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China v USSR 1989

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  • #61
    Recall what China was back then. 80% rural with the PLA growing their own food. You could not bomb China back to the Stone Age when they were already in the Stone Age.

    The CCP had already prepared the People's War. Surviving Cities would still be under CCP leadership. Collective Farms have their own militia orgainizations and the militia alone numbered 5 million. Most of the PLA would survive under Divisional leadership. The CCP would remain in charge of the country side. They had thought this through.
    i don't get this. you originally mentioned to DOR that if the Soviets ended up hitting China, Chinese national unity would be kaput, warlordism would be back, PLA C3 would be gone, and whatever remained of the military would be trying to stop the urban chaos from engulfing everything else. that looks like USSR victory to me, because the Soviets have achieved their strategic objectives-- elimination of China as a nuclear threat and probably as a regional power bucking the Soviets.

    even holding onto Lop Nor afterwards is optional, because good luck to China restarting a nuclear program anytime soon after the nuclear holocaust.

    What did the Soviets actually gain here? A big desert. What might they lose? The Soviet Far East. Just one nuke would wreck 20 miles of the Trans-Siberian railway leaving vulnerable to a 7 million foot army which doesn't drink gasoline as much as the Soviets do.

    All of this does not mean the Soviets could not win and win easily but the shift would be from counter-force to counter-population, from de-nuclearizing China to genocide ... and that was not the plan.
    doubt that WWI foot army is going anywhere with all the MR HQs gone, Beijing gone, and as you say, 4 of their best field armies destroyed...and the KMT right there. so at the end of 5 days the Soviets have achieved their objective of de-nuclearizing China.

    before this gets even more confusing, i wanted to re-vector back to the original discussion. Brezhnev was willing to risk nuclear war with China provided the US was alongside the USSR, or at least neutral. but even the POTENTIAL of getting into some sort of conflict with the US was a deal-breaker for Brezhnev. he knew it was unlikely that the US was going to start WWIII over China, but he couldn't be sure. deterrence, not warfighting! :-)

    just like LBJ was always afraid of ground troops invading North Vietnam because he couldn't be sure about the Chinese response...even tho everyone knew that the likelihood was low.
    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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    • #62
      Originally posted by astralis View Post
      i don't get this. you originally mentioned to DOR that if the Soviets ended up hitting China, Chinese national unity would be kaput, warlordism would be back, PLA C3 would be gone, and whatever remained of the military would be trying to stop the urban chaos from engulfing everything else.
      That point still stands. No Chinese army is going to march north in the aftermath of a Soviet nuclear strike. However, you did note that I said AFTER the PLA licked their wounds.

      Originally posted by astralis View Post
      that looks like USSR victory to me, because the Soviets have achieved their strategic objectives-- elimination of China as a nuclear threat and probably as a regional power bucking the Soviets.
      Again, look at the Soviet objectives. The elimination of the nuclear threat to Moscow. They're not counting on CCP collapse. They're attacking the C3 but they couldn't care less if Mao or Zhou survived the nuclear strikes. Bonus if they did but again, that is not an objective just we attacked Baghdad but we couldn't care less where Saddam was when the bombs fell.

      Originally posted by astralis View Post
      even holding onto Lop Nor afterwards is optional, because good luck to China restarting a nuclear program anytime soon after the nuclear holocaust.
      You don't know how many nukes were outside of Lop Nor or how many IRBMs they can assembled in Southern China and transport it to Lop Nor.

      Originally posted by astralis View Post
      doubt that WWI foot army is going anywhere with all the MR HQs gone, Beijing gone, and as you say, 4 of their best field armies destroyed...and the KMT right there. so at the end of 5 days the Soviets have achieved their objective of de-nuclearizing China.
      Again, without conquering the rest of China, you do not know how many nukes the Chinese have stored away elsewhere. Lop Nor represented the threat to Moscow only. We know all this now that 2Arty had all the nukes but we and the Soviets back then also counted H6 and Q5s as nuclear delivery vehicles.

      And the Soviet Army automatically becomes a foot army once they ran out of fuel, hence the reference to the Trans-Siberian railway.

      Originally posted by astralis View Post
      before this gets even more confusing, i wanted to re-vector back to the original discussion. Brezhnev was willing to risk nuclear war with China provided the US was alongside the USSR, or at least neutral. but even the POTENTIAL of getting into some sort of conflict with the US was a deal-breaker for Brezhnev. he knew it was unlikely that the US was going to start WWIII over China, but he couldn't be sure. deterrence, not warfighting! :-)

      just like LBJ was always afraid of ground troops invading North Vietnam because he couldn't be sure about the Chinese response...even tho everyone knew that the likelihood was low.
      There's 3 fingers of Lagavulin 16 waiting for you.
      Chimo

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