Sun Tzu on the Fallacy of Protracted War

Von Clausewitz observed that

Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made of it in magnitude and also in duration.  Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow. (Book One, Chapter Two, p. 92).

Sun Tzu is equally adamant:

Victory is the main object in war.  If this is long delayed, weapons are blunted and morale depressed.  When troops attack cities, their strength will be exhausted.  (The Art of War, Book II, Par. 3)

When the army engages in protracted campaigns the resources of the state will not suffice.  (The Art of War, Book II, Par. 4)

Thus, while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged.  (The Art of War, Book II, Par. 6)

For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.  (The Art of War, Book II, Par. 7)

Hence, what is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations.  And therefore the general who understands war is the Minister of the people’s fate and arbiter of the nation’s destiny.  (The Art of War, Book II, Par. 21)

Interestingly, in the Griffith translation of The Art of War, there is the following annotation following  Par. 21:

Ho Yen-his:  The difficulties in the appointment of a commander are the same today as they were in ancient times.    [Griffith notes that Ho wrote this about 1050 A. D.] 

            It appears obvious that the difficulties in the appointment of a commander are the same today in 2013 as they were in ancient times.

Question for President Obama

 In 2011, Russia's FSB gave the FBI a tip on Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Why did the FBI not do anything then?  Had they done so, the Boston tragedy could have been prevented.  Someone needs to answer for this.

Heads need to roll NOW.  Director Mueller should be dismissed immediately without retirement benefits for this gross dereliction of duty.

Scope of NSC-68 as Policy Guidance

The scope of NSC-68 as policy guidance may be gleaned from its Table of Contents:

 

"A Report to the National Security Council - NSC 68", April 12, 1950.  President's Secretary's File, Truman Papers.

CONTENTS

 

Terms of Reference

Analysis

                I.             Background of the Present World Crisis

               II.            The Fundamental Purpose of the United States

               III.           The Fundamental Design of the Kremlin

IV.          The Underlying Conflict in the Realm of Ideas and Values Between the U. S. Purpose and the Kremlin design

                                A.            Nature of the Conflict

                                B.            Objectives

                                C.            Means

V.            Soviet Intentions and Capabilities—Actual and Potential

VI.          U. S. Intentions and Capabilities—Actual and Potential

VII.         Present Risks

VIII.        Atomic Armaments

                                A.            Military Evaluation of U. S. and U.S.S.R. Atomic Capabilities

                                B.            Stockpiling and Use of Atomic Weapons

                                C.            International Control of Atomic Energy

IX.           Possible Courses of Action  [Guess which one the authors favored]

                        Introduction

                        The Role of Negotiation

A.            The First Course—Continuation of Current Policies, with Current and Currently Projected Programs for Carrying Out These Projects

B.            The Second Course—Isolation

C.            The Third Course—War

D.            The Remaining Court of Action—a Rapid Build-up of Political, Economic, and Military Strength in the Free World

Conclusions

Recommendations

Engels Predicts North Korea's Failure

North Korea is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key… to view its future direction.  That key is contained in Marxist dogma.

In Anti-Dühring, in discussing the Franco-German war of 1870-1871, Engels made the following observation:

[T]his war [the Franco-German War] compelled all continental powers to introduce in a stricter form the Prussian Landwehr system [militia in addition to regular army], and with it a military burden which must bring them to ruin within a few years.  The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them.  But this militarism also bears within it the seed of its own destruction.  Competition among the individual state forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the army, navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the warlords in command.  And this moment will arrive as soon as the mass of the people—town and country workers and peasants—will have a will.  At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work and militarism collapses by the dialectics on its own evolution.   (Marx-Engels, Collected Works (International Publishers 1987), Vol. 25, p. 158).

North Korea’s Songun or “military first” policy has become the main purpose of the state, an end in itself.  The Korean Workers Party no longer controls the military but is controlled by it—violating Mao’s dictum.  “Political power grows from the barrel of a gun.  And the party must control the gun.”  Now the gun controls the party and everything else.

However, North Korea’s effort to compete militarily against South Korea, the United States and pretty much everyone else… has in fact caused its financial collapse.    Moreover, the complete militarization of the population clearly make the people familiar with the use of arms, enabling them to turn against the regime—as soon as the mass of the people will have a will. 

Our policies should be to do everything possible to enable the Korean people to have a will… To will a self is to become a self (Nietzche).    The North Korean people are intelligent, hard-working and their lives being made unnecessarily difficult by a group of militarists whose only aim is ultimately to protect their own status—at the expense of the people.  

