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China, rather than being more militant, would probably be more restrained,
the Soviet leader said.
The CCP-CPSU rupture in July 1963 prompted Khrushchev to seek
improved ties with the United States. The Soviet leader did not go so far as to
seek US support against China, but merely sought to burnish his increasingly
tarnished image among his Politburo comrades via an apparent diplomatic
success.^48 Moreover, freed of the need to accommodate Chinese demands for
greater Soviet militancy, Khrushchev had greater room to negotiate with the
West. The key product of this new Soviet flexibility was agreement on a treaty
banning atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and a Partial Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty (PTBT) was initialed by Soviet, US, and British representatives on
July 25, just five days after the end of the ill-fated CCP-CPSU Moscow confer-
ence. The idea of a PTBT had been broached in 1959, but Moscow, comply-
ing with Chinese demands that it avoid nonproliferation collaboration with
the United States, had not moved forward with the idea. Then, suddenly, in
July 1963, as acrimony at the Sino-Soviet Moscow meeting flared, Khrushchev
surprised US and British leaders by expressing willingness to move forward
with a PTBT without preconditions.
Mao saw Moscow’s conclusion of a PTBT as a major advance in Soviet
collusion with the US against China.^49 China then lacked the technology to
conduct underground nuclear tests. (Its first underground test came only in
1969.) Banning atmospheric tests would therefore mean banning Chinese
testing of nuclear weapons. Of course, the PRC would not and did not become
a signatory to the treaty. But the treaty nonetheless meant that Moscow and
Washington would together work to create an international climate opposing
China’s testing of nuclear weapons. Rather than helping socialist China be-
come strong with a nuclear deterrent against US nuclear blackmail, Soviet
“modern revisionism” colluded with US imperialism to hobble China’s nu-
clear weapons development efforts, thereby keeping keep China vulnerable to
the US nuclear threat.
Shortly before the PTBT was signed, Beijing gave Moscow a direct request
that it not sign the treaty on the grounds, inter alia, that it conflicted with the
provisions of the 1950 treaty. Moscow ignored Beijing’s request. A Chinese
statement after the treaty’s signature laid out China’s objections: “The Chinese
government hoped that Soviet government would not infringe on China’s
sovereign rights and act for China in assuming an obligation to refrain from
manufacturing weapons.”^50 In fall 1964, following the signature of the PNBT,
McGeorge Bundy tried yet again to feel out Ambassador Dobrynin regarding
joint action to deal with China’s incipient nuclear capacity. And once again
the Soviet representative demurred. He took a nuclear China “for granted,”
Dobrynin said. Chinese nuclear weapons would not threaten the Soviet
Union, or for that matter, the United States. China’s nuclear arsenal would
be too small and primitive to do that. China’s nuclear weapons would have