Cold War in Asia
[2] Political scientist Peter Rudolf in 2020 argued that Americans see China as a threat to the established order in its drive for regional hegemony in East Asia now, and a future aspirant for global supremacy.
They drove UN forces all the way back to South Korea as Mao Zedong felt threatened by the close proximity of the war to the border at the Yalu River.
President Eisenhower broke the impasse by warning he might use nuclear weapons, and an armistice was reached that has remained in effect ever since, with large American forces still stationed in South Korea as a tripwire.
[7] Beijing was pleased that the success of the Soviet Union in the space race – the original Sputniks – demonstrated that the international communist movement had caught up in the area of high technology with the Americans.
[8] However, ties between the two countries frayed, quickly making a dead letter of the 1950 alliance, destroying the socialist camp unity, and affected the world balance of power.
At one major meeting of communist parties, Khrushchev personally attacked Mao as an ultra leftist — a left revisionist — and compared him to Stalin for dangerous egotism.
[11][12][13][14] Increasingly, Beijing began to consider the Soviet Union, which it viewed as Social imperialism, as the greatest threat it faced, more so than even the leading capitalist power, the United States.
[38] Johnson vividly remembered how Harry Truman's political career had been ended by the Korean War, and feared that if they abandoned the long-standing commitment to the containment of communist expansion, the Democratic Party would be badly hurt.
[41] At a time of deep angry divisions especially at the elite level over the war in Vietnam, as well as race relations and generational misunderstandings on sex and gender, his main goal in foreign policy was taking advantage of the profound split between Moscow and Beijing, forcing both sides to curry American favor.
Meanwhile, the antiwar forces on the home front were self-destructing, spinning headlong into violence, drugs, and a radicalism (typified by the Weathermen) that provoked a strong backlash in Nixon's favor.
Nixon, having achieved what he pronounced to be "peace with honor," immediately withdrew all US air and naval combat forces and ended the draft; he continued heavy shipments of modern new weapons into South Vietnam despite mounting demands from Congress that all aid be stopped.
However, in a quick response General Suharto led a major anti-communist coup that overthrew Sukarno and massacred hundreds of thousands of PKI supporters, including Aidit and the top leadership, while another 200,000 Chinese fled Indonesia.
India secured the support of the Soviet Union, including protection against Chinese intervention, in August 1971 with the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation before openly entering the conflict in December 1971.
[83] The Awami League's paramilitary wing, the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, would be formed to specifically counter the communist insurgents, though they would commit multiple human rights abuses.
The rise of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism led to a name change to Sri Lanka, a loss of influence by the British oriented elite, and repression the Tamil minority.
[91][92] Lawrence Freedman, A choice of enemies: America confronts the Middle East (Hachette, 2010) provides detailed coverage of Washington's complex relations with the critical region of Jews and Arabs, Sunnis and Shias, and massive oil supplies.
[95] They tried to impose scientific socialism on a country that did not want to be modernized—indeed, which was heading in the opposite direction under the lure of Muslim fundamentalism of the sort that had topped the Shah in next-door Iran.
Disobeying orders from Moscow, the coup leaders systematically executed the leadership of the large Parcham clan, thus guaranteeing a civil war among the country's many feuding ethnic groups, especially the rival .
Only the Soviet army could possibly quell the growing rebellion by Parcham, the fundamentalist "mujahideen", and allied tribes who opposed the anti-religious, feminist modernizers[96] The Kremlin never realized the dangers involved and did not have even a basic understanding of the forces they confronted.
At this point Moscow decided not to send troops but instead stepped up shipments of military equipment such as artillery, armored personnel carriers and 48,000 machine guns; they also sent 100,000 tons of wheat.
[98] Moscow's first man in Kabul was prime minister Nur Muhammad Taraki (1913–1979), who was murdered and replaced by his deputy Hafizullah Amin (1929–1979) of the Khalq faction in September 1979.
Pressure for intervention seems to have come primarily from the KGB (secret police), whose efforts to assassinate Amin had failed, and from the Red Army, which perhaps was worried about the danger of a mutiny on the part of its many Muslim soldiers.
In July 1979, before the Soviet invasion, President Jimmy Carter for the first time authorized the CIA to start assisting the Mujahideen rebels with money and non-military supplies sent via Pakistan.
[101] In Moscow the deputy defense minister explained to the Politburo in 1986: We control Kabul and the provincial centers, but on occupied territory we cannot establish authority....We have lost the battle for the Afghan people.
[102]When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow in 1985 he immediately realized the severe drain caused by trying to hold the USSR together by force, especially as Washington was escalating military spending, threatening to build Star Wars, and the Soviet economy was faltering badly as revenues plunged from oil exports.
[96] It took him several years to get enough Politburo support, all the time the poor performance and prolonged presence of the Soviet military in Afghanistan created domestic financial and political problems.
While the Democratic Republic regime remained officially nonaligned and opened diplomatic relations with the U.S. by June 1978, as time went on Afghanistan's increasing bond in the Soviet orbit was a cause of concern.
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance said at the time "We need to take into account the mix of nationalism and communism in the new leadership and seek to avoid driving the regime into a closer embrace with the Soviet Union than it might wish.
Following Amin's rise as General Secretary, he publicly expressed his desire for friendly relations with the U.S.[110] As the rebellion spread and the security situation deteriorated, U.S. authorities decided on 23 July 1979, to evacuate the families of American nationals in Afghanistan.
During the period of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. provided about 3 billion US dollars in military and economic assistance to the Mujahideen groups stationed on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line.