People are people; and as Abraham Lincoln said:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

This is the information age.  Our policy objective and task is to inform the North Korean people through any and all means available of the reality of the world at large and how their own government is fooling them.  The Korean people will free themselves.  

The Aim of War

The Aim of War is to Achieve Political Objectives

Marshal of the Soviet Union Boris Shaposhnikov captured the essence of war in military-political terms:

[A] war must begin with the defeat of the strongest and most dangerous enemy, and it must not be diverted by successes over a weak one by leaving the stronger to hang over one’s neck... It must be not forgotten that for the resolution of a war, it is important to have not only military successes, but also obtain political success, that is, win a victory over a politically important enemy ... Otherwise, only after an extended period accompanied even by military successes, will we be forced to return to the same fight against the main enemy against which we initially were only on the defensive.[1]

Lessons of the Cold War.

 George Kennan in discussing American foreign policy and democracy notes that we made two big boo-boos dugint the cold war.  (1) to attribute to the “Soviet leadership aims and intentions it did not really have; in jumping to conclusion that the Soviet leaders were just like Hitler and his associates…” with the same aspirations, timetable, and who could only be dealt with in the same manner as Hitler was. [2]  (2)  The second postwar mistake was to embrace the nuclear weapon “the mainstay of our military posture, and the faith we placed in it to assure our military and political ascendancy in this postwar era.”[3] 

It is from these two great mistakes that there has flowed, as I see it, the extreme militarization not only of our thought but of our lives that has become the mark of this postwar age.  And this is a militarization that has had profound effects not just on our foreign policies but also on our own society…  And this habit—the habit of pouring so great a part of our gross national product year after year into sterile and socially negative forms of production—has now risen to the status of what I have ventured to call a genuine national addiction.  We could not now break ourselves of the habit without the serious of withdrawal symptoms.  Millions of people, is addition to those other millions who are in uniform, have become accustomed to deriving their livelihood from the military-industrial complex.  Thousands of firms have become dependent on it, not to mention labor unions and communities.  It is the main source of our highly destabilizing budgetary deficit.  An elaborate and most unhealthy bond has been created between those who manufacture and sell the armaments and those in Washington who buy them.  We have created immense vested interests in the maintenance of a huge armed establishment in time of peace and in the export of great quantities of arms to other peoples—great vested interests, in other words, in the Cold War.  We have made ourselves dependent on this invidious national practice; so much so that it may fairly be said that if we did not have the Russians and their alleged iniquities to serve as a rationalization for it, we would have to invent some adversary to take their place—which would be hard to do.[4][My highlight] 

Kennan notes that the problem is made worse by the unnecessary wastefulness of it all, the lack of coherent relationship between the way Congress figures out civilian and military costs.[5] 

It sometimes seems to me that those of us not involved in this great military-industrial enterprise are in danger of becoming, in the figurative sense, a nation of camp followers, like the pathetic civilian stragglers who trailed along behind the European armies of earlier centuries in the hopes of picking up remnants from the relative abundance of the military resources of food and clothing which the armies disposed.[6]

And because of these requirements we need to keep demonizing our opponent and giving him qualities which make them 10 feet tall in order to justify the military-industrial requirements which become self-generating.[7]

 

We should not allow politicians with vested interests to define China, North Korea, Iran or any other threat in order to justify military requirements which are not needed for our political / military aims in war. 

 

---

    [1]  David M. Glantz, The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union:  A History, (Portland, OR:  Frank Cass, 1992), p. 42.

[2] George F. Kennan,  At a Century’s Ending.  Reflections 1982-1995 (New York:  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1996), p. 130.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Idid., pp. 130-131

[5] Ibid., p. 132

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

North Korea's Nuclear Security: The Third Alternative in Nuclear Confrontation

The world is more complex and dangerous than during the Cold War. The problem we now face with nuclear-armed states like North Korea and possibly Iran is the possibility that in a confrontation, a weaker North Korea or Iran may opt for the grave risk of mutual devastation to unilateral defeat.


