per-
ceptions
of Chinese hostility and prolonged U.
Revolution and War_nodrm
S.
diplomats in Shenyang (Mukden) in November 1948, but Acheson had downplayed such incidents as part of the normal disorder accompanying a revolution.
In June 1949, however, Mao announced that the threat from U.
S.
imperialism gave China no choice but to "lean to one side," and China and the Soviet Union signed!
a treaty of alliance in January 1950.
164 This development, which discredited!
the earlier hope that Chinese nationalism would be a stronger force than Communist solidarity, strengthened the case for a heightened U.
S.
commit- ment in the region.
165 The Communist victory in China also spawned grow- ing fears of revolutionary contagion throughout Asia; according to the CIA,
"the urgent question of 1950 [was] whether Soviet-oriented, China-based communism can continue to identify itself with nationalism, exploit eco- nomic privations and anti-Western sentiment, and sweep into power by one means or another elsewhere in Asia. "166
To be sure, it is unlikely that the United States and revolutionary China would have become close allies in the absence of these misperceptions. Mao faced a basic strategic dilemma: given his belief that the PRC needed Soviet aid and protection, it was essential that he convince Stalin that China would be a reliabUe ally. Although Mao and other CCP leaders wanted recognition from (and trade with) the United States and its allies, overt efforts to achieve
this goal would only have fed Stalin's suspicions and jeopardized the al- liance. By fthe same logic, Chinese efforts to reassure Moscow merely rein- forced U. S. fears and impeded recognition. Thus, the deterioration of Sino-American relations was partly due to the logic of bipolarity, which forced Mao to choose between the two camps. 167
At the same time, there was more than structural forces at play. Both sides inflated the other's hostility and let slip an opportunity to forge a less acri- monious relationship. In treating the CCP solely as a Soviet puppet, the United States missed a chance to minimize Soviet influence in Asia. By viewing the United States as a rapacious imperialist power, the PRC was forced to rely more heavily on the Soviet Union and was denied potentially beneficial trade relations. Thus, even if close relations were not a realistic
164 See Tucker, Patterns in the Dust, 44; Mao, Selected Works, 4:41 1-2. 4; and Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, chap. 3?
165 Pressure to bring Taiwan within the U. S. security umbrella increased throughout the spring, and the commander of U. S. forces in the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur, warned that "the strategic interests of the United States will be in serious jeopardy if [Taiwan] is allowed to be dominated by a power hostile to the United States. " See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 1 56; Gaddis, Long Peace, So-87; and Stueck, Road to Confrontation, 14fr50.
166 Quoted iln Leffler, Preponderance ofPower, 337-38; and see also Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 45, 117.
167 See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 102.
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? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
possibility in the aftermath of the revolution, the exaggerated suspicions that had emerged by 1950 had very real costs. 168
The Korean War
The same dynamics that fueled the Sino-American spiral helped bring the two states into the Korean War, and this unexpected clash offers another ex- ample of the effects of revolutions on perceptions of hostility and on opti- mism about the use of force. 169 The conflict also hardened each state's image of the other and helped keep Sino-American relations in a deep freeze for nearly two decades.
MutualMisperceptions. PriortotheNorthKoreanattack,U. S. policymak- ers believed that Communist military expansion in Asia was unlikely. The invasion seemed to discredit this view completely, and Truman rushed U. S. troops to South Korea under the auspices of the United Nations and sent the U. S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Straits in order to deter an assault on Tai- wan. 170 American intervention soon turned the tide and the UN forces crossed the thirty-eighth parallel in October and headed north to eliminate the Communist government and. reunify the country.
The rapid UN advance raised Chinese perceptions of threat to new heights and prompted extensive military preparations. 171 Truman's decision to inter- pose the Seventh Fleet between Taiwan and the mainland forced Mao to abandon his dream of unifying China under Communist auspices, and Mao now saw U. S. involvement in Korea as "the first step in the whole U. S. Asian scheme of aggression. " Even if the United States did not attack China imme- diately, Mao was convinced that Korea would be the staging ground for an
168 Steven Goldstein likens the Sino-American relationship to a Greek tragedy. : "the result of an interactive process in which the leaders of two nations were so severely limited in their perceived policy options that they were unable to explore meaningfully the possible bases of accommodation or respond to open gestures by the other side. " "Sino-American Relations, 1948-1950: Lost Chance or No Chance? " in Harding and Yuan, Sino-American Relations, 12o-21.
1 69 It is worth noting that the North Korean decision to invade (and the Soviet decision to support them) rested on North Korean leader Kim II Sung's erroneous belief that an attack would spark a massive uprising by Communist sympathizers in the south. Thus, the Korean War was caused in part by the (misguided) belief that the "revolution" in the north would be easy to export, consistent with my theory. See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 135? 141-44?
170 On January 5, 1950, Truman had declared that "the United States Government will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China [and] . . . will not provide military aid or advice to Chinese forces on [Taiwan]. " Text in Roderick MacFarqua- har, ed. , Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971 (New York: Praeger, 1972), 70.
171 See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 174; Jonathan D. Pollock, "The Ko- rean War and Sino-American Relations," in Harding and Yuan, Sino-American Relations, 215-17; and Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 9? 1.
? ? Revolution and War
inevitable imperialist invasion. This threat would force the PRC to maintain large, costly defenses along the Sino-Korean border, and Chinese officials ex- pressed the fear that the reunification of Korea would encourage "reac- tionary forces" and "make other states shift sides towards the American imperialists. "172 U. S. policy thus threatened Mao's entire revolutionary strat- egy, and he concluded that it was necessary to demonstrate China's ability to thwart a U. S. attack. Despite the obvious costs and risks, therefore, Mao de-
cided that China's long-term security required it to enter the war. 173
Sadly, this decision was based on a fundamental misreading of U. S. ob- jectives. U. S. leaders had no intention of invading China and tried to reas- sure the PRC that the United Nations armies were not a threat. 174 Unfortunately, because U. S. leaders had reversed their earlier pledge not to protect Taiwan and U. S. spokesmen had previously declared that the UN forces would not cross the thirty-eighth parallel, Chinese officials dis- counted these assurances and remained convinced that the occupation of Korea was the beginning of a coordinated imperialist assault. 175
m As Mao put it, "If we do not send troops [to Korea], the reactionaries at home and abroad would be swollen with arrogance. " See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Part- ners, t8t; Thomas J. Christensen, "Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace," In- ternational Security 17, no. 1 (1992), esp. 136; Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 96-97; and Pollock, "Korean War and Sino-American Relations," 221-22; and Michael H. Hunt, "Bei- jing and the Korean Crisis," Political Science Quarterly 107, no. 3 (1992).
