DIPLOMACY of POWER Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument t STEPHEN S. KAPLAN with MICHEL TATU THOMAS W. ROBINSON WILLIAM ZIMMERMAN DONALD S. ZAGORIA and JANET D. ZAGORIA PAUL JABBER and ROMAN KOLKOWICZ ALVIN Z. RUBINSTEIN DAVID K. HALL COLIN LEGUM THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION Washington, D.C. :j,; ;::,t',: ~ ~ URiS LiBRARY \ \" ~ .' :, *.. Ctn'di!A·~":;i'·~'~13.'. a:I=R 11 1982 Copyright© 1981 by TO MY FAMILY THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 1775 Massachusetts Avenue. N.W.• Washington. D.C. 20036 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: Kaplan, Stephen S Diplomacy of power. Bibliography: p, Includes index. I. tRussia-Armed Forces-History-20lh century. 2. Russia-Foreign relations--1945- 3. Russia­ Military policy. 4. World politics-1945­ I. Title. UA770.K28 327.1'17'0947 80-25006 ISBN 0-8157-4824-8 ISBN 0-81 57-4823-X (pbk.) 9 8 7 6 543 2 1 '\\) , ..... i , ,! :" :' U' ~-, .J' .' " 11• Ji : ,1t, 1;,.i1U"· 1. V II ':'\ 1ASl"1{ru! :',1 ,,,.,tollA ~"71111•.. ~L;!~~.· \. Diplomacy of Power THE SINO-SOVIET BORDER CONFLICT 273 rever, was the decision to station strong military units on maneuvers in particular caused the Chinese to transfer additional, though )iI, a deployment begun sometime after the signing of the still marginal, troops and equipment to Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. iefense pact in January 1966 and shifted into high gear in Last, increased patrolling by both sides and the exigencies of the Cultural vember 1967 several divisions, armed with tanks and mis­ Revolution caused rising tension all along the border. Although by early :cupying permanent bases in Mongolia. 1969 the impending end of the Cultural.Revolution promised to subtract mer of 1968 the Russians held their first large maneuvers in a disruptive and potentially dangerous element, the Soviet buildup more :I completed a rail line between Chita, a major Soviet mili­ than offset that possibility and probably made the Chinese fear the future. d Choibalsan, Mongolia's second largest city, where a new ~as established. Soviet strength inside Mongolia was esti­ iivisions, including one tank division. The magnitude of this The March 1969 Military Clashes on the Ussurill t the balance of power between the two states' forces. The heir best to redeploy their own forces in response. After the The many incidents along the border after early 1969 may be divided )Uan maneuvers, several Chinese divisions were redeployed into the very small-but important-group whose immediate cause prob­ Mongolian border and significant numbers of artillery pieces ably can be traced to Chinese military initiatives and the much larger ~ed from the Fukien region. Finally, with the Cultural Revo­ group that available evidence indicates were due to Soviet a'ction. There g to a close, the Chinese began a..gain to stress the importance are little data on most of those incidents after the first two in March 1969, ::1:ion and Construction Corps. tn all, the Chinese increased which is unfortunate, since there is a fundamental difference between ty in the northeast and in Inner Mongolia by four or five those two and most of the subsequent occurrences. Whereas the March 2 king the total forty in both areas, as against the thirty-five or incident seems, on balance, to have been perpetrated by the Chinese and .Si08S in the traditional orientation. The Chinese also tight­ the March 15 incident by the Soviet army to punish the Chinese for the rder security in response to similar Soviet moves. 10 earlier "transgression," almost all subsequent actions were Soviet-initiated lusions emerge from this analysis of comparative border activities designed to support concurrent diplomatic initiatives, to test )re 1969. First, for long periods a rough balance of forces Chinese military reaction, or to pin the Chinese back during the period military regions on the Sino-Soviet border, trading Chinese of Soviet military buildup. These later incidents have been relatively nu­ leriority for Soviet equipment and mobility advantages, and merous and show the character of deliberate Soviet use of force. Yet since nese troop concentrations in Manchuria with Soviet defense the data necessary to draw firm conclusions about the nature of those Ie Arnur and in Central Asia. Second, the balance changed incidents is lacking, I shall concentrate on only the first two Sino-Soviet when the Soviet Union began to improve the quality and, clashes, presuming that they have enough in common with the rest to t, the quantity of its forces. Third, the balance seems to have permit extrapolation. I will also examine the imbalance and the uneven y upset by the movement after 1966 of Soviet troops and pace of the respective Soviet and Chinese military buildups and related o Mongolia and close to the Sino-Mongolian border. Soviet foreign policy activities to judge the wider effects of the Soviet use of rk Times, December 11,1966; Washington Post, December 11, 1966; force after March 1969. a, January 11, February 15, and March 10, 1967; New York Times, On March 2 a skirmish took place at Damansky Island between Soviet 7; Krasnaya Zvez.da, July 31,1968; Dal'n;y Vostok, no. 1, 1968; arti­ and Chinese frontier formations. More than thirty Soviet border guards 1 Salisbury, New York Times, January 3, 1969; Novosti Mongoli, and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers were killed or wounded. 