Editor’s Note

This issue begins with an article by Vojtech Mastny showing how the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain eventually negotiated the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) in 1963. Drawing on recently declassified archival materials from Russia and Eastern Europe, Mastny demonstrates that the main obstacles to a limited ban on nuclear testing were on the Soviet side. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev initially sought to link restrictions on nuclear testing with unrelated political issues, notably the status of Berlin and of Germany as a whole. Khrushchev also demanded the signing of a non-aggression accord between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact, and he sought to resist U.S. demands for intrusive on-site inspections to monitor a test ban. But over time, as domestic considerations and changes on the international scene (especially the growing rift between the USSR and China and the emergence of discord within the Warsaw Pact) gave Khrushchev greater incentive to pursue an agreement with the United States, the prospects for a limited test ban significantly improved. Mastny shows that Khrushchev had privately decided to pursue a limited test ban even before President John F. Kennedy made his celebrated speech at American University in June 1963. Kennedy's speech merely reinforced, rather than inspired, Khrushchev's decision. After the treaty was finally signed in August 1963, progress toward a wider détente faltered. Divisive political issues, especially the German question, prevented further headway for another several years. Not until the early 1970s, under new leaders in both the Soviet Union and the United States, did a fuller U.S.-Soviet détente take hold, if only precariously.

The next three articles deal, in varying ways, with the role of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the Cold War. The article by Lorenz Lüthi explains why the PRC undertook a large-scale Third-Line Defense (TLD) program in 1965–1966 to relocate industrial plants and entire cities from coastal regions to the central heartland of the country. The TLD program also entailed the construction of entirely new cities and factories in geographically remote areas of the PRC. Lüthi argues that although Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders were increasingly worried about the Soviet Union and the military threat it could pose to China, their primary concern in the mid-1960s was still the United States, especially after the Johnson administration sharply escalated U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In pushing ahead with the TLD program, the Chinese authorities wanted to ensure that the PRC would be able to respond to a possible U.S. attack. Although the TLD program fell victim to the chaos that emerged during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, the planning and preparations for the program underscored the depth of Chinese leaders' security concerns. Lüthi draws on declassified Chinese documents, including items published in official anthologies and other materials stored in provincial archives in China, to shed new light on this key aspect of Mao's defense preparations against the United States. The TLD planning of the mid-1960s paved the way for the PRC's more ambitious TLD program in the early 1970s that was driven by fears of a war with the Soviet Union.

The third article in this issue, by Garret Martin, focuses on the decision by French President Charles de Gaulle in January 1964 to establish diplomatic relations with the PRC, a step that ran contrary to U.S. policy toward Communist China at the time. Drawing on French, American, and British archival resources, Martin shows how de Gaulle's bold step fit into his larger strategy for France as a state that could maneuver between the two superpowers in the Cold War and reassert its role in Southeast Asia after the humiliating withdrawal from Indochina in 1954. Although Cold War strategic considerations and improvements in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union formed the backdrop for de Gaulle's action, these factors did not determine the timing of his move. Rather, the timing was driven by changes in Southeast Asia that caused the French leader to believe that he...