202508291345 Status: #idea Tags: #history #cold_war #geopolitics #china #soviet_union #united_states # The Chinese threat nearly caused an American-Soviet rapprochement In the 1950s and 1960s, China became increasingly antagonistic towards the Soviet Union. Following the death of Stalin and the rise of Krushchev, Mao Zedong became emboldened to try to wrestle the mantle of "head of the communist movement" from the Russians. This resulted in China competing with Russia for spheres of influence in the developing world, as well as increased border tensions (even leading to a small war in the 1960s between the two). China's much more immediate threat led Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, to seek a rapprochement with the United States. He especially tried to court Nixon once it became clear that Nixon was stabilizing relations with China. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the US viewed them as the greater threat and thus aligned with China in the fracturing of the Communist world. This demonstrates how triangular geopolitical dynamics can create unexpected alliance opportunities, and how perceptions of relative threat levels drive strategic decisions. ## Related Ideas - [[Systematically improving an explicit theory of history]] - [[The Qin dynasty developed advanced social technology for centralization]] - [[China will be able to overwhelm the US In a major war by the end of the decade]] - [[China's production capacity is already triple that of the US]] - [[Greater population and productive capacity acts as slack for poor strategy in war]] --- # References - Mao Zedong biography - American empire by Amaury de Riencourt - ChinaTalk interview (https://www.chinatalk.media/p/the-other-cold-war?selection=564fc747-4122-4637-82ca-1aaefc92b289)