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Now I'm working with something that not a lot of people have done and that is the idea of a 1979 Sino-Soviet war after China attacks Vietnam similar to OTL's Sino-Vietnamese war, with a POD in 1976 where the Gang of Four weren't overthrown but instead allowed the very incompetent Wang Hongwen to take power to appease the public and you can tell he is responsible for making China get itself into war with the USSR (and yes I took the inspiration from the A Cat of a Different Color TL).

And of course it's a given that China isn't militarily/technologically superior to the USSR yet has the manpower to make up for it; what's not is the nuclear factor of course. Now working with a best case-scenario, the USSR doesn't use nukes or at least able to destroy most of China's nuclear arsenal with nukes of course, which then weakens Chinese morale and gets the Maoist government overthrown which causes China to collapse and both the two superpowers and the pro-US ROC to fill in the vaccum.

One thing I realized is that détente would end a lot sooner if the war ends long before the OTL Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (which may or may not get butterflied away ITTL) with the Soviets destroying a potential ally of the US which shakes up the geopolitical landscape. Not to mention that the loss of China as a world player would cause severe consequences around the world, perhaps killing off Maoism or at least weakening it.
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