Soviet/Chinese War: Maximum Damage for the Bystanders

Suppose the Soviet Chinese border conflict lead to full scale war. What is the maximum negative outcome for US and it's allies and neutral states? I'v read somewhere that the US didn't want a war on those grounds.
 
Unless the war goes nuclear, the only US allies in trouble would have been Japan and South Korea. Soviet Navy would have been interested in attacking Chinese ports, and Soviets ships would have had to get through Korean Strait or take a long way around Japan. The Chinese would have tried to stop them, and since Chinese Navy couldn't match Soviet Pacific Fleet they would have probably tries to lay mines. In such case Japan and South Korea would have had to react to clear their shipping lanes.
Another problem is Korea, or rather Koreas - what would they have done? South Korea and Japan would have probably tried to remain neutral, but North Korea would have had to choose sides - with both China and USSR trying to get Kim's support. I'm not sure if North Korea would have been able to remain neutral - the country is too important strategically.
Without nukes no US ally would have been directly hurt by the conflict. On the contrary, with both it protectors at war, North Vietnam would have been forced to cease any actions against South Vietnam. Taiwan would have been relatively safe - China is too busy to mess with US. There would have been some economical repercussions because of sea fighting threatening some important shipping lanes, but nothing more. Personally I believe the Soviets would have quickly eliminated most of Chinese Navy and sailing South Sea would have become relatively safe.
The best the US could do (and advise their allies to do) would have been to sit back and watch the fireworks - as long it doesn't go nuclear.
 
Bio

as long it doesn't go nuclear.

Or either side uses biowar. If they had used gas it would have been no big deal for outsiders, but nuclear or bio would have ramifications outside of the immediate areas.
 
Mostly it would have very positive outcomes for US allies. A civil war among the East Bloc in the middle of the Vietnam War? Can't ask for anything better. China would be destroyed, USSR seriously weakened. Cold War would be over much earlier without loss of life from the West. Although the human toll would be in the hundreds of millions.
 
I really would have to say not much at all, even if it went to extremes, if the war is contained then I'd say only those two countries are hurt. I would say if the war does do damage to others then it would most liekly not be towards the U.S, but to cuntries near the conflict.
 
I think common sence says it would be the communist bloc that gets screwed if they manage to go to war at each other. It make sence.

Another question, what about refugees? How would they be handeled?
 

CalBear

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Well, maximum damage is total, ie. everyone, or close to it, dies.

Start with a full Sino/Soviet nuclear exchange, with the U.S. getting involved (how is less important than it happening, which, based on most open source info is likely). That drags Europe in, with the disaster of tactical exchanges on the Continent. If you want MAXIMUM damage, let's go with colbalt jacketed weapons (no sense in using a clean bomb when a really dirty one can be used instead). That will put paid to most of the Northern Hemisphere and a not small portion of the Southern, thanks to the planetary atmospheric circulation patterns. Enough weapons with Colbalt Jacketing (I believe the magic figure is 1,000 megatons +/-) and you kill the biosphere in the short term (100 years or so).

Then you get to pull in Captain Tripps (or at least his cousins). The Soviets had a very robust bio-war program (including at least one serious accident with what looked a LOT like small pox). A modified small pox would be death on a platter, especially if it was engineered to have a longer infectious before symptom onset period. Couple it with lowered resistance from radiation exposure and it's "Katie bar the door" time.

Less well known, but far better funded, was the American bio-weapon program. Before it was dismantled following the 1972 Geneva Protocol it is not unreasonable to believe that any number of creeping awfuls were created at Dugway (after all, the U.S. is acknowledged as the leader is biological research, and bio-weapons are just another branch of research). God (or perhaps the Devil) knows what was brewed up in the name of freedom before sanity intervened.

If the war is pre-'72 it is not at all unreasonable to expect both sides to use biologicals AND long duration chemicals anywhere they might expect their opponents to seek aid or shelter (Viet Nam, Australia, Middle East, India, Pakistan, South America, South Africa, etc.). Once that happened death would be running about on little cat's feet everywhere. Post '72 you need to rely on the Colbalt jacketing to slowly poison the Planet.

