¹ Pravda (Bratislava), October 24, 1964, p. 5.

² The psychological premise of this argument is quite plausible: that Khrushchev regretted his previous aid programme to China and sought to undo its effects. But there is no firm evidence for this line of speculation, as is seen from consideration of three arguments adduced by Hinton, Harold C., a major proponent of the preventive strike hypothesis (Communist China and World Politics [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966], Chap. XVII)Google Scholar.

One factor is the timing of Khrushchev's fall: Hinton suggests that the First Secretary wanted to strike immediately after the Chinese test; hence, Peking delayed its test until two days after Khrushchev's ouster. The Chinese test, however, was probably intended to occur on October 1—the 15th anniversary of the regimé—but took place on October 14, due to technical problems. (See statement by Secretary of State Rusk, , The New York Times, 10 30, 1964, p. C–16Google Scholar; Powell, Ralph L., “China's Bomb: Exploitation and Reactions,” Foreign Affairs, XLIII, No. 4 (07 1965), p. 616)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hence, if his opponents in the Kremlin wished to prevent his hare-brained project, Khrushchev should have been ousted before October 1. A second argument by Hinton illustrates further the implausibility of the first. He suggests that Khrushchev left Moscow for the Crimea, because he was sure that his preventive strike plan would be surely carried out. But the opposite seems more likely: he was away because he had no plan to act against China. A third argument is based on actions after Khrushchev's removal: The country most vulnerable to a retaliatory Chinese blow—Outer Mongolia—was the promptest and most enthusiastic in commenting on the ouster. But this behaviour could also be accounted for by Ulan Bator's general dependence upon Russia's good graces.

Two other bits of evidence may be cited for the preventive war thesis. One is that the Chinese themselves gave signs of thinking that a new era had begun after Khrushchev's removal, as seen by Chou En-lai's trip to Moscow to explore the new situation. But Peking's hopes may be explained by reasons other than relief that Khrushchev's plan had been pre-empted.

Perhaps the most direct evidence—and it is hardly persuasive—of Soviet interest in stopping the Chinese test is found in reports from the 13th Pugwash Conference meeting in Karlovy-Vary, Czechoslovakia, September 13–19, 1964. Soviet participants in the panel dealing with non-proliferation are said to have argued for a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing, with sanctions provided against any state that tested—whether or not it adhered to the treaty. However the formal statement issued by the Conference Continuing Committee did not go that far. It called for extension of the partial test ban treaty to cover underground testing, if necessary by a moratorium, affirming that technical problems of control “should not now be an obstacle.” The report added: “It is very important that ways and means be found to convince the governments and the people concerned of the inadvisability of any further atmospheric testing” (italics added).

Thus, the evidence that Khrushchev sought a surgical strike is not very compelling. And it would appear basically implausible that Moscow, either alone or in co-ordination with the West, would initiate such a radical move. On the one occasion when a Western statesman is known to have inquired of Khrushchev what to do about the Chinese nuclear threat—during the test ban signing in 1963—the Soviet leader dismissed the problem with a shrug. (See also The New York Times, July 30, 1963 and October 2, 1964; The Washington Post, October 2 and November 15, 1964.)

³ Text in the Peking Review, VII, No. 42 (10 16, 1964)Google Scholar. For the first steps that Peking suggested towards total nuclear disarmament in its initial attack on the Moscow Treaty, see the Chinese statement of July 31, 1963 and Chou En-lai's letter of August 2, 1963.

⁴ Text in Peking Review, VII, No. 43 (10 23, 1964), p. 6Google Scholar. Emphasis added to suggest Peking's possible indifference, at least on paper, to non-proliferation.

⁵ See the analysis by Halperin, Morton H., “Chinese Nuclear Strategy: The Early Post-Detonation Period,” Adelphi Paper (London: Institute for Strategic Studies), No. 18 (05 1965), p. 10Google Scholar.

