Chapter 5: Triangular Diplomacy and the Korean War
1 “Conversation Between I. V. Stalin and Mao
Zedong: Moscow, December 16, 1949,” Archive of the President of the
Russian Federation (APRF), fond 45, opis 1, delo 329, listy 9–17,
trans. Danny Rozas, from Cold War
International History Project: Virtual Archive, Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars, accessed at www.cwihp.org.
2 Strobe Talbott, trans. and ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1974), 240.
3 “Conversation Between I. V. Stalin and Mao
Zedong,” www.cwihp.org.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 See Chapter 6, “China Confronts Both
Superpowers,” page 170.
8 “Appendix D to Part II—China: The Military
Situation in China and Proposed Military Aid,” in The China White Paper: August 1949, vol. 2
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 814.
9 “Letter of Transmittal: Washington, July 30,
1949,” in The China White Paper: August
1949, vol. 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967),
xvi.
10 Dean Acheson, “Crisis in Asia—An Examination of
U.S. Policy,” Department of State
Bulletin (January 23, 1950), 113.
11 Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue
Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and
the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993),
98.
12 Acheson, “Crisis in Asia—An Examination of U.S.
Policy,” 115.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 118.
15 The results of postwar Sino-Soviet negotiations
still rankled four decades later. In 1989, Deng Xiaoping urged
President George H. W. Bush to “look at the map to see what
happened after the Soviet Union severed Outer Mongolia from China.
What kind of strategic situation did we find ourselves in? Those
over fifty in China remember that the shape of China was like a
maple leaf. Now, if you look at a map, you see a huge chunk of the
north cut away.” George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft,
A World Transformed (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1998), 95–96. Deng’s reference to China’s strategic
situation must be understood also in light of the significant
Soviet military presence in Mongolia, which began during the
Sino-Soviet split and lasted throughout the Cold War.
16 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 103.
17 Stuart Schram, The Thought
of Mao Tse-Tung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 153.
18 “Conversation Between I. V. Stalin and Mao
Zedong,” at www.cwihp.org.
19 Soviet forces had initially advanced further
south, past the 38th parallel, but heeded a call from Washington to
return north and divide the peninsula roughly halfway.
20 Chen Jian, China’s Road to
the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American
Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),
87–88 (citing author interview with Shi Zhe).
21 Kathryn Weathersby, “‘Should We Fear This?’:
Stalin and the Danger of War with America,” Cold War International
History Project Working Paper Series, working paper no. 39
(Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, July 2002), 9–11.
22 “M’Arthur Pledges Defense of Japan,”
New York Times (March 2, 1949), from
New York Times Historical
Archives.
23 Acheson, “Crisis in Asia—An Examination of U.S.
Policy,” 116.
24 Ibid.
25 Weathersby, “‘Should We Fear This?’”
11.
26 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 144.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 145.
29 Chen, China’s Road to the
Korean War, 112.
30 Shen Zhihua, Mao Zedong,
Stalin, and the Korean War, trans. Neil Silver
(forthcoming), Chapter 6 (originally published in Chinese as
Mao Zedong, Sidalin yu Chaoxian
zhanzheng [Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe,
2003]).
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Yang Kuisong, Introduction to ibid. (as adapted
from Yang Kuisong, “Sidalin Weishenma zhichi Chaoxian zhanzheng—du
Shen Zhihua zhu ‘Mao Zedong, Sidalin yu
Chaoxian zhanzheng’” [“Why Did Stalin Support the Korean
War—On Reading Shen Zhihua’s ‘Mao Zedong, Stalin and the Korean
War’”], Ershiyi Shiji [Twentieth Century], February 2004).
34 Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President on
the Situation in Korea, June 27, 1950,” no. 173, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United
States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1965), 492.
35 Gong Li, “Tension Across the Taiwan Strait in
the 1950s: Chinese Strategy and Tactics,” in Robert S. Ross and
Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-examining the Cold
War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 144.
36 United Nations General Assembly Resolution
376(V), “The Problem of the Independence of Korea” (October 7,
1950), accessed at http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/059/74/IMG/NR005974.pdf?OpenElement.
37 For a fascinating discussion of these principles
as applied to the Ussuri River clashes, see Michael S. Gerson,
The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict: Deterrence,
Escalation, and the Threat of Nuclear War in 1969
(Alexandria, Va.: Center for Naval Analyses, 2010).
38 On Mao’s war aims, see for example Shu Guang
Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and
the Korean War, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1995), 101–7, 123–25, 132–33; and Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 91–96.
39 Chen, China’s Road to the
Korean War, 137.
40 Shen, Mao Zedong, Stalin,
and the Korean War, Chapter 7.
41 Ibid.
42 Chen, China’s Road to the
Korean War, 143.
43 Ibid., 143–44.
44 Ibid., 144.
45 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 164–67.
46 Chen, China’s Road to the
Korean War, 149–50.
47 Ibid., 150.
48 Ibid., 164.
49 “Doc. 64: Zhou Enlai Talk with Indian Ambassador
K. M. Panikkar, Oct. 3, 1950,” in Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue,
Uncertain Partners, 276.
50 Ibid., 278.
51 Ibid. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had
written to Zhou, as well as to U.S. and British representatives,
regarding prospects for limiting the Korean conflict.
52 “Letter from Fyn Si [Stalin] to Kim Il Sung (via
Shtykov): October 8, 1950,” APRF, fond 45, opis 1, delo 347, listy
65–67 (relaying text asserted to be Stalin’s cable to Mao), from
Cold War International History Project:
Virtual Archive, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, accessed at www.cwihp.org.
53 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 177.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 See Shen Zhihua, “The Discrepancy Between the
Russian and Chinese Versions of Mao’s 2 October 1950 Message to
Stalin on Chinese Entry into the Korean War: A Chinese Scholar’s
Reply,” Cold War International History Project
Bulletin 8/9 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, Winter 1996), 240.
57 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 200–201, citing Hong Xuezhi and
Hu Qicai, “Mourn Marshal Xu with Boundless Grief,” People’s Daily (October 16, 1990), and Yao Xu,
Cong Yalujiang dao Banmendian
[From the Yalu River to Panmunjom]
(Beijing: People’s Press, 1985).
58 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, 195–96.