The 1969 Strike Question

DocumentedDates. Chinese troops moved onto the island overnight 1–2 March; the first engagement began about 11:00 on 2 March 1969 and lasted nearly two hours. A second, far larger engagement on 15 March ran roughly nine hours. Further actions on 17 March (failed Soviet tank recovery), 21 March (Soviets shelled the ice to sink the tank) and 22 March (last Soviet fatality). Chinese accounts conventionally count three engagements: 2, 15 and 17 March.

DocumentedSoviet casualties are settled. Dmitri Ryabushkin, working from central and local Russian archives with nominal rolls giving names, ranks and addresses, gives a complete accounting for 2–22 March: 58 killed (49 border guards, 9 Soviet Army) and 94 wounded (61 border troops, 33 Army).

DocumentedThe Chinese planning chain is on the record. After the 5 January 1968 clash at Qiliqin Island killed four Chinese, the Central Military Commission ordered the Beijing and Shenyang Military Regions to prepare a counter-attack at "a politically advantageous time, place, and situation." In late January 1969 the Heilongjiang MD proposed the Zhenbao Island Counter-Interference Struggle Plan; on 19 February 1969 the General Staff and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved it. General Staff instructions were to "strive for suddenness of action," fight quickly, avoid entanglement, withdraw after victory, and obtain "reliable proof" — captured weapons or photographs. Zhenbao was chosen because China's legal claim there was strongest and the tactical geometry favoured it.

DocumentedThe physical inventory corroborates premeditation. Ryabushkin publishes a Soviet inventory (Central Borderguard Archive, Pushkino) of Chinese equipment left on the island: 3 field telephones, up to 2,000 metres of field cable, 5 cable bobbins, 5 entrenching tools, 25 reed or wooden mats, 2 white camouflage cloaks, 50 first-aid packs. Two kilometres of laid telephone wire and sleeping mats are not consistent with a chance patrol encounter.

Documented15 March, scale. A nine-hour firefight. Chinese forces exceeded a regiment (~2,000 men); the Soviets used at least 50 tanks and APCs, fired approximately 10,000 artillery rounds and flew 36 aircraft sorties. It was the first combat use of the BM-21 "Grad" 122 mm 40-tube rocket launcher; participant letters date the decisive ten-minute salvo to about 17:00. Afterwards Moscow alerted the Strategic Rocket Forces in the Far East for several days, standing down on 20 March.

DocumentedT-62 no. 545. Disabled on 15 March, then still a secret type. Soviet recovery failed on 17 March; on 21 March the Soviets shelled the ice to sink it. Chinese divers raised it on 27 April 1969; it is displayed at the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution in Beijing. Sources that date the capture to 21 March have confused sinking with recovery. The claim that the Type 69 tank was "reverse-engineered" from it is an oversimplification.

DocumentedOne battle, three names. Tielieketi (铁列克提), Terekty and Zhalanashkol are the same engagement under Chinese, Kazakh and Soviet names. The date is 13 August 1969; the place is Yumin County, Xinjiang, on the border with what was then Semipalatinsk oblast. Because the two national historiographies describe it so differently, secondary literature sometimes treats them as separate events.

Documented10/11 June — a Chinese protest note; 19 June — a shooting in the Xinjiang mountains leaving, by Chinese account, one herdswoman dead. 8 July — Bacha / Pacha / Goldinsky Island on the Amur: by Moscow's account one Soviet worker killed and three wounded; Soviet troops returned that afternoon and burned a Chinese house and forest. Moscow framed it as a Chinese provocation aimed at sabotaging the Khabarovsk river-navigation talks. Both sides' versions are single-source and contradictory.

DocumentedHe did, and the memorandum of conversation is public. It was declassified and published for the first time as Document 10 in William Burr's National Security Archive briefing book in 2001, and the covering Rogers memorandum is also printed in FRUS.

DocumentedDavydov's argument. He volunteered a rationale, unprompted — which is what made the approach unusual. Two objectives would be served: "the Chinese nuclear threat would be eliminated for decades," and the blow "would so weaken and discredit the 'Mao clique' that dissident senior officers and Party cadres could gain ascendency in Peking." He insisted a strike "would not affect the US and there was nothing to fear from this," and that China would not attack the Soviet Union in return "because they would fear a more massive Soviet attack in retaliation." He also told Stearman the 13 August Xinjiang clash involved a "mob of peasants" and "had nothing to do with Chinese nuclear installations in Sinkiang."

