On Protracted War

On Protracted War is a work comprising a series of speeches by Mao Zedong given from May 26, 1938, to June 3, 1938, at the Yenan Association for the Study of the War of Resistance Against Japan. In it, he calls for a protracted people's war, as a means for small revolutionary groups to fight the power of the state.

Content

Strategy

Mao starts off the book by critiquing the "defeatist exponents of the theory of national subjugation". He argues that because of the creation of the Second United Front and national "perseverance" the Japanese have failed to achieve a victory through mobile warfare and that China was now engaged in a "protracted war". Afterwards, Mao criticizes the proponents of "China's quick victory" stating that they were underestimating the enemy. He expresses his dislike of armchair generals who assume that Guerrilla warfare holds a supplementary role to mobile warfare. Mao laments that their hopes consisted chiefly of a victory through foreign military intervention by the Soviet Union or victory through a decisive military solution.

Mao stated that there had to be three prerequisites in order to achieve victory and defeat the forces of Japan :

"First, the establishment of an anti-Japanese united front in China; second, the formation of an international anti-Japanese united front; third, the rise of the revolutionary movement of the people in Japan and the Japanese colonies. From the standpoint of the Chinese people, the unity of the people of China is the most important of the three conditions."

Mao argues that resistance against Japan must come through the form of both conventional resistance, and a rearward strike on the logistical and reinforcement capabilities of Japanese forces. He asserted that warfare through conventional means must not involve static defense of nonessential strategic objectives.

"Our strategy should be to employ our main forces to operate over an extended and fluid front. To achieve success, Chinese forces must conduct their warfare with a high degree of mobility on extensive battlefields... This means large scale mobile warfare, and not positional warfare... It does not mean the abandonment of all the vital strategic points, which should be defended by positional warfare as long as possible... Positional warfare is necessary, but strategically it is auxiliary and secondary."

As part of his goal to wage a people's war, Mao explained that large numbers of Guerrilla units among the peasants were necessary for such a strategy to succeed. China's ability to supply her troops depended on captured Japanese equipment stocks and foreign deliveries, allowing China to conduct positional warfare when her conventional capabilities matched the Japanese, who would be worn down using the aforementioned rearward strikes.

Politics

The basis of a people's war, a war waged by the peasants and thus the party, necessitated political control over military operations. This was echoed by his 1938 statement :

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China."

In On Protracted War Mao argues that wars waged by Communists were inherently progressive and just. All wars which had the support of the party were to be actively participated in, even if they were in coordination with reactionary factions. Mao criticized "idealists" who refused to cooperate with said reactionaries.

Criticism

The book was highly criticised by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), which considered the book, along with Mao's theory, an excuse for avoiding fighting against Japan. The Communist Party justified that the book did not deny the effectiveness of the big battles carried out by the Nationalists but provided an alternative means of resistance before the Chinese army became powerful.

Once the Chinese army became powerful enough, the Communist Party explained, the guerrilla warfare aspect of the strategy should be de-emphasized, and conventional forces should take over the primary prosecution of the war.