If you are blessed this might give you a 99.999 death rate (there is always the odd bastard from the REALLY deep end of the gene pool) leaving you with 60-70,000 or so dazed survivors of Homo Sapiens Sapiens wandering around trying to figure out what the hell happened.
 
Suppose the Soviet Chinese border conflict lead to full scale war. What is the maximum negative outcome for US and it's allies and neutral states? I'v read somewhere that the US didn't want a war on those grounds.

besides the instant death toll, massive starvation. a can of boston beans would sky rocket in price :mad::mad:
 
It depends on when, mostly. From the late '60s on nuclear war would likely be unavoidable.
Not necessarily. If they both judge that using nuclear weapons would cause a reverberating effect with other nuclear-armed countries and lead to mass worldwide...(what's the right word here?)...um, boom; they would both then decide to avoid nukes and go straight for a conventional (plus gas) war.

What I do know is: Mongolia is fucked. Totally fucked. Not even the ghost of Genghis could save them, because that whole countryside would wind up being an Asiatic Poland, i.e supersized battlefield where everyone goes to die. :D
 
I recall reading something about this subject in the '90s, around the time the CNN documentary series Cold War came out. It seems that the Soviets were very serious about a war with China (getting ready to call up reservists, put their economy on a war footing, preparing to ship divisions to the Sino-Soviet Border region, alerting their Pacific Fleet, etc,). Supposedly Andrei Gromyko (Soviet Foreign Minister) called Henry Kissinger (then the National Security Advisor) and asked what would America's reaction be to a Sino-Soviet War. Since this question was nearly out of the blue, Kissinger told Gromyko that he'd call back after consulting with President Nixon, along with SecState and SecDef. A few days later, as the Politburo was debating the issue, Gromyko got his return call. Kissinger supposedly said that America would remain neutral, as would her allies in Europe and the Pacific, and would urge that no nuclear weapons be used by either side. That was the public version. He also added that the U.S. would sit back and watch the two Communist behemoths bash each other to pieces, and then the U.S. would take advantage of it in SEA (no Soviet or Chinese help for the North Vietnamese...) and in the Middle East (no Soviet arms for Egypt and Syria). And public opinion would have been like this: "The Russians and Communist Chinese are at war? Good. Then the Commies will kill each other off." If someone pops a nuke (most likely the Soviets), that question never came up, as the Politburo decided against war after getting Gromyko's report.
 
Start with a full Sino/Soviet nuclear exchange, with the U.S. getting involved (how is less important than it happening, which, based on most open source info is likely).

But it was that I wanted to know. Why would Soviet (or China) start nuking another country when they are fighting each others?
 

CalBear

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But it was that I wanted to know. Why would Soviet (or China) start nuking another country when they are fighting each others?

Well, the short version is that once someone crosses the nuclear threshold, everything goes on hair trigger and even a minor error in judgement by a junior officer (e.g. a clash along the inter-German border between a couple of random patrols, an airliner mistaken for a bomber entering the ADZ)results in escalation.
 
The Soviets had a very robust bio-war program

That's putting it mildly....

From Plague Wars by Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg (a VERY scary book)

Alibekov also confirmed that the Soviets were attempting at Vektor to genetically engineer entirely new life forms – super-viruses –, which, if successful, were intended to cause unimaginable consequences to the world’s population. These ‘doomsday’ viruses were combinations of the most deadly germs available – smallpox, Marburg, Ebola, VEE and Machupo. The grotesque ‘marriage’ would be between speed of infection and high-kill factor. The aim was to insert genes from one virus, like Ebola, into another, like smallpox, to create an even more lethal ‘chimera’ virus.

By 1990, Alibekov alleged, the Soviets had successfully created the first ‘chimera’ – by inserting genes from VEE (a brain virus, that causes a sever coma) into smallpox. Biopreparat spent several million dollars on this programme. Subsequent combinations under development included the insertions of Ebola and Marburg genes into smallpox.