173 AstheChill\esepressproclaimedinNovember,"OnlyifweresistcanAmericanimperi- alists be taught a lesson, and can the issues of Korea, liberation, and the independence of other areas be settled on the basis of justice and the will of the people. " Quoted in Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 106-107. According to Jonathan Pollock, "internationalist obligations may have served as a principal justification for Chinese actions, but long-term se- curity was uppermost in Mao's calculations. " See his "Korean War and Sino-American Rela- tions," 221.
174 U. S. policy makers considered retaliating against Chinese territory in the event of Chi- nese intervention but did not intend to attack if the PRC stayed out. See Foot, Wrong War, 82-83. The U. S. did drop propaganda leaflets and parachuted GMD agents into the mainland during this period. Although these efforts were neither extensive nor effective, they un- doubtedly reinforced Beijing's perceptions of threat. See William M. Leary, Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIACovert Operations in Asia (University: University ofAlabama Press, 1984), 127-43?
175 Zhou En-lai later recalled, "We saw through [the American] tricks. . . . Nehru told me that the [UN forces] would stop 40 miles short of the Yalu River. . . . Obviously, this was the second time [for them] to fool us. If we did nothing, the . . . enemy would surely continue its advance and would devise a second scheme (against China]. " In November, a Peoples' Daily editorial warned! , "The mouthpieces of the American imperialists are still spreading the smokescreen of guaranteeing that MacArthur's troops . . . will not push beyond the border of Korea. However, in light ofthe experience afforded hy history, such [a] statement is in fact a pre- diction that U. S. aggressors will push beyond the border of Korea. " Quoted in Goncharov, Lewis, and Litai, Uncertain Partners, 193--94; and Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang, C h i n a u n d e r T h r e a ? : Th e P o l i t i c s of S t r a t e g y a n d D i p l o m a cy ( B a l t i m o r e : J o h n s H o p k i n s U n i v e rs i t y Press, 19&), 57 (emphasis added). See also Zhai Zhihai and Hao Yufan, "China's Decision to Enter the Korean War: History Revisited," China Quarterly 121 (1990); Christensen, "Threats, Assurances," 136; and Foot, Wrong War, 68.
? ? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
The leaders of the PRC were also confident that the risks of war could be controlled and that they would eventually emerge victorious. Despite obvi- ous disadvantages in weaponry and resources, the advocates of interven- tion argued that the Chinese "volunteers" would enjoy numerical superiority, shorter supply lines, and better morale (because they were fighting for a just cause}, and they anticipated a rapid victory over the UN forces. Chinese officials downplayed the significance of U. S. atomic weapons by arguing that such strikes would be costly but not definitive, and suggested that in the worst case, the PRC could always return to the
strategy of "protracted war" that had defeated Japan. 176 Thus, China's deci- sion for war reflected the by-now familiar combination of insecurity and overconfidence. On the one hand, intervention in Korea was necessary be- cause the extemal threat was severe, but on the other hand, intervention would be successful because China's military forces enjoyed important strategic advantages. 177
U. S. decision making in Korea reveals equally impressive misjudg- ments. 178 Although the invasion was an independent North Korean initia- tive (albeit one taken with the knowledge and approval of the Soviet and Chinese leadership), the Truman administration viewed it as a clear case of Soviet aggression and responded accordingly. 179 At the same time, U. S. leaders believed that the Soviet Union would not risk a world war over Korea and that the PRC would follow Moscow's orders. As a result, they assumed that China would not intervene and ignored Chinese warnings stating that Beijing regarded the advance to the Yalu as an extremely seri-
1 76 Marshal Peng Dehuai argued in favor of intervention by saying, "If China is devas- tated in war, it only means that the Liberation War will last a few years longer. " Quoted in Chen Xiaoliu, "Chinese Policy towards the U. S. , 1949-1955,'' in Harding and Yuan, Sino- Amer(can Relations, 191. Shu Guang Zhang quotes a CCP Politburo estimate that "the war can be limited to Korea and our objective is by all means attainable" and concludes "Chi- nese leaders were confident that their large-scale counteroffensive would not lead to either a military stalemafte or a general war with the United States. " Deterrence and Strategic Cul- ture, 107.
m See Gurtov and Hwang, China u nder Threat, 59-62; and Zhai and Hao, "China's Deci- sion," 107-108.
178 One authoritative review essay argues that "recent scholarship concurs that American policymakers grievously misread Soviet and Chinese intentions with regard to Korea" and concludes that the Truman administration "made a monumental miscalculation of Chinese Communist intentions and capabilities as . . . MacArthur marched to the Yalu. " Robert J. MacMahon, "The Cold War in Asia: Toward a New Synthesis," Diplomatic History 12, no. 3 (1988), )16-17.
179 The definitive analysis of the civil origins of the Korean War is Bruce Cumings, The Ori- gins ofthe Korean War, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981? 1); the best analy- sis of the knowledge and calculations of North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union is Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, chap. 5; and see also Allen Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (New York: Macmillan, 196o).
[}21]
? ? Revolution and War
ous threat. 180 The lack of reliable diplomatic channels forced Zhou En-lai to communicate his warnings via the Indian ambassador, K. M. Panikkar, but as U. S. officials did not regard Panikkar as a reliable source, Acheson concluded that Zhou's warning was "not an authoritative statement of policy. "181 U. S. decision makers also dismissed Chinese capabilities, arguing that China's in- ternal problems would discourage it from taking action and the Red Army would not be a serious obstacle. 182 According to General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U. S. forces in the Far East, "Only 50 I 6o,ooo Chinese troops could be gotten across the Yalu. . . . If the Chinese tried to get down to Py- ongyang, there would be the greatest slaughter. " 183 Thus, both sides saw the other as dangerous but defeatable and held their collision courses. Instead of the easy victories that each expected, however, the conflict ended in an in- conclusive stalemate after two more bloody years of war.
Exiles,Information,andInstability. Severalfamiliarfeaturesofpostrevolu- tionary confrontations were present in this case. First, as suggested earlier, U. S. responses were partly shaped by the influence of GMD exiles and their sympathizers (e. g, the "China lobby"), whose efforts sharpened U. S.
per- ceptions of Chinese hostility and prolonged U. S. support for the GMD, in tum reinforcing Beijing's own sense of insecurity. Second, the lack of reli- able information permitted each side's misperceptions to flourish un- checked. The CCP exaggerated U. S. hostility in part because it did not understand the U. S. political system, while the U. S. misread China's inten- tions and capabilities because it regarded its past actions as having been friendly and could not understand that the CCP held a very different view. 184 The limited contacts between the CCP and the U. S. government
180 Thus, Acheson later asserted, "No possible shred of evidence could have existed in the minds of the Chinese Communist authorities about the [peaceful] intentions of the United Nations. " Quoted in Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature ofInternational Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 205-16.
