Cold War Hot: Alternate Decisions of the Cold War

by Tsouras, Peter

  Like many Russians, Ivanov privately admired the Americans—they were brash and imaginative, and like the Soviet Union, their country was a mixture of many disparate peoples and cultures and had been started from a relatively new beginning. There were more similarities than differences and even as a committed communist he had watched with admiration as American industry and science had grown. All the same, they lacked even the most fundamental sense of what it takes to survive as a major power, to lead, to stay in position. A major power has to demonstrate will, strength, and courage. As in the animal world, a nation unwilling to face dangers to itself, to sacrifice, will rapidly fall to the mercies of the stronger. And as in the animal world, mercy is nothing to be depended upon.

  The Americans, he had concluded, had lost the revolutionary fervor they used to have and, while they had become comfortable and rich, they had developed feet of clay. They had no shortage of money to spend, such as in the so-called Marshall Plan for Western Europe and no shortage of propaganda to dispense about freedom but they were reluctant to expend themselves for their expressed ideals. A fatal flaw.

  Clearly Communism was the inexorable future, exactly as Marx had said. This had proven to be a system with the strength and the ability to sacrifice itself for its ideals. That was the kind of system that would gain and keep power. Now the question seemed to be, who would lead the socialist nations to the future, the Soviet Union or Mao’s China?

  In the back seat of his Chaika,2 Ivanov organized his notes and prepared his briefing materials. The Western alliances, particularly SEATO, were essentially emasculated in the face of Soviet naval positional superiority. American naval forces in the region were unquestionably large and capable, particularly in their ability to move aircraft carrier battle groups far from their bases in the Philippines and Japan but they were too scattered and too far away to influence Soviet naval moves in Asia quickly. The estimates put together by the Committee’s naval experts assessed American response times to be approximately one to two weeks for carrier battle groups to arrive in the Southeast Asian area. The American Polaris ballistic nuclear missiles carried in their submarines were a significant capability and an ever-present threat but they were essentially useless without a clear will to use them.

  The question he had to answer for the assembled members of the highest organs of Soviet power was whether the United States and its allies would intervene in the planned operation to seize and subdue the People’s Republic of China.

  The Maoist clique had become a grave danger to the progress of socialism and the schism that had developed had grown from an embarrassment and a wasteful diffusion of power to an increasingly dangerous focus of conflict within the communist movement. China had formerly devoted most of its efforts to campaigns against its own people but lately China had refocused its propaganda against Moscow and it was only a matter of time before greater confrontations would begin. The time to decide the direction for the Socialist world and to eliminate the growing distraction of Mao and his perversion of communist doctrine was now.

  The Soviet leadership had decided to strike the head of the snake now, to drive across the Mongolian frontier and use their assembled combined arms armies to surge rapidly south to split and disorganize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and isolate and seize the Chinese capital, Peking. To do this, the Soviets would need quietly to move large forces from their positions in the West opposite the NATO armies and to take those forces and all of their supporting equipment and munitions the thousands of miles to the Chinese frontier without being detected.

  The Chinese had one really massive weapon to confront the Soviet Forces: inexhaustible supplies of fighting men.3 The three advantages that the Soviets had to offset the Chinese manpower were modern, well-equipped maneuver forces, allies surrounding China (India, Vietnam, North Korea) and large stocks of tactical nuclear and chemical weapons. The first advantage would provide the necessary upper hand with the Chinese forces if surprise were maintained. The second would give the Soviets contingencies if the initial phase did not go as well as planned (plus some potential for alternate avenues of attack and support). The last advantage of special weapons would have to be employed if the situation turned somehow to favoring the Chinese and they were able to bring their enormous advantage in manpower to bear.

  Would the Americans use this opportunity to strike an Eastern Europe that had been weakened to support the Chinese operations? Would the Americans use their organs of intelligence to let the Chinese know what the Soviet forces were about to do? Would the Americans and their allies assist China to deepen the wedge between the socialist camps? These were the serious questions that faced the Soviet leadership as the armies detrained along the Amur River in the Mongolian wasteland.

