Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...many Sinologists, Peking's invasion was another illustration of China's "Great Wall mentality": its obsessive fear of encroachments, real or imagined, against its borders. This siege mentality compelled China to enter the Korean War. It has contributed to periodic flare-ups between Chinese and Soviet troops along the Ussuri and Amur rivers. It may also have been behind China's attack against India in 1962. That assault, in which the Chinese penetrated up to 100 miles inside Indian territory on a broad front but withdrew benignly one month later, was regarded by some as a possible blueprint precedent...
...invasion also presumably had a tactical goal: drawing Vietnamese troops away from Cambodia in order to ease the pressure on Pol Pot's surviving forces. But the risks involved in the Viet Nam invasion were far greater than those involved in the border war with India. Besides a possible Soviet retaliation that could come at any time, China already has suffered a political setback in world eyes. The Japanese, who joined them in decrying "hegemony" when they signed a treaty with Peking last year, were upset that China was practicing such blatant hegemony of its own. Some American policymakers took...
...from who has the upper hand in the collective leadership that succeeded Ho Chi Minh. The eleven-man Politburo is divided between pragmatists who want to concentrate on internal reconstruction and hard-liners who are bent on military adventure, despite the gruesome hardships involved. The hardliners, led by pro-Soviet Party Boss Le Duan and Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, are in control. Says a diplomat long acquainted with Hanoi...
...affected, if you will, by an arrogance of power." Combined with the arrogance is the urging of Moscow, which moved into the power vacuum left behind by the U.S. retreat. There is some small justification for the argument that the U.S. may have driven Viet Nam into the Soviet embrace last summer when it spurned Hanoi's modest attempts at reconciliation...
...spectacle last week of the two big Communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, at each other's throats on the brink of a possible shooting war?with the U.S., their once common adversary, passively standing by?bordered on a global Theater of the Absurd. After some initial confusion, the increasingly fragmented international Communist movement swung overwhelmingly against China. In Eastern Europe, independent Yugoslavia maintained its customary neutrality. Maverick Rumania appealed to both sides to "stop military actions immediately." The rest of the Warsaw Pact countries, predictably, supported Moscow in condemning what Bulgaria called China's "adventurous and aggressive actions...