has been estimated to have numbered more than 200,000 and perhaps as many as 400,000 PLA soldiers.⁴⁷ One historian has concluded that the invasion force, which included “regular ground forces, militia, and naval and air force units . . . was similar in scale to the assault with which China made such an impact on its entry into the Korean War in November 1950.” ⁴⁸ The official Chinese press accounts called it the “Self-Defensive Counterattack Against Vietnam” or the “Counterattack in Self-Defense on the Sino-Vietnamese Border.” It represented the Chinese version of deterrence, an invasion advertised in advance to forestall the next Vietnamese move.

The target of China’s military was a fellow Communist country, recent ally, and longtime beneficiary of Chinese economic and military support. The goal was to preserve the strategic equilibrium in Asia, as China saw it. Further, China undertook the campaign with the moral support, diplomatic backing, and intelligence cooperation of the United States—the same “imperialist power” that Beijing had helped eject from Indochina five years earlier.

The stated Chinese war aim was to “put a restraint on the wild ambitions of the Vietnamese and to give them an appropriate limited lesson.”⁴⁹ “Appropriate” meant to inflict sufficient damage to affect Vietnamese options and calculations for the future; “limited” implied that it would be ended before outside intervention or other factors drove it out of control. It was also a direct challenge to the Soviet Union.

Deng’s prediction that the Soviet Union would not attack China was borne out. The day after China launched its invasion, the Soviet government released a lukewarm statement that, while condemning China’s “criminal” attack, emphasized that “the heroic Vietnamese people . . . is capable of standing up for itself this time again[.]”⁵⁰ The Soviet military response was limited to sending a naval task force to the South China Sea, undertaking a limited arms airlift to Hanoi, and stepping up air patrols along the Sino-Soviet border. The airlift was constrained by geography but also by internal hesitations. In the end, the Soviet Union gave as much support in 1979 to its new ally, Vietnam, as it had extended twenty years earlier to its then ally, China, in the Taiwan Strait Crises. In neither case would the Soviet Union run any risks of a wider war.

Shortly after the war, Hua Guofeng summed up the outcome in a pithy phrase contemptuous of Soviet leaders: “As for threatening us, they did that by maneuvers near the border, sending ships to the South China Sea. But they did not dare to move. So after all we could still touch the buttocks of the tiger.”

Deng sarcastically rejected American advice to be careful. During a late February 1979 visit of Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal to Beijing, Blumenthal called for Chinese troops to withdraw from Vietnam “as quickly as possible” because Beijing “ran risks that were unwarranted.” ⁵¹ Deng demurred. Speaking to American reporters just before his meeting with Blumenthal, Deng displayed his disdain for equivocation, mocking “some people” who were “afraid of offending” the “Cuba of the Orient.”⁵²

As in the Sino-Indian War, China executed a limited “punitive” strike followed immediately by a retreat. It was over in twenty-nine days. Shortly after the PLA captured (and reportedly laid waste to) the capitals of the three Vietnamese provinces along the border, Beijing announced that Chinese forces would withdraw from Vietnam, save for several disputed pieces of territory. Beijing made no attempt to overthrow the Hanoi government or to enter Cambodia in any overt capacity.

A month after the Chinese troops had withdrawn, Deng explained the Chinese strategy to me on a visit to Beijing:

DENG: After I came back [from the United States], we immediately fought a war. But we asked you for your opinion beforehand. I talked it over with President Carter and then he replied in a very formal and solemn way. He read a written text to me. I said to him: China will handle this question independently and if there is any risk, China will take on the risk alone. In retrospect, we think if we had driven deeper into Vietnam in our punitive action, it would have been even better.

KISSINGER: It could be.

DENG: Because our forces were sufficient to drive all the way to Hanoi. But it wouldn’t be advisable to go that far.

KISSINGER: No, it would probably have gone beyond the limits of calculation.

DENG: Yes, you’re right. But we could have driven 30 kilometers deeper into Vietnam. We occupied all the defensive areas of fortification. There wasn’t a defense line left all the way to Hanoi.

The conventional wisdom among historians is that the war was a costly Chinese failure.⁵³ The effects of the PLA’s politicization during the Cultural Revolution became apparent during the campaign: hampered by outdated equipment, logistical problems, personnel shortages, and inflexible tactics, Chinese forces advanced slowly and at great cost. By some analysts’ estimates, the PLA suffered as many killed in action in one month of fighting the Third Vietnam War as the United States suffered in the most costly years of the second one.⁵⁴

Conventional wisdom is based, however, on a misapprehension of the Chinese strategy. Whatever the shortcomings of its execution, the Chinese campaign reflected a serious long-term strategic analysis. In the Chinese leadership’s explanations to their American counterparts, they described the consolidation of Soviet-backed Vietnamese power in Indochina as a crucial step in the Soviet Union’s worldwide “strategic deployment.” The Soviet Union had already concentrated troops in Eastern Europe and along China’s northern border. Now, the Chinese leaders warned, Moscow was “beginning to get bases” in Indochina, Africa, and the Middle East.⁵⁵ If it consolidated its position in these areas, it would control vital energy resources and be able to block key sea lanes—most notably the Malacca Strait connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. This would give Moscow the strategic initiative in any future conflict. In a broader sense, the war resulted from Beijing’s analysis of Sun Tzu’s concept of shi—the trend and “potential energy” of the strategic landscape. Deng aimed to arrest and, if possible, reverse what he saw as an unacceptable momentum of Soviet strategy.

