Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…This is a really interesting thing to consider from this lecture. In retrospect, maybe one of the most important things, if not the most important thing that happened in the 20th century, is the Chinese Civil War. At the time, you wouldn’t think of this as a major event, especially since World War II had just happened. If you were living in 1948 or 1949, you wouldn’t think of this as the main thing happening in the world. But given that we know in retrospect this is a really big country with a huge population, we should be paying a lot of attention to its internal political development. I wonder if we should apply the same logic today where there are other countries with huge populations where we don’t think a lot about what’s happening. India or Nigeria. I really couldn’t tell you the first thing about Nigeria even though I know that it’s a big country with a huge population. Let’s not try because I don’t know anything about it either. On China and the Chinese Civil War, there was an understanding that it was a really big deal. That’s why Roosevelt—and the British are just thinking he’s laughable—keeps trying to treat China like a great power. The British are saying, “They’re not a great power, Franklin, not remotely.” But he wants to bring them into the Cairo Conference. He also wants them to be a veto-wielding member of the United Nations, which by China’s military status there’s just no way. But Roosevelt is looking, there’s no Japan out there, we want to have something in Asia to counterbalance. But then when you get to the Chinese Civil War, Americans who’ve fought some big wars, they’re looking at it saying, “It is not feasible for us to alter this outcome.” The thinking was — I think it was the Eisenhower archives — that if they lived together long enough, they would go at each other eventually. I want to zoom in on one particular episode during this period that I think is fascinating. In 1936, the Communists in China kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek, who’s the leader of the Nationalists, and they’re about to kill him. Stalin radios in over the Comintern. He says, “No, you can’t kill Chiang Kai-shek even though he’s your enemy, he’s been massacring you. You gotta let him go.” In exchange, Chiang Kai-shek has to promise to create a united front against the Japanese. There are 30,000 communist guerrillas when they’re fighting the Japanese at this period and there are 1.5–2 million nationalist troops. The communists get to claim the prestige of fighting the Japanese with a fraction of the effort. This just seems like a brilliant move on Stalin’s part in retrospect, because if they had killed Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist forces might have dissolved. There would be a puppet government installed by Japan. It would be a terrible thing for Stalin. It just seems like Stalin makes a lot of right calls in the theater in Asia at this time. What is the understanding, big picture, that lets him?…

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