More likely while the Chinese are mobilizing they'll do some visible submarine patrols, fly some bombers with nukes in them, make sure their deterrent is very visible. It's called signaling. It's an important part of nuclear policy to be able to do so. And it's a very pointed reminder to the Chinese of their arsenal.
Sino Russian war 1993
- Thread starter Monk78
- Start date
By 1993 the Chinese were quite indifferent to those old claims. In fact, in 1991, they had agtreed to a border demarcation with the dying USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Sino-Soviet_Border_Agreement
Your post says 1993 and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so they certainly would have been withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact. If you meant the book, I think it was from the 1980s.
The Soviet Union developed conventional weapons systems for hypothetical war against China, that are now banned, such as special versions of he Cluster bomb. Some of these stocks were used during the first Chechen war.
Deleted member 2186
How are they going to do that, if nukes fly, they fly, nothing the US can do about that.
I don’t recall. It was about twelve years ago. They had lots of books of varying quality and reliability in that rather large library anyways.
Ramontxo
Donor
The USA has not such an option. There is no way it can forbid either China or Russia to use their nuclear armament. Even if it where just either the UK or France in such a situation where they thought their Country was obliged to use the Nuclear Option I think it would take far more than a "Ukasse" from the USA to make them desist of it
Last edited:
Maybe a scenario where a Russian Civil War has broken out either after the August 1990 coup or in the wake of the 1993 constitutional crisis culminating in the storming of the Russian White house. This may take the form of Chinese intervention on one of the sides in a Russian Civil War or simply an attempt to take advantage of the situation by seizing some of Beijing's territorial claims in Siberia or Mongolia. Otherwise, a Sino-Russian war in the 1990s seems unlikely. In a Russian Civil War situation, I think China would be going for a limited territorial conquest, hence a limited border clash is a probable scenario.
The weird thing about the POD is that this was precisely the time when Russia and China were having the best relations they had for decades, when far from itching to avenge old territorial losses, China had reached a border agreement with the USSR in 1991 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Sino-Soviet_Border_Agreement and far from wanting to go back in it after the collpase of the USSR : "May 29, 1994, during the visit of Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to Beijing, Russian and Chinese officials signed an agreement on the Sino-Russian Border Management System intended to facilitate border trade and hinder criminal activity.[13] On September 3 of that year, a demarcation agreement was signed, fixing the boundary along a previously–disputed 55-km stretch of the western Sino-Russian border." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Russian_relations_since_1991
Lore_PatriotsUnity12
Banned
Any nuke that launched on both sides resulted the Chinese fault for starting the major war against Russia, and China is most likely to lose almost half of regiments and divisions during the nuclear war on both sides. China is most likely to relinquished the UN Security Council seat should the CCP leadership corrupted and gradually out of control with the overall major distrust to the politics and severe stagnated economy. (I can’t imagine on what could be bleak prediction on the future of Hong Kong once lease expired from worsen Sino-Soviet nuclear war.) From the nuclear fallout, Chinese provincial regions would be fragmented about weeks after the Soviet nuclear strikes of some major Chinese cities. We may see US re-sanctioned to China’s economy and politicians.
Last edited:
Why do think Chinese did that ? Esp when Russia will be weaker than ever in decades ?
Because it solved the problem without expenditure of lives and treasure.
You consistently seem to think countries are more aggressive than they actually are.
Because they have no desire to start a war-especially against a nuclear power!--for some anicent terriitorial claims in which they had long since lost interest.
Even if it could be guaranteed the war would not go nuclear (which it couldn't), their last experience with conventional war--with Vietnam in 1979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War --hadn't gone that well. At the best, a war would be expensive not only in lives and direct expenditures but in trade and diplomatic losses (since the world would condemn China as aggresor). Even the loss in trade with Russia alone would not be trivial, even if no other nation imposed trade sanctions. (But surely the US would react economically at least; as it was, the renewal of China's most favored nation status was a controversial issue in the 1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_favoured_nation#United_States ) And all for what? They don't want to add a Russian minority problem to their existing minority problems anyway.
Last edited:
The OP sets the time for the war in 1993, but since the question has come up... Soviet/Russian withdrawals from former Warsaw Pact countries varied by country, and was (of course) delayed by the struggle of Moscow to pay for the withdrawals (and places to put them back in Russia). For example, the last troops left Czechoslovaka in Jun 1991; Poland in September 1993; eastern Germany, in August 1994.
I doubt that these troops would have made a difference in a Sino-Russian War in '93. Whether they're in Eastern Europe or European Russia (where they all went), Moscow logistically can't trasport or supply them in the Far East, at least not on top of what's already out there.
