Sarah Paine

They'll win the war because they'll annihilate us.

And of course, this is what General Westmoreland was trying to do in the Vietnam War, is getting the North Vietnamese to concentrate so he could blow them off the map.

And of course, they'd read their Mao and didn't do that nonsense.

So Mao was saying you only fight when you're sure of victory.

And also...

In order to get to phase three, you need a big friend.

Why?

Because phase three is conventional warfare, which requires infinite supplies of conventional armaments that requires an industrial base to produce it.

And somewhere like China lacks this industrial base.

And so good old Soviet Union played this role the world over.

And so this is the secret sauce of people's war.

If you want to get to phase three, you need a big buddy.

And that's where the Soviet Union came in.

And so this is why Mao determines that Yan'an is going to be his terminal point of retreat.

He said, I'm finding my way through to the Soviet Union.

No kidding.

You've got to have the conventional arms to fight this stuff.

What's interesting about Mao's description of people's war is it actually applied not so much to the war with Japan, which he claimed it applied to, but rather to the civil war with the nationalists.

And here is the key point.

Mao didn't actually fight the regional war against Japan.