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Tung Ming, "The people's revolutionary strategy will triumph over U.S. imperialism's counter-revolutionary strategy," in Great Strategic Concept (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), pp. 30-35
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THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY WILL TRIUMPH OVER U.S. IMPERIALISM'S COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
— In commemoration of the first anniversary of the publication of Comrade Lin Piao's article "Long Live the Victory of People's War!"
by Tung Ming
Comrade Lin Piao's famous article "Long Live the Victory of People's War!" was published a year ago. It is a comprehensive, systematic and profound analysis of Comrade Mao Tse-tung's theory and strategic concept of people's war and provides the revolutionary people of the whole world with a powerful ideological weapon in the fight against imperialism and modern revisionism. It has dealt a heavy blow to the arrogance of U.S. imperialism and its lackeys and greatly heightened the morale of the peoples striving for freedom and emancipation. Its publication was of extremely great historic and international significance.
The present great struggle between the people, who account for more than ninety per cent of the world's population, and U.S. imperialism is a decisive battle between revolution and counter-revolution on which hinges the future of the world. It is also a decisive battle between the two systems, socialism and capitalist-imperialism, between Comrade Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary military strategy based on people's war and imperialism's reaction-¬
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ary military strategy based on the theory that weapons decide everything.
All wars waged by the reactionaries including U.S. imperialism are anti-popular. They cannot depend on people but only on weapons for the conduct of their wars. That is why they are bound to exaggerate one-sidedly and put blind faith in the role of weapons. This theory that weapons decide everything determines their attitude in war, namely, the doctrine that might is right, and their opportunism and pragmatism. They invariably advance when conditions seem favourable and retreat in the face of difficulties. They bully the weak-kneed and fear the brave. They grow tough when their opponents show any signs of weakness, and they soften in face of toughness. The greater the fear of them, the more arrogant and aggressive they become; the more their opponents defy and fight them unflinchingly, the less they can do about it. Their nature as exploiters often makes them act crazily in pursuit of their selfish interests, and unwilling and unable to correctly appraise the relative strength of objective forces or to understand the laws of war. They are inevitably subjective-idealistic in determining strategy and conducting war. They always overestimate their own strength and underestimate that of the people, commit one irretrievable mistake after another and are never able to correct these mistakes.
The U.S. imperialists, the biggest military imperialists, have manufactured and stockpiled a large number of nuclear weapons during the last twenty-one years. Making use of their enormous economic power and modern scientific technique, they have done everything they can to develop lethal weapons. At the same time, their military concepts have become a hotchpotch of the theory that weapons decide everything, the doctrine that might is right, as well as pragmatism, opportunism and subjective-idealism. U.S. imperialism, the first to produce nuclear weapons, has in its military thinking become an utter slave of such weapons. United¬
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States military strategy has undergone several changes since the end of World War II. But the idea of relying on nuclear weapons to conduct nuclear blackmail has remained unchanged and runs through all its military strategies. U.S. imperialism has outdone all reactionaries, past and present, in the absurdity and ridiculousness of its military theory that weapons decide everything.
After it manufactured the first atom bomb twenty-one years ago, U.S. imperialism thought that henceforth the use or the threatened use of atomic weapons of mass destruction would be sufficient to assure U.S. domination over the world. However, the victory of the Chinese revolution and of the Korean war against U.S. aggression, the victorious development of the current Vietnam war against U.S. aggression and that of the revolutionary struggles in many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have shown the bankruptcy of U.S. imperialism's counter-revolutionary military strategy based on nuclear blackmail.
In 1959, fourteen years after the United States exploited its first atomic bomb, General Taylor, a faithful stooge of Wall Street, finally discovered that the conception that "atomic weapons can decide everything" is a "great fallacy" and so he put forward the "flexible response" strategy as a life-saving recipe for U.S. imperialism. Although Taylor sees the fallacy of the "massive retaliation" strategy which mainly relies on strategic nuclear weapons, his new strategy is likewise built on the theory that weapons decide everything. It still depends on so-called "naval and air superiority", and on the superiority of highly efficient conventional arms and other weapons and falls back on the threat of nuclear war as its mainstay. As a result, this new strategy has become powerless in face of the revolutionary people who fear nothing, neither hardships nor death.