Russian Armed Forces was engaged in low level conflicts after the post-USSR dissolution. It's military was in an unstable position due to the transition. For China, it's still recovering from the Sino-Vietnamese War and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The PLA's doctrine wasn't fully revised yet. It's navy and air force were mostly for defensive purposes at this period.
As many pointed out, this will only happen if Zhirinovsky became president. He is known to make hawkish statements when is he is angry.
ASB but the war goes on, neither side would make significant gains. The area between Russia and China in the northeast in a difficult area to fight in especially in the dead of winter. Both sides may decide to break out WMDs in the face of overwhelming forces. Pandora's Box opens. China can launch a handful of nuclear weapons on Russian cities and military bases across the border, maybe even send in a few H-6 bombers. Russia will be hurt, but China will be a radioactive wasteland at the end of the day.
www.globalsecurity.org
Page 81 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/066004008):
www.nytimes.com
One thing to note is that the PLA-N did have one Xia-class SSBN, which entered service in August 1983 and was armed with 12 JL-1A SLBMs. A second one was rumored to be lost with all hands in 1985. It also tested first SLBM in 1988 according to the WSJ:
www.wsj.com
Ditto for the PLAAF.
www.jstor.org
As many pointed out, this will only happen if Zhirinovsky became president. He is known to make hawkish statements when is he is angry.
ASB but the war goes on, neither side would make significant gains. The area between Russia and China in the northeast in a difficult area to fight in especially in the dead of winter. Both sides may decide to break out WMDs in the face of overwhelming forces. Pandora's Box opens. China can launch a handful of nuclear weapons on Russian cities and military bases across the border, maybe even send in a few H-6 bombers. Russia will be hurt, but China will be a radioactive wasteland at the end of the day.
Nuclear Weapons Facility Overview
Page 81 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/066004008):
| Year | United States | Russia | United Kingdom | France | China | Israel | India | Pakistan | North Korea |
| 1993 | 23,575 | 43,000 | 422 | 420 | 230 | 47 | no data | 0 | 0 |
Russian forces only completely left Germany and Eastern Europe in March 1994.
Bitter Goodbye: Russians Leave Germany (Published 1994)
China's navy and air force at this period can only go places near to the coast. The PLA-N of 1993 isn't the ocean-going PLA-N of 2020/2021. It was only in the late 1990s when the PLA-N began to be green water at least in response to the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis.
One thing to note is that the PLA-N did have one Xia-class SSBN, which entered service in August 1983 and was armed with 12 JL-1A SLBMs. A second one was rumored to be lost with all hands in 1985. It also tested first SLBM in 1988 according to the WSJ:
China’s Submarines Add Nuclear-Strike Capability, Altering Strategic Balance
With far-ranging nuclear subs, China is rattling Asia’s balance of power, challenging the U.S. and risking an undersea contest with echoes of Tom Clancy and the Cold War.
www.wsj.com
Ditto for the PLAAF.
China's Response to the Strategic Defense Initiative on JSTOR
John W. Garver, China's Response to the Strategic Defense Initiative, Asian Survey, Vol. 26, No. 11 (Nov., 1986), pp. 1220-1239
www.jstor.org
Then have Vlad Zhirinovksy take over. Since he is a nationalist and racist, he may try to rally Russian nationalism of a potential invasion of the Far East by the Chinese. The 1990s was the period where Chinese migration to the Russian Far East increased.
The issue is that they wouldn’t need to keep them in Eastern Europe though, in retrospect, they hadn’t actually been keeping them in the Sarsaw Pact for decades, had they? If they had they wouldn’t do so many invasions from the outside, rather than having Soviets stationed inside handle it. Near the end of the Soviet Union it was also getting to the point where only around have the population was Russian, though I am unsure if that was ethnic Russians or Russian citizens. I think they used the terms Russki and Russians to distinguish them. Though the CIS possibly had some military defensive arrangements, I am unsure if it would have made too much of a difference. The regular Russian troops could make a difference in a war, but it depends on just how fast it is going. The TransSiberian Railroad would be one of the first targets e Chinese go for if the war expands further than just the paltry islands, and if they aimed at train depots rather than just isolated lines, hitting civilian areas... Well, not like it would expand things further than the actual war.
Sadly I can not give any written source, beacause it was in one foreign policy live TV show around 1999, when the second Chechen war broke out. One of the Estonian military experts, ie a former USSR staff officer, commented on the 1993 documentary frames from last war, saying, look, weapons for a hypothetical war with China were used there.
I only remember, because, that at the same autumn I took a course on a related subject at the university.