Will a melee on top of the world give birth to a nuclear war? Chancelleries have been on the alert since a border incident on Monday, June 15 in the disputed region of Ladakh, in the Himalayas, resulted in the brutal death of dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers. If gestures of appeasement seem for the moment to rule out the possibility of an escalation, tensions remain high between the two giants, each endowed with a substantial nuclear arsenal. This high-risk situation, however, is nothing new in history: twice in the twentieth century, countries with atomic bombs went to war.
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1969: the USSR and China border on nuclear war
The 1969 border conflict between China and the USSR brought to light the rivalries between the two countries for leadership within the Communist bloc. Its roots are plural: first Mao's opposition to the policy of detente undertaken by the Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev, coupled with his questioning of the Marxist-Leninist dogma dear to the Soviets, and from 1964 to the claim by the president of whole swathes of the Soviet Far East.
For its part, the USSR is alarmed by the vertiginous demographic imbalance on both sides of the Sino-Soviet border in the Far East. Fearing a Chinese digital spillover, Soviet leaders mass hundreds of thousands of soldiers there, which the Chinese soon see in turn as a threat. Already since 1965, skirmishes have been commonplace between border guards, who often come to blows.
" Both parties sent specialists soldiers of the body-to-hand and weapons were not used ," Iliyas Sarsembaev notes in his dissertation on the subject in 2005. " The ' use of arms was made more difficult as he Chinese army used a shield of civilians to advance across the border. The tone changes after the crushing of the Prague spring in 1968 by the Soviets. The Chinese are concerned about the propensity of the "Russians" to intervene in the "brother countries" to quell ideological differences. To dissuade Moscow, Mao chose the show of force.
On March 2, 1969, 32 Soviet soldiers were killed during a Chinese incursion on Damanski Island on the Ossouri River. On March 15, Chinese artillery shelled Soviet forces stationed on the island. Informed late, Brezhnev orders to retaliate without further delay. The Chinese troops are crushed by the fire of the Grad multiple rocket launchers , which make their baptism of fire. Chinese losses number in the hundreds.
Clashes will continue in the spring and summer of 1969 on other sections of the border, on the initiative of China or the USSR, causing the death of hundreds, even thousands of soldiers. It does not take much for the conflict to turn into nuclear confrontation. " The memories of KGB officers who served in the Far East in the late 1960s note that nuclear bombers stationed in the region were ordered to be ready to take off at any time, " said Iliyas Sarsembaev.
Cut off from the world by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese leaders are almost unreachable. " When Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin tried to reach Mao by telephone at the end of March 1969, the red guard who answered him insulted him, called him a revisionist element, and hung up on him!" Says historian Sergei Radchenko of Cardiff University. " It was not until the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, which Kosygin and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai attended in September, that Beijing finally responded to the Moscow openings, and that a cease-fire could -be negotiated a few days later. "
A turning point in the Cold War, this border conflict will precipitate the rapprochement between China and the United States, which will culminate with Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972. It will take 30 years before two nuclear powers challenge each other again. cannon shots.
1999: Kargil, the glacier war
In the heart of Kashmir, the Kargil district gave its name to an extraordinary confrontation between India and Pakistan, triggered by the infiltration of Pakistani troops in this mountainous region administered by New Delhi. " Unlike the Sino-Soviet confrontation, the Kargil War comes against a background of appeasement between Pakistan and India, after an official visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Pakistan in February 1999, " explains Pierre Grosser, historian and professor of international relations at Sciences Po Paris, who studied the two conflicts. " It is therefore with surprise that the Indians note in May 1999 that hundreds of Pakistani paramilitary combatants have crossed the Kashmir ceasefire line. "
The Indian response mobilizes tens of thousands of soldiers. The ensuing war lasted until July and saw Pakistani and Indian troops clash between 3,000 and 5,000 meters above sea level, often in extreme temperatures. The atomic threat is on everyone's mind, Pakistan having conducted its first nuclear tests a year earlier. On May 31, 1999, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shamshad Ahmad said that Pakistan was ready to use " all the weapons in its arsenal ".
Aware of the danger, China, Pakistan's historic ally against India, refuses to give it the slightest support. Pakistani forces quickly find themselves in trouble with the Indian counterattack, prompting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to request an interview with Bill Clinton. The American president agreed to receive him on July 4, but demanded the withdrawal of the Pakistani paramilitaries from Kargil, under penalty of reprisals. The international pressure pushes the Prime Minister to yield in the weeks which follow.
Was Pakistan ready to use the bomb? American intelligence would have heard of the start of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Nawaz Sharif later said that General Pervez Musharraf ordered the preparation of Pakistani warheads without informing him. The applicant replied in his memoirs that the Pakistani bomb was not operational at the time of the Kargil conflict. " It is still difficult to know whether we have passed near a nuclear crisis or not, " says Pierre Grosser. " There were infinitely more channels of communication during this crisis than during the Sino-Soviet conflict, which allowed for a rapid de-escalation with the pressures of the international community on Pakistan. "
A space below the nuclear threshold
" The stability that nuclear deterrence offers is paradoxical, " analyzes Corentin Brustlein, defense specialist at Ifri. " We can see the reappearance of forms of conflict between two powers, each with a nuclear response capacity, precisely because escalation to the nuclear threshold is a priori excluded by the belligerents, " he explains.
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There is room for maneuver for limited wars between nuclear powers: in compliance with tacit standards, to avoid escalation. " Let us nevertheless keep in mind that war is the kingdom of chance, chaos and friction, " recalls Corentin Brustlein, according to whom the rapidity of current means of communication can defuse crises, but also contribute to worsen them. “ Public opinion can escalate, nationalists call for revenge. Each state has its own internal dynamic, by which it can find itself overwhelmed. "