The Art of Strategy by Mao Zedong
The Art of Strategy
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
Mao Zedong
You are welcome to this page.
In the year 1999, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution. Without delving into detailed ideologies, we can say that for better or for worse, Mao Zedong was one of the great figures of the 20th century. He defeated the Japanese forces occupying his country and won a long civil war despite starting with very inferior means. Later, he unified China and made it the power it is today, laying the foundation of what this Central Empire could become.
One could say that he was an excellent leader, strategist, and military commander, although we must also acknowledge that his people paid for it with blood and suffering. He probably killed more people than Stalin and Hitler combined. History will tell if the price was too high… You, dear reader, have the last opinion.
MILITARY PRINCIPLES
Here are our military principles:
1.
Delivering blows to enemy forces first scattered and isolated, then to the enemy forces concentrated and powerful.
2.
Take first the small and medium cities, the vast rural areas, and the big cities later.
3.
Be specifically aimed at the annihilation of the living force of the enemy and not the maintenance or conquest of cities and territories.
The holding or seizing of a city or territory is the result of the annihilation of the enemy’s living force, and often, a city or territory can be held or seized for good only after changing hands several times.
4.
In every battle, concentrate an absolutely superior force (two, three, four, and sometimes five or six times the enemy forces), encircling them completely to annihilate enemy forces and ensure complete victory, without letting any escape from the net.
In special circumstances, use the method of dealing crushing blows to the enemy, that is, concentrate all our strength to make a frontal assault, an attack on one or both flanks of the enemy, with the purpose of annihilating a part of his troops and routing another so that our army can quickly move their forces to crush other enemy troops.
Strive to avoid battles of attrition in that it does not compensate for the lost cattle or only even. Thus, although we are numerically inferior in the whole, we are absolutely superior in every case and in each specific campaign, and this ensures victory in battle. Over time, we will become superior as a whole and eventually wipe out all enemy forces.
5.
Fight no battle unprepared or give no battle without being sure of winning; make every effort to be well prepared for each battle, make every effort to ensure that the correlation between the conditions of the enemy and ourselves guarantees victory.
6.
Give full play to our style of fighting: courage in battle, spirit of sacrifice, no fatigue, and continuous fighting (that is, fighting successive battles in a short period and without taking rest).
7.
Strive to wipe out the enemy in war maneuvers. At the same time, give importance to tactics of positional attack to seize the fortified points and cities in enemy hands.
8.
With regard to the taking of the cities, seize all strongly fortified points and weakly defended cities held by the enemy. Seize, at the appropriate time and if circumstances permit, all fortified points and cities which the enemy defended with medium strength. As for fortified points and cities strongly defended by the enemy, take them when the conditions for it have matured.
9.
Strengthen our military with all the weapons and most of the men captured from the enemy. The main source of human and material resources for our army is on the front.
10.
Make good use of the intervals between campaigns for our troops to rest, train, and consolidate. The periods of rest, training, and consolidation should, in general, be very short, not giving, as far as possible, any respite to the enemy.
These are the main methods used by the People’s Liberation Army to defeat Chiang Kai-shek. They have been forged by the People’s Liberation Army in long years of struggle against domestic and foreign enemies and correspond completely to our current situation. (…) Our strategy and tactics are based on people’s war, and no unpopular army can use them.
The current situation and our tasks. (25 December 1947), Selected Works, Vol IV
PURPOSE OF THE WAR
The object of war is nothing other than to preserve one’s own forces and destroy the enemies (destroy means disarming enemy forces or depriving them of their ability to resist, and it does not mean annihilating all physically).
The defense is to keep the immediate objective of one’s own forces, but at the same time, it is half of the complement to attack or prepare to spend on the attack. The withdrawal is part of the category of defense and is a continuation of it, while the persecution is a continuation of the attack.
It should be noted that the destruction of the enemy’s forces is the primary objective of the war and the conservation of one’s forces, the secondary, because you can only effectively retain your own strength by destroying the enemy in large numbers.
Therefore, the attack, as the primary means to destroy enemy forces, is primary in war, while the defense, as an aid to destroy enemy forces and as a means to keep one’s forces, is secondary. It is true that in the practice of war, defense plays the leading role on many occasions, while the other is played by the attack, but if war is considered as a whole, the attack remains the primary.
On Protracted War (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol II.
SURPRISE
Without preparation, the superiority of forces is not real superiority, and there can be no initiative either. Knowing this truth, a less prepared force can often defeat a superior enemy force by surprise attacks.
On Protracted War. (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol II.
WAR AND POLITICS
War is the continuation of politics. In this sense, war is politics and is itself a political action. There has never been, since time immemorial, any war that had no political character. (…)
But war has its unique characteristics, and in this sense, it is not equal to politics in general. War is the continuation of politics by other means. When politics comes to a certain stage of development, beyond which it cannot continue by the usual means, war breaks out to sweep the obstacle from the road. (…) When the obstacle is removed and our political objective is achieved, the war ends. While the obstacle is not completely eliminated, the war will continue until the objective is fully realized. (…) It can be said that politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.
On Protracted War (May 1938), Selected Works, Vol II.
Every Communist must grasp this truth: Political power grows out of the gun.
Problems of War and Strategy (November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol II.
VICTORY
Victory should in no way make us relax our vigilance. Whoever relaxes vigilance will be politically disarmed and will be reduced to a passive state.
Speech at the Meeting of the New Political Consultative Conference Preparatory Committee (June 15, 1949) Selected Works, Vol IV.
Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again, and so on to victory.
Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle (August 14, 1949), Selected Works, Vol IV.
The commanders and fighters should in no way relax in the least their will to fight; any idea that tends to relax the will to fight or to underestimate the enemy is wrong.
A commander cannot hope to win the war by overstepping the limits imposed by the material conditions, but they can and should strive to overcome within those limits. The stage of action for a military leader is built on objective material conditions, but in this scenario, they may lead magnificent epic actions of grandeur.
Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee elected at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of China (January 5, 1949), Selected Works, Vol IV.
BIOGRAPHY
(Shaoshan 1893-Beijing 1976) Chinese statesman. Despite
that his family prospered and was able to send to school
He never forgot his humble peasant origins. This was
and within the Communist Party represented
sector was supported by the peasantry, against
the majority that favored the urban proletariat.
China’s civil war tore faced
Nationalist Party, led by Chang Kai-shek,
with Communist Mao in 1934 suggested that
community moved north: the famous Long
March of more than 10,000 km. who staged
50,000 men (only reach 15,000) for 368
days.
The next ten years were maturing
doctrine for this former law student and
political philosophy of the SS. XVIII and XIX, as well as
battle, this time side by side with
Nationalists against the Japanese invasion.
His marriage (1920) and Yang had Gaihui
failed, the Communist leader relapsed during those years,
Ho Sizhen married and later to actress
Langbing. At the end of World War II, the Army
Russian Manchuria left in the hands of the Communists
Chinese, from there, and after three years of fighting,
they defeated the Nationalist Army of Chiang Kai-shek.
In October 1949 he proclaimed in Beijing
People’s Republic of China, and Mao, general secretary
party, was named president, a position he left
in 1958 to become chairman of the committee
Party Central. Mao set out to modernize its
country, for it must lead from the State
ideological formation of the people (the ‘revolution
cultural ‘) parallel to economic reforms.
One of the weapons that he used to Mao Tse Tung
to win their political and cultural revolution were
his writings: his political doctrine, known as
Maoism, had appeared in the study “On a
investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan ‘
(1927), this and his later works were condensed
in the famous “Red Book. But the enmity with
former Soviet allies and the Western world
China condemned to isolation.