DocumentedDavydov was a KGB officer under diplomatic cover. Raymond Garthoff attests to his credentials (Detente and Confrontation, 2nd edn, p. 237). The meeting had been reported before Burr published the memcon — by Garthoff, and by Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall (1999), pp. 66–67.

DocumentedSecretary of State Rogers set out the full pattern for Nixon on 10 September 1969, in a memorandum titled "The Possibility of a Soviet Strike Against Chinese Nuclear Facilities." Drafted by INR/RSE (R. Baraz) on 29 August, forwarded by Marshall Green on 30 August. This is the single best document on the question.

Documented27 August 1969 — the US went public. CIA Director Richard Helms told the press that Moscow had been sounding out foreign governments on their reactions to a preemptive strike on China. It ran on 28–29 August in the Washington Post ("Russia Reported Eyeing Strikes at China A-Sites") and the New York Times. Lüthi notes that "it is unclear why the US government went public." Beijing knew within a day, and Mao and Zhou ordered general mobilisation of the PLA and massive civil defence preparations.

Documented"Will Russia Czech-Mate China?", London Evening News, 16 September 1969, p. 7; translated in FBIS USSR, 19 September 1969, pp. A11–A12. Victor Louis (born Vitaly Yevgenyevich Lui) was a Soviet citizen with close KGB connections, labelled "an agent of the Soviet State" by the CIA and previously accused by Beijing of carrying out "secret activities" on Taiwan for Moscow.

DocumentedNIE 11/13-69, "The USSR and China," 12 August 1969 — six days before the Davydov lunch — found there was "at least some chance" that Moscow "may be preparing to take action" against Chinese nuclear forces, and that "a conventional air strike aimed at destroying China's missile and nuclear facilities might be the most attractive military option available to Moscow, if the Soviets believed that they could do this without getting involved in a prolonged and full-scale war." The Estimate "did not think it likely that the Kremlin would reach this conclusion, but felt that there was some chance that it would."

DocumentedRogers to Nixon, 10 September 1969 — the bottom line. "It is extremely unlikely that Davydov would be privy to top-level Soviet discussions on this matter, much less any decisions taken… his questioning about the strike hypothesis was in the context of trying to elicit discussion of American views." Davydov's conversation and the Boston remarks "are curiosities rather than signals." And: "Thus the possibility of a Soviet strike at Chinese nuclear facilities cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, my advisers and I do not believe such a move to be probable." The Department's analysts judged the chances "substantially less than fifty-fifty," and that if conflict came it "might more likely result from escalation of border clashes." Rogers: "That assessment seems reasonable to me."

DocumentedThe CIA Board of National Estimates was more forward-leaning. Special Memorandum 4-69, "The Soviet Buildup Against China," 6 May 1969: "Soviet military exercises in the Far East have played China as the opponent, and have involved Soviet use of nuclear weapons." Dispositions in Mongolia "could be lead elements for a heavily armored offensive ground force around Lake Baykal which might attack either toward Peking or toward the Chinese missile and nuclear facilities." And, strikingly: "Given an opportunity or an excuse, the Soviets would probably excise the Chinese nuclear threat. There can be little doubt that Chinese nuclear facilities would be attacked immediately should large scale conflict with the Chinese break out." But the same memorandum concludes: "Evidence of Soviet strategic attack preparations against China is thus quite tenuous at present."

DocumentedThe dissenting voice inside the US government was Allen Whiting's. His 16 August 1969 report to Kissinger, "Sino-Soviet Hostilities and Implications for U.S. Policy," written overnight after briefing Kissinger at San Clemente, argued that "Soviet military deployments and political behavior indicate an increasing probability of a Soviet attack on China, presumably aimed at destroying China's nuclear capability." The briefing significantly shaped Kissinger's thinking and inspired secret NSC contingency planning.

DocumentedKissinger's marginal note. On the Holdridge/Sonnenfeldt memorandum of 12 September 1969, Kissinger wrote in the margin that he disagreed with State's assessment: "Soviets would not ask such questions lightly." Two renderings circulate — Burr quotes "I disagree with State analysis. Soviets would not ask such questions lightly"; Gerson quotes "would not ask such questions lightly – though this does not mean that they intend to attack." The qualifying clause matters and is usually dropped.