  The stage in the Great Hall of the Kremlin was framed with a huge bas-relief of stylized workers reaching upward with massive hammer and sickle. This imposing display made Ivanov feel small and insignificant as he approached the podium before the assembled leadership of the greatest power on earth. When he opened his notes and his first transparency was displayed on a giant screen, Ivanov forgot his initial discomfort and focused on the substance of his briefing: the Americans would not interfere. Through slide after slide, he laid out the rationale for his conclusions. The Americans were irresolute, unprepared, and comfortable. The Americans would view the internecine war between the Soviet Union and China as a potentially advantageous event in which two enemies would bloody themselves without American losses. Since America did not have any contacts with the Chinese regime, it was unlikely that America would reveal the Soviet intent to the Chinese if they discovered it. The Americans and their allies were not positioned to interfere and could not get into position in time. The NATO forces in the West were unlikely to attack when the main Soviet armies were moved because of Western qualms against initiating attacks and the lack of unity among the allies for this type of action. They would certainly fear the strong resistance that the remaining Warsaw Pact forces, augmented with tactical nuclear and chemical weapons, could provide. Lastly, the American strategic nuclear “deterrence” forces were useless to prevent Soviet action, since that threat was neatly counterbalanced by equal or greater Soviet capabilities. The West, with the United States at the center, was neatly stalemated.

  At the end of his presentation, Ivanov was startled to hear applause and looked up from the podium to see hundreds standing and clapping. The die was cast.

  China was not unaware of the proximity of greater action by its Soviet neighbor. Chairman Mao had directed the Chinese people’s and the Party’s attention to the revisionist and imperialist tendencies of the Brezhnev–Kosygin government while deploying the PLA in greater numbers in the most likely paths of intervention. All the same, while his intelligence agencies detected greater numbers of Soviet troops moving towards the border, the most likely reason seemed to be to impose the usual Soviet dictates with a larger force to back them up. Mao still had work to do to eliminate the fractious elements within his own government to assure the continuation of his own vision for a socialist future. His vision was fixed on regenerating China’s revolutionary zeal by eliminating his internal opposition and once that process was complete, driving across the Taiwan Straits to eliminate the Kuomintang traitors once and for all.

  Forward!

  “We shall not conceal it: watching all these maneuvers by the Chinese leadership, we, like all the Marxist-Leninists of the world, are justifiably alarmed at the dangerous path along which the Chinese leaders are dragging their great country.”

  M.S. Suslov, to the Plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee, February 14, 19644

  Thus it was, that on May 13, 1968, the massive Soviet attacks along three fronts into China stunned China and the whole world.

  The initial portions of the Soviet attack went together like the parts of a fine Swiss watch. The critical mountain passes were secured by parachute reconnaissance or helicopter-borne battalions and
the PLA security forces were overrun or bypassed as if they were not even there. The main portion of the attack used the doctrine that had served the Red Army so well during the latter half of the Great Patriotic War. Armored forces closely supported by the frontal air forces and heavy barrages of divisional artillery crushed the Chinese forces that stood in their way. The Pacific Front had the heaviest going, from its attack jump-off positions out of Vladivostok, driving through difficult and canalized terrain through Changchun then seizing the critical road and communications hub at Fushun/Mukden. The Central Front drove the long way from its staging areas at Ulaanbaator in the Mongolian People’s Republic, south-southeast along the main railroad like a dagger across the deserts towards Peking. The Western Front started out from Frunze in the Kirghiz Socialist Republic and followed the path of the ancient Silk Road, driving straight east past Alma-Ata virtually unopposed for hundreds of miles as it headed for the “back door” to the central areas of China.

  The plan was simple, straightforward and quintessentially Soviet: pin the PLA in position, defeat the forces in detail, use masses of supporting arms to find or make an opening to move to the next pockets of resistance. Using these three forces to drive individually towards Peking ensured that one or all would trap the Chinese leadership in place for a quick and decisive defeat of Mao and his clique. Once Peking had been taken and the troublesome Chinese government was removed, Moscow had little doubt that for all intents and purposes, the war would be over. With a new and more cooperative socialist China, the conflict with the capitalist powers could resume apace from a single, unified communist family.

