Soviet Aims in the East

IT is NO good approaching current events in the Far East—the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam—with short memories. The history of earlier centuries is, of course, relevant, and not least the defeat of the Chinese by the Vietnamese in the eleventh century, and later the Chinese defeat of the Mongol invaders. The span of time I have in mind, however, is much shorter: 34 years, to be exact.

The Soviet attitude toward today’s battles is determined by Stalin’s belated declaration of war on Japan on August 8, 1945, two days after the first atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima. This late intervention was successful beyond all dreams, for it laid the geopolitical foundations for Mao Tse-tung’s defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese civil war.

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Brian Crozier

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IT is NO good approaching current events in the Far East—the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam—with short memories. The history of earlier centuries is, of course, relevant, and not least the defeat of the Chinese by the Vietnamese in the eleventh century, and later the Chinese defeat of the Mongol invaders. The span of time I have in mind, however, is much shorter: 34 years, to be exact.

The Soviet attitude toward today’s battles is determined by Stalin’s belated declaration of war on Japan on August 8, 1945, two days after the first atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima. This late intervention was successful beyond all dreams, for it laid the geopolitical foundations for Mao Tse-tung’s defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese civil war.