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The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) tried to transcend the Cold War, but the NAM ended up as one of the Cold War's chief victims. During the movement's first dozen years (1961–1973), four Cold War developments shaped its agenda and political orientation. East Germany's attempt to manipulate it started with the so-called construction of the Berlin Wall less than a month before the first NAM conference in Belgrade. Nuclear disarmament issues imposed themselves the day before that conference, with Nikita Khrushchev's sudden announcement that the USSR would resume nuclear testing. The war in the Middle East in June 1967 brought the NAM close to an association with the Soviet bloc—at least until the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia the following year. Finally, the overthrow of Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk in 1970 split the movement over the question of that country's standing. The NAM again moved closer to the Soviet camp once the movement decided in 1972 to award representation both to the exiled Sihanouk, who lived in Communist China and was allied to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and to the Communist insurgents in South Vietnam.

The decision by France and the People's Republic of China (PRC) to establish diplomatic relations in late January 1964 has undergone relatively little scrutiny among scholars. Garret Martin's path-breaking article in the Winter 2008 issue of the JCWS is the most important account to date of this episode, but it focuses on the French side of the story. The account here provides a much fuller picture by drawing on declassified records of the PRC Foreign Ministry, official collections of formerly secret CCP documents, and materials from archives in former Soviet-bloc countries. These sources help illuminate two important but hitherto unknown or poorly understood aspects of Sino-French recognition in the period from August 1963 to January 1964: the French and Chinese thinking behind the decision to recognize each other, and the negotiation process itself.

This forum includes six commentaries on Lorenz M. Lüthi's book The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World, published by Princeton University Press in 2008. Drawing on recently declassified documents and memoirs from numerous countries, Lüthi explains how and why the close alliance between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China fell apart in a remarkably short time, dissolving into fierce mutual enmity. Amassing a wealth of evidence, Lüthi stresses the role of ideology in the split, lending support to the arguments put forth nearly five decades ago by analysts like Donald Zagoria in his pioneering book on the Sino-Soviet rift. Six leading experts on Chinese foreign policy and Sino-Soviet relations discuss the strengths of Lüthi's book but also raise questions about some interpretations and omissions. The forum includes Lüthi's reply to the commentaries.

Contrary to later Vietnamese allegations, China did not “sell out” the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) during the last two years of the Paris negotiations (1971–1973). North Vietnamese, Chinese, Soviet, East European, and American sources show that Hanoi could have gotten from Washington an agreement similar to the final Paris Agreement (January 1973) as early as the spring of 1971. Sino-American rapprochement did not help the United States in the negotiations, as claimed by the North Vietnamese, because the Chinese side made no concessions at all on Vietnam. In fact, China increased military aid to the DRV. Similarly, U.S.-Soviet detente did not damage the North Vietnamese effort, although Moscow unsuccessfully tried to mediate between Hanoi and Washington. In the end, U.S. success in rebuffing the DRV's Easter Offensive and Hanoi's miscalculations about U.S. domestic developments in 1972 prolonged the Vietnam War unnecessarily.

This article traces the origins, development, and demise of the Third-Line Defense project in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1964 to 1966. Responding to the U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War, Chinese leaders decided to transfer strategic military and civilian assets from the vulnerable coastal and border provinces to the country's interior. Following the dispatch of U.S. Marines to Vietnam in March 1965, the PRC proceeded with the construction of provincial Third-Line Defense projects. In the end, the Third-Line Defense project fell victim to Mao Zedong's ideological radicalization in the lead-up to the Cultural Revolution. The article uses documentary evidence from Chinese provincial archives as well as published collections of Chinese documents.