  In war, no operational plan, no matter how well thought-out or capably carried out, survives its first contact with the enemy unaltered. This operation was no exception to this rule. The People’s Liberation Army was aware of its imbalance vis-à-vis the Red Army and had long ago determined that the best way to deal with that imbalance was through trading distance for time, then bleeding their invaders through a thousand cuts. The Pacific Front force succeeded in securing the Shenyang road junctions but found itself slowed and ambushed through the tough mountainous terrain to the southwest. The size advantages of a larger force can be negated and even overturned if that force has to push through single-lane roads and steep canyons. The PLA commanders in this sector used a combination of cunningly conceived artillery ambushes and mined hillsides to make the Soviets pay for every yard of ground gained. The onset of heavy spring rains augmented the efforts of the Chinese defenders and caused the momentum to bog and then disappear as armor-heavy forces dealt with obstacle after obstacle.

  The Central Front force ran into less opposition from the PLA but was bogged down nonetheless by the difficult ground it had chosen as its axis of advance. The Mongolian deserts are some of the most barren and difficult pieces of ground on earth, and vehicles, even good military vehicles, do not hold up well over long distances over that kind of ground. Tracked vehicles had to rely on wheeled transporters to carry them for the extended distances (since tracked vehicles use large amounts of fuel and break down frequently on long road marches) but the primitive roads would not support the great numbers of wheeled vehicles that were required. The advance slowed every time the roads were blocked by broken down or mired vehicles and new routes had to be made.

  Slowed vehicles that bunch up around an obstacle in open areas have a special nightmare—air attacks. The pilots of China’s Peoples’ Liberation Air Force (PLAF) were able to break through the Soviet air cover as the ground forces penetrated deeper into Chinese Mongolia and they wrought havoc on the massed vehicles spread out and stopped in the open desert. Columns of black smoke marked the places where the PLAF had gotten through, guiding the next waves in against more of the columns.

  The inability of the Soviets to overcome these obstacles was rooted in another factor—the lack of operational experience in the forces. The rates of advance on the Pacific and Central Fronts should have been as fast or faster than their predecessors over these same routes in 1945 during the August Storm campaign against the Japanese. The difference was that the Red Army of 1945 had extensive combat experience, seasoned and talented commanders, and efficient staffs. The Red Army of 1968 was a peacetime force, largely made up of recently mobilized reserve divisions from Central Asia, Siberia, and the Far East, with only a small portion from the cutting edge of divisions from the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG). The peacetime Soviet forces had an enormous amount of dead wood in their upper officer ranks, the product of the Soviet system’s relentless pull towards mediocrity. And it showed.

  Combat drills designed for the well-metalled roads and gentle fields of Western Europe were a poor fit for this new theater of mountains, defiles, wild forests, and swamps. The enemy was also not the one around which Soviet combat doctrine had been designed. The skills of the Chinese infantry in this environment, on the other hand, were a perfect fit. The techniques of close combat, ambush, camouflage, and deception were employed in terrain which was ideal to hide masses of their stoic and relentless infantry. The Chinese learned quickly that massing large numbers for an attack was suicidal, since they would be struck by overwhelming Soviet artillery and air strikes. Instead, the Chinese commanders learned to infiltrate their forces into positions, then concentrate them quickly for a surprise attack, then melt away quickly to strike again. These tactics allowed them to bleed and stall the Soviet advance while other forces preyed upon the extending Soviet lines of communication. The end result was a deadly parity without a decisive outcome and at a great cost in blood.

  Of the three forces, the Western Front had relatively smooth sailing. No appreciable organized opposition, good rates of advance, and no casualties to speak of. It was moving through sparsely settled areas with few military forces. The few that were in the area pulled back and out of the way, monitoring the progress of the Soviet columns but not providing any great obstacles. The only enemy the Western Front faced was time. The long distances took time to overcome and Moscow’s timetable required fast victory and fast resolution before their opponents in the capitalist world took advantage of the USSR’s distraction with China.