6 Translation in Peking Review, VII, No. 48 (11 27, 1964), pp. 12–14Google Scholar.

⁷ Pressure from China kept the Soviet Union (like Malaysia) uncertain of being seated at the “Second Bandung” Conference in Algiers up to the moment when it was put off due to Ben Bella's overthrow. For a penetrating analysis, see Die Zeit, June 18, 1965. See also the discussion of Chou En-lai's manoeuvring before the conference in The New York Times, June 20, 1965, p. 4.

⁸ Pravda, July 16, 1965, p. 5; see also “Big Sell-Out at Helsinki,” Peking Review, VIII, No. 26 (06 25, 1965), p. 29Google Scholar.

⁹ Zeri i Popullit, February 2, 1965, which included the text of a January 5, 1965 note from Warsaw to Tirana and other relevant correspondence. It remains an open question, however, whether Albania in this instance was being holier than the Chinese pope desired.

¹⁰ Peking Review, VI, No. 31 (08 2, 1963), pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

¹¹ The following analysis is based in largest part on Soviet media and on comments transmitted by the New China News Agency (NCNA). Since the comments themselves are sometimes ambiguous, and since they are not always reported in full by the Chinese, the views expressed by various governments may not fall so precisely into various categories as expressed here. Many of the relevant documents are reprinted in Europa-Arkhiv, No. 6 (March 25, 1965), pp. D127–146; for analysis, see ibid. pp. D127 et seq.; Powell, Ralph D., “China's Bomb: Exploitation and Reactions,” Foreign Affairs, XLIII, No. 4 (07 1965), pp. 623–624Google Scholar; Halperin, Morton H., “Chinese Nuclear Strategy” op. cit., The New York Times, 12 26, 1964, p. 14Google Scholar.

¹² Interview with correspondent of the Manila Times, reported in The New York Times, October 29, 1964.

¹³ Speech to the General Assembly on December 7, 1964 (“Soviet Government Memorandum on Steps to Further Ease International Tension and to Limit the Arms Race,” text in Current Digest of the Soviet Press [CDSP], XVI, No. 50 [01 6, 1965], pp. 9–11)Google Scholar; see also Le Monde, December 9, 1964.

¹⁴ U.N. Document, DC/213/Add. 2, April 28, 1965.

¹⁵ This point was elucidated by Helmut Sonnenfeldt at the Airlie House Conference in 1965.

¹⁶ Pravda, November 7, 1964.

¹⁷ On February 16, 1965, according to Chinese sources, Premier Kosygin submitted to Peking and Hanoi a formal proposal to convene a new international conference on the whole Indochina question. And on February 23, 1965 Moscow broached with de Gaulle the “question of calling an international conference without prior conditions” (Red Flag and People's Daily, November 11, 1965, translated in Peking Review, VIII, No. 46 [11 11, 1965], pp. 10–21 at pp. 15–17)Google Scholar. But Peking also charged that the Kremlin had “wanted to send via China 4,000 men to be stationed in Vietnam … [and] to occupy and use one or two airfields in south-western China and to station a Soviet armed force of 500 men there” (Chinese Communist Party Central Committee letter to its Soviet counterpart quoted by Crankshaw, Edward in The Observer [London], 11 14, 1965Google Scholar; and Fall, Bernard B., “The Year of the Hawks,” The New York Times Magazine, 12 12, 1965, p. 48)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Halperin, , “Chinese Nuclear Strategy,” op. cit., p. 5Google Scholar.

¹⁹ NCNA-English, February 6, 1965.

²⁰ Premier Shastri failed in his attempt at the Conference to organise a mission to Peking to persuade the Chinese not to test (The New York Times, October 8, 1964, pp. 1, 13). For documents of the Cairo Conference, see Review of International Affairs (Belgrade), XV, No. 350 (11 5, 1964)Google Scholar.

²¹ Pakistan's reply in 1963 also discussed this alternative.

²² Mali has signed the Moscow Treaty, but Guinea and Albania have not.

²³ Halperin, , “Chinese Nuclear Strategy,” op. cit., p. 9Google Scholar.

