Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...France, Italy and Spain, the major Eurocommunist parties all lined up against China, with one quirky difference: as a reminder of his vaunted autonomy from Moscow, Spanish Communist Party Boss Santiago Carrillo compared China's aggression against Viet Nam to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Throughout Latin America, leftist groups raised an anti-Chinese chorus. Thousands of students marched down Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma with banners that said VIVA VIET NAM?VANGUARD OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION...
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...
...long as the Vietnamese forces can hold their own, the Soviets will probably prefer to reap the propaganda benefits of restraint. The danger is that if the Chinese were to press the war too far, moving against Hanoi or Haiphong or indicating an intention to stay on Vietnamese soil, the Soviets themselves would not want to appear weak and would feel compelled to act. If so, what would they do? Administration experts say the Soviet options are many. They could mount a major resupply of Vietnamese forces, dispatch large numbers of military advisers, or even take direct military action...
More ominous, they could also threaten Peking's sense of security by moving along the 4,500-mile Soviet-Chinese border, which is bristling with 44 divisions of the Red Army. Soviet troops could strike into the frozen, inhospitable terrain of Sinkiang, but a more likely target is Manchuria, China's industrial heartland. Analysts hopefully discount an air attack on China's nuclear faculty at Lop Nor as a "doomsday" option, one perhaps favored by Moscow's military brass, but not by the Politburo...
...been relegated to the role of sideline observer, without much influence on either combatant. The Administration's position was that the Chinese intrusion was a direct result of the Soviet-encouraged Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, which, in turn, was seen as Moscow's response to the normalization...