Sino-Indian Conflict and the Sino-Soviet Alliance } 161
European socialist states, on relations with bourgeois nationalist states like
Egypt, Iraq, and India, and most of all on relations with the United States,
Khrushchev was guided, Mao increasingly concluded, by “revisionist” prin-
ciples quite different from the militant approaches of Lenin and Stalin. Mao’s
fundamental objection to Khrushchev’s approach had to do with the role of
struggle and tension. Mao believed that tension and confrontation facilitated
the mobilization of people, first and foremost in the intermediate zone be-
tween the West and the socialist camp, but also within the socialist states
themselves and within the Western states. Mao sought global upheaval.
Khrushchev, on the other hand, was more concerned with reduction of ten-
sion to keep his country out of war and ease its heavy burden of military
spending.
Mao’s aim through 1960 was to strengthen the revolutionary camp by
convincing the CPSU that its line was “incorrect,” leading that party to em-
brace “correct” principles advocated by the CCP. Unity, struggle via polem-
ical combat, leading to new unity on the basis of correct principle; this was
Mao’s objective. Such a confession of ideological error might substantially
erode the CPSU’s claim to leadership of the world communist movement. To
guard against this, Mao ordered that the leading position of the Soviet Union
be explicitly upheld. Only the Soviet Union had the strength to provide global
leadership. Indeed, the CCP became a firmer advocate of explicit Soviet lead-
ership that Moscow itself. But while explicitly upholding Soviet leadership,
Mao advocated an intra-movement decision-making process in which all fra-
ternal parties, or at least important ruling ones, would have an equal say in
setting the movement line.
On two critical issues, Mao incorrectly attributed sinister motivations to
foreign leaders. First, in August 1958, when Mao determined that Moscow’s
“joint fleet” proposal was inspired by a “desire to control China.” Second, in
April 1959, when Mao determined that Nehru was trying to “seize Tibet.” The
swift way in which Mao arrived at these judgments suggests that they were
not deeply reasoned. Had either or both of those judgments been submit-
ted for consideration of China’s more prudent leaders or their professional
staffs, those judgments would almost certainly would have been discarded or
greatly moderated. But Mao’s preeminence within the CCP elite was such, and
the fate of those who questioned his judgment grim enough, that once Mao
rendered a judgment, that judgment was unassailable. Once the Chairman
spoke, his words became policy.^30
Mao also made two other major miscalculations in 1958 and 1960, both
of which had dire consequences for China. First, to surprise Khrushchev
with the Offshores bombardment. Second, to reckon that Moscow would not
respond to intensified polemical attack with an “open break” with China.
Regarding the Offshores bombardment, the fact that Mao did not inform
Khrushchev of the upcoming move, let alone seek his opinion, during the