If Russia and China went to war in 1980, what would that have looked like? Hard mode: no nukes or other handwaves

If Russia and China went to war in 1980, what would that have looked like?
Hard mode: no nukes or other handwaves

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Large Soviet armor manuevers through the vast steppe regions of northern and western China, Some encroachment in Manchuria just as a warning to the Norks and get a defensive line away from Vladivostock (however you spell all this chink shit) and then nothing really. There would be a slight shift in regime and a even bigger Tiannamen square but then it’d liberalize like it did in OTL after the Soviets still collapse. There would either be even more hatred and genocide against the Turks depending on how they respond to a Soviet invasion, but that’s a minor thing no matter what.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >the Turks
      Turkmeninstanis?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        All the central Asians are Turks anon, including the Uighers

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Except Tajiks, they are Persians

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Industrialized USSR wipes the floor with developing Chinese, 5,000,000 eaten, decisive Soviet victory.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The PLA made the Soviet army look reasonable and well trained by comparison. Probably millions of dead changs, entire villages emptied of male occupants and sent to charge a tank or MG nest. And they'd go happily and willingly.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    1980 USSR was already showing the institutional rot that wound up killing it and China was just beginning to enter the Deng period, also for what it's worth the Soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan and likely would not be able to handle another front opening up - especially one so far from their logistics and manufacturing centers with such absolutely basic infrastructure in place.

    It's likely the Chinese would be the aggressors with a nationalist drive to take back Manchuria and control Mongolia proper (it's funny how Russian shills always go out of their way to ignore that Chinese hardliners consider the Russian landgrabs in Manchuria to be among their Unequal Treaties on par with British and Japanese frickery, but then again these morons also act like Russia is the senior partner to China still despite China having an economic and population ten times as large as Russia while Putin reads CCP talking points on television and Xi lets Russia stand alone in it's war). I don't think Russia could drum up the equipment and men needed to stop the Chinese from taking up positions where they want the new borders to be and digging in before it could be solidified because of their involvement in Afghanistan.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      USSR was showing intitutional rot by the beginning of the 70s if not earlier, by 1980 it was very much in full swing.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The Chinese army was dog tier in the 80's. They couldn't beat Vietnam even after the US had killed 90% of its fighting age men. Even the Russian army would have steamrolled them then. Of course Russia was on the verge of one of the biggest economic collapses in history at the time, so it would have utterly destroyed them as well. I'm sure there's a timeline where the two ripped each others' throats out and crumbled. It's probably a peaceful and comfortable world, free of nonstop media subversion and ideological poison, with global warming set back decades and gasoline at rock bottom prices.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >It's probably a peaceful and comfortable world, free of nonstop media subversion and ideological poison, with global warming set back decades and gasoline at rock bottom prices.
      Yeah nah there'd still be Israeli and middle eastern autism to worry about, but we'd definitely be a lot better off

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They were already in a war during the Mao ape out anon

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Whoever invaded the other would lose, neither had the men or force projection to make deep strikes, the defender would have "won" the war of attrition.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The further east, the more it is in China's favor. The local terrain isn't very conductive to mass movements of armor and Mongolia would probably face Belarus' present dilemna. China's objective would be the reconquest of Manchuria, and there are quote a few vulnerabilities in the Soviet logistic train, notably the transbaikal rail line being a single point of failure that a (suicidal) air attack or infiltration would get to work on.

    It would be a landsea war for the most part. The PLAN back then wasn't very developed, but at the same time Russian naval incompetence is legendary.

    China could take it with surprise and a few million casualties. But then again, you really can't handwave nukes either - the Soviets would almost certainly turn beijing into a parking lot.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      China had just 5 mechanized armies in the 80s on that border. Two of them cat A, as in, "near peer with a european army". Rest of them were cat B, or WW2 european army tier. The entire rest was light infantry swarms.

      Even in the mid 80s their top tank was a knockoff T-62 and they didn't have any IFVs. The chinese would need saboteurs and a lot of preparation (Which, as the 80s went on, was less and less conductive to warming diplomatic relations under Deng) to make any surprise attack worthwhile and they would have a hard time challenging the Soviets in Mongolia.

      I give them a week before the 48th Unified Army Corps skullfricked them.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The memes jack

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why in the 80s, you moron? The Soviets wouldn’t launch a war in the 80s, it’s more likely to happen in the 60s, the PLA would be destroyed and Mao would be assassinated by Lin Biao, followed by a regime change.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    China would have won. The war in Afghanistan was a considerable drain on the USSR's economy, multiply this by a hundred. The USSR had a more disciplined military and a more advanced economy, but Soviet society would have exhausted a lot quicker before the Chinese hive would. The war would devolve into a quagmire, both sides would commit unimaginably horrifying atrocities, chemical and biological weapons would have been used against civilian targets and it's unimaginable that nukes wouldn't fly. The Soviets might have tried to bring the Warsaw Pact nations into the war, to which said nations would have likely replied with cordially inviting the Soviet Union to go frick itself with a pineapple. Soviet rule in Eastern Europe would cease as the Soviets would have to withdraw.

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