China achieved this objective in part by its military daring, in part by drawing the United States into unprecedentedly close cooperation. China’s leaders had navigated the Third Vietnam War by meticulous analysis of their strategic choices, daring execution, and skillful diplomacy. With all these qualities, they would not have been able to “touch the buttocks of the tiger” but for the cooperation of the United States.

The Third Vietnam War ushered in the closest collaboration between China and the United States for the period of the Cold War. Two trips to China by American emissaries established an extraordinary degree of joint action. Vice President Walter “Fritz” Mondale visited China in August 1979 to devise a diplomacy for the aftermath of the Deng visit, especially with respect to Indochina. It was a complex problem in which strategic and moral considerations were in severe conflict. The United States and China agreed that it was in each country’s national interest to prevent the emergence of an Indochinese Federation under Hanoi’s control. But the only part of Indochina that was still contested was Cambodia, which had been governed by the execrable Pol Pot, who had murdered millions of his compatriots. The Khmer Rouge constituted the best organized element of Cambodia’s anti-Vietnam resistance.

Carter and Mondale took a long and dedicated record of devotion to human rights into government; indeed they had, in their presidential campaign, attacked Ford on the ground of insufficient attention to the issue of human rights.

Deng had first raised the issue of aid to the Cambodian guerrilla resistance against the Vietnamese invaders during the private conversation with Carter about the invasion of Vietnam. According to the official report: “The President asked if the Thais could accept and relay it to the Cambodians. Deng said yes and that he has in mind light weapons. The Thais are now sending a senior officer to the Thai-Cambodian border to keep communications more secure.”⁵⁶ The de facto cooperation between Washington and Beijing on aid to Cambodia through Thailand had the practical effect of indirectly assisting the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. American officials were careful to stress to Beijing that the United States “cannot support Pol Pot” and welcomed China’s assurances that Pol Pot no longer exercised full control over the Khmer Rouge. This sop to conscience did not change the reality that Washington provided material and diplomatic support to the “Cambodian resistance” in a manner that the administration must have known would benefit the Khmer Rouge. Carter’s successors in Ronald Reagan’s administration followed the same strategy. America’s leaders undoubtedly expected that if the Cambodian resistance prevailed, they or their successors would oppose the Khmer Rouge element of it in the aftermath—which is what in effect happened after the Vietnamese withdrawal over a decade later.

American ideals had encountered the imperatives of geopolitical reality. It was not cynicism, even less hypocrisy, that forged this attitude: the Carter administration had to choose between strategic necessities and moral conviction. They decided that for their moral convictions to be implemented ultimately they needed first to prevail in the geopolitical struggle. The American leaders faced the dilemma of statesmanship. Leaders cannot choose the options history affords them, even less that they be unambiguous.

The visit of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown marked a further step toward Sino-American cooperation unimaginable only a few years earlier. Deng welcomed him: “Your coming here itself is of major significance,” he noted to Brown, “because you are the Secretary of Defense.” ⁵⁷ A few veterans of the Ford administration understood this hint about the invitation to Secretary Schlesinger, aborted when Ford dismissed him.

The main agenda was to define the United States’ military relationship with China. The Carter administration had come to the conclusion that an increase in China’s technological and military capacity was important for global equilibrium and American national security. Washington had “drawn a distinction between the Soviet Union and China,” Secretary Brown explained, and was willing to transfer some military technology to China that it would not make available to the Soviets.⁵⁸ Further, the United States was willing to sell “military equipment” to China (such as surveillance equipment and vehicles), though not “arms.” It would not, moreover, interfere in decisions by NATO allies to sell arms to China. As President Carter explained in his instructions to Brzezinski:

[T]he United States does not object to the more forthcoming attitude which our allies are adopting in regard to trade with China in technology-sensitive areas. We have an interest in a strong and secure China—and we recognize and respect this interest.⁵⁹

