Military Conflicts Between Communist States: Geopolitical Realities and the Realization of a Communist Peace

Abstract

Despite historical perceptions of systemic communist-capitalist bipolarity in the Cold War world order, the international communist system was nevertheless affected by the same geopolitical realities that influenced the international system as a whole. By examining the seven cases of military conflicts between communist states from 1945 to 1991 – the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956), the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), the Sino-Soviet border conflict (1969), the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (1978-1989), the Chinese invasion of Vietnam (1979), the Somali invasion of Ethiopia (1977-1978), and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989) – this article challenges both the notions of Cold War bipolarity between communist and capitalist systems as well as the Marxist theory of peaceful coexistence between communist states.