Description
This article examines the height of the socialist rupture between the Soviet Union and China in 1962 as a liminal moment in the Cold War international order, characterized by ambivalence in both nuclear deterrence and alliance politics. As Soviet nuclear anxieties pushed Moscow toward rapprochement with the United States, China's perception of the emerging nuclear non-proliferation regime as a mechanism of nuclear monopolization deepened the Sino-Soviet split. Alliance realignments also occurred during this period. To explore this, the article focuses on three representative socialist weak states as third actors: North Vietnam, North Korea, and Mongolia.
The article employs the concept of liminality to explain how ambivalence came to dominate this period, generating an order within the broader Cold War order. At the same time, liminality created opportunities for these third states to exercise sovereign agency and pursue their own interests.
Empirically, the study draws on materials from the Wilson Center Digital Archive as well as offline archival sources. Using process tracing, it examines both third-state perceptions and the evolution of the Sino-Soviet split between 1962 and 1964, with particular attention to 1962 as a critical juncture.