Thread by @DefenseNigeria

The day America saved China from nuclear anihilation.

Chinese troops ambushed a unit of Soviet border troops on March 2nd 1969. About 300 Chinese soldiers sprung from their foxhole and opened fire on the remaining Soviets. China's Mao gambled that the Soviets will not retaliate or do so on a minor scale. He was wrong.

Soviet strategic missile forces were put on high alert with nuclear warheads ready to be launched at 1500km away in less than 15 minutes. At the same time KGB elite border guards planted on the disputed islands mowed down a Chinese detachment of soldiers with machine

..gun fire, killing hundreds of Chinese soldiers. The Soviets wanted to launch a limited nuclear strike against Chinese nuclear facilities as well as tactical attacks on deployed Chinese forces.

The CIA got wind of the planned Soviet attack on China.

The U.S then notified Moscow it knew of the planned attack and made a direct threat of nuclear retaliation if China is attacked with nuclear weapons.

The Soviet leader was told that the US had devised "detailed plans" for nuclear war with the Soviet Union if it attacked China,

The same day, Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev that he had just met Henry Kissinger, the U.S national security adviser to Nixon.

QUOTE

If China suffers a nuclear attack, they will deem it as the start of the third world war

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Thus China was spared from a Soviet nuclear attack by threats of nuclear retaliation from the United States. Where it not for Nixon its quie possible China will only have been spoken of in the past tense.

Chinese nuclear weapons then were few, crude and unreliable. They lacked the range to strike vital Soviet targets. The Soviets on the other hand had a modern, sophsiticated arsenal of tactical and strategic nuclear weapon easily capable of wiping out Chinas nuclear deterrent.