In discussing the risk inherent in nuclear threats, Barry M. Blechman and Robert Powell, "What in the Name of God is Strategic Superiority" in National Security and Strategy, ed. by Robert H. Connery and Demetrios Caraley (Academy of Political Science, 1983) wrote:

"Before the introduction of ballistic missiles and long-range bombers armed with atomic weapons, battles has to be won or lost on the ground before either side considered surrendering a vital interest. Moreover, when a military verdict finally forced the issue, the only alternative to surrender was further intolerable damage. Military superiority was fundamentally asymmetric: If one side had it, the other did not. Thus, the losing side’s policymakers had only two alternatives: surrender or face continued destruction and suffering.

In the present era, the set of alternatives available to the “loser” is larger. Nuclear-armed missiles and bombers that can withstand an enemy’s attack and retaliate with devastating force … have invalidated the previous asymmetry of military verdicts. Throughout any confrontation, both sides will retain the capability to destroy one another. Thus, policymakers on the losing side of a military struggle have a third alternative. At any time during a confrontation, they may attempt to coerce the opponent (and apparent victor) by beginning to implement, and thus to make credible, the threat to destroy the other’s society implicit in the existence of nuclear forces. Of course, such a strategy would have to be pursued in full realization that the other side could respond in kind, thereby leading to mutual destruction, but the risk of mutual devastation may well seem preferable to the certainty of unilateral defeat… In short, when faced with defeat, the prospect of, at best, a negotiated settlement and, at worst, mutual defeat may appear the “least worst” choice among a set of awful alternatives.

Whether or not this third alternative exists affects profoundly the utility of military superiority, because it drastically alters the character of risk in confrontations… The crucial questions for policymakers who perceive to be superior militarily is whether the party they threaten might still choose the third alternative, preferring a grave risk of mutual devastation to unilateral defeat." (Id., pp. 82-83).

The answer to this crucial question remains... elusive; but must be addressed.

North Korea clearly has chosen to pursue nuclear-based security to prevent itself from being coerced politically and militarily by the United States, and gain political respect and legitimacy as a regional power. The nuclear option is insurance against defeat and/or humiliation at the hands of the United States, South Korea, or anyone else. It is worth pondering that as the force structure and technological capabilities that the United States displayed in recent wars are beyond the capacity of any nation in the foreseeable future, the only recourse available to a developing power is the cheaper and more accessible nuclear/ballistic missile option.

Paradoxically, our search for a conventional combat capability in order to preclude nuclear war has proven so successful, that others seek to counter this capability through nuclear forces. Iraq could have drastically altered the outcome of the war, politically in particular, had they used SCUD attacks earlier and with more powerful warheads. Iraq's missile force structure was both logical and affordable; its poor execution and lack of punch is what rendered it ineffective. We cannot use this lack of combat effectiveness as a planning factor, for other nations may prove better capable of effective employment.

For example, during the Falklands War, Argentina successfully used their very limited number of Exocet missiles to cause considerable damage to the British Navy. Despite recent failures, North Korea's missiles are bound to perform better after failures are studied and corrected. Massive strikes, properly timed and combining alternate conventional, chemical, and/or nuclear warheads can create widespread damage, both in military terms and more importantly in political terms which will dictate the war's tempo and determine what outcome will follow. Strategically, a nation equipped with a missile force which is facing a far better armed and more capable opponent will seek to retain a retaliatory capability, with a secure reserve force which will guarantee unacceptable pain, or cause sufficient doubt as to intentions and capabilities upon the enemy, thus allowing for the maximum room for political maneuver. Our future adversaries will combine mobile missiles for offensive operations, dispersing them in depth, using active deception measures for protection and ensuring its operational capacity.

This is the face of future war.

The Chinese Communist Struggle Againt Japanese Imperialism 1937-1945 PART 2

STRATEGY AND TACTICS

We are now engaged in a war; our war is a revolutionary war; and our revolutionary war is being waged in this semi-colonial and semi-feudal country of China. Therefore, we must study not only the laws of war in general, but the specific laws of revolutionary war, and the even more specific laws of revolutionary war in China. [Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse Tung (Peking:  Foreign Languages Press, 1963), p. 75]

Mao and the Chinese Communist Party acquired a vested interest in a protracted war against the Japanese because its resultant chaos facilitated their expansion in the countryside and allowed them to exploit their guerrilla base areas for political, as well as for military purposes.

Mao Zedong identified four characteristics of China's revolutionary war from which all strategies and tactics derived:

The first is that China is a vast semi-colonial country which is unevenly developed both politically and economically, and which has gone through the revolution of 1924-27... The second characteristic is the great strength of the enemy ... The third characteristic is that the Red Army is weak and small... The fourth characteristic is the Communist Party's leadership and the agrarian revolution. [Mao Zedong, "Characteristics of China's Revolutionary War", in William J. Pomeroy, Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism (New York:  International Publishers, 5th printing, 1984), pp. 179-181.]