In the end, China was not able to rescue the Khmer Rouge or force Hanoi to withdraw its troops from Cambodia for another decade; perhaps recognizing this, Beijing framed its war aims in much more limited terms. However, Beijing did impose heavy costs on Vietnam. Chinese diplomacy in Southeast Asia before, during, and after the war worked with great determination and skill to isolate Hanoi. China maintained a heavy military presence along the border, retained several disputed pieces of territory, and continued to hold out the threat of a “second lesson” to Hanoi. For years afterward, Vietnam was forced to support considerable forces on its northern border to defend against another possible Chinese attack.⁶⁰ As Deng had told Mondale in August 1979:

For a country of that size to keep a standing force of more than one million, where will you find enough work force? A standing force of one million needs a lot of logistical support. Now they depend on the Soviet Union. Some estimates say they are getting $2 million a day from the Soviet Union, some estimates say $2½ million. . . . [I]t will increase difficulties, and this burden on the Soviet Union will grow heavier and heavier. Things will become more difficult. In time the Vietnamese will come to realize that not all their requests to the Soviet Union can be met. In those circumstances perhaps a new situation will emerge.⁶¹

That situation did, in fact, occur over a decade later when the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Soviet financial support brought about a retrenchment in Vietnamese deployment in Cambodia. Ultimately over a time period more difficult to sustain for democratic societies, China achieved a considerable part of its strategic objectives in Southeast Asia. Deng achieved sufficient maneuvering room to meet his objective of thwarting Soviet domination of Southeast Asia and the Malacca Strait.

The Carter administration performed a tightrope act that maintained an option toward the Soviet Union via negotiations over the limitations of strategic arms while basing its Asian policy on the recognition that Moscow remained the principal strategic adversary.

The ultimate loser in the conflict was the Soviet Union, whose global ambitions had caused alarm around the world. A Soviet ally had been attacked by the Soviet Union’s most vocal and strategically most explicit adversary, which was openly agitating for a containment alliance against Moscow—all this within a month of the conclusion of the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance. In retrospect, Moscow’s relative passivity in the Third Vietnam War can be seen as the first symptom of the decline of the Soviet Union. One wonders whether the Soviets’ decision a year later to intervene in Afghanistan was prompted in part by an attempt to compensate for their ineffectuality in supporting Vietnam against the Chinese attack. In either case, the Soviets’ miscalculation in both situations was in not realizing the extent to which the correlation of global forces had shifted against them. The Third Vietnam War may thus be counted as another example in which Chinese statesmen succeeded in achieving long-term, big-picture strategic objectives without the benefit of a military establishment comparable to that of their adversaries. Though providing breathing space for the remnants of the Khmer Rouge can hardly be counted as a moral victory, China achieved its larger geopolitical aims vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and Vietnam—both of whose militaries were better trained and equipped than China’s.

Equanimity in the face of materially superior forces has been deeply ingrained in Chinese strategic thinking—as is apparent from the parallels with China’s decision to intervene in the Korean War. Both Chinese decisions were directed against what Beijing perceived to be a gathering danger—a hostile power’s consolidation of bases at multiple points along the Chinese periphery. In both cases, Beijing believed that if the hostile power were allowed to complete its design, China would be encircled and thus remain in a permanent state of vulnerability. The adversary would be in a position to launch a war at a time of its choosing, and knowledge of this advantage would allow it to act, as Hua Guofeng told President Carter when they met in Tokyo, “without scruples.” ⁶² Therefore, a seemingly regional issue—in the first case the American rebuff of North Korea, in the second case Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia—was treated as “the focus of the struggles in the world” (as Zhou described Korea).⁶³

Both interventions set China against a stronger power that threatened its perception of its security; each, however, did so on terrain and at a time of Beijing’s choosing. As Vice Premier Geng Biao later told Brzezinski: “The Soviet Union’s support for Vietnam is a component of its global strategy. It is directed not just at Thailand, but at Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Straits of Malacca. If they succeeded, it would be a fatal blow to ASEAN and would also interdict the lines of communications for Japan and the United States. We are committed to do something about this. We may have no capability to cope with the Soviet Union, but we have the capability to cope with Vietnam.”⁶⁴

These were not elegant affairs: China threw troops into immensely costly battles and sustained casualties on a scale that would have been unacceptable in the Western world. In the Sino-Vietnam War, the PLA seems to have pursued its task with many shortcomings, significantly increasing the scale of Chinese losses. But both interventions achieved noteworthy strategic goals. At two key moments in the Cold War, Beijing applied its doctrine of offensive deterrence successfully. In Vietnam, China succeeded in exposing the limits of the Soviet defense commitment to Hanoi and, more important, of its overall strategic reach. China was willing to risk war with the Soviet Union to prove that it refused to be intimidated by the Soviet presence on its southern flank.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has summed up the ultimate result of the war: “The Western press wrote off the Chinese punitive action as a failure. I believe it changed the history of East Asia.”⁶⁵

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The Third Vietnam War

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