The "escalation" strategy which has appeared on the scene over the past two years and which serves as a shot-in-the-arm for the strategy of "flexible response" is more closely tied up with¬
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nuclear blackmail and nuclear threats. It is nothing but the villainous strategy of a gambler and a rascal, an out-and-out opportunist and pragmatist strategy. The characteristic of the champions of this "escalation" strategy is that while they raise a hue and cry about expanding the war and brandish nuclear weapons to frighten others, they fear that once the war expands they will be in serious trouble and the situation will get out of hand. Their strategy provides for ascending or descending the ladder of "escalation". Once they find that the expansion of the war is disadvantageous to them or that their opponents do not fear this strategy, they concoct a "face-saving" pretext and come down the ladder, just as a rascal gives way at the first sign of imminent danger. This fully exposes their nature as paper tigers which appear to be strong but are actually weak.
The experience gained by the revolutionary people of China and other countries in their protracted struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys has proved that the revolutionary military strategy of people's war, created by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, is the only correct and victorious strategy for the oppressed people to defeat all enemies.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung's military strategic concept of people's war is built on the foundation of thorough-going historical materialism and dialectical materialism. It is a fundamental Marxist principle that the people are the motive force in the making of world history. Comrade Mao Tse-tung has creatively applied this theory to war, holding that weapons play an important but not the decisive role in war and that the basic factor that decides the outcome of war is man, not weapons. Revolutionary war is a war of the masses and only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them can the war be carried on and won.
Proceeding from this guiding thought, we consider that the best weapon is not such lethal weapons as aircraft, artillery, tanks or atom bombs, but Mao Tse-tung's thought; and that the greatest¬
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combat power is not the power of any new weapon but the awakened people armed with Mao Tse-tung's thought.
Proceeding from this guiding thought, we can despise any formidable enemy strategically and take full account of him tactically; we can most correctly assess the relative strength of the enemy and ourselves and make the most ingenious use of all the internal contradictions of the enemy; we can integrate the army with the people to the maximum extent, bring into fullest play the initiative of the masses of the people, strategically using one against ten and tactically pitting ten against one, flexibly avoiding the enemy where he is strong and attacking him where he is weak; we can concentrate superior forces to wipe out the enemy, slicing him up and nibbling him up bit by bit; we can bring into full play the wisdom of the soldiers and of the masses of the people, becoming more resourceful, experienced, wiser and stronger with each battle until the relative strength between the enemy and ourselves is radically changed and the enemy is wiped out thoroughly, completely and totally.
This revolutionary military strategy, once grasped by the masses of the people and integrated with them, becomes an invincible force which in the end will bury U.S. imperialism and all its lackeys and enable the oppressed peoples to win genuine liberation.
Contrary to the expectations of all the reactionaries, the emergence of nuclear weapons cannot save from bankruptcy the theory that weapons decide everything. The greater the imperialist threat of nuclear war, the more does revolutionary people's war show its splendour and superiority. The war against U.S. aggression now being victoriously waged by the Vietnamese people provides us with a new example of "the weak" defeating "the strong"; it is a potent living example showing that by relying on people's war, the people can defeat any anti-popular war launched by U.S. imperialism.
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Just as Comrade Lin Piao has pointed out in "Long Live the Victory of People's War!":
People's war is the most effective weapon against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys. All revolutionary people will learn to wage people's war against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys. They will take up arms, learn to fight battles and become skilled in waging people's war though they have not done so before. U.S. imperialism like a mad bull dashing from place to place, will finally be burnt to ashes in the blazing fire of the people's wars it has provoked by its own actions.
(Published in Renmin Ribao, September 3, 1966)