Fifty years ago, the US and China signed the "Shanghai Communiqué" leading to the normalisation of ties between Washington and Beijing. Its main purpose was to counter the Soviet Union which had threatened to "take out" China's nuclear arsenal. RFI looks at how this historical 'triangle' is being reformed against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
US President Richard Nixon's groundbreaking visit to China from 21-28 February 1972, half a century ago, resulted in a strategic cooperation with China sharing intelligence on Soviet troop movements through its listening posts near the Russian border in Xinjiang, discouraging Moscow from attacking China, and thus preventing a nuclear Armageddon.
The relationship grew so close, that after official ties were established in 1979, then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited the top-secret situation room in the CIA headquarters in Lanlgley, Virginia, as reported for the first time only last week in a podcast by veteran China watcher Jane Perlez.
What Perlez failed to mention is that the China-US love affair can be explained as US revenge on Moscow for refusing a similar request from Washington some five years earlier.
Q&A with Ambassador Winston Lord, who was the room with Nixon and Mao: https://t.co/dWXpYQUD81
— Jeremy Goldkorn (@goldkorn) February 23, 2022
According to an 2010 article in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, the US wanted to attack China's nuclear installations before it developed a bomb and saw the Sino-Soviet split in 1961 as "the perfect opportunity for a joint operation."
On 14 July, 1963, an American emissary in Moscow gave "a detailed presentation of China's nuclear programme" and, according to the paper, "proposed a joint operation to stop it. But Soviet president Nikita Khruschev said the programme posed no threat."
Betrayal
After the Chinese-US detente, Russia felt betrayed, but cancelled its plans for a nuclear attack on China. The threat of a nuclear war remained, but Washington and Moscow managed to agree to limit the numbers of nuclear warheads through a series of negotiations resulting in the Salt and Start treaties.
When the cold war ended in 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the threat of a nuclear war greatly evaporated. Former soviet states which had nuclear weapons on their territory gave them to Russia. But the weapons were never removed.
Fast forward to 2022.
On 27 February, on the fourth day after invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's nuclear forces into high alert in response to what he called "unfriendly" steps by the West.
The same day, Belta, the Belarus state controlled news wire reported on a "referendum" that would allow lawmakers to "amend the constitution." It appeared to be a decision, made by Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, that would allow Russia to move nuclear arms to Belarus territory.
Slamming the "fake referendum," the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on Monday that the Belarussian decision to drop the country's non-nuclear status was "very dangerous."
"We know what it means for Belarus to be nuclear. It means that Russia will put nuclear weapons in Belarus and this is a very dangerous path," he said.
Yesterday's constitutional referendum in #Belarus was orchestrated by Lukashenko to gain additional tools to further consolidate his power.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) February 28, 2022
The deletion of Article 18 on Belarus’s non-nuclear status is greatly worrying.
The #EU continues to stand by the Belarusian people. https://t.co/varLYY3Nrt
The waiting game
But it is far from clear if China, which was threatened with a nuclear attack by Moscow over fifty years ago, will support Russia when it comes to active deployment of nuclear weapons.
When the Olympic Winter Games started in Beijing two weeks ago, Putin was there, and had a high-level meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It is likely that Xi knew about Russia's invasion plans, but asked Putin not to invade during the Olympic games, as he did in 2008, when Russian troops invaded Georgia on the first day of the Olympic Summer Games, which Beijing hosted as well.
But China's recent abstention in the UN Security Council on a vote that would condemn Russia's invasion into Ukraine (Russia was the only country that voted against; China, India and the UAE abstained) shows Beijing's reluctance to fully support Putin.
"Restraint"
Beijing has also been consistent in saying that its own nuclear arsenal (estimated at some 350 warheads, against Russia's 6,257 and the US's 5,550) is only meant for deterrence and never for "first strike".
But China on Monday called for de-escalation and "restraint" over the Ukraine crisis as Russia and Ukraine prepared to meet for their first talks since Moscow's invasion of its western neighbour and pressed for Russia's "reasonable" security demands to be heard, repeatedly refusing to condemn Putin's actions or use the term "invasion".
Xi Jinping told Putin in a call last week that he hoped the crisis could be resolved with a "balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiations."
Meanwhile, China shares Moscow's opinion that the US, Nato and the EU are largely responsible for Russia's anger, because of the eastward expansion of the Atlantic Alliance, which, it claims, was a "violation of promises."
Last week, referring to the 50th anniversary of the Shanghai Communiqué, China's Xinhua News Agency said that "it is high time that Washington realised that, though the post-pandemic world will face new situations and challenges, conflict and confrontation between major countries are not the theme of the world, nor will it solve the problems facing the United States and other countries."
But at the same time, while not talking about an "invasion," Beijing repeats its long-held dogma of "non-interference" in other countries' affairs and the importance of "national sovereignty," and, earlier this month, dedicated a large part of the front page of the official People's Daily to congratulate Ukraine on its independence.
