By James R. Holmes
While PLAN officers might not quote Mao anymore, their strategy bears his mark.
As China commemorates the 120th birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong, most Western commentaries have dwelt on how he shaped present-day China for good or, mostly, for ill. This is right and fitting. It helps outsiders know the new, old Asian titan rising in the Pacific.
Mao’s impact on Chinese strategic thought has attracted less scrutiny. It’s worth remembering that the communist supremo was a strategist — one who’s still studied in war colleges across the globe, including my own — as well as an ideologue and a tyrant. It’s not so much that strategists quote Mao incessantly. Nowadays he’s far from a staple of Chinese strategic discourses. But his imprint remains visible. He shapes assumptions about China’s geostrategic environment and how China should manage that environment.
In short, Maoist theory is woven into China’s strategic culture. People need not quote Mao all the time to take inspiration from his ideas and example. It’s unwieldy to restate the source of your assumptions every time you make an argument. Heck, you may not even know where they come from. That’s why they’re assumptions. For instance, the ghost of Alfred Thayer Mahan flits about whenever American military folk discuss command of the global commons. Few have made a study of Mahan’s works; some have never heard of him; many who have want to forget his leaden prose. His ideas endure nonetheless.
Strategy comes in threes, it appears. Thucydides explains human conflict in terms of fear, honor and interest, Clausewitz has his “paradoxical trinity,” Mahan has his tridents of sea power, and so forth. In that spirit, here are three Maoist axioms underlying Chinese strategic thought today:
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