Peking, however, had highly-placed friends in Pyongyang, where reasons of ideology and personal ambition promoted factions that gave their support, open or hidden, either to the Soviet Union or China and not always consistently at that. The Chinese leaders got wind of the initiative and had no intention of allowing events to develop as Moscow planned. A very senior member of the Politburo and, just as important, the Deputy Chairman (a general) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee's Military Affairs Committee (the supreme military command) went with him. Quietly but very firmly the North Koreans were told that if they started a war at this particular juncture there would be no Chinese 'volunteers' this time; they would be on their own.[25] Both knew there would be no Soviet assistance beyond a few weapons; Soviet troops would be too busy looking after their own security on the Chinese border and elsewhere.
This blunt warning, impressed not only on the politicians in Pyongyang but also on the North Korean generals, many of them known personally to the Chinese general from the Military Affairs Committee through their service together in the Korean War of 1950-3, seems to have gone home. At all events, North Korea did very little when the time came, mounting just a few minor raids. The North was clearly not going to risk the enmity of a growing China, just as China was not going to risk having Pyongyang fall into unfriendly hands; North Korean territory was too close to Manchuria for that. Perhaps also the North thought the time was not appropriate anyway; after all, the emissaries had been careful during the talks not to rule out action later on, when circumstances might be more suitable. Better wait and see how the Soviets got on first.
The raids, principally with light naval units, did cause the Americans and the Japanese some alarm since it was not quite clear at the time whether they presaged something bigger. The South Koreans, of course, mobilized completely and appealed to Washington, describing the threat in their usual rather dramatic terms. Washington was not so sure about things, but did send two fighter squadrons, to comfort Tokyo. Preparations were made to move some ground forces to the peninsula but the Soviet Union collapsed before they arrived and the men were in the event sent instead to Vladivostok to supervise the surrender of some of the Soviet forces in the Far East.
Just as the Soviet Union wanted to avoid full-scale war in Asia, so did the United States; they both had their hands full elsewhere. China did not want it either, and was not ready for it unless the Soviet Union emerged from the war very much weaker, in which case China might well be tempted into taking advantage, in the Marxist jargon, of the new correlation of forces. Japan did not want war at all, despite its new foreign policy direction. To its relief it saw the danger approach and then happily recede, though it’s new strength left it able to throw useful weight into the Western side of the scale had it been needed. Japan also took the opportunity later of profiting from the Soviet fall.
Asia, then, saw much tension but no global East-West war. What fighting there was largely took place out in the Pacific and something of this has already been described in Chapter 13. The Soviet Pacific Fleet had put to sea, under the guise of one of its regular exercises, before fighting in Europe erupted. It was shadowed by American and Japanese warships and aircraft, and the submarines of both sides stalked each other. Soviet aircraft maintained their usual surveillance over south China and Soviet ships were active in and around Vietnamese waters. But that was before the war in Europe started. When it did start they all left. Vietnam would have to look after itself for a while. There were naval actions between Soviet and US naval units but not many. Perhaps the war went too fast for that; both navies had intense preoccupations in other theatres. Japanese ships were involved in one minor action, when a Japanese escort group north of the Tsushima Islands was fired on by an unidentified fast-patrol boat, later known to have been part of a small North Korean force returning from a lightning raid on Pusan in South Korea. The missile — a
In the Korean peninsula nothing much happened, despite the heavy concentration of troops there. The North Korean decision to pay more attention to Peking than to Moscow proved a canny one, and its minor forays produced little more than defensive actions by South Korean forces, who were discouraged by the United States from any wish they might have had to upgrade the fighting. While Seoul and Washington had both heard of the warning given by China to the North (through confidential information gleaned at the time by the US Ambassador in Peking) they were aware that the Chinese attitude might well be different if major war were launched by the South.
So the clash between East and West did not spread to Asia as the countries of the region had feared. But that did not mean that nothing.happened there. Far from it: a lot of what might be called tidying up went on. The breakdown of authority in the Soviet Union provided a heaven-sent (so to speak) opportunity for putting right a few wrongs and settling old scores.
The first of these was in Indochina. The drawn-out struggle there had been going badly for Hanoi, as has already been described. Soviet supplies had been thinning out and when the war in Europe started they stopped altogether. The Soviet advisers, who had already concentrated in Haiphong for their annual indoctrination and conference found themselves conveniently placed to leave for a safer place on 3 August. It is thought that they did this on the
In Peking the Politburo and the Military Affairs Committee had been in almost continuous session since early August. Daily they had argued, often heatedly, over the merits of a variety of actions that might extract some profit from the war between the superpowers. They had discussed what could be done to encourage the Kazakh unrest in the Soviet Union, of which they were getting news, not least from the Kazakhs on their own side of the border. They decided eventually to order large-scale military exercises on the border, but that was not until Kazakhstan had seceded from the Soviet Union after the destruction of Minsk by nuclear attack on 20 August. Manoeuvres were ordered at the same time, on the border with Uzbekistan, in both cases to dissuade the Soviet Union from launching punitive action. Exercises on a smaller scale were also set in train in Manchuria, but with caution. The Chinese were conscious of their military weakness, in Manchuria above all. They decided on a course of prudence, to wait and see what events brought. In relation to Mongolia, however, they thought it worthwhile to send some very tough messages, making it distinctly clear that the time had come, in their view, for the Mongolian leaders to invite the Soviet divisions there to go home. If they did not, it was gently hinted, life might later prove very uncomfortable indeed for those leaders when the Sinic peoples inevitably drew together again.
Vietnam seemed to offer a more immediate chance of doing something that would be to Chinese advantage. Mei Feng, the aged but experienced Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, had no doubts. China had learned from the abortive invasion in 1979. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) was in much better shape now, but the Vietnamese were not. Mei Feng's view was that Chinese forces should go in, and this time as far as Hanoi. Once they were in control there, the Soviet Union would be unable to dislodge them, even if it won the war. The rainy season should not deter them; it would hinder the enemy aircraft and armour but the Chinese soldiers could manage all right, they would take to it like Peking ducks to water.
Mei Feng's counsel prevailed. A Chinese attack on Vietnam, long prepared and needing only the signal, was launched on 19 August, with the PLA itching to show the results of the change of leadership, training and tactics that had gone right through the Chinese Main Force divisions since 1979. The invasion, for that is what it was, followed something like the pattern of February 1979, for the PLA was still tied to some extent to its old thought processes and beliefs, except that forces went in through Laos as well. The aim of this was to split the defenders and force them to divide their resources among a number of fronts, any one of which could develop into something bigger. And, of course, messages had gone out to the Laotian insurgents, with whom Chinese 'advisers' had been working, and to the various factions fighting the Vietnamese in Kampuchea. It was not a model of co-ordination but under the conditions of insurgent fighting in the jungles this was hardly to be expected. The transistor radios carried by guerrilla groups crackled out the message that China had attacked and within a day or two all the various fronts, if such a term can be applied to actions varying from ambushes to divisional attacks, burst into life.
This time the PLA made rapid progress at the outset. It seems that something like twelve divisions were used in the opening assault, which was launched against the fortified Vietnamese positions and defences along the