182 See Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 101-15. U. S. officials underrated Chi- nese capabilities in part because they saw it as an illegitimate Soviet puppet. Truman be- lieved that the PRC regime was "Russian and nothing else," Marshall referred to the Chinese and Russian Communists as "co-religionists," and Dean Rusk believed that Mao's regime was a "colonial Russian government . . . it is not Chinese. " Quoted in Michael Schaller, The United. States and China in the 2oth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 125; and Leffler, Preponderance ofPower, 400.
183 Quoted in Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 104 (emphasis in original). U. S. leaders downplayed the danger of Chinese intervention because they also believed that the CCP was preoccupied with domestic problems, that its army was unfit for conventional war- fare, and that, as Acheson put it, it would be "sheer madness" for China to send troops to Korea when its real threat lay on the border with the Soviet Union. Foot, Wrong War, 8 1 .
184 This contrast is apparent in Mao's harsh reaction to the rosy vision of past U. S. involve- ment in China presented in the State Department White Paper. As he put it, "The 'interna- tional responsibilities' of the l)nited States and its 'traditional policy of friendship' for China are nothing but intervention against China. " See Mao, Selected Works, 4:435.
181 See Chen Xiaoliu, "China's Policy towards the U. S. ," 189 n. 1.
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? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
prior to 1946 only made matters worse, and contacts declined even more as relations eroded. 185 The impact of uncertainty is also apparent in the am- bivalence that afflicted U. S. policy throughout this period; because no one could be sure what Mao and the CCP would do, U. S. policy vacillated be- tween "letting the dust settle" and continuing their support for the GMD. Unfortunately, the CCP tended to see inconsistent U. S. behavior not as a sign of confusion or a response to changing circumstances but as evidence ? of U. S. duplicity. Neither side possessed adequate information about the other's preferences, capabilities, or political constraints, and so both were prone to malign interpretations of the other's actions. 186
In short, the immediate international consequences of the Chinese Revo- lution support the central arguments of this book. The revolution caused a potentially significant shift in the balance of power and encouraged U. S. ef- forts to contain further Communist expansion. This policy led to increased support for the GMD and a corresponding decline in U. S. relations with the CCP, and each side's subsequent actions proceeded to reinforce the other's worst fears. The conflict came to a head in Korea, after the PRC concluded that war was both unavoidable and winnable and the United States dis- counted Chinese warnings and denigrated Chinese military capabilities. Like other postrevolutionary wars, the Sino-American struggle in Korea turned out to be longer and bloodier than either side expected. And it might have been bloodier still, as U. S. policy makers considered escalating the war on several occasions and would probably have done so had the Communist negotiators rejected the final UN armistice proposal in June 1953. 187
Realism and Radicalism: Chinese Foreign Policy, 1953-1960
The subsequent course of Chinese foreign relations illustrates the tension between ideological objectives and the need for security in an anarchic world. Although ideology and domestic politics clearly influenced Chinese foreign-policy decision making, external factors (especially Chinese percep- tions of the balance of threats) were usually more important.
The struggle in Korea convinced Mao that China could best defend itself by standing up to U. S. imperialism, and he tried to compel the United States to end its support for the GMD by shelling the GMD-held islands of Que-
185 Acheson later admitted, "While we had regular diplomatic relations with the National Government and . . . voluminous reports from our representatives in their territories, our di- rect contact with the Communists was limited in the main to the mediation efforts of General Hurley and General Marshall. " China White Paper, xiv.
186 See Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 276-77; and Hunt, "Mao Tse-tung and Accommodation with the United States," 226-3- 3.
187 See Foot, Wrong War, 230, and A Substitutefor Victory: The Politics ofPeacemaking at the Ko- rean Armistice Talks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).
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? Revolution and War
moy and Matsu in 1954 and again in 1958. In response, the United States signed a defense agreement with Taiwan in 1954 and threatened to retaliate (including possibly using nuclear weapons) if China tried to occupy the off- shore islands or Taiwan. 188
These confrontations strengthened the U. S. image of the PRC as a reckless revolutionary power that was even more aggressive and dangerous than the Soviet Union. 189 The United States rebuffed several Chinese attempts to im- prove relations in the mid-1950s (although the two states did begin bilateral discussions at the ambassadorial level in 1955), and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles described Sino-American relations as a "state of semi-warfare" in 1957. 190 China's enthusiastic endorsement of "wars of national liberation" and Mao's seemingly cavalier views on nuclear weapons reinforced the American impression of China as an especially bellicose and irrational foe, and these concerns increased further when China detonated its own nuclear device in 1964. 191 Indeed, the Kennedy administration was sufficiently con- cerned to explore the possibility of a joint U. S. -Soviet preemptive strike
against Chinese nuclear facilities. 192 U. S. fears of Chinese-backed subversion also underlay the Americans' growing involvement in Vietnam, and the vi- olence and xenophobia unleashed during the Cultural Revolution in China merely confirmed the image of the PRC as an irrational and unpredictable adversary. 193
This impression was at best a caricature and at worst extremely mislead- ing. Although its leaders were willing to implement far-reaching and ill- conceived domestic programs such as the Great Leap Forward, China's foreign policy was acutely sensitive to external constraints and its use of
188 See Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, chaps. ? ; Gurtov and Hwang, China under Threat, chap. 3; Jan Kalicki, The Pattern ofSino-American Crises: Political-Military Interac- tions in the 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), chaps. 3, 6, 8; and Allen S. Whiting, "New Light on Mao: Quemoy 1958, Mao's Miscalculations," China Quarterly 62 (1975)?
189 Foot, Wrong War, 27-28.
190 Quoted in Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 239?
191 ForMao'sstatementsaboutnuclearweapons,seeAliceLangleyHsieh,ComunistChina's
Strategy in the Nuclear Era (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall, 1962), 1, 52, 132; and Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 291. On China's nuclear program, see John Wilson JLewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); and Avery Goldstein, "Understanding Nuclear Proliferation: Theoretical Expla- nation and China's National Experience," Security Studies 2, nos. 3-4 (1993).
192 See Chang, Friends and Enemies, chap. 8.
193 In 1966, Assistant Secretary of State William P. Bundy referred to the PRC as "a gov- ernment whose leadership is devoted to the promotion of communism by violent revolu- tion," and Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a congressional hearing that "a country whose behavior is as violent, irascible, unyielding, and hostile as that of Communist China is led by leaders whose view of the world and of life itself is unreal. " See Franz Schurmann and
Orville Schell, eds. , The China Reader, vol. 3: Communist China (New York: Vintage, 1967), 378-79- 508.
? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
force was cautious and restrained. 194 Mao was willing to raise tensions in the Taiwan Straits in order to convince the United States that the PRC could not be intimidated, but he went to some lengths to limit the risks and stayed well clear of the brink. 195 With the exception of Korea and Vietnam (where . Chinese strategic interests were directly involved), Beijing's support for "wars with national liberation" was more rhetorical than real, and Mao stressed that foreign revolutionaries must rely on their own efforts. 196 Simi- larly, Mao's seemingly provocative statements about nuclear weapons were intended primarily to bolster Chinese morale and to convince the United States that China could not be cowed by nuclear threats; significantly, Mao's private remarks were quite prudent, and his public statements became more
moderate as China's nuclear capability increased. 197
China's overriding concern for security was also evident in its sensitivity
to shifts in the global balance of power and its willingness to ignore ideo- logical principles in responding to them. 198 During the 1950s, the PRC saw the United States as its principal threat and chose to "lean to one side" with the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, dissatisfaction with Soviet sup- port led Mao to adopt a neutral position between the two superpowers, while China expanded its ties with Western Europe and Japan and tried to unite the Third World in an "international united front. " The latter effort did not attract many adherents, however, and the onset of the Cultural Revolu- tion in 1966 initiated a brief period of self-imposed isolation. 199
194 See Allen S. Whiting. "The Use of Force in Foreign Policy by the Peoples' Republic of China," A n n a l s of t h e A m er i ca n A c a d e m y of P o l i t i c a l a n d Soci al S c i e n c e 4 0 2 ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 5 5 ? , an d Th e C h i n e s e C a l - culus ofDeterrence: India and Indochina (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975).
195 During the 1954 crisis, Mao prohibited "offensive actions against foreign warships and airplanes," and the Central Military Commission told Chinese troops that they could retali- ate to a U. S. attack only "if this involves no grave risks. " When the GMD evacuated the off- shore island of Dachen in February 1955, the Central Military Commission denied a local commander's request to occupy the island for fear that it would entangle them with U. S. forces. Mao acted cautiously in 1958 as well, rejecting a proposed air strike on Quemoy in Au- gust and ordering his artillery not to fire on U. S. ships. See Shu Guang. Deterrence and Strate- gic Culture, 198, 219, 236-37; and Chang. Friends and Enemies, 72.
197 In 1965, Mao claimed that his calling the atomic bomb a "paper tiger" was "just a figure of speech. " He suggested that a nuclear war "would be a catastrophe for the whole world" and stated, "If one must fight one should confine oneself to conventional weapons. " See Schurmann and Schell, China Reader, 364-65. See also Avery Goldstein, "Robust and Afford- able Security: Some Lesson from the Second-Ranking Powers During the Cold War," Journal ofStrategic Studies 15, no. 4 (1992), 492-{)6, 5oo-503; and Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, 34, 215-18, and app. A.
198 According to A. Doak Barnett, "when security interests have been at stake, Chinese Communist leaders have generally . . . given them priority over other interests, including ide- ological and economic ones. " China and the Major Powers in East Asia (Washington, D. C. : Brookings Institution, 1977), 254-55.
199 See Harry Harding. "China's Changing Roles in the Contemporary World," in Harding. China's Foreign Relations, 186-87; and Armstrong, Revolutionary Diplomacy, 77-90.
? 196 See Van Ness, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy, 72.
? ? ? Revolution and War
By the late 1960s, the growth of Soviet military power in the Far East and a series of border clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops convinced Mao that the main threat was "Soviet hegemonism. "200 Just as the PRC had once "leaned to one side" to balance the perceived threat from the United States, it now turned to the United States to balance the threat from the So- viet Union. The rapprochement became overt after President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing, and given the aura of suspicion that had sur- rounded Sino-American relations since the late 1940s, it would be hard to find a more vivid example of unsentimental realpolitik. Moreover, this shift ? occurred in period when ideology was especially important in shaping pol- icy within China. Thus, although the Sino-Soviet alliance can be seen as the result of either balancing or ideological solidarity, the Sino-American rap- prochement represented strictly the former. Z01
China's willingness to subordinate ideological principles to its security in- terests was evident in other relationships as well. Despite their public com- mitment to "Asian solidarity" and "peaceful coexistence," recurring border disputes and mutual suspicions led to a major deterioration of Sino-Indian re- lations in the late 1950s. The two states eventually fought a brief border war in 1962, and China's forces acted both cautiously and defensively in repelling the Indian challenge. India's subsequent tilt toward the Soviet Union was matched by a de facto alliance between China and Pakistan, despite the lat- ter's nonsocialist character and its close ties to the United States. 202 Similarly, the U. S. withdrawal from Indochina in the early 1970s allowed the long-sup- pressed rivalry between China and Vietnam to reemerge; Vietnam strength- ened its alliance with the Soviet Union while China backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and China and Vietnam eventually fought a brief but intense border war following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979.
In addition to providing evidence of China's willingness to sacrifice prin- ciples to the requirements of balance-of-power politics, these developments can be viewed as part of the gradual process of learning and adaptation. Al- though the United States and China continued to exaggerate each other's hostility after the Korean War, they avoided a direct clash in subsequent crises in part because each had learned that such a war would be costly. 203
200 See Thomas W. Robinson, "The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict," in Stephen S. Kaplan, DiplomacyofPower:SovietArmedForcesasaPoliticalInstrument(Washington,D. C. :Broko ings Institution, 1g81).
202 See Anwar H. Syed, China and Pakistan: Diplomacy ofan Entente Cordiale (Amherst: Univer- sity of Massachusetts Press, 1974), chap. 4; and Ya'acov Vertzberger, The Enduring Entente: Sino- Pakistani Relations, 196o-t980, Washington Papers no. 95 (New York: Praeger, 1983), 15-24.
203 China reportedly suffered over 26o,ooo dead in Korea, while the United States lost around47,00. 0 AwarenessofwhatanotherclashmightcosthelpedkeeptheUnitedStatesout of Indochina in the 1950s, and the fear of Chinese intervention constrained U. S. behavior dur- ing the height of its subsequent involvement there.
201 I am indebted to Avery Goldstein for this insight.
? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
Over time, the PRC gradually evolved from a radical state to a reformist state to a conservative state, and although the CCP remains in power as of this writing, its policies bear little resemblance to the ideals of Marx or Mao, and its foreign policy aims are largely indistinguishable from the goals of other great powers.
The Chinese Revolution fostered intense perceptions of threat with other major powers, based on the shared belief that the other was inherently ag- gressive and that the threat could be reduced or eliminated through the use of force. Over time, however, the impact of these early views faded and the new regime and its neighbors gained a more accurate understanding of their respective interests and capabilities. Despite its revolutionary origins, revolutionary China generally behaved in a restrained and prudent manner after the Korean War. My theory thus receives further support.
Although the comparison is hardly novel, the similarities between the Chinese and Russian experiences are worth noting. Both regimes came to power after a world war, a situation that helped shape their early percep- tions and gave them a "breathing space" in which to consolidate their power. Both fought and won a civil war, faced pressure from hostile imperi- alist powers, and exaggerated their opponents' willingness to attack them directly. Having fought wars shortly after gaining power (though China's involvement in Korea was far more costly than Russia's war with Poland), both states gradually overcame their initial isolation and reemerged as ac- cepted (albeit suspect) players on the world stage. Finally, although both China and Rutssia were willing to compromise their ideological principles in order to preserve their security, neither abandoned these ideals completely, and they continued to interpret world events through the distorting prisms of a revolutionary worldview.