967; Los Angeles Times, july 10, 1969; New York Times, May 24, -SM, "Military Affairs of Communist China, 1968," Tsu Kuo, no. 59 Tension all along the border rose quickly and both armies increased their ,pp. 20-36, which quotes Sing-tao Jih-pao, August 3 (p. 2), October . state of readiness. On March 15 at the same location there was a second, ~mber 9 (p. 3), 1968; Communist China 1967 (Kowloon: Union res), pp. 230-31; Japan Times (Tokyo), March 9,1967; The Econo­ 11. This section is based on Robinson, ''The Sino-Soviet Border Dispute," pp. 1969; and Le Monde, April 14, 1969. 1187-90. 274 Diplomacy 01 Power THE SINO-SOVIET BORDER CONFLICT 275 larger clash with greater loss of life. Whereas the first battle had lasted south and the other just north of the island. The southern post had the two hours, the second took nine hours. Both sides used heavy weapons. disadvantage that its line of sight did not include the island itself (al­ The Chinese reportedly lost several hundred men, the Russians an un­ though the river-arm and the Chinese bank could be seen) and thus on­ specified number. Sino-Soviet relations entered a new and dangerous the-spot,patrolling was necessary to determine Chinese presence on the stage. Incidents, if not actual military clashes, began to be reported all island. The Chinese border post, named Kung-szu after the local Chinese along the border and lasted until the famous September meeting at the settlement, was located on a hillock directly across from the island. Peking airport between Premiers Chou En-Iai and Aleksei Kosygin. On the night of March 1-2, a mixed group of about three hundred Damansky Island is in the Ussuri River, which forms the boundary Chinese frontier guards and regular soldiers dressed in white camouflage between the Soviet Union and China, about 180 miles southwest of crossed the ice from the Chinese bank to Damansky Island, dug foxholes Khabarovsk. The Chinese claim the island was once a part of the Chinese in a wooded area overlooking the southernmost extremity, laid telephone bank, became separated by erosion of the river, and during low water in wire to the command post on the Chinese bank, and lay down for the late summer can be reached on foot from the Chinese shore. The main night on straw mats. Sometime early in the morning, the duty man at the channel of the Ussuri passes to the east of the island. The river at this Soviet outpost south of the island reported activity on the Chinese bank. point is wide and the river-arm (as the Chinese call it) or the channel Around 11 :00 a.m. a group of twenty or thirty armed Chinese were seen (the Soviet term) appears to be nearly as wide, and may be as deep at moving toward the island, shouting Maoist slogans as they went. The high water, as tye channel on the east. From the location of navigation Soviet outpost commander, Strelnikov, and an undetermined number of markers on the two shores and the curvature of the river, ships appear to his subordinates set off for the southern extremity of the island in two traverse the eastern channel. The island itself is uninhabited, although armored personnel carriers, a truck, and a command car. Arriving on the Chinese fishermen used it for drying their nets and both nations have done island (or perhaps remaining on the ice covering the river-arm west of some logging on it. About one mile in length and one-third mile wide, it is the island) a few minutes later, Strelnikov and seven or eight others dis­ flooded during the spring thaw. The island is largely wooded, with some mounted and moved out to warn the oncoming Chinese, as they had open areas, and rises to twenty feet above the water. There is extensive several times previously. Following a procedure developed for such occa­ marshland on the Soviet side of the river, which in winter forces Russian sions, the Russians strapped their automatic rifles to their chests (reports vehicles to detour about two miles before they can move onto the ice differ: some say they left their weapons behind) and linked arms to pre­ toward the island. In March 1969 the river was frozen nearly solid, and ~nt the Chinese from passing.