Power and Politics in Asia

...and of a discourse on the strengths and the limitations of guerrillas...

...co-author, "Guerrillas in the 1960s" The Communist victories in China and Indochina presented us with problems of military doctrine and techniques that we have not yet managed to solve...

...In his important new book, George K. Tanham, of the RAND Corporation, writes that "Mao's concept of the protracted war in three stages served as the theoretical basis for the war in Indochina...

...Ramon Magsaysay in the Philippines, the British in Malaya, the French in Indochina and Algeria, studied the new politico-military tactics employed against them, and with varying luck evolved their own unorthodox responses...

...Mao chose a guerrilla strategy in the '30s for two major reasons: It seemed to him the most promising way to combat the strong but roadbound Japanese invader...

...But whether this holds equally true of conflicts between major powers which are not as exclusively and immediately ideological—whether, to put it differently, we should be prepared to wage protracted war and provide our infantry companies with political officers and propaganda sections —is another matter...

...The Chinese Communist leader conceived of guerrilla strategy as only one stage in a protracted struggle, a stage evolving from a period of retreat, accompanied by the development of regular armies, but preceding the defeat of the enemy in conventional operations...

...The English version reads smoothly, and the translator, Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, has rounded it out with an account of Mao's career and some challenging comments on the significance of unconventional warfare in the '60s...

...166 pp...

...Basically, the strength of this concept lay in Mao's recognition that the guerrilla was just one component of revolutionary war...

...How was it that poorly equipped, seemingly illtrained hordes could defeat armies that were patterned after Western models or—as in Indochina—actually made up of experienced European regulars...

...This is not Mao's only work on the subject...

...The more significant part of the book, however, deals not with what happened, but what made it happen...

...The various aspects of Viet Minh doctrine, organization and operations are described with knowledge and clarity...

...Reviewed by PETER PARET Center of International Studies, Princeton University...

...He sought to indoctrinate them, to insure that the last section leader understood his part in the great struggle...

...But exactly how did these techniques work, how could they be countered, could they perhaps even be copied...

...its impetus, frustrated nationalism...

...Irregular warfare was not a special military technique, but one factor among many in a total political, social and military effort...

...The book is at once analysis, instruction, propaganda and exhortation...

...and he believed that irregular soldiers, living and fighting as part of the population, were the best means of mobilizing the masses both to resist the enemy and to lend weight to the Communist movement...

...On the other hand, the Japanese, the Kuomintang, the French, and the West in general, saw fighting primarily as a military activity...

...his papers and speeches are filled with discussions on irregular war...

...5.00...

...It is particularly striking to learn from Mao's pamphlet and Tanham's study how completely the Communists incorporated the political factor into their field operations...

...But they did learn from Mao how to minimize their weaknesses in organization, administration and training, while capitalizing on their great ideological and geographic assets...

...This brings us back to the question of how far the lessons learned in Asia should be built into our own doctrines and organizations...

...Rambling and allusive, the text must be read with imagination...

...This is not to say that the Viet Minh copied the Chinese pattern completely, either in thought or in action...

...to be truly effective, he had to be closely integrated with all other elements, now in dominant, now in secondary fashion...

...COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONARY WARFARE: THE VIETMINH IN INDOCHINA By George K. Tanham Praeger...

...Clearly the unorthodox operations that formed such a large part of the victors' strategies constituted a main factor in their success...

...Until this final transition could be achieved, guerrillas carried the war to the Japanese, served as mobile training camps and as tools of political infiltration...

...Mao wrote it in order to persuade his fellow Chinese that the war against Japan should be fought in a particular manner...

...Mao's victories over the Japanese and the Nationalists do not guarantee that his doctrine of protracted war or even his guerrilla theory could be employed with equal success in different countries and different situations...

...Indeed, Mao and the Viet Minh considered the waging of war mainly in ideological terms...

...Yet, as the defeat of the French in Indochina proves, it is equally certain that the validity of Mao's views is not limited to China...

...Of course, ideology rules supreme in anti-colonial struggles, and no one doubts that in future wars of this type the side that best exploits popular grievances and hopes will gain considerable advantage...

...The internal conquest of an industrial society would obviously require different techniques...

...For a long time the United States remained unaffected by this trend, until it became obvious that nuclear weapons were not the answer to every threat...

...Mao's text is neither a history of Chinese Communist guerrilla operations nor a systematic study of the nature of irregular war...

...the reader gains an understanding, which goes far beyond slogans and generalities, of how a revolutionary military movement actually works...

...Today the Administration and the services are engaged in a serious build-up of American unconventional forces, while public opinion has enthusiastically transformed the treacherous guerrilla of the 1940s and '50s into a new American minuteman...

...After all, we are not its intended audience...

...For one thing, both ideas assume large, underdeveloped areas, societies without specialists in which a farmer easily becomes a guerrilla, a guerrilla turns into a regular soldier, and the regular—if necessary—reverts to a guerrilla...

...It consists rather of observations on how to recruit a peasant, and how to train and use him...

...of an ill-informed account of "Guerrilla Warfare in History"—in which Ethiopia is charmingly described as "a relatively small country...

...The war in Indochina was an anti-colonial war...

...Tanham gives a brief account of the campaigns from the early Viet Minh defeats in 1946 to the triumph of their already regularized forces at Dienbienphu— a story brought up to date by Anne M. Jonas, also of RAND, in a chapter on post-armistice developments...

...But Yu Chi Chan, with its characteristic mixture of commonplaces, repetitions and sharp insights, provides a good introduction to his ideas...

...With the publication in English of Mao Tse-tung's pamphlet Yu Chi Chan ("Guerrilla Warfare"), the views of the most successful modern practitioner of unconventional war have now been made generally available...