Could the US have sided with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet Split?

Lee Kuan Yew said this, reflecting on a conversation he had with Nixon in the late 60s...

“I said that if I were an American, I would consider that China shared a 4,000-mile boundary with the Soviet Union, a boundary which the Russians had changed only in the last century. So they had unresolved problems. There was no boundary between the US and China. The US had drawn a line across the Taiwan Straits with the Seventh Fleet, but this was a line drawn on water, and need not be perpetual. There was much to be gained by engaging China.

Asked about the US-China enmity, I said there was no natural or abiding source of enmity between China and the United States. China’s natural enemy was the Soviet Union with whom it shared a 4,000-mile boundary which had been shifted to China’s disadvantage only in the last 100 years. There were old scores to settle. The boundary between America and China was an artificial one drawn on water across the Straits of Taiwan. It was ephemeral and would pass with time.”



What if the US looked at the situation from the different perspective, and decided that it had no intrinsic conflict with China or the Soviet Union beyond their current governments, and came to believe that in the long run China was the bigger threat?

Could the American leadership decide that due to China’s sheer population, it is a greater threat to the US in the long term than the Soviet Union, Communist regimes or not? That the Soviet Union perhaps has more in common with the US than China?

Mao was rather nonchalant about nuclear war. He also directly fought the US in Korea while having more men fight the US in Vietnam than the Soviets. China went on to back the horrific Khmer Rouge, while America did the same, if the US is changing its thinking it could maybe come to view Chinese Communists and their allies as more unhinged than Soviet Communists and some of their allies.


1: Is it possible for the US to come to support the Soviet Union over China?

2: With hindsight, which would be more beneficial to the US?
 
IIRC Kennedy was more open to this line of thinking whereas Nixon saw the Soviets as the bigger military threat and considered it logical to side with them. I'm not sure who you could get in office with different views or a way to change Nixon's thinking. Personally I think you would need Nixon getting elected in 1960, this avoids the Missile Crisis, and have us get involved in Vietnam like OTL. From there let's say Nixon goes all in from the beginning and invades North Vietnam at the soonest opportunity, this triggers a Chinese intervention and voila, US and Chinese forces are fighting again 10 years after Korea. Depending on how this escalates, you could have American bombers taking out the fledgling Chinese nuclear program (maybe in concert with the Soviets?) and you've ensured the US and China will remain enemies for the rest of the Cold War at least.
 
I doubt that. USA was inclined against Soviets after WW2 so it would be for anyone political suicide if he suggests that let's ally with Soviets against Chinese Commies. And European allies would become quiet paranoid with that. They would be worried if Soviets can now push their influence further to West.
 
1: Is it possible for the US to come to support the Soviet Union over China?
Ideologically this would actually make more sense. The Soviets had been supporting a policy of detente with the west, and China's main gripe with the Soviets was that they weren't radical enough in their support for marxist revolutionaries. The USSR had come close to ending their support for North Vietnam on more than one occasion. Should they follow through then I think the detente period would likely continue longer and perhaps expand. I doubt the USSR would open up China-style though, too much institutional, economic, and ideological inertia.

2: With hindsight, which would be more beneficial to the US?
Depends. Does China open up anyways? If it doesn't does the US remain primarily an industrial state, or do India and SEA take on the niche China had filled in OTL's embrace of globalism?
 
Actually, in the early to mid-1960's the US did see the PRC as the greater evil than the USSR (more "Stalinist", fanatical, opposed to US-Soviet agreements like the partial test-ban treaty, etc.) As late as 1969, at least some Soviet officials evidently believed that the US would back the USSR if massive Chinese invasion would lead the USSR to use nuclear weapons; "they could not conceive of the US helping China." https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/sino.sov.16.pdf Indeed, William Hyland "acknowledged that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US." For example, implying that a war would involve Soviet strikes to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, Hyland observed that it might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem." https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/
 
So Pournelle's CoDominium. To paraphrase Herman Kahn, it's possible. You just need the US/USSR's leadership to decide that both's populations being white-majority was more important as a point in common than the capitalist/communist divide.

It's not technically ASB, but I'm pretty sure it's LOW odds.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Very interesting - I was about to ask this question.

I think this was a thing done in a few science fiction stories from the 1960s as part of the backstory. The story took place decades later, but the Anglo-US-Soviet alliance had fought WWIII against the "Chinese hegemony." It was ironic because China always talks about hegemony as a bad thing.

Maybe if the Sino-Indian war had a second round before the 60s were out, and it was after the Cuban Missile Crisis and before the Prague Spring (or before Six-Day War), both US and USSR could find common ground supporting India, and China could be seen as the looniest of the three.
 
So Pournelle's CoDominium. To paraphrase Herman Kahn, it's possible. You just need the US/USSR's leadership to decide that both's populations being white-majority was more important as a point in common than the capitalist/communist divide.

It's not technically ASB, but I'm pretty sure it's LOW odds.

So essentially the old Yellow Peril...
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Monthly Donor
So essentially the old Yellow Peril...

I disagree with interpoltomo and don't think race would be the justification. The justification would be Maoist China's perceived extra dose of radicalism and the fact that the Americans actually had experience fighting the Chinese in large numbers (in Korea) whereas it did not have the same experience in fighting the Soviets or other Communists in Europe in bulk over a substantial period.
 
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