Beijing could emerge as a winner from the war

During the height of the Cold War in the 1970s China was seen as an ally of the Soviet Union and part of a global communist bloc united against the United States and the West.

But then US President Richard Nixon's national security advisor Henry Kissinger decided that by pursuing a shrewd diplomatic strategy, Washington was in a position to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow.

And indeed, that approach led eventually to President Nixon's historic 1972 trip to China, which was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, where he shook hands with Mao Zedong, marking the beginning of the American opening to China.