DocumentedThe operative decision came six weeks later, and it was a diplomatic one. Kissinger's memorandum to Nixon of 29 September 1969, "The US Role in Soviet Maneuvering Against China" (FRUS XII, Doc. 88), recommended that Nixon authorise him to ask State "to prepare instructions to the field setting forth guidance to be used with the USSR and others, deploring reports of a Soviet plan to make a preemptive military strike against Communist China." Nixon circled Approve and added a handwritten instruction to base it on "reports which have come here." Haig's memorandum to Kissinger of 11 October 1969 confirms: "The President has authorized you to ask State to prepare instructions to the field…"

DocumentedThe public signal was Elliot Richardson's, on 5 September 1969 — before the Kissinger memorandum, and drawn from State's own consultants' advice to "avoid any whiff of collusion." Speaking to the American Political Science Association in New York, the Under Secretary of State said: "In the case of Communist China, long run improvement in our relations is in our own national interest. We do not seek to exploit for our own advantage the hostility between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic. Ideological differences between the two Communist giants are not our affair. We could not fail to be deeply concerned, however, with an escalation of this quarrel into a massive breach of international peace and security." (Full text: Department of State Bulletin, 22 September 1969, pp. 257–260.)

DocumentedThe formal policy study was NSSM 63 ("U.S. Policy on Current Sino-Soviet Differences," issued 3 July 1969; response completed 10 November 1969; Senior Review Group 20 November). Its conclusion was neutrality: clear support for either country would forfeit advantage with the other. The Washington Special Actions Group recommended the US "do all possible to avoid involvement while doing what we can to encourage termination of the hostilities." The only mention of US nuclear forces anywhere in this context is a WSAG recommendation to raise the DEFCON in response to a Soviet nuclear attack on China. Kissinger's private position was that neutrality could still "lean toward China."

DocumentedNot everyone in the White House thought a strike would be bad for the US. William Hyland's NSC critique of the NSSM 63 draft, 28 August 1969 — which Kissinger called "1st rate" — held that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US," and that Soviet destruction of Chinese nuclear facilities might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem. State's academic consultants took the opposite view, warning that "a non-nuclear Soviet strike would have a vast destabilizing effect."

DocumentedThe Soviet denials are on the record. Kosygin, at the Beijing airport on 11 September 1969, per the CPSU Central Committee's own circular to the SED: "We declared the provocative nature of the contrived imperialist propaganda to the effect that the Soviet Union allegedly is preparing a preventive strike on China." Kapitsa called the idea "unthinkable" and "an invention of the Western press." Denials are not disproof — but they are the only contemporaneous Soviet statements on the question in the archives.

DocumentedSome Soviet officials were talking openly about nuclear use. Maj-Gen Sergei Krakhmalov, Soviet military attaché in Tehran, told US diplomats in September 1969 that Moscow "would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese if they attacked with major forces." Arkady Shevchenko, then at the UN, told a US diplomat on 5 September 1969 that Beijing was wrong to think the Kremlin would not "use larger-than-tactical nuclear weapons" — a hawkishness rather at odds with the tone of his own 1985 memoir.

DocumentedDate and duration confirmed. 11 September 1969, Beijing Capital Airport. The Chinese official record gives 3 hours 40 minutes; the Soviet circular says "about four hours"; Ryabushkin says three and a half. Soviet side: Kosygin, CPSU CC Secretary Konstantin Katushev, Mikhail Yasnov. Chinese side: Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian, Xie Fuzhi.

DocumentedCorrection to the standard account: this was not a flight diverted on the way home from Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh died 2 September; the funeral was 9 September. The CPSU Central Committee's own memorandum to the East German leadership states that the Chinese reply reached Hanoi an hour after the Soviet delegation had already left for Moscow via Calcutta, and that Kosygin "set off for Beijing already from the territory of the Soviet Union." Sources differ on which Central Asian city — Ryabushkin says Tashkent, Kapitsa's memoir (via Lüthi) says a refuelling stop at Dushanbe; from there Kosygin ordered the aircraft to fly via Siberia to Beijing.