Mao's conception of the war against the Japanese, and eventually the KMT as well, was that of an agrarian-based protracted revolutionary war, passing through three phases. The first phase is devoted to organizing, consolidating, and preserving the regional base areas from which the war will be conducted and sustained. The second phase, involves a progressive expansion of operations against collaborationist, puppet troops, and the enemy. The primary purpose of these operations are to procure arms and supplies. In the final phase comes the decision, or destruction of the enemy. In this phase, the guerrilla bands form into regular line units able to engage the enemy in conventional operations. [Samuel B. Griffith, Brigadier General, USMC (Ret), trans., Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare (New York:  Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1961), pp. 20-22.]

Translated into strategic terms, Mao’s model led the Red Army into fighting a protracted war which was: (1) a war of national resistance against the Japanese; and at the same time, (2) a revolutionary war against the Kuomintang. The war was revolutionary in that its aims went far beyond merely defeating the Japanese: it aimed at establishing Communist power in China proper. Under the cover of nationalist fervor through the 'united front' strategy, they effectively convinced large numbers of people that they were the true defenders of China. Accordingly, the Red Army established large base areas behind enemy lines from which to conduct operations. In the words of General Chu Teh, the commander of the Communist Eighth Route Army:

"Our plan is to establish many regional mountain strongholds throughout north and northwest China." [Quoted in Agnes Smedley, "The Red Phalanx", in Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan, ed. by Gérard Chaliand (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1982), p. 55.]

Our regulars can return to such bases for rest, replenishment and retraining... From these strongholds we can emerge to attack Japanese garrisons, forts, strategic points, ammunition dumps, communication lines, railways. After destroying such objectives, our troops can disappear and strike elsewhere.

The chief military aim of the Red Army against the Japanese was to wear them down through protracted guerrilla operations against their lines of communications (LOCs). By establishing guerrilla base areas from which to operate, the Red Army was able to maintain relatively short LOCs, therefore not dependent on long and vulnerable LOCs such as the Japanese were. Moreover, at the same time the Red Army's logistical needs were limited as the guerrillas were, essentially, largely light infantry who were given local support by the peasants. We may note that the communists got most of their arms from Japanese forces whom they had ambushed and defeated, as well as from the troops of puppet governments.

During the war, the Communists’ chief political objective were to prevent the capitulation of Chinese forces, maintain the 'United Front' strategy with the KMT in order to defeat the Japanese invaders, co-opt every Chinese into the struggle, and the establishment of Communist control over China. The Chinese Communist Party’s political guidance provided a major strategic advantage to the Communist forces: a clearly defined objective. All political and military actions were planned and executed with these goals in mind. Translated into military terms, the mission of the Red Army became: (1) to prevent capitulation of the resistance against the Japanese, identify traitors and collaborationist, and continue fighting; (2) to maintain a unity of effort with the KMT and other forces in the struggle against the Japanese. According to Mao "When the Red Army fights, it fights not merely for the sake of fighting but to agitate the masses, to organize them, to arm them, and to help them establish revolutionary political power." [Mao Tse-Tung, "On the Purely Military Viewpoint", in William J. Pomeroy, ed., Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism, (New York:  International Publishers, 1968, 5th Printing 1984), pp. 174-75.] Finally, in order to prevent China's complete capitulation, the Chinese Communist Party called for the masses of people to be drawn into civil and military work. In practical terms, this meant that every Chinese had to be co-opted into the struggle against the Japanese.

Operationally and tactically, the vastness of China and the remoteness of the center of Red Army's power ensured its survival through their ability to "move around". As previously noted, Mao identified the Communist limitations as the smallness and weakness of the Red Army which prevented it from engaging the enemy in force and winning quickly; this is why guerrilla warfare was to be used in order to ensure eventual victory. According to Mao, because the enemy was large and strong, he could destroy the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army if they did not follow a 'United Front' strategy with the KMT in their common fight against the Japanese. Additionally, in order to counteract Chinese weakness, Mao emphasized guerrilla warfare operations as opposed to conventional military operations. He characterized the former as follows:

In guerrilla warfare select the tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west; avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision. When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws. [Mao Tse-Tung, p. 46]

The success of this tactic depends on speed an agility, with an ability to move at a moment's notice.