²⁴ Approximately one-sixth of the states establishing diplomatic relations with Peking from 1949 through 1965 did so in the period subsequent to the October 1964 test. In addition to China's nuclear status, however, was the economic interest Peking presented to other nations. In 1964 alone Communist China was reported to have extended $94 million in grants and credits, while in the entire preceding decade these had totalled only $138 million (The New York Times, August 16, 1965, p. 8). For a listing of the nations having diplomatic relations with Peking, with Taipei, or with neither, see Halpern, A. M. (ed.), Policies Toward China: Views from Six Continents (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), pp. 494–502Google Scholar.

²⁵ In addition to East European, Chinese and other Asian radio broadcasts, the following sources have been used: Neue Züriche Zeitung, May 19, 1965; The New York Times, May 15, 1965; Le Monde, May 18, 1965; Boston Sunday Herald, May 16, 1965, p. 42; plus press surveys of Asahi Evening News; Nihon Keizai; Yomiuri; and the Japan Times.

²⁶ “Carry the Struggle Against Khrushchev Revisionism Through to the End,” People's Daily and Red Flag, 06 14, 1965 (Booklet issued by Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

²⁷ Another hypothesis was that the bomb employed a fission-fusion process to attain its large yield, a fission trigger igniting the thermonuclear material. See The New York Times, May 15, 1966, p. 4E, and May 21, 1966, p. 6.

²⁸ See London Times, May 12, 1966; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 12 and 13, 1966.

²⁹ Ashahi and Sankei, May 17, 1966; Ashahi, May 18, 1966.

³⁰ Text of the Chinese statement in The New York Times, May 10, 1966.

³¹ Pravda (Moscow), May 10, 1966; Rude Pravo (Prague), May 11, 1966; Borba (Belgrade), May 12, 1966. The Yugoslav paper charged that the Chinese experiment “is motivated by an incomprehensible racial complex,” but the only evidence cited was that Peking proclaimed its test necessary as a means of opposing “United States-Soviet collusion for maintaining a nuclear monopoly and sabotaging” the struggle of the oppressed peoples.

³² The following analysis is based on radio broadcasts; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 11–16, 1966; and the Peking Review, IX, Nos. 21 and 22.

³³ Peking Review, IX, No. 22 (05 27, 1966), p. 38Google Scholar.

³⁴ Text in Peking Review, IX, No. 21 (05 20, 1966), pp. 5–12 at p. 8Google Scholar.

³⁵ Not clear whether this is a quote or a paraphrase of the film commentary. See Peking Review, IX, No. 41 (10 7, 1966), p. 31Google Scholar.

³⁶ Ibid. pp. 31–32.

³⁷ Peking Review, IX, No. 45 (11 4, 1966), p. 27Google Scholar.

³⁸ Ibid. pp. 24–26.

³⁹ Peking did not formally classify these individuals into those from the Soviet and those from the non-Soviet orbit, but it did observe a de facto separation, marked by a subtitle “Love Chairman Mao All the More.” See ibid.; also IX, No. 46 (November 11, 1966), pp. 28–29.

In a somewhat unusual step for the U.N. Secretary General, U Thant expressed his regret at the Chinese test (and at a Soviet underground test one day before). “Any atomic explosion anywhere at any time is to be regretted,” he said, noting that the General Assembly had urged in 1965 that all atomic tests be suspended (The New York Times, October 29, 1966, p. 3).

⁴⁰ The New York Times, December 31, 1966.

⁴¹ Text in The New York Times, December 29, 1966, p. 12.

⁴² See the report on the foreword to the Japanese edition of Hsieh's, Alice L.Communist China's Strategy in the Nuclear Age in The New York Times, 05 31, 1966, p. 3Google Scholar. The foreword was written before the third Chinese test, after which Chinese claims mounted.

⁴³ See “The Mortal Enemy Must Pay for Its Old and New Crimes,” editorial, Liberation Army Daily, May 13, 1966, in Peking Review, IX, No. 20 (05 13, 1966), p. 6Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ See Sulzberger, Cyrus in The New York Times, 05 5, 1967Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Hoffmann, Stanley, “Nuclear Proliferation and World Politics“ in Buchan, Alastair, (ed.), A World of Nuclear Powers? (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 105Google Scholar.