DocumentedWhat was agreed — the Chinese four points. (1) maintain the status quo of the border; (2) avoid military conflict on the border; (3) military forces to avoid contact in disputed areas; (4) border authorities to consult in case of dispute. Both sides agreed to confirm this by exchanging formal letters after reporting to their leaderships — which is what generated Zhou's letter of 18 September. Zhou declared "China has no territorial pretensions toward the Soviet Union," repeated the "unequal treaties" characterisation but said China did not demand their annulment, and told Kosygin polemics would continue. The Soviets separately proposed restoring rail and air links, the severed high-frequency communications line, and ambassadors.

DocumentedThe nuclear clause is Zhou's, added afterwards, and Moscow never confirmed it. Zhou's letter to Kosygin of 18 September 1969, Section II.1: "The two sides promise that the armed forces of each side, including nuclear forces, will not attack and open fire on the other side." Kosygin replied on 26 September proposing talks in Beijing in early October — but, as Zhou told the Chinese delegation on 7 October, "in their letter of reply, they only mentioned that they had issued the order to their border forces, without mentioning the mutual understandings that had been reached." Mao and Zhou read the omission as meaning war was imminent. Talks opened in Beijing on 20 October 1969: Qiao Guanhua for China, First Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov for the USSR.

DocumentedThe Four Marshals told Mao an attack was unlikely. Their report of 17 September 1969 (Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen, Xu Xiangqian) says the Soviets were "openly threatening us with a nuclear strike, and conspiring to launch a surprise attack on our nuclear facilities" — and concludes that "the Soviet revisionists dare not start a major war against China." China's most senior military-strategic advisers reached that judgement six days after the airport meeting. The leadership panicked anyway a month later. The war scare was not driven by the expert assessment.

DocumentedDates. On 17 October 1969, from Suzhou, Lin Biao formulated the "Urgent Directive on Strengthening War Preparedness and Preventing an Enemy Surprise Attack," conveyed by his secretary Zhang Yunsheng by telephone to Chief of the General Staff Huang Yongsheng. On 18 October (21:30, per Chinese sources) Huang transmitted it to the whole army as "林副主席第一个号令" — Vice-Chairman Lin's First Order. It was reported to Mao on 19 October. Gerson dates Lin's message to Huang to 18 October; the discrepancy is minor.

DocumentedWhat it directed. Dispersal and protection of heavy weapons — tanks, aircraft, artillery — especially in the three northern military regions; accelerated production of anti-tank weapons; command organs to move to wartime positions; strengthened duty rotations; intelligence units on constant surveillance. Whether it originally contained four or six items is disputed between sources.

DocumentedCorrection: the dispersal of the leadership was Mao's decision of 14 October, four days before the Order. The CCP Central Committee's notice of 14 October required principal leaders in Beijing to complete war-preparedness dispersal before 20 October. Mao's reasoning: "The concentration of all of the members of the central leadership in Beijing is not good; one atom bomb would kill many."

DocumentedKey military officials went to a hardened wartime command centre under Baiwang Shan (百望山) in western Beijing; the State Council and the Party's Central General Office to hardened posts in Xiangbizi Gou (象鼻子沟), also in the western hills. Liu Shaoqi died at Kaifeng on 12 November 1969.

Documented27 August 1969 — the CCP Central Committee and the Central Military Commission established a national Leading Group for People's Air Defence, headed by Zhou Enlai, tasked with preparing large-scale evacuations and dispersing critical industries out of large cities; citizens in major cities were told to dig air-raid shelters and stockpile necessities. 28 August — the CC's "Order for General Mobilization in Border Provinces and Regions" (full text in CWIHP Bulletin 11). Gansu ordered its urban population to scatter on 30 August; Beijing mobilised its eight million inhabitants on 2 September. After the Victor Louis article, a crash shelter-building programme was established nationwide.

DocumentedIt began in 1964 — and Mao's push predates the Gulf of Tonkin by three months. On 10 May 1964 Mao rejected the draft Third Five-Year Plan's agriculture-first emphasis and demanded acceleration of the Panzhihua steel base; on 27 May 1964 he convened an enlarged Politburo Standing Committee meeting on the Third Front. The Gulf of Tonkin incident of 2 August 1964 then catalysed full mobilisation; on 17 August at Beidaihe Mao demanded acceleration of the Chengdu–Kunming railway. Mao's rationale: "in the period of the atomic bomb, we need a strategic rear for retreat."