"the urgent question of 1950 [was] whether Soviet-oriented, China-based communism can continue to identify itself with nationalism, exploit eco- nomic privations and anti-Western sentiment, and sweep into power by one means or another elsewhere in Asia. "166
To be sure, it is unlikely that the United States and revolutionary China would have become close allies in the absence of these misperceptions. Mao faced a basic strategic dilemma: given his belief that the PRC needed Soviet aid and protection, it was essential that he convince Stalin that China would be a reliabUe ally. Although Mao and other CCP leaders wanted recognition from (and trade with) the United States and its allies, overt efforts to achieve
this goal would only have fed Stalin's suspicions and jeopardized the al- liance. By fthe same logic, Chinese efforts to reassure Moscow merely rein- forced U. S. fears and impeded recognition. Thus, the deterioration of Sino-American relations was partly due to the logic of bipolarity, which forced Mao to choose between the two camps. 167
At the same time, there was more than structural forces at play. Both sides inflated the other's hostility and let slip an opportunity to forge a less acri- monious relationship. In treating the CCP solely as a Soviet puppet, the United States missed a chance to minimize Soviet influence in Asia. By viewing the United States as a rapacious imperialist power, the PRC was forced to rely more heavily on the Soviet Union and was denied potentially beneficial trade relations. Thus, even if close relations were not a realistic
164 See Tucker, Patterns in the Dust, 44; Mao, Selected Works, 4:41 1-2. 4; and Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, chap. 3?
165 Pressure to bring Taiwan within the U. S. security umbrella increased throughout the spring, and the commander of U. S. forces in the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur, warned that "the strategic interests of the United States will be in serious jeopardy if [Taiwan] is allowed to be dominated by a power hostile to the United States. " See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 1 56; Gaddis, Long Peace, So-87; and Stueck, Road to Confrontation, 14fr50.
166 Quoted iln Leffler, Preponderance ofPower, 337-38; and see also Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 45, 117.
167 See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 102.
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possibility in the aftermath of the revolution, the exaggerated suspicions that had emerged by 1950 had very real costs. 168
The Korean War
The same dynamics that fueled the Sino-American spiral helped bring the two states into the Korean War, and this unexpected clash offers another ex- ample of the effects of revolutions on perceptions of hostility and on opti- mism about the use of force. 169 The conflict also hardened each state's image of the other and helped keep Sino-American relations in a deep freeze for nearly two decades.
MutualMisperceptions. PriortotheNorthKoreanattack,U. S. policymak- ers believed that Communist military expansion in Asia was unlikely. The invasion seemed to discredit this view completely, and Truman rushed U. S. troops to South Korea under the auspices of the United Nations and sent the U. S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Straits in order to deter an assault on Tai- wan. 170 American intervention soon turned the tide and the UN forces crossed the thirty-eighth parallel in October and headed north to eliminate the Communist government and. reunify the country.
The rapid UN advance raised Chinese perceptions of threat to new heights and prompted extensive military preparations. 171 Truman's decision to inter- pose the Seventh Fleet between Taiwan and the mainland forced Mao to abandon his dream of unifying China under Communist auspices, and Mao now saw U. S. involvement in Korea as "the first step in the whole U. S. Asian scheme of aggression. " Even if the United States did not attack China imme- diately, Mao was convinced that Korea would be the staging ground for an
168 Steven Goldstein likens the Sino-American relationship to a Greek tragedy. : "the result of an interactive process in which the leaders of two nations were so severely limited in their perceived policy options that they were unable to explore meaningfully the possible bases of accommodation or respond to open gestures by the other side. " "Sino-American Relations, 1948-1950: Lost Chance or No Chance? " in Harding and Yuan, Sino-American Relations, 12o-21.
1 69 It is worth noting that the North Korean decision to invade (and the Soviet decision to support them) rested on North Korean leader Kim II Sung's erroneous belief that an attack would spark a massive uprising by Communist sympathizers in the south. Thus, the Korean War was caused in part by the (misguided) belief that the "revolution" in the north would be easy to export, consistent with my theory. See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 135? 141-44?
170 On January 5, 1950, Truman had declared that "the United States Government will not pursue a course which will lead to involvement in the civil conflict in China [and] . . . will not provide military aid or advice to Chinese forces on [Taiwan]. " Text in Roderick MacFarqua- har, ed. , Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971 (New York: Praeger, 1972), 70.
171 See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 174; Jonathan D. Pollock, "The Ko- rean War and Sino-American Relations," in Harding and Yuan, Sino-American Relations, 215-17; and Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 9? 1.
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inevitable imperialist invasion. This threat would force the PRC to maintain large, costly defenses along the Sino-Korean border, and Chinese officials ex- pressed the fear that the reunification of Korea would encourage "reac- tionary forces" and "make other states shift sides towards the American imperialists. "172 U. S. policy thus threatened Mao's entire revolutionary strat- egy, and he concluded that it was necessary to demonstrate China's ability to thwart a U. S. attack. Despite the obvious costs and risks, therefore, Mao de-
cided that China's long-term security required it to enter the war. 173
Sadly, this decision was based on a fundamental misreading of U. S. ob- jectives. U. S. leaders had no intention of invading China and tried to reas- sure the PRC that the United Nations armies were not a threat. 174 Unfortunately, because U. S. leaders had reversed their earlier pledge not to protect Taiwan and U. S. spokesmen had previously declared that the UN forces would not cross the thirty-eighth parallel, Chinese officials dis- counted these assurances and remained convinced that the occupation of Korea was the beginning of a coordinated imperialist assault. 175
m As Mao put it, "If we do not send troops [to Korea], the reactionaries at home and abroad would be swollen with arrogance. " See Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Part- ners, t8t; Thomas J. Christensen, "Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace," In- ternational Security 17, no. 1 (1992), esp. 136; Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 96-97; and Pollock, "Korean War and Sino-American Relations," 221-22; and Michael H. Hunt, "Bei- jing and the Korean Crisis," Political Science Quarterly 107, no. 3 (1992).
173 AstheChill\esepressproclaimedinNovember,"OnlyifweresistcanAmericanimperi- alists be taught a lesson, and can the issues of Korea, liberation, and the independence of other areas be settled on the basis of justice and the will of the people. " Quoted in Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 106-107. According to Jonathan Pollock, "internationalist obligations may have served as a principal justification for Chinese actions, but long-term se- curity was uppermost in Mao's calculations. " See his "Korean War and Sino-American Rela- tions," 221.