  The Soviet Navy was doing the best of all and, from its first contact with the Chinese Navy, it made short work of the minesweepers and coastal patrol craft it encountered.5 The naval leadership eagerly sought a greater role and recommended an amphibious landing in the vicinity of Shanghai. This idea was considered briefly but the armed forces staff was getting too occupied with the rapidly expanding problems of the fronts.

  The rest of the world was watching. Most of the United Nations called for immediate cessation of aggression but Moscow and its satellites blocked any resolutions that called for their withdrawal. The United States’ and its allies’ first reaction was as Ivanov had predicted, to view the Sino–Soviet war as an internecine squabble that had gotten ugly but could also have benefits. The biggest dangers for the NATO and SEATO allies were the greater power that the Soviet Union would have if it were successful in its conquest of China and the potential for this war to overflow to the rest of the world. There were debates in the US Congress and the respective parliaments of its allies, there were increases in defense spending, and there were increased deployments of forces to Germany and Japan but in the main, Ivanov was accurate as always. The Americans and their allies would not interfere.

  The war continued for several months without taking Peking or even getting much closer. The main mass of the PLA had been brought to bear against the three Soviet axes and the fight had devolved into slow and deadly attrition as summer reached its full heat. Casualties were heavier than anticipated but the Chinese were in a better position to sustain them. They had the interior lines of communication to bring up massive replacements. They also had much greater numbers to call from. The Soviet forces were being bled steadily as they tried to find openings to pursue a mobile war where they could triumph. Each new opening led to another ambush, which led to yet another static front and
yet more punishing casualties. Because the distances were so great, Soviet Frontal Aviation squadrons could not remain on station very long and when the skies were empty of Soviet aircraft, the planes of the PLAF were raking the Soviet positions with bombs and rockets.

  As the weeks dragged into months and the conclusion of the war became less certain, and the pressure of the long exposure to the possible actions of the capitalists started to weigh in, the Soviet leadership took the direction that they had wanted to avoid but could no longer do so. The front commanders received the code word that they had been begging for, the word that authorized them to begin to employ chemical weapons and tactical nuclear weapons. The first nuclear attacks were delivered using FROG6 tactical rockets against frontline PLA formations while the rear support areas were attacked with persistent nerve agents using aircraft spraying methods. The Chinese forces were staggered by these attacks and the Soviets were able to exploit the devastation they caused to gain significant ground, for a short while. The leadership of the Chinese forces did not hesitate to give their front-line commanders the clearance to begin their own nuclear attacks on Soviet forces. The door had been opened and the war had entered a new and more desperate phase.

  As the Chinese and the Soviets traded 10-kiloton strikes,7 against each other, the world began to suffer along with the combatants. In each nuclear blast, the products of the explosion, including the irradiated debris from the ground, soared upward to the highest reaches of the atmosphere. When it reached those altitudes, the radioactive isotopes of iodine, strontium and americium, and bits of remaining fissile material circulated and spread over every square mile of the Earth’s surface. Throughout the world, high altitude sampling aircraft began to sense the presence of these deadly products, confirming what the seismic readings had been telling the scientists since the first moment those weapons had been fired: the war had begun to be a nuclear war. The particles settled to the Earth with the rains and where they touched, they were ingested by plants and animals and humans. For tens of millions of people, many completely innocent of the war or the development of atomic weapons or any blame at all, their lives were brutally shortened by the falling particles from someone else’s fight. Where the nations of the UN had been disturbed by the events of the last several months, genuine panic was spreading. Even nations that had been supporting one or the other side were calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities. It was too late. The casualties had been too catastrophic, the losses too grave, and complete victory only seemed to require one more good strike. The Soviet government sent orders to the Strategic Rocket Forces to prepare to target the major cities of China for a knockout blow. The same orders were communicated at nearly the same time to PLAF bomber forces to plan an attempt for a long-range one-way attack against their hated enemies in Moscow.