Im at work and cant really focus on reading anything heavy about it but it's been on my mind since I heard about it a few weeks ago
Attempted regime change by China. But they were so incompetent they got stopped cold by Vietnamese national guard troops. The regular army was clustered around Hanoi and didn't even get involved. After China took massive casualties and its offensive ran out of steam, they declared victory and left, destroying everything they could get their hands on along the way.
Then, the war was forgotten. Vietnam was America's forgotten war for over a decade, Korea is still mostly forgotten except for MAS*H, but the China-Vietnam conflict is forgotten today in China for reasons that must be obvious.
wrapping your head around the weird foreign policy fallout of the Sino-Soviet split is not a fun time
Yeah, I was thinking that, especially since its such a relatively short period of time in a weird time in history that doesnt have a lot of info to begin with bcos gobbudism
What about the part w China allied w Pol pot and elon musk going back in time and getting impaled by bamboo stakes
They didnt exactly make up though right? It's pretty interesting that China was adamant that it was really intended as a spanking instead of an invasion. It also sounds stupid too.
The goal was regime change, but they got stopped cold so they retconned it to being a chastisement of Vietnam so they could make it look like a victory instead of what it was, a devastating defeat. Compare to the Winter War against Finland. Well, except Finland lost the Winter War. But still.
They def didn't make up, which is partially why Vietnam maintains friendly relations w the US til this day, despite the US-Viet war. There was a diplomatic encounter this week that seemed like a sign of warmer times ahead though
https://en.vietnamplus.vn/vietnam-gives-top-priority-to-developing-ties-with-china-party-leader/243044.vnp
They def didn’t make up, which is partially why Vietnam maintains friendly relations w the US til this day, despite the US-Viet war.
:agony-deep:
The last sentence was supposed to be hopeful, but yeah, an indefensible move
Since we're on this I'm dying for a based Marxist youtuber to explain the USSR's involvement in poland in WWII with all necessary historical context.
AFAIK it's not too complicated, basically the USSR lost territories on its western front after signing Brest-Litovsk (treaty that ended Russian involvement in WW1), Stalin "invaded" Poland to regain those territories and to create a buffer zone between the USSR and the Nazis. Clearly this paid off as the Nazis were repelled from Soviet territory before they were able to capture Leningrad or Moscow, despite their initial victories in the invasion.
Stalin wanting to set up an anti-Hitler pact before WW2 is pretty well documented, there's no chance the Soviets were a real "ally" of the Nazis as you're taught to believe in the west.
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/stalin-first-tried-to-resist-hitler-with-great-britain-11589838192
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html
That being said I'm sure a Marxist youtuber could go into way more depth than I have in explaining this.
I've been re-watching the Brit 1973 production World At War series, and its a pretty fair summary of WWII, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was correctly considered a strategic maneuver to buy the USSR time to prepare for the eventual Nazi invasion.
as years go by, the West is always trying to revise the history of WWII, no doubt block buster Hollywood movies played a big role:
https://www.les-crises.fr/the-successful-70-year-campaign-to-convince-people-the-usa-and-not-the-ussr-beat-hitler/
Clearly this paid off
tell that to the hundreds of thousands of soviets captured & killed in the reoccupied territory after neither the Stalin or Molotov defensive lines were functional because they moved the border. on paper it makes sense why they took territories closer to the Axis in preparation for war but it didn't actually translate into a better defensive strategy when war broke out. less prepared and farther-to-supply troops were fed to the germans who still advanced at breakneck speed & had to be stopped by millions of new mobilized personnel.
those troops should not have been lost so easily or quickly and would've made better accounts of themselves if not for a flawed strategic model & breathtaking soviet confidence/arrogance in the expected duration of the nonaggression pact
AFAIK it’s not too complicated, basically the USSR lost territories on its western front after signing Brest-Litovsk
This isn't quite right because a lot happened after that that made the terms of Brest-Litovsk moot. In 1918 Poland became an independent country and immediately attacked Ukraine (and Belarus and Lithuania), which was in a civil war at the time. The U(krainian)SSR and the CCCP fought against the Polish and the western Ukrainian state. This war ended with the Treaty of Riga which gave a lot of Ukrainian and Belarusian territory to Poland. The Soviets got this territory back after Molotov-Ribbentrop and then WW2 happened.
The Poles still talk a lot about retaking "their" land from Ukraine and this has reached a fever pitch since Russia invaded Ukraine.
there's a Radio War Nerd episode on it which I remember being pretty good
I read the wiki page and I'm at work, there are lot of things that are fairly simple to explain in comparison, if this one isnt easy to explain just say that.
Once the Sino-Soviet Split got underway, China's foreign policy became more contrarian. This is part of the reason why China made closer ties with the USA than the USSR did. It's also part of why China supported the Khmer Rouge while it was in power. Kampuchea was the only socialist* country aligned with China instead of the USSR.
A newly unified, Soviet-aligned Vietnam put an end to the Khmer Rouge, and this was the foremost cause for the ensuing border conflict between Vietnam and China. There were other reasons but this was the major one.
In Vietnam, for centuries they have seen the large political entity to their north as the biggest threat. But it has been over 40 years since any military hostilities, and the only remaining territorial disputes are over small atolls far off the coast. Some reconciliation efforts have been underway, and with the Trans-Pacific Partnership scrapped and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on the rise, we may see China and Vietnam in friendly alignment in the next few decades.
stupid (understated) political decision for China. Actually a pretty Machiavelli geopolitical/ inner political decision for China:
The sino-soviet split basically created an atmosphere where both countries comes to support opposite sides throughout conflicts from the split to the collapse of the Ussr (Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia-Eritrea, etc.). The outcome of the war is pretty vague, Chinese people would tell you that they are close to reach/bomb Hanoi but didn't because that would escalate the conflict while I believe that it was an ill prepared operation to begin with. Regardless of the judgement of the outcome there are 2 things that happened:
- it shows to the world the incompetency of the USSR to support its allies in the time of war, reshuffling the future geopolitical alliance to come.
-the Incompetency of the Chinese Military brass to adapt to modern warfare allowed Deng to reform the military / Purge the military (theorize on how it helps with the cementation of Deng's power within the politburo)
Either way, big socialist bros fighting, little brothers get hurt
Yeah but like a bunch of former peasants arent going to get everything right, i usually defer to that when socialists fuck up unless like you cant