174 U. S. policy makers considered retaliating against Chinese territory in the event of Chi- nese intervention but did not intend to attack if the PRC stayed out. See Foot, Wrong War, 82-83. The U. S. did drop propaganda leaflets and parachuted GMD agents into the mainland during this period. Although these efforts were neither extensive nor effective, they un- doubtedly reinforced Beijing's perceptions of threat. See William M. Leary, Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIACovert Operations in Asia (University: University ofAlabama Press, 1984), 127-43?
175 Zhou En-lai later recalled, "We saw through [the American] tricks. . . . Nehru told me that the [UN forces] would stop 40 miles short of the Yalu River. . . . Obviously, this was the second time [for them] to fool us. If we did nothing, the . . . enemy would surely continue its advance and would devise a second scheme (against China]. " In November, a Peoples' Daily editorial warned! , "The mouthpieces of the American imperialists are still spreading the smokescreen of guaranteeing that MacArthur's troops . . . will not push beyond the border of Korea. However, in light ofthe experience afforded hy history, such [a] statement is in fact a pre- diction that U. S. aggressors will push beyond the border of Korea. " Quoted in Goncharov, Lewis, and Litai, Uncertain Partners, 193--94; and Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang, C h i n a u n d e r T h r e a ? : Th e P o l i t i c s of S t r a t e g y a n d D i p l o m a cy ( B a l t i m o r e : J o h n s H o p k i n s U n i v e rs i t y Press, 19&), 57 (emphasis added). See also Zhai Zhihai and Hao Yufan, "China's Decision to Enter the Korean War: History Revisited," China Quarterly 121 (1990); Christensen, "Threats, Assurances," 136; and Foot, Wrong War, 68.
? ? ? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
The leaders of the PRC were also confident that the risks of war could be controlled and that they would eventually emerge victorious. Despite obvi- ous disadvantages in weaponry and resources, the advocates of interven- tion argued that the Chinese "volunteers" would enjoy numerical superiority, shorter supply lines, and better morale (because they were fighting for a just cause}, and they anticipated a rapid victory over the UN forces. Chinese officials downplayed the significance of U. S. atomic weapons by arguing that such strikes would be costly but not definitive, and suggested that in the worst case, the PRC could always return to the
strategy of "protracted war" that had defeated Japan. 176 Thus, China's deci- sion for war reflected the by-now familiar combination of insecurity and overconfidence. On the one hand, intervention in Korea was necessary be- cause the extemal threat was severe, but on the other hand, intervention would be successful because China's military forces enjoyed important strategic advantages. 177
U. S. decision making in Korea reveals equally impressive misjudg- ments. 178 Although the invasion was an independent North Korean initia- tive (albeit one taken with the knowledge and approval of the Soviet and Chinese leadership), the Truman administration viewed it as a clear case of Soviet aggression and responded accordingly. 179 At the same time, U. S. leaders believed that the Soviet Union would not risk a world war over Korea and that the PRC would follow Moscow's orders. As a result, they assumed that China would not intervene and ignored Chinese warnings stating that Beijing regarded the advance to the Yalu as an extremely seri-
1 76 Marshal Peng Dehuai argued in favor of intervention by saying, "If China is devas- tated in war, it only means that the Liberation War will last a few years longer. " Quoted in Chen Xiaoliu, "Chinese Policy towards the U. S. , 1949-1955,'' in Harding and Yuan, Sino- Amer(can Relations, 191. Shu Guang Zhang quotes a CCP Politburo estimate that "the war can be limited to Korea and our objective is by all means attainable" and concludes "Chi- nese leaders were confident that their large-scale counteroffensive would not lead to either a military stalemafte or a general war with the United States. " Deterrence and Strategic Cul- ture, 107.
m See Gurtov and Hwang, China u nder Threat, 59-62; and Zhai and Hao, "China's Deci- sion," 107-108.
178 One authoritative review essay argues that "recent scholarship concurs that American policymakers grievously misread Soviet and Chinese intentions with regard to Korea" and concludes that the Truman administration "made a monumental miscalculation of Chinese Communist intentions and capabilities as . . . MacArthur marched to the Yalu. " Robert J. MacMahon, "The Cold War in Asia: Toward a New Synthesis," Diplomatic History 12, no. 3 (1988), )16-17.
179 The definitive analysis of the civil origins of the Korean War is Bruce Cumings, The Ori- gins ofthe Korean War, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981? 1); the best analy- sis of the knowledge and calculations of North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union is Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, chap. 5; and see also Allen Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (New York: Macmillan, 196o).
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ous threat. 180 The lack of reliable diplomatic channels forced Zhou En-lai to communicate his warnings via the Indian ambassador, K. M. Panikkar, but as U. S. officials did not regard Panikkar as a reliable source, Acheson concluded that Zhou's warning was "not an authoritative statement of policy. "181 U. S. decision makers also dismissed Chinese capabilities, arguing that China's in- ternal problems would discourage it from taking action and the Red Army would not be a serious obstacle. 182 According to General Douglas MacArthur, commander of U. S. forces in the Far East, "Only 50 I 6o,ooo Chinese troops could be gotten across the Yalu. . . . If the Chinese tried to get down to Py- ongyang, there would be the greatest slaughter. " 183 Thus, both sides saw the other as dangerous but defeatable and held their collision courses. Instead of the easy victories that each expected, however, the conflict ended in an in- conclusive stalemate after two more bloody years of war.
Exiles,Information,andInstability. Severalfamiliarfeaturesofpostrevolu- tionary confrontations were present in this case. First, as suggested earlier, U. S. responses were partly shaped by the influence of GMD exiles and their sympathizers (e. g, the "China lobby"), whose efforts sharpened U. S.
per- ceptions of Chinese hostility and prolonged U. S. support for the GMD, in tum reinforcing Beijing's own sense of insecurity. Second, the lack of reli- able information permitted each side's misperceptions to flourish un- checked. The CCP exaggerated U. S. hostility in part because it did not understand the U. S. political system, while the U. S. misread China's inten- tions and capabilities because it regarded its past actions as having been friendly and could not understand that the CCP held a very different view. 184 The limited contacts between the CCP and the U. S. government
180 Thus, Acheson later asserted, "No possible shred of evidence could have existed in the minds of the Chinese Communist authorities about the [peaceful] intentions of the United Nations. " Quoted in Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature ofInternational Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 205-16.
182 See Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 101-15. U. S. officials underrated Chi- nese capabilities in part because they saw it as an illegitimate Soviet puppet. Truman be- lieved that the PRC regime was "Russian and nothing else," Marshall referred to the Chinese and Russian Communists as "co-religionists," and Dean Rusk believed that Mao's regime was a "colonial Russian government . . . it is not Chinese. " Quoted in Michael Schaller, The United. States and China in the 2oth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 125; and Leffler, Preponderance ofPower, 400.
