Word: counterattacking
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...Vietnamese regular army hauling heavy weapons rushed north to meet them head-on and force a confrontation that could be the first major battle of the week-long war. In preparation, China threw three fresh divisions against forward Vietnamese defenses. At week's end Vietnamese forces launched a counterattack in three border provinces...
...declaration of war came in a transparently disingenuous Peking announcement that its forces were engaged in a "counterattack" against Vietnamese provocations. "The Chinese frontier forces took the action when the situation became intolerable and there was no alternative," said the official Hsinhua News Agency. "We don't want a single inch of Vietnamese soil. What we want is a stable and peaceful frontier. After hitting back at the aggressors as far as necessary, our frontier forces will turn to guard strictly the frontiers of our motherland...
...animosity between the two ethnic cousins, which dates back 21 centuries to the Chinese colonialization of the kingdom of Nam Viet in the Red River Delta. In A.D. 39 two sister queens named Trung Trac and Trung Nhi led a four-year revolt against the Middle Kingdom; a wrathful counterattack smashed the Vietnamese troops at the River Day. Rather than surrender to the Chinese, the two queens jumped in the river and drowned?a martyrdom still honored by Vietnamese girls every March on Hai Ba Trung...
With so obvious a propaganda advantage, the Soviet Union at week's end had essentially limited its counterattack against China to a fusillade of words. Pravda ventilated Soviet "wrath and indignation" at the Chinese aggression. Without making a specific threat, Soviet Defense Minister Ustinov reaffirmed that the U.S.S.R. "will honor its obligations under the treaty of friendship and cooperation with Viet Nam." Official press and radio also charged the U.S. with connivance in the Chinese attack. Emphasizing that the Chinese invasion was launched "almost the next day" after Teng Hsiao-p'ing's return from Washington, Pravda protested that...
Peking's official news agency, Hsinhua, called the expedition a "counterattack to defend the country's borders." Most observers believed that the Chinese would withdraw after "punishing" the Vietnamese. But U.S. officials were nonetheless alarmed by the ominous step-up in tensions between the erstwhile allies. The administration called on both nations to withdraw their respective forces from foreign territory, and also urged the Soviet Union, now Hanoi's chief patron and bankroller, to act with restraint. Said State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter III at a hastily called press conference: "We are committed to the territorial integrity...