(Alibekov’s claims about the ‘chimera’ research were later vociferously denied by Sandakhchiev. Western intelligence analysts believe the programme was still in its infancy; however, to dismiss it as a potential threat, they say, would run contrary to everything the Russians have achieved in their biological weapons development programmes so far.)

Alibekov described the entire range of special technologies and engineering used by the Soviets to manufacture agents and weapons; cultivation; preparations; formulas; instruments; and milling, drying and freeze-drying techniques. He recounted a wide array of testing methods in chambers and the open air. He recited precise testing methods including gruesome infection ratios and kill rates. For every piece of equipment or process, he also carefully explained how each technique applied to every primary BW agent in the Soviet arsenal. He gave personal profiles of all key Soviet officials and scientists in Biopreparat, including their research work, tendencies and vulnerabilities. He described the layouts of every facility in depth and concluded his technical presentation with an insight into Soviet defensive innovations, equipment and vaccines – that is, how they planned to fight off an enemy attack.

Alibekov also confirmed that the Soviets had conducted large-scale aerosol tests inside the USSR’s borders, near civilian populations, using BW simulants (including Bacilus thuringiensis and Serratia marcescens). These experiments, held from 1979 through 1989, had occurred near Novosibirskm at a military site near Nukus, in the Caucusus, and several times inside the Moscow subway system.

In terms of strategic planning, he confirmed Pasechnik’s insight that the Soviet BW programme had operated under the highest security classification possible in the USSR’s political/military system – even higher than the nuclear programme. This classification, ‘Special Importance’, which was higher than ‘Top Secret’, indicated, by itself, that the Soviets equated their strategic BW missiles with their nuclear missiles.

Alibekov explained the Soviet delivery systems of BW agents, describing with precise detail the tactical aircraft with spray tanks; long-range strategic bombers carrying cluster bombs; strategic missiles with multiple warheads; and cruise missiles under development. In the event of an all-out war, he added, the biological agents used to strike strategic targets – like American and British cities – would not just comprise super-Plague and anthrax, but also viruses that cause serious epidemics, including smallpox and Marburg. Each city would be attacked with a cocktail of bacteria and viruses – at least three to five agents per attack – so the enemy activities would be fully disrupted within a couple of days; the civilian infrastructure would collapse and there would be few survivors. The will to continue the fighting would die with the people.

Soviet BW production was considered so sensitive, Alibekov said, that nothing was shared with any foreign government, not even Warsaw Pact nations. Inside the Kremlin, all Soviet leaders since Brezhnev, including President Gorbachev, had understood the extent of the BW programme. But only a few other high-ranking members on the Politburo (like the defence and Health Ministers), who were directly responsible in the chain of command, and took care of funding, were kept fully informed; other officials only had a generalised overview.

This mafia-like secrecy, a kind of military/political omerta, ensured that only a tiny handful of very senior officers and their immediate aides and juniors, men like Yevstigneev and Kalinin, had the knowledge and were able to administer the whole programme. That alone helped explain Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s confusions, hesitations, and contradictions when talking to the West about BW treaty violations.

At the very end of months and months of long and careful debriefing, Alibekov was invited to write a study paper for the CIA of all the information in is possession on the entire Soviet BW programme. This long paper was considered so potentially dangerous should it ever fall into the wrong hands that it was given the highest US security classification that exists, and even Alibekov was not permitted to keep a copy or ever see it again.
 

CalBear

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That's putting it mildly....

...At the very end of months and months of long and careful debriefing, Alibekov was invited to write a study paper for the CIA of all the information in is possession on the entire Soviet BW programme. This long paper was considered so potentially dangerous should it ever fall into the wrong hands that it was given the highest US security classification that exists, and even Alibekov was not permitted to keep a copy or ever see it again.


Yep. Ivan was quite dedicated to the system. There are more than a few folks who are less than convinced that Russia is completely out of the game even today.
 
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