As an illustration of their readiness in this respect, the Bethune International Peace Hospital located in the Wut’ai base, the largest of the guerrilla base medical centers (1,500 beds), could be evacuated on a half-hour’s notice and was some twenty times.  [Chalmers A. Johnson, "The Japanese Role in Peasant Mobilization", Reading H, Course A653 Asian Military History, (Ft Leavenworth KS:  US Army Command and General Staff College, Class 1994-95), p. 146.]

Therefore if the strategic center of gravity of the Communists was the smallness of the Red Army, then it follows that the operational center of gravity of the guerrillas the preservation of their forces in order to destroy the enemy, both Japanese and KMT. [ Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, p. 95.]

Operationally, the best example of Red Army operations against the Japanese was the Eighth Route Army’s Hundred Regiments Offensive. The offensive begun on August 20, 1940, when 400,000 troops in 115 regiments of the Eight Route Army attacked the Japanese forces in five provinces. [Johnson, p. 148.] The operation lasted for three months, it being divided into three phases. The first phase which lasted from August 20—September 10, 1940, consisted of attacks directed against Japanese railroad lines of communications (LOCs) as well as coal mines which supplied the Japanese. In the second phase, lasting from September 20, 1940 to early October 1940, Red Army attacks were directed against Japanese strongholds and blockhouses which bounded or protruded into Communist areas. In the final phase, lasting from October 6—December 5, 1940, the Red Army went on the defensive, counterattacking a reconstituted Japanese First Army which was conducting large scale mopping-up operations against Chinese Communist Party base areas, from the Taihang Mountains of southeast Shansi to the area west of Beijing. [Johnson, p. 148.]

In order to fully appreciate Mao’s strategy, at this point it is worth noting that the main Japanese objectives in China were: (1) the blocking of American economic influence in East Asia; (2) a determination to keep China disunited to facilitate their advance into the mainland; and (3) the fight against international communism, i.e., the Soviet Union . [Saburo Ienaga, pp. 112-113.] After the conquest of a portion of eastern China in 1937-1939, they settled down as an occupation force, installing puppet governments and ruling through them such. The major puppet figures were Pu Yi in Manchukuo, and Wang Ching-wei's Reorganized National Government at Nanking which was established in March 1940. All of these governments were doomed to failure, as Japanese governors and their occupation policies robbed them of any possible claim to legitimacy that they may have otherwise have achieved. Regardless, the aim of the Japanese was to prevent the unification of China, and to control the portions of the country that they had taken through these puppet governments.

Militarily, the Japanese operated primarily in the coastal areas and out of Manchuria. Due to the size of China and the lack of Japanese military manpower, all they could do was to garrison the main cities and try to protect their railway LOCs. This was their main limitation, which combined with the war in the Pacific led to their defeat. They confined their movements largely to secure their LOCs primarily around railroads. As the Japanese did not control the countryside, these LOCs were constantly at risk. Consequently, the Japanese center of gravity was their exposed lines of communications. As the communists controlled the countryside, through their guerrilla operations, they continuously drained the Japanese of their material and manpower resources. The Hundred Regiments Campaign was very effective tactically and caused the Japanese to reassess the Red Army's capabilities and effectiveness as a military force. [Johnson, p. 148, quoting intelligence assessments by the Japanese.] However, it was also very costly to the Red Army, particularly in ammunition.

Moreover, the Japanese response to the offensive was typical of the Japanese: swift and brutal. After the Hundred Regiments Offensive, General Okamura Yasuji, assumed command of the North China Army on July 7, 1941. He instituted the sanko-seisaku or "three-all" policy: kill all, burn all, loot all. (My italics).

The essence of the sanko-seisaku was to surround a given area, to kill everyone in it, and to destroy everything possible so that the area would be uninhabitable in the future. Instances of the policy’s implementation were common: 1,280 persons were executed and all houses burned at Panchiatai, Luan hsien, east Hopei, in 1942. the largest scale destruction occurred in the Peiyueh district of Chin-Ch’a-Chi border region, where more than 10,000 Japanese soldiers carried out a mopping campaign between August and October 1941. The results in that area were some 4,500 killed, 150,000 houses burned, and about 17,000 persons transported to Manchuria."  [ Johnson, p. 147.]

