Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…middle peasants. It's a big bait and switch. It looks like you're going to get -- see, you got the land? Well, now you do, and now you don't, because at the end, they're all going to lose their land. 00:28:26 In order to reform, to get the land, Mao is talking about a red terror to get it. And while he was still with the Nationalists, he wrote a report on the peasant movement in Hunan, where he's talking about taking all the land from the landlord class and shooting them. And that won't cut it with the Nationalist army because their officers are landlords. So, as part of his program, it's not just land reform and educating people, warm and cuddly. It's also coercion. 00:29:04 Okay, that's Mao the social scientist. Enough of him. Now, we're going to do Mao the military leader. You've probably heard this chestnut from Mao: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao spent his- it’s still part of his early career- being right but being a minority view. That he had certain views about military operations that were not shared by Communist Central. And Mao kept following that dim light wherever it may lead, and events eventually vindicated him. He survived a variety of encirclement campaigns, but then he had some troubles. And here are his critics. Li Lisan was a labor organizer, he was the de facto head of the Communist Party from 1928 to 1930. And after the white terror on the Northern Expedition, Moscow had told its communist buddies in China that the next thing to do was to take the cities. 00:30:10 And so Li Lisan tries to, with the Nanchang uprising in 1927. It was a total disaster. And he tries it again in 1930 with the Changsha uprising, another disaster. That got him into exile in Russia and according to Mao, Comrade Li Lisan did not understand the protracted nature of the Chinese Civil War. Li Lisan is trying to fight a decisive, war-winning battle far too early. You try to do that, and you can get yourself ruined. Here's another critic, Xiang Ying. Mao is in the Jiangxi Soviet, and he thinks a smart strategy is to lure the enemy into your own terrain, which is favorable to you, let them get exhausted, then you spring the trap and you annihilate them. Communist Central in Shanghai thought this was nuts, that you shouldn't be ceding territory at all. So Mao, for the longest time, he’s off in Jiangxi, they were off in Shanghai, they were a long way apart, and so Communist Central can’t do anything about it- Mao does his own thing. 00:31:08 So the communist Central sent Xiang Ying to Jiangxi Soviet to fire Mao personally, and you can imagine how this works for his later career- not well. He fires Mao and this is where his strategy winds up producing the Long March, the Long Retreat, in which they lose 95% of their people by trying to defend territory, so people began to get it, that Mao may have known what he was doing. Then, on the Long Retreat, Mao chose as his terminal point of retreat, like where you’re going to wind up, as up in Yenon, way up north, deep in Muslim and Mongol lands, but near the Soviet border. Mao thought that was essential because they're the big benefactor. treat, like where you’re going to wind up, as up in Yenon, way up north, deep in Muslim and Mongol lands, but near the Soviet border. Mao thought that was essential because they're the big benefactor. Whereas this gentleman, Zhang Guotao, who was the military commissar of the Fourth Army, thought, "Nonsense, we're Han Chinese, we want to be in Han lands." So he wanted to go into western Sichuan, which he did. 00:32:10 And he suffered a series of defeats over 1935, and as a result, he was never as important ever again, and eventually defected to the Nationalists. So, Mao had proven himself prescient and right and determined. He had kudoi and determination, and people eventually recognized that. All right, Mao and Clausewitz define war somewhat differently. Clausewitz has this famous line, "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." Mao says, "No, no, war is politics by other means. It is something that is used to achieve political ends." So far that's not incompatible. But then here's Mao's twist: "A revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows the power of another." Clausewitz is not about class warfare at all. In fact, his wife is always trying to wine and dine the aristocrats, so completely different in that department. 00:33:07 Mao is looking at the world, and he believes the linchpin of the social order are landlords. He's going to detonate them and try to destroy them. He talks about the violence of all of it, that you're going to get the peasant masses to overthrow these landlords, and that this will require terror in rural areas, but this is absolutely necessary and of course this is what the Nationalists absolutely would not tolerate. Mao also understood he was operating in a period of nested wars, and that the ones that were ongoing were the civil war with the Nationalists and then the regional war with Japan. Pearl Harbor comes a little later. And he talked about defeating Japan in three stages. 00:34:02 He said “defeating Japan requires three conditions: first is progress by China”, i.e, the civil war, “which is the basic and primary thing; the second is difficulties for Japan”, i.e, the regional war, “and the third is international support”, the big friend. I'm going to talk about each of these three things in turn. So, in order to win the civil war, Mao believes you need base areas, these Soviets, where are they located? Often on the boundaries of provinces, in very difficult terrain, where provincial authority, let alone national authority, simply does not extend. Mao thought that there were certain prerequisites for a good base area. One is strategic terrain. It's got to be defensible so that the weaker communist forces can defend it against conventional nationalist or conventional Japanese armies. So that’s key, pick your terrain carefully. 00:34:54 Also, you need to have a strong Red Army presence there to make it work. You need numerous organized workers and peasants. You've got to have some local support there. And then you need a good party organization. This is Mao's idea of what you need for a base area. t work. You need numerous organized workers and peasants. You've got to have some local support there. And then you need a good party organization. This is Mao's idea of what you need for a base area. He believed that you needed to match your military unit, the type of military unit, to the territory. He said there are three kinds of territory: there's base areas, there is enemy-controlled areas, and then there is the interface in between, which is where guerilla forces are going to be roaming. So he was all about deploying the Red Army to the comparatively safe base area, they'll protect that. You might send guerilla detachments to some of the guerilla areas, but really only really small things would you ever send into enemy territory. Moreover, he has prerequisites to fight. There are six possible prerequisites; you've got to have at least two before you fight. The most important one is that people have to actively support you. You probably need a base area to pull this off. 00:36:00 He said that the last three things about enemy weak points, enemy exhaustion, enemy mistakes, those things could appear quite rapidly. But you better choose your terrain very carefully; terrain is immutable. He also said that if you're weak the way the Communists were, you had to follow a strategy of annihilation. What you do is you annihilate one small enemy unit at a time, and the cumulative effects will eventually change the balance of power. Only someone who is really strong can tough out an attrition strategy. He's also about triangle building in these areas. So, little guerilla detachments go out into the interface. If it works out well and it looks like they can start either a new base area or expand an existing one, that's what they're going to be up to. So, these guerilla forces are either a disposal force, which you could send them out to do risky things, and if they get wiped out, it doesn't endanger base area defense, or they can become a nucleus of a new base area. So in small guerilla groups, party members are toughened, cadres trained, the party government, mass organizations are consolidated. If they're successful, then you bring in the Red Army to do higher-level institution building and either greatly expand an existing base area, or you're forming a new one, is what’s going on. 00:37:30 Mao had two military services, we always think of army, navy, air force—that's not what it was for him. It was guerilla forces versus conventional forces. And guerilla forces are operating in the rear of the enemy so that there's no stability or security. In fact, there isn't even a front line; it's just so amorphous. And so what guerilla forces are supposed to be doing is exterminating small enemy forces, weaken larger ones, attack enemy lines of communications, establish bases, and force the enemy to disperse, but they're doing all this in combination with conventional forces. Because here's the thing: you think about Mao and his guerillas, well, actually, here's what Mao really says: "Regular forces are of primary importance because it is they who alone are capable of producing the decision," like winning the war.…

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