2. The Chinese Commander Who Revolutionized Guerrilla and Insurgency War
Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), the communist revolutionary who founded the People’s Republic of China, was one of the most original military minds of the twentieth century. He literally wrote the book on the modern theory of insurgency, On Guerrilla Warfare. In it, he described a revolutionary methodology to defeat Japanese invaders, based on strategies and tactics honed during Mao’s struggle against China’s Nationalist government. Mao developed a Theory of People’s War that divided popular insurgencies into three stages. Stage One sets out to win popular support with the distribution of propaganda, and attacks against the organs of an unpopular government. Stage Two sees an escalation, with attacks directed against the government’s military forces and vital institutions.
In Stage Three, things are further ratcheted up with a turn to conventional warfare. This is when the revolutionary general and his forces make a bid to capture the cities, overthrow the government, and seize control of the country. It was a flexible doctrine, and shifts between stages can go in either direction, depending on circumstances. Also, the stages need not be uniform throughout the entire country but could vary based on local conditions. Mao’s insurgents fought both the Japanese and the Nationalist Chinese, and ultimately prevailed. They used small groups of combatants in raids and ambushes to defeat bigger and less mobile armies. The discomfited the Japanese, and eventually secured the communists’ victory in China.
