Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam

Mao Tse-tung’s campaign to capture state power in China has long served as the premier illustration of revolutionary warfare for scholars and would-be practitioners alike. Indeed, the vast scope and sheer numbers involved in the Chinese Civil War (1927-49) have served to all but dwarf possible rivals. Of these latter, though, the Vietnam War (1955-75) — also known as the Second Indochina War — certainly succeeded in capturing the world’s attention and analysis in a way the Chinese episode could not. Not only was the leading global power, the United States, more direct ly involved in Vietnam (together with a host of more modest yet nonetheless still formidable players), but the conflict occurred in an era when mass communications were able to publicize its vicis situdes in a fashion simply not possible for the Chinese case. Thus it is Vietnam which has influenced the most recent scholarly gen eration concerned with revolution. Still, it is Maoist ‘people’s war’ that has remained the inspira tion for would-be revolutionaries. For all the uniqueness of the Vietnamese approach, it is not possible to separate it from its Chinese predecessor — the debt owed in both strategic and tacti cal particulars is substantial. So, too, is this the case with follow-on episodes. The years since the 1975 end of the Vietnam War have seen four benchmark instances of revolutionary warfare con sciously modelled after Mao. These have occurred in Thailand, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Peru. In all four, the insurgents have not only claimed to be ‘making a revolution’ but have held up Mao’s approach as that providing guidance for their campaigns. Three of the battles, those of the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Peru, continue at this writing; the fourth, Thailand, has all but disap peared. Regardless of precise status, none of these four has occa sioned adequate scholarly attention. This is a mistake. It may not, in a sense, be surprising. So much, after all, has been written concerning Maoist insurgency that there would seem little left to add. Such an attitude, however, is short sighted, because the form remains with us still — and is likely tofor years to come. This alone should spark our interest. Revolutionary wars which look to the Maoist model are not going to disappear. The reasons are both pragmatic and ideological. Pragmatically speaking, the Maoist approach offers the most highly developed construct available for ‘making a revolution’. Hence there is little need for would-be revolutionaries to look elsewhere for a tem plate. Ideologically speaking, the apparent Maoist appeal to a communion with the masses is compatible with all political philosophies which purport to find legitimacy in those same mass es. Hence it is seductive enough to capture adherents across the spectrum. Only the content of ‘democracy’ need be adjusted to fit the circumstances. This, in fact, is precisely what has happened in the years since Mao’s triumphant 1949 entry into Peking. His approach has been used by insurgents of all persuasions — predictably. For when all is said and done, Maoist insurgency is a technique for purposive (i.e., deliberate) action. It is a means to an end, political power; politi cal power to be seized for the purpose of overthrowing the exist ing order. It is not, as so many of its misguided adherents have claimed, an alternative form of democratic governance. To the contrary, as will become clear in the course of this work, only democracy offers a realistic counter to the Maoist approach.