Only Gromyko can go to Taipei

In response to Nixon's China visit and US-PRC ties growing while ROC-US ties are being cut off, could the Soviets try to grow their ties with Taiwan?
 
During the period of the Sino-Soviet Split, were the Soviets as hostile to China as the Chinese were towards the Soviets? The Chinese policy was such that had there been some sort of breakaway right-wing Russian pseudo-state, I could imagine Beijing championing them, but I wonder if the USSR would have been that eager to upset the apple cart.

One thing to consider, I think, is that the USSR might have been pretty reluctant about supporting what was still basically a US client state like Taiwan, whereas it was clear by the 1970s that China didn't regard the US as its primary concern. Unless, of course, the USSR's agenda was to pull Taiwan out of the American orbit.

But in that latter case, what would the Soviets have to offer Taiwan?
 
In response to Nixon's China visit and US-PRC ties growing while ROC-US ties are being cut off, could the Soviets try to grow their ties with Taiwan?

See this fascinating piece on Chiang, Victor Louis, and the "Russia option" (and why Chiang ultimately declined to follow through on it):

"Nearly a decade after the Sino-Soviet split, Victor Louis, a Russian correspondent for the London Evening News who reputedly had KGB connections, visited Taiwan for ten days. In meetings with Nationalist officials, principally Defense Minister Chiang Ching-kuo, he proffered Soviet cooperation for a joint attack on mainland China. Louis’s visit in October 1968 and his subsequent contacts with Taiwan have been widely reported upon and analyzed by scholars, but until very recently certain key details had never been revealed.

"What were the terms of cooperation under consideration by Russia and Taiwan? To what extent was Chiang Kai-shek, president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, personally involved in this episode? And perhaps most important, why did Chiang ultimately decline to exercise the Russia option in his long struggle with the Chinese Communists?

"Many of the answers lie in portions of Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries, housed at the Hoover Institution, that were released in July 2009. These volumes, which cover Chiang’s final collection of entries (1956–72), provide for the first time detailed information on this highly intriguing Cold War engagement....

Anyway, Chiang viewed the Soviets with suspicion. He thought (with good reason) they were trying to drive a wedge between the RoC and the US, and that their real goal in China was to replace Mao's regime with a pro-Soviet Communist one. Still, with rumors of a pending Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear sites, he did not want to reject cooperation outright.

"On October 1, he set forth his terms of cooperation with the Russians:

  • Chiang would maintain complete independence in Chinese foreign policy, not subject to any restriction.
  • He would maintain Chinese territorial integrity and administrative independence without allowing foreign interference.
  • He would guarantee these three points through an oral statement:
  1. 1. After recovery of the Chinese mainland, he would not permit any foreign power to create anti-Russian bases on Chinese soil.
  2. 2. He would not conclude an anti-Russian alliance with any foreign power.
  3. 3. He would permit Chinese-Russian joint economic development of Chinese areas bordering Russia on a mutual assistance and equitable basis.
Chiang also contemplated at this time how to cooperate with the Russians to destroy the Chinese Communist nuclear weapons in localities most threatening to Taiwan—south of the Yangzi River—and then those in northern China.

THE DENOUEMENT

Suddenly, just as Chiang turned serious in his negotiations, Russia lost interest. Louis failed to show up for a scheduled meeting with Wei in Italy in October; Chiang suspected that his absence was deliberate. During the rest of 1969, Chiang’s diary made no further reference to Taiwan’s contact with the Russians. Not until the next April did he return to the subject, pointing out then that the Russian attitude had been changeable and unpredictable. For the next two years, until April 21, 1972, Chiang’s diaries showed that Taiwan remained in contact with the Russians, but the liaison became increasingly sporadic, and nothing of substance came out of it.

Looking at all of Chiang’s diary entries relevant to the Louis episode, one may identify two reasons why the Russia option never came to pass. The first is that the Soviets—after a meeting between Premiers Aleksei Kosygin and Zhou Enlai in Beijing in September 1969—began that fall to ease tensions with the Chinese Communists. Chiang thought this was part of the reason Louis failed to show up to meet with Wei. He observed that Russia and Communist China had started negotiations in Beijing on October 20 to settle the Manchurian border dispute; those talks went on intermittently until December 18, 1970, and resulted in a treaty. That treaty apparently lessened the prospect of war between the Soviet Union and China, thus making Russia’s approach to Taiwan for military cooperation less urgent. (The border settlement, however, did not fundamentally alter the hostile relations of the two Communist nations. Thus, the Russians continued to engage in talks with Taiwan, through Louis and Wei—who had resumed contact—as well as ambassadors [1970–72] in Mexico City and Tokyo.)

The second reason these lingering contacts resulted in no cooperative arrangement—military or otherwise—was Chiang’s resistant frame of mind. From the beginning of Louis’s contact with Wei, Chiang had shown a strong distrust of the Russians. He characterized them as “cunning” and reminded himself to guard carefully against their “fraudulent” activities. No doubt he had in mind that Russia had acquired through chicanery and outright aggression many pieces of Chinese land since mid-Qing times. And he often lamented that Russia had gained unjustified advantages over China through the Yalta Agreement of 1945.

That is why he warned Wei to be vigilant when dealing with Louis and why he repeatedly refused to supply the Russians a list of weapons he might need. And he was especially conscious of the danger of a joint military adventure with the Russians. He cited a well-known Chinese historical episode as a warning to himself. In that episode, General Wu Sangui of the Ming Dynasty appealed to the Manchu army for help as a rebellion threatened the dynasty’s existence. The invited Manchu army did suppress the rebels, but went on to topple the Ming as well.

With the danger in mind, Chiang nevertheless engaged in talks with the Russians because he would explore any possibility that might help him realize a goal he considered as important as his own life: recovery of the lost Chinese mainland. “Anyone helping me recover the mainland is my friend,” he once wrote as he weighed the Russia option. “Otherwise, he is my enemy.”

But late into negotiations, he met a Russian condition he could not accept. “The Russians have taken the United States as an enemy, not a friend,” he wrote in June 1970. “And they have told us that the only condition for their cooperation is that we must act against the United States.” He branded the condition “unthinkable.”

At one stage in his negotiation with the Russians, Chiang had expressed willingness to make two concessions: he would not allow a foreign power to use Chinese territory for anti-Russian bases and he would not form an anti-Russian alliance with a foreign power. The foreign power in question was implicitly the United States. But those concessions were far different from the proposition that he treat the United States as an enemy. In realpolitik terms, he could not trade the support of the United States, a decades-old ally, for an uncertain cooperation with Russia, a nation that had historically proven inimical to Chinese interests.

While seriously ill in June 1971, Chiang struggled to jot down in his diary his thoughts on foreign aggression—especially Russia’s—against China, and he reminded himself: “Today Russia is luring me to oppose the United States for the sake of fighting the Chinese Communists. I must never be tempted by it.”

Chiang had made up his mind not to exercise the Russia option."
https://www.hoover.org/research/russia-option
 
Last edited:
Top