The US War department analyzed the Japanese response in the following manner:

The Japanese reply to guerrilla war was a policy of frightfulness. It drove the people into the arms of the communists, because they undertook to organize the rural areas for defense after the regular Chinese armies had been defeated and fled. The people subscribed fully to the Communists' answer to those who doubted their ability to fight the superior Japanese forces: "If we don’t fight, what happens? The Japanese kill us anyway. If we fight, let’s see what happens."  [Johnson, p. 158.]

As previously mentioned, the 'United Front' strategy did not last for long. The effectiveness of Chinese Communist Party operations became worrisome for the KMT which was focused on events which would follow after the end of the war, the effect of communist political control being their main concern. In January 1941, the KMT surrounded and destroyed the headquarters detachment of the CCP's New Fourth Army, killing 9000 men and capturing its commander. Chang Kai-shek ordered the Fourth Army disbanded but the Chinese Communist Party refused. Instead it appointed a new commander, Ch'en Yi, and built up the army to 260,000 men by 1945. After Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, the Americans suspected that the Nationalist Chinese were happy to let them fight the Japanese while the KMT fought the communists. For example, the American attache, in the embassy at Chunking noted that over 400,000 of Chang's best troops were manning a cordon around the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region which was the major communist base area.

Thus the combination of Japanese and KMT attacks against the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army caused the years 1941-42 to be the most difficult for the CCP and the Red Army. The population in the Communist areas in North China was cut from about 44 million to 25 million and the size of the Eighth Route Army was cut from 400,000 to 300,000. [Johnson, p. 149.] But the Japanese policy drove the peasants and the Chinese Communist Party closer together as there was not a village untouched by Japanese brutality. By the Spring of 1943, the Eighth Route Army was again operating in the areas of Hopei and Shantung.

However, the results of the Hundred Regiments Offensive had brought a change in the Red Army's guerrilla tactics. As the Japanese and the KMT were blocking the Red Army's sources of supplies, the Red Army began attacking puppet armies, and these seizures provided the Red Army's major sources of military supplies through the rest of the war.

Additionally, with the entry of the United States in the war against Japan, the guerrillas placed greater emphasis on economic warfare against the Japanese. For example, the Eighth Route Army in May to July 1944 fought off Japanese grain confiscation units in Hopei and Shansi. The Army attacked Japanese storage houses, captured grain, ambushed raiding parties. [Johnson, p. 150.]

COURSE OF ACTION ANALYSIS

The Chinese Communist Party's strategy was clearly effective in achieving its goals and objectives. The Japanese were only able to hold a few strategic points but in the end, Mao Zedong's analysis of the situation combined with a strategy of protracted warfare against a stronger enemy. Mao basically placed the Japanese in the situation that Sun Tzu had warned against: do not engage in protracted war because it will lead to your ruin. [Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. by Samuel B.Griffith, (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 72-76.] The Japanese accomplished their immediate operations quickly early in the campaign but could not control all of the area of operations, that is to say, the rest of China; therefore the war dragged on. Mao, by preventing the Japanese from achieving quick victory, ensured their ruin, and their ultimate defeat.

Of great significance as well is that the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army were involved in a revolutionary war as well. As already noted, their military operations were clearly subordinate to their political goal of "liberating" the countryside of both Japanese and the KMT as well as collaborationist. It was this unity of purpose that was their main strength. Some Western commentators have criticized Chinese Red Army operations as lacking significance and as relatively small in number given the nature of the theater. This is an erroneous argument because as we have seen, Red Army operations were geared to the establishment of Communist power in China, which ridding China of the Japanese invaders was but one obstacle and not an end in of itself.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, if the Japanese had been able to concentrate all of their forces in China perhaps they might have been able to achieve greater success in their war against the Chinese. However, the Japanese seriously under-estimated the size and scope of China, as well as the capability of the Chinese people to resist. Japan's strategic objectives had clearly exceeded its capabilities. They also could not come to grip with the nature of the war that the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army forced upon them. As Mao noted:

It has been definitely decided that in the strategy of our war against Japan, guerrilla strategy must be auxiliary to fundamental orthodox methods... The Japanese military machine is thus being weakened by insufficiency of manpower, inadequacy of resources, the barbarism of her troops, and the general stupidity that has characterized the conduct of operations... We can prolong this struggle and make it a protracted war... If we cannot surround whole armies, we can at least partially destroy them; if we cannot kill the Japanese, we can capture them... The destruction of Japan's military power, combined with the international sympathy for China's cause and the revolutionary tendencies evident in Japan, will be sufficient to destroy Japanese imperialism." [Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, pp.  94-99]