Why did Nikita Khrushchev send missiles to Cuba? This chapter argues that Cuba was important to him for two reasons: it bolstered his self-perception as an equal to the United States and addressed his concerns over a potential US invasion of Cuba, which would affect his reputation in the revolutionary world. He faced a challenge from Mao Zedong, who wanted to wrest the mantle of revolutionary leadership from the Soviets. Yet, having come to the brink over Cuba, Khrushchev backed off, understanding that reputational concerns were not as important as the imperative of avoiding a global nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis provides not just a useful window into understanding Khrushchev's American policy, with its perennial fears of humiliation and sensitivity to slights, but also a crucial snapshot of Sino-Soviet relations on their downward slide towards an outright confrontation.

In 1958–59, Khrushchev acted aggressively, most notably with his ill-conceived attempt to force the Allies out of Berlin. This move was partly a response to Mao's actions in the Taiwan Strait and a similar calculation of war risks. Both leaders believed their gambles would not trigger a military response from the United States, but Khrushchev soon realized he had miscalculated. Instead of adhering to his deadline, Khrushchev engaged the West in a dialogue. In September 1959, he visited the United States, gaining the recognition he so desired. Meanwhile, the Great Leap Forward, which Mao launched to prove that China was better than the USSR at building socialism, resulted in a massive famine in China. The failure of the Great Leap boosted Khrushchev's confidence, but Sino-Soviet relations continued to worsen.

In July–September 1958, the world faced the threat of war twice due to a revolution in Iraq and Mao's actions near China's shores. The Iraqi Revolution led to the landing of US Marines in Beirut, prompting the Kremlin to brandish the nuclear stick, though it is clear that Khrushchev was simply bluffing: he had no intention of starting a nuclear war over US actions in the Middle East. Elsewhere, Mao Zedong, leveraging his belief that the socialist camp held the upper hand in the historic struggle against capitalism, pushed the world to the brink by provoking a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Khrushchev's performance in these crises was mixed. The coup in Iraq weakened the Eisenhower doctrine and the Baghdad Pact, and Khrushchev claimed credit for these outcomes. However, his hopes for extending Soviet influence in the Middle East were left unfulfilled. The crisis off the Chinese coast forced Khrushchev to commit to defending an unpredictable ally in a nuclear war with the United States, undermining his faith in the alliance. In 1959, he cancelled an agreement to supply China with a prototype nuclear bomb. The Sino-Soviet alliance survived the tribulations of 1958, but the crises exposed their rivalry in the socialist camp, the third world, and their respective quests for America's recognition.

This chapter accounts for the twists and turns of Soviet–American and Sino-Soviet relations in 1960–61. Khrushchev's primary concern was resolving the Berlin issue, and he hoped that the new US president, John F. Kennedy, would be more amenable to finding a solution than Eisenhower had been. China continued to be a problem for Khrushchev. During the November 1960 Moscow conference of Communist parties, he faced Chinese resistance and criticism but ultimately prevailed in having the conference adopt a declaration that largely ignored Beijing's objections. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Soviet leader became increasingly concerned with the prospect of Cuba's survival. Berlin, Cuba, and other global issues were at the center of his discussions with Kennedy in Vienna in June 1961. The summit ended on a sour note, but despite Khrushchev's bluster and his optimistic evaluation that the chances of a war with the United States stood at merely 5 percent, he proved unwilling to push his luck over Berlin and ultimately authorized the building of the Berlin Wall to stem the flow of refugees and stabilize a highly volatile situation in East Germany.

By early 1965, new dynamics were taking shape within the international communist movement. Cuba and North Korea were at the forefront of this challenge. Relations between the two countries date back to the Korean War, when many Cubans, like young people across Latin America, mobilized to prevent their countries from joining the US-led war effort. When the Cuban Revolution of 1959 brought the island into the socialist camp, a bond began to grow between the Cuban and North Korean leaderships reflective of their shared history of anti-colonial struggle, and their common interests as small countries within a community of socialist states dominated by the Soviet Union and China. Political, cultural, and economic cooperation between Havana and Pyongyang grew steadily, including Che’s historic visit to North Korea in December 1960. By 1965, a nascent Third Worldist tendency affirming its independence from the two major socialist powers was coalescing around North Korea, Cuba, and North Vietnam. At its core was the conviction that it was those on the frontlines of the anti-imperialist struggle which most clearly recognized the true historic task at hand: the defeat of US imperialism.

In 1966, more than 600 people from 82 countries travelled to Havana for the Tricontinental Conference. The unprecedented event defined a new, radical Third Worldist political tendency that reverberated throughout the international Left and provided a militant alternative to the old communist and socialist parties. Tricontinentalism rested on the belief that what was demanded by the current historical moment was the broadest possible united front of political forces willing to wage militant struggle against US imperialism. Cuba and North Korea stood at the forefront of this disruption, which correlated to a major shift in North Korean foreign policy, and the beginning of a new high point in DPRK–Cuba relations. By 1966, North Korea, Cuba, and North Vietnam were widely recognized as constituting a new, informal bloc within the socialist camp, increasingly bold in its willingness to speak on behalf of the Third World and to challenge the authority of Moscow and Beijing.

The combination of changing international circumstances alongside significant developments in China’s domestic politics made 1960 a turning point in Chinese international scientific outreach. Chapter 3 examines the impacts of these on Chinese engagement with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and the World Federation of Scientific Workers, considering the reasons for the significant divergence in how each was viewed and, consequently, those relationships evolved into the early years of the new decade. As had been the case in the 1950s, elite Chinese scientists and scientific organisations worked with foreign affairs officials, but in the context of the early 1960s this meant significantly adjusting and adapting their approaches to such external events and organisations. In all, Chinese science diplomacy via united front work was less well suited to the combative context of the Sino-Soviet split than when the two powers were not so overtly locked in competition for influence.

China’s use of Switzerland changed as a result of the Sino-Soviet split, as China tried to compensate for the loss of assistance from the Soviet Union and its allies by increasing its relations with Western Europe. The Swiss missions in Switzerland were important for China’s efforts to increase its presence in Latin America and Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The case of nine Chinese who were arrested in Brazil in 1964 is used to demonstrate how China’s missions in Switzerland contributed to China’s global presence, and how the Swiss government and Swiss businesses were affected by Chinese actions abroad. Swiss support for Tibet and Tibetan refugees is discussed to show that the Swiss government also took advantage of the importance that Switzerland played for China, and managed to get away with actions that China did not tolerate from other nations. The chapter also discusses the effects that the Great Leap Forward had on Chinese and Swiss bilateral trade relations from 1958 to 1965, how Swiss companies and government officials tried to increase trade, and how the Sino-Soviet split led China to increase the scope of its network of embargo goods dealers that it operated out of Bern.

The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China saw decolonization as a long-awaited opportunity to overturn the imperialist-dominated world order. Both countries saw themselves as bearing no guilt for the crimes of imperialism and the underdeveloped state of newly independent countries. Rather, they saw themselves to varying degrees as victims of imperialism and natural allies for Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, the advent of attempts to give political structure to the developing world raised the specter of a “Third World” not necessarily aligned with Moscow or Beijing. For the Soviets, the very notion of a “Third World” was a non-starter, a political and ideological dead-end that would deflect the revolutionary energies of the people. For the Chinese, the unwillingness of many in the developing countries to accept Chinese leadership kept this constituency beyond China’s reach. Consequently, the rhetoric of support for anti-imperialism and alliance between the “international communist movement” and the “national liberation movement” masked a much more complex, manipulative, and often antagonistic relationship between the “Second World” and the “Third.”