USSR - Relations with Asian Nations

The USSR in 1950 recognized the Communist forces of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. In 1954 it participated in the Geneva Agreement that divided the country into North and South Vietnam, and it continued to support the Communist north. As the Vietnam War escalated during the 1960s, the USSR came into conflict with the United States. After the North Vietnamese victory, the Soviet Union still supported reunited Vietnam in its conflict with China.

Soviet relations with other Asian countries were both conciliatory and aggressive. Premier Kosygin rendered an outstanding service to world peace in 1966 by mediating a new phase of the quarrel between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. In the 1971 Indian-Pakistani conflict that resulted in the formation of the state of Bangladesh, the USSR supported victorious India, while both China and the United States sided with Pakistan. Despite normal relations with Japan, a peace treaty ending World War II was never signed because of the Soviet Union's refusal to return to Japan the strategically placed Kuril Islands acquired in 1945.

In December 1979 the USSR, in an attempt to shore up a faltering Marxist government, sent a large military force across the border into Afghanistan, occupying the country. Amid condemnation from the rest of the world, the Soviet troops fought to quell nationalist resistance and dug in, apparently for a long duration. Although fighting continued in 1982, a new Asian satellite seemed to have joined the Soviet orbit.