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Sino-Soviet Relations in the 1990s
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15829 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1989 |
2,854 Words |
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Herbert J. Ellison
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Deng Xiaoping's recent announcement of a summit meeting with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 signals a further step in Sino-Soviet reconciliation, a process under way for about six years but infused by Gorbachev with a new dynamism for the past three years.
The relationship is already greatly changed. Only a decade ago, China sought security cooperation with Japan and the United States against Soviet military encirclement extending from Mongolia and the Sino-Soviet border to Afghanistan and Vietnam. Japan began rearming in earnest--perceiving a growing threat to its national security--and the United States was poised for a vast rebuilding of its regional military power, which had declined after the Vietnam War.
The Soviet Union's enormous buildup of its Asian land, naval, air, and strategic forces had resulted in growing defensive cooperation among the threatened Asian countries and its nearly complete diplomatic isolation. The Soviets were described as "as Asian power but not a power in Asia," a state with huge regional military power but lacking constructive intercourse with the area's dynamic political and economic currents.
China is the central focus of sweeping changes in Soviet East Asian policy, and for good reason. A hostile China had presented major challenges: a threat to Soviet security in central Asia and the Far East, a major block to the expansion of Soviet East Asian power, and hostile competition to Soviet leadership within world communism. Hence, the eager pursuit of reconciliation with China followed the death of Mao in 1976. Mao had heretofore been the main obstacle in improved Sino-Soviet relations.
But until the early 1980s, the effort was mostly unsuccessful. The dethronement of Maoist ideology by the new Chinese leadership removed a major source of conflict, but other major differences remained. The Chinese insisted that the Soviets reduce their regional military power and modify their political and military role in territories under their influence along the Chinese border, from Indochina to Afghanistan and inner Asia. They also demanded that the Soviets respect the rights and independence of fellow communist parties and states, abandoning their practice of political and military intervention, whether under the Brezhnev Doctrine or another pretext.
Before Gorbachev, there was no convincing evidence of such changes; however, since spring 1985, Gorbachev has introduced many new policies and has begun to forge a new relationship with China. Some questions are: What is the relationship today, what can it become in the future, and what will be its implications for East Asia and the world? But these questions require a look at the tremendous legacy of conflict faced by Soviet and Chinese leaders.
Conflict in Perspective
It is impressive to recall the length of the Sino-Soviet conflict--nearly a quarter of a century from its beginnings in the late fifties--and how bitter, disappointing and costly it was for both sides. The Soviets blamed Mao, describing him as a left-wing fanatic whose utopian revolutionism ignored the perils of international relations in the nuclear age, and whose dream of building communism on the foundation of China's impoverished rural communes led to "barracks
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