DocumentedGeography. The Great Third Front, centrally administered: Sichuan (including present-day Chongqing), Yunnan, Guizhou; Shaanxi, Gansu east of Wushaoling, Qinghai, Ningxia; and the parts of Hebei, Henan, Hubei and Hunan west of the Beijing–Guangzhou railway, plus Guangxi's Hechi region and Shanxi south of Yanmen Pass. The Small Third Front was provincially administered in the mountainous interiors of coastal provinces; the Shanghai programme was the largest.

DocumentedThe dates below rest chiefly on Hui Zhang, China's Fissile Material Production and Stockpile, IPFM Research Report No. 17 (2017), built from Chinese-language official and semi-official histories. Zhang's coordinates are read off commercial satellite imagery. Every arc-minute coordinate from FAS, GlobalSecurity or AtomicArchive is a 1990s open-source estimate, not an official datum — and AtomicArchive's six-decimal renderings of FAS's arc-minute figures are false precision, not independent confirmation.

DocumentedWhat US intelligence could see. Lop Nur was identified from CORONA imagery of 6–9 August 1964 — a ground scar forming ~60% of a circle 19,600 ft across, with a 325 ft tower first seen in April 1964. The suspected Yumen reactor was first photographed in 1962; October 1965 imagery showed four of six cooling towers finished, all six complete by September 1967. Lanzhou was identified in September 1959 but consistently underestimated — a well-documented analytic failure, since analysts expected China's first test to be plutonium-fuelled. Declassified CORONA coverage of Lanzhou exists for 10 August 1964, 17 December 1969 and 31 March 1971; the December 1969 pass falls squarely inside the crisis and would be worth ordering from NARA.

DocumentedNamed transfers. CIA's annex to SM 7-68 lists them: a motorised rifle regiment to the Xinjiang border in late 1963; the 265th MRD from Moscow MD to the Manchurian border in late 1964; an army corps HQ to the Xinjiang border in late 1965; the 322nd MRD from North Caucasus and an MRD from the Baltic to Xinjiang in mid/late 1966; the 18th Guards Tank Division from North Caucasus and the 315th MRD from Odessa to the Mongolian border in late 1966/1967. CIA's own caveat: "Most of these divisions are probably not, at this time, equivalent in strength or quality to the Soviet divisions now stationed in Eastern Europe."

DocumentedThe Central Asian Military District was created on 24 June 1969, HQ Alma-Ata, by splitting the Turkestan MD — forces concentrated on the Chinese border. In the Far East MD, the 29th Army Corps was redesignated the 35th Army in mid-1969, the 51st Combined Arms Army staff was formed, and the 43rd Army Corps moved from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Birobidzhan. In Mongolia, the January 1966 treaty and the 4 March 1967 stationing agreement brought as many as six more divisions plus six new graded earth airfields.

DocumentedTactical air more than doubled after 1966. By May 1969 CIA counted a new tactical air army in Transbaikal–Mongolia with 300 aircraft — the second largest Soviet tactical air army — plus 230 in the Far East MD: 530 tactical combat aircraft in the two districts, over 30 airfields renovated or built along the border, most of the new regiments on older MiG-17 and Il-28. By October 1970 CIA gave "at least 725 combat aircraft and 300 helicopters" along the whole border.

DocumentedLong Range Aviation. CIA, May 1969: "a Badger medium bomber regiment from the western USSR (Southwest Bomber Command) deployed to the Far East and conducted exercises." LRA units had been flying reconnaissance against China since 1965. The LRA headquarters at Blagoveshchensk on the border had been moved back to Ukrainka, "perhaps for physical security reasons," with a new high-echelon headquarters at Irkutsk. CIA's assessment: "Soviet medium bombers could probably penetrate Chinese air defenses rather easily to deliver either conventional or nuclear bombs."

DocumentedWhat R-12/R-14 there was, was in the wrong places. Four pockets, none in Transbaikal, Amur or Mongolia: the 45th Rocket Division at Ussuriysk/Manzovka in Primorye (~32–35 launchers, and disbanded in September 1970 — the eastern MRBM force was liquidated immediately after the crisis, not reinforced); the 83rd Separate Rocket Regiment at Anadyr, four R-14 aimed at Alaska, taken off alert on 1 June 1969; ~10 launchers at Sary-Ozek; 12 R-12 at Kattakurgan and three R-14U silos at Aktyubinsk. Total east of the Urals in 1969: roughly 45–60 launchers and falling — about 7–8% of a force of 608 R-12 and 97 R-14 launchers.