183 Quoted in Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 104 (emphasis in original). U. S. leaders downplayed the danger of Chinese intervention because they also believed that the CCP was preoccupied with domestic problems, that its army was unfit for conventional war- fare, and that, as Acheson put it, it would be "sheer madness" for China to send troops to Korea when its real threat lay on the border with the Soviet Union. Foot, Wrong War, 8 1 .
184 This contrast is apparent in Mao's harsh reaction to the rosy vision of past U. S. involve- ment in China presented in the State Department White Paper. As he put it, "The 'interna- tional responsibilities' of the l)nited States and its 'traditional policy of friendship' for China are nothing but intervention against China. " See Mao, Selected Works, 4:435.
181 See Chen Xiaoliu, "China's Policy towards the U. S. ," 189 n. 1.
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prior to 1946 only made matters worse, and contacts declined even more as relations eroded. 185 The impact of uncertainty is also apparent in the am- bivalence that afflicted U. S. policy throughout this period; because no one could be sure what Mao and the CCP would do, U. S. policy vacillated be- tween "letting the dust settle" and continuing their support for the GMD. Unfortunately, the CCP tended to see inconsistent U. S. behavior not as a sign of confusion or a response to changing circumstances but as evidence ? of U. S. duplicity. Neither side possessed adequate information about the other's preferences, capabilities, or political constraints, and so both were prone to malign interpretations of the other's actions. 186
In short, the immediate international consequences of the Chinese Revo- lution support the central arguments of this book. The revolution caused a potentially significant shift in the balance of power and encouraged U. S. ef- forts to contain further Communist expansion. This policy led to increased support for the GMD and a corresponding decline in U. S. relations with the CCP, and each side's subsequent actions proceeded to reinforce the other's worst fears. The conflict came to a head in Korea, after the PRC concluded that war was both unavoidable and winnable and the United States dis- counted Chinese warnings and denigrated Chinese military capabilities. Like other postrevolutionary wars, the Sino-American struggle in Korea turned out to be longer and bloodier than either side expected. And it might have been bloodier still, as U. S. policy makers considered escalating the war on several occasions and would probably have done so had the Communist negotiators rejected the final UN armistice proposal in June 1953. 187
Realism and Radicalism: Chinese Foreign Policy, 1953-1960
The subsequent course of Chinese foreign relations illustrates the tension between ideological objectives and the need for security in an anarchic world. Although ideology and domestic politics clearly influenced Chinese foreign-policy decision making, external factors (especially Chinese percep- tions of the balance of threats) were usually more important.
The struggle in Korea convinced Mao that China could best defend itself by standing up to U. S. imperialism, and he tried to compel the United States to end its support for the GMD by shelling the GMD-held islands of Que-
185 Acheson later admitted, "While we had regular diplomatic relations with the National Government and . . . voluminous reports from our representatives in their territories, our di- rect contact with the Communists was limited in the main to the mediation efforts of General Hurley and General Marshall. " China White Paper, xiv.
186 See Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 276-77; and Hunt, "Mao Tse-tung and Accommodation with the United States," 226-3- 3.
187 See Foot, Wrong War, 230, and A Substitutefor Victory: The Politics ofPeacemaking at the Ko- rean Armistice Talks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).
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moy and Matsu in 1954 and again in 1958. In response, the United States signed a defense agreement with Taiwan in 1954 and threatened to retaliate (including possibly using nuclear weapons) if China tried to occupy the off- shore islands or Taiwan. 188
These confrontations strengthened the U. S. image of the PRC as a reckless revolutionary power that was even more aggressive and dangerous than the Soviet Union. 189 The United States rebuffed several Chinese attempts to im- prove relations in the mid-1950s (although the two states did begin bilateral discussions at the ambassadorial level in 1955), and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles described Sino-American relations as a "state of semi-warfare" in 1957. 190 China's enthusiastic endorsement of "wars of national liberation" and Mao's seemingly cavalier views on nuclear weapons reinforced the American impression of China as an especially bellicose and irrational foe, and these concerns increased further when China detonated its own nuclear device in 1964. 191 Indeed, the Kennedy administration was sufficiently con- cerned to explore the possibility of a joint U. S. -Soviet preemptive strike
against Chinese nuclear facilities. 192 U. S. fears of Chinese-backed subversion also underlay the Americans' growing involvement in Vietnam, and the vi- olence and xenophobia unleashed during the Cultural Revolution in China merely confirmed the image of the PRC as an irrational and unpredictable adversary. 193
This impression was at best a caricature and at worst extremely mislead- ing. Although its leaders were willing to implement far-reaching and ill- conceived domestic programs such as the Great Leap Forward, China's foreign policy was acutely sensitive to external constraints and its use of
188 See Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, chaps. ? ; Gurtov and Hwang, China under Threat, chap. 3; Jan Kalicki, The Pattern ofSino-American Crises: Political-Military Interac- tions in the 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), chaps. 3, 6, 8; and Allen S. Whiting, "New Light on Mao: Quemoy 1958, Mao's Miscalculations," China Quarterly 62 (1975)?
189 Foot, Wrong War, 27-28.
190 Quoted in Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, 239?
191 ForMao'sstatementsaboutnuclearweapons,seeAliceLangleyHsieh,ComunistChina's
Strategy in the Nuclear Era (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice-Hall, 1962), 1, 52, 132; and Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 291. On China's nuclear program, see John Wilson JLewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); and Avery Goldstein, "Understanding Nuclear Proliferation: Theoretical Expla- nation and China's National Experience," Security Studies 2, nos. 3-4 (1993).
192 See Chang, Friends and Enemies, chap. 8.
193 In 1966, Assistant Secretary of State William P. Bundy referred to the PRC as "a gov- ernment whose leadership is devoted to the promotion of communism by violent revolu- tion," and Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a congressional hearing that "a country whose behavior is as violent, irascible, unyielding, and hostile as that of Communist China is led by leaders whose view of the world and of life itself is unreal. " See Franz Schurmann and
Orville Schell, eds. , The China Reader, vol. 3: Communist China (New York: Vintage, 1967), 378-79- 508.
? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
force was cautious and restrained. 194 Mao was willing to raise tensions in the Taiwan Straits in order to convince the United States that the PRC could not be intimidated, but he went to some lengths to limit the risks and stayed well clear of the brink. 195 With the exception of Korea and Vietnam (where . Chinese strategic interests were directly involved), Beijing's support for "wars with national liberation" was more rhetorical than real, and Mao stressed that foreign revolutionaries must rely on their own efforts. 196 Simi- larly, Mao's seemingly provocative statements about nuclear weapons were intended primarily to bolster Chinese morale and to convince the United States that China could not be cowed by nuclear threats; significantly, Mao's private remarks were quite prudent, and his public statements became more
moderate as China's nuclear capability increased. 197
China's overriding concern for security was also evident in its sensitivity
to shifts in the global balance of power and its willingness to ignore ideo- logical principles in responding to them. 198 During the 1950s, the PRC saw the United States as its principal threat and chose to "lean to one side" with the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, dissatisfaction with Soviet sup- port led Mao to adopt a neutral position between the two superpowers, while China expanded its ties with Western Europe and Japan and tried to unite the Third World in an "international united front. " The latter effort did not attract many adherents, however, and the onset of the Cultural Revolu- tion in 1966 initiated a brief period of self-imposed isolation. 199
194 See Allen S. Whiting. "The Use of Force in Foreign Policy by the Peoples' Republic of China," A n n a l s of t h e A m er i ca n A c a d e m y of P o l i t i c a l a n d Soci al S c i e n c e 4 0 2 ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 5 5 ? , an d Th e C h i n e s e C a l - culus ofDeterrence: India and Indochina (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975).
195 During the 1954 crisis, Mao prohibited "offensive actions against foreign warships and airplanes," and the Central Military Commission told Chinese troops that they could retali- ate to a U. S. attack only "if this involves no grave risks. " When the GMD evacuated the off- shore island of Dachen in February 1955, the Central Military Commission denied a local commander's request to occupy the island for fear that it would entangle them with U. S. forces. Mao acted cautiously in 1958 as well, rejecting a proposed air strike on Quemoy in Au- gust and ordering his artillery not to fire on U. S. ships. See Shu Guang. Deterrence and Strate- gic Culture, 198, 219, 236-37; and Chang. Friends and Enemies, 72.
197 In 1965, Mao claimed that his calling the atomic bomb a "paper tiger" was "just a figure of speech. " He suggested that a nuclear war "would be a catastrophe for the whole world" and stated, "If one must fight one should confine oneself to conventional weapons. " See Schurmann and Schell, China Reader, 364-65. See also Avery Goldstein, "Robust and Afford- able Security: Some Lesson from the Second-Ranking Powers During the Cold War," Journal ofStrategic Studies 15, no. 4 (1992), 492-{)6, 5oo-503; and Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, 34, 215-18, and app. A.
198 According to A. Doak Barnett, "when security interests have been at stake, Chinese Communist leaders have generally . . . given them priority over other interests, including ide- ological and economic ones. " China and the Major Powers in East Asia (Washington, D. C. : Brookings Institution, 1977), 254-55.
199 See Harry Harding. "China's Changing Roles in the Contemporary World," in Harding. China's Foreign Relations, 186-87; and Armstrong, Revolutionary Diplomacy, 77-90.
? 196 See Van Ness, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy, 72.
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By the late 1960s, the growth of Soviet military power in the Far East and a series of border clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops convinced Mao that the main threat was "Soviet hegemonism. "200 Just as the PRC had once "leaned to one side" to balance the perceived threat from the United States, it now turned to the United States to balance the threat from the So- viet Union. The rapprochement became overt after President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to Beijing, and given the aura of suspicion that had sur- rounded Sino-American relations since the late 1940s, it would be hard to find a more vivid example of unsentimental realpolitik. Moreover, this shift ? occurred in period when ideology was especially important in shaping pol- icy within China. Thus, although the Sino-Soviet alliance can be seen as the result of either balancing or ideological solidarity, the Sino-American rap- prochement represented strictly the former. Z01
China's willingness to subordinate ideological principles to its security in- terests was evident in other relationships as well. Despite their public com- mitment to "Asian solidarity" and "peaceful coexistence," recurring border disputes and mutual suspicions led to a major deterioration of Sino-Indian re- lations in the late 1950s. The two states eventually fought a brief border war in 1962, and China's forces acted both cautiously and defensively in repelling the Indian challenge. India's subsequent tilt toward the Soviet Union was matched by a de facto alliance between China and Pakistan, despite the lat- ter's nonsocialist character and its close ties to the United States. 202 Similarly, the U. S. withdrawal from Indochina in the early 1970s allowed the long-sup- pressed rivalry between China and Vietnam to reemerge; Vietnam strength- ened its alliance with the Soviet Union while China backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and China and Vietnam eventually fought a brief but intense border war following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979.
In addition to providing evidence of China's willingness to sacrifice prin- ciples to the requirements of balance-of-power politics, these developments can be viewed as part of the gradual process of learning and adaptation. Al- though the United States and China continued to exaggerate each other's hostility after the Korean War, they avoided a direct clash in subsequent crises in part because each had learned that such a war would be costly. 203
200 See Thomas W. Robinson, "The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict," in Stephen S. Kaplan, DiplomacyofPower:SovietArmedForcesasaPoliticalInstrument(Washington,D. C. :Broko ings Institution, 1g81).
202 See Anwar H. Syed, China and Pakistan: Diplomacy ofan Entente Cordiale (Amherst: Univer- sity of Massachusetts Press, 1974), chap. 4; and Ya'acov Vertzberger, The Enduring Entente: Sino- Pakistani Relations, 196o-t980, Washington Papers no. 95 (New York: Praeger, 1983), 15-24.
203 China reportedly suffered over 26o,ooo dead in Korea, while the United States lost around47,00. 0 AwarenessofwhatanotherclashmightcosthelpedkeeptheUnitedStatesout of Indochina in the 1950s, and the fear of Chinese intervention constrained U. S. behavior dur- ing the height of its subsequent involvement there.
201 I am indebted to Avery Goldstein for this insight.
? ? The American, Mexican, Turkish, and Chinese Revolutions
Over time, the PRC gradually evolved from a radical state to a reformist state to a conservative state, and although the CCP remains in power as of this writing, its policies bear little resemblance to the ideals of Marx or Mao, and its foreign policy aims are largely indistinguishable from the goals of other great powers.
The Chinese Revolution fostered intense perceptions of threat with other major powers, based on the shared belief that the other was inherently ag- gressive and that the threat could be reduced or eliminated through the use of force. Over time, however, the impact of these early views faded and the new regime and its neighbors gained a more accurate understanding of their respective interests and capabilities. Despite its revolutionary origins, revolutionary China generally behaved in a restrained and prudent manner after the Korean War. My theory thus receives further support.
Although the comparison is hardly novel, the similarities between the Chinese and Russian experiences are worth noting. Both regimes came to power after a world war, a situation that helped shape their early percep- tions and gave them a "breathing space" in which to consolidate their power. Both fought and won a civil war, faced pressure from hostile imperi- alist powers, and exaggerated their opponents' willingness to attack them directly. Having fought wars shortly after gaining power (though China's involvement in Korea was far more costly than Russia's war with Poland), both states gradually overcame their initial isolation and reemerged as ac- cepted (albeit suspect) players on the world stage. Finally, although both China and Rutssia were willing to compromise their ideological principles in order to preserve their security, neither abandoned these ideals completely, and they continued to interpret world events through the distorting prisms of a revolutionary worldview.
