When nuclear powers fight?

[uk 75]

Purely as a fact check exercise the only instance I could think of where armed forces from nuclear powers came to serious blows was between the Soviet Union and China on the Usuri river in 1969.
I think there are regular clashes between Indian and Pakistani forces which have not been altered by them both having nuclear weapons.
Indian and Chinese troops have had brawls but I am not sure if shots were fired.
While US and Soviet pilots have met in combat in Korea and possibly in other ways, the two air forces have not clashed.
Soviet and Western warships were involved in sometimes deliberate collisions but no shots have been fired.
At the borders between East and West straying aircraft or overflights have been shot down in some numbers but not in clashes where both sides fired live rounds.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Sooner or later the mask will slip and the UK and France will throw down.

 

[TomS]

China's nuclear capability in 1969 was extremely limited. DF-2 probably just reached IOC during or just before the 1969 conflict so it might not even seriously count.

 

[kaiserd]

The exact date of Israel’s nuclear weapons program providing its first operational weapon and the Israeli attack on USS Liberty in 1967 likely to be quite close to each other.

Depending on where exactly the Iranian program is at that threshold it may have already been passed or imminently passed by “covert” Israeli attacks on specific Iranian forces/ sites/ individuals in Syria or Iran itself.

Pakistan and India have had proper quite intensive combat operations against each other post them both being nuclear powers. And isn’t there a relatively recent localised clash between India and China, again while both nuclear weapon powers?

And South African nuclear weapon status being a bit fuzzy in the 80’s combined with Soviet advisers with Cuban forces in Angola may technically get close to qualifying.

 

[uk 75]

What is interesting so far is that probably only India and Pakistan have put their forces on the first step.of the nuclear ladder.
Once both countries had functioning nuclear capabities did it change these military clashes?
We have not seen a full on war since 1971 but incidents have come close.
The confrontations with China do seem to have been kept at as low a level as possible. China always favours clashes which portray its opponent as "rowdies" challenging legal Chinese going about their business.
It has never been revealed whether NATO and Warsaw Pact forces have ever exchanged fire.
The Inner German Border and Berlin Corridors have seen Soviet attacks on Western mitary and civil aircraft.
But as far as I can find Western forces did not shoot back.

 

[Archibald]

China's nuclear capability in 1969 was extremely limited. DF-2 probably just reached IOC during or just before the 1969 conflict so it might not even seriously count.

Even at the height of the madness between the two communist powers, cooler and saner heads prevailed. The Soviets knew they could have nuclear carpet bombed China, but they also knew their 1 billion+ population was mostly rural. And truth be told, they had not enough nukes to anihilate every single chinese village.

Bottom line: had the Soviets nuked them, the chinese would have answered with their own bomb: the population one. Dozen if not hundred of millions of armed chinese militias would have invaded the Soviet far east to wage a hundred years guerilla. And against such humans waves, not even nukes would save the Soviets.

In fact Mao used his "population bomb" to corner both Cold War superpowers within the same decade.

In 1969 he threatened the Soviet far east with an invasion.

In 1965 he did the same in Vietnam, reminding the Americans of what had happened in Korea in 1950. Fact was that hords and scores of chinese had pushed back not only the Americans but the United Nations all the way from the chinese border to the tip of the Korean peninsula. Mao told Johnson he was ready to do the same in Vietnam: swarms of chinese across the north and then across the south, were the Americans were fighting.

In both cases the superpower leaders shitted their pants and backed down.

Although in the Soviet case in 1969 it went this way. In March 1969 the Chinese gave the Soviets a bloody nose. In August the Soviets waged a similar ambush, and got their vengeance. Both sides now had 150 soldiers killed in similar ambushes, and were licking their wounds. But the Soviets stopped right there: they knew the Chinese had a limited nuclear capability and an rather unlimited population bomb one.

Unfortunately the Chinese leadership was now scared to death and paranoid, convinced they had pissed the Soviets and would end nuked. Over the months of September and October, China prepared for nuclear warfare, going their own DEFCON 2 level.

Meanwhile Nixon was playing his madman theory with Kissinger, and together they tried to scared the Vietnamese, via the Soviets, by agitating their nuclear forces as if they were ready for a nuclear strike over North Vietnam. The latter was unimpressed, but the Soviets dealing with crazy chinese, now wondered WTH happened to madman Nixon. The latter was trying to put some "ambiguity" related to those B-52s bombing the heck out of Vietnam, kind of saying "be careful North Vietnam, we may drop some tactical nukes along the lot, if you don't return to the Paris negociations table..." North Vietnam (rightly) called it bluff, but the Soviets were a little worried if not paranoid.

Bottom line: early October 1969 nearly had a three way nuclear war between Madman Theory Nixon, Paranoid PRC, and baffled Soviets stuck between the two erratic and lunatic rivals.

 

[kaiserd]

I think that “population bomb” idea/ theory is very much overblown (and arguably owes more to an inheritance from preceding historic openly racist “yellow peril” narratives than the facts of the time).

In reality both the Soviets (Russians) and the Chinese believed that though the Russians if they attacked China they (the Soviets) would sweep all before them and take the major cities, defeat major armies etc. they would ultimately not have a way of definitively defeating the PRC.
Instead they would face an ultimately unwinable extremely costly war of attrition that also carried major risks of drawing in other nuclear powers and the conflict becoming more terminal in nature.

Essentially an even costlier (probably nuclear) version of the Japanese experience in their then relatively recent war with China. And not so much a version of the US experience of fighting Chinese forces in Korea.

The PRC China leadership was deeply aware of how inferior militarily and vulnerable they were to the USSR at this time. This deep insecurity probably contributed to the PRC’s “madman” act (involvement in the border clashes demonstrating a real fear of being seen to be “weak”). Much of Mao’s and the PRC leadership’s talk at this time of being prepared to fight, to return to guerrilla/ revolutionary life and tactics, etc. was more about their insecurity and trying to present weakness as strength than any coherent or confident plan of action.

And ultimately the USSR didn’t see an existential threat from the PRC and didn’t have leadership that had an appetite for such a horrendous conflict.
And once China saw they weren’t under immediate imminent threat from the USSR then their “madman” act faded away (and their improved relationship with the US and Mao’s death probably also aided this change).

I would also note the narrative above re: Chinese threats and the Vietnam War is simplistic at best; the Chinese position re: that war was nuanced and continually evolving (as was their relationships with North Vietnam and the USSR during this period). China poured a lot of resources and material into the conflict and at certain stages may well have threatened escalation if prompted by what they would have perceived as US escalation. In a way they were in open competition with the USSR for influence in this regard. But how much they would or could have actually escalated their involvement in the Vietnam conflict at particular points of time is very much open to question. And the US reluctance to take certain steps for fear of setting off escalated involvement by the USSR and the PRC waxed and wained depending on the context of the conflict at particular points in time and owed at least as much to concerns re: how the USSR would escalate than specific concerns re: the PRC’s escalation.

 

[riggerrob]

The book "Blind Mans' Bluff" contains some scary anecdotes about confrontations between the Soviet Navy and NATO Navies in the North Atlantic Ocean during the Cold War. Submarines carried nuclear torpedoes and it is rumored that NATO deployed (but did not fire) nuclear depth charges.
A few submarines sank during mysterious circumstances so we suspect that they may have been damaged during collisions with NATO ships????????
The public never heard about this dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.
I was part of this game while sailing abroad HMCS Iroquois.