DocumentedThe real nuclear buildup was theatre, not strategic — and it started against China. CIA, March 1968: Moscow stationed Scaleboard (SS-12) missile units "in at least three of the four Soviet military districts along the Chinese border… the fact that the Scaleboard has not yet been identified elsewhere in the Soviet armed forces underscores the increased military priority which the Soviets now accord to the areas near China." By May 1969: 45–54 Scaleboard launchers, 8–12 Shaddock, and a larger-than-normal Scud complement — against a Soviet front in Eastern Europe holding only some 9, possibly 18, Scud launchers. Range is given variously as 450 miles (CIA 1968), 500 nm (CIA 1970) and 500 miles with a 500 kt warhead (Gerson).

DocumentedContemporary US intelligence declined to give China a number at all. NIE 13-8-69 (27 February 1969): China "could now have a few thermonuclear weapons for delivery by its two operational medium jet bombers," plus "some fission weapons in stock." NIE 13-8/1-69 (30 October 1969): moving toward MRBM deployment, but permanent complexes had not begun construction. NIE 13-8-71: fewer than 10 DF-2 MRBMs and "a handful" of strategic bombers — an arsenal a capable opponent could destroy preemptively. Actually deliverable Chinese warheads in 1969 were plausibly in the single digits to low tens. The FAS "50" and the NIE picture are not the same quantity and cannot be conflated.

DocumentedTen tests to the end of 1969, and the list is complete — nothing missing from it, nothing spurious in it. Yields below are Western seismic and radiochemical estimates; none is Chinese-declared. The contemporaneous DIA table of March 1972 is given where it differs.

Documented~59 divisions along the border (NIE 11/13-69), lightly armed and not motorised against motorised Soviet forces with superior artillery, armour and helicopters. DIA's tables show total ground-force army-level units unchanged at 34 from 1966 through 1970, with Northeast China actually falling from 8 to 6 — deployment "remained rather surprisingly stable." The big movement came after the crisis, not during it: DIA calls the transfer of five armies from South China northward in late 1969–early 1970 "the largest troop movement since the end of the China Civil War in 1950." Ground force strength in 1969: 2,379,000. CIA's own dry verdict in May 1969: "The Chinese military posture vis-à-vis the Soviets certainly does not provide a rationale for the Soviet military buildup."

DocumentedThe two standard references, with one correction to a citation in circulation. The CNA study is Michael S. Gerson, The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict: Deterrence, Escalation, and the Threat of Nuclear War in 1969, CNA report CRM D0022974.A2/Final, November 2010, 74 pp., prepared for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (ASCO 2010 027). There is no CNA report titled "The Sino-Soviet Border War and the Possibility of Soviet Nuclear Attack on China" — that title could not be traced to any publication and should be treated as a garbled citation in circulation, not a second work. Goldstein's two articles are confirmed: "Return to Zhenbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why It Matters," The China Quarterly 168 (December 2001), pp. 985–997; and "Do Nascent WMD Arsenals Deter? The Sino-Soviet Crisis of 1969," Political Science Quarterly 118:1 (Spring 2003), pp. 53–79.

DocumentedTransmission: Daily Telegraph c. 12–13 May 2010 → South China Morning Post, 12 May 2010 ("Nixon intervention saved China from Soviet nuclear attack") → Le Figaro, History News Network, and outward. Liu cites no archives, no documents, no file references. The Telegraph's justification was inferential — that a six-part series in an official outlet implies archival access. That is not evidence.

DocumentedTwo serious scholars addressed it, and both reject it. Gerson: "The available archival evidence, however, does not support these claims. On the contrary, much of the debate within the Nixon administration reflected the view that there were significant drawbacks to strong and overt support for either Beijing or Moscow." He then lays out the documented US position — the opposite of Liu's story. Li Danhui, interviewed by the Global Times on 19 May 2010: "I think the planned Soviet nuclear surgical strike on China was actually more bluffing than a real plan," and the US "might have helped to stop the so-called nuclear attack unintentionally" — while noting she lacks evidence the Soviets ever deployed nuclear weapons against China, and expressing scepticism about the original article's dramatic language.