Adapting to Win. Noriyuki Katagiri
included the Malayan Emergency of 1948 to 1960 and the Indochina War of 1946 to 1954, both of which demonstrated that learning and adaptation of sequencing, or lack thereof, was a critical determinant of war outcomes. In Malaya, Chin Peng led a communist rebellion against British colonial forces under the banner of the Malaya Communist Party (MCP). For much of the emergency period, Chin maintained limited contact with Mao, received little support, and ignored the need to “win hearts and minds” of the population. A few years into the war, the MCP realized that its guerrilla strategy was not working, so it issued a policy directive in 1951 to urge its members to refrain from coercive measures on the population. The MCP also received advice from China and Russia to modify the struggle in line with the growing emphasis on “peaceful coexistence” with the population, but the MCP minimally adopted these measures. By the late 1950s the independence movement was practically over. In Indochina, Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap learned a great deal from Mao, copied some ideas but generated their own versions, and successfully led a phased war against the French in their quest for independence. One of Ho’s first official statements after the outbreak of war was that Vietminh leaders would follow the people’s war. Another Vietminh leader, Truong Chinh, authored a pamphlet called The Resistance Will Win, which drew extensively from Mao’s writings on guerrilla war. In contrast to the MCP, the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) worked closely with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Vietnam had assisted Mao during the Chinese civil war, and China reciprocated during the Indochina War. In fact, the CCP’s victory in 1949 became a catalyst for the Vietminh to resurrect the ICP in 1951. The Vietminh closely studied the CCP’s wars against Japan and Chiang Kai-shek while translating documents and training materials into Vietnamese and distributing among troops.
Table 2. Repeated Extrasystemic Wars with the Same Strategies
In Latin America, Mao’s ideas influenced the thoughts of revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and Regis Debray about how to carry out guerrilla wars through stages. Guevara made clear the origin of his ideas on guerrilla war when he said that “we have always looked up to Comrade Mao Tse-tung. When we were engaged in guerrilla warfare we studied Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory on guerrilla warfare. Mimeographed copies published at the front lines circulated widely among our cadres; they were called ‘food from China.’ We studied this little book carefully and learned many things.”29 A number of chapters in his selected works resonated closely with the ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, including the concept of vanguard, people’s war, and people’s army. Guevara praised Giap in his prologue to Giap’s book when it was brought into Cuba and published in La Guerra del Pueblo: Ejercito del Pueblo.30 Regis Debray, too, displayed a considerably detailed knowledge of the associated readings, citing authors like Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao, as well as Cuban national hero Jose Marti.31 In fact, Mao’s ideas became so popular that local leaders applied them in many instances against their own governments. Gilberto Vieira, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Colombia, outlined five phases of civil war: (1) preparation and organization, (2) large-scale program of psychological action against the government, (3) isolation of armed forces, (4) division of armed forces, and (5) economic, political, and social reconstruction of the zones of operations, using American aid.32 These leaders communicated closely with their revolutionary counterparts elsewhere as they commanded their wars of liberation.
In Latin America, however, local characteristics and geography intervened to generate a diverse effect. In particular, Guevara’s famed “foco theory,” which argued that revolutions would begin with a small core of discontented elements and blossom over time into an organized group, stood out as a clear deviation from people’s war. Accordingly, Guevara anticipated that a revolution in Cuba along with Fidel Castro would proceed through three stages, with the first phase including small-sized guerrilla units that would mix with the physical and human conditions of the battlefield. Unlike the Maoist concept of “base areas,” the guerrilla units would carry out limited attacks at this phase. In another important contrast to Mao’s theory, revolutionaries would not wait until all conditions were met but instead would allow a small guerrilla nucleus—foco—to operate liberally. In the process of guerrilla growth, the battle would reach a point where commanders would move around to spread violence. This spread of violence would establish a rough parity of power where a compact group would emerge and seek to dominate the war. The final phase would consist of the rebels successfully capturing large cities and overrunning the army. In the other contrast to Mao’s theory, mobile operations introduced in this phase would not replace guerrilla fighting; instead, regular forces would be a supplement to guerrilla forces.33 It was clear that Guevara’s theory had a sequential element, but it apparently developed on a different path.
In Africa, there were numerous extrasystemic wars in recent history, including the Ashantis, Zulus, Boers, and Senegalese. Here again, we see the impact of learning and proliferation of sequencing ideas on the way local insurgent forces fought extrasystemic wars. Many of these tribal groups had little luck throughout the European colonial period and until the 1960s when decolonization movements became widespread. Among the prominent leaders were Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Frantz Fanon. Leading an insurgency in Guinea-Bissau against Portugal, Cabral read Mao’s writings when he was in China in 1960 and studied them further before he opened his war in 1963.34 Fighting a long but increasingly successful struggle for independence, he praised Mao, Guevara, and Nkrumah as champions of Third World revolution.35 In Ghana, Nkrumah shared the idea of fighting over multiple phases as the key to liberate the territory when he followed Lenin’s masterpiece—Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism—to criticize the residual colonialism in his aptly titled book Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.36 In Algeria, Fanon developed what was essentially a sequencing strategy, a little-known fact for a psychiatrist best known for the treatment of peasant rage and emotions in suppressed societies. During the Algerian war for independence, Fanon was a key ideological leader behind the operations of the FLN and National Liberation Army (ALN), which also advocated a multiphase approach that differed from Mao’s. He anticipated that in the first phase, a small group of frustrated individuals would make a spontaneous attack on colonial forces in their local areas. This period would be characterized by small-scale movement; “the aim and the program of each locally constituted group was local liberation.” In the second phase, colonial forces would respond with a series of large-scale offensives. Through these offensives the forces would turn into guerrilla operatives, similar to those seen in a peasant revolt. In the final phase, the revolt would transform itself into a revolutionary war. The insurrectionists would evolve into warriors of liberation strong enough to decimate the colonial leaders and regain sovereignty. Through three phases, according to Fanon, a war of liberation would be complete.37 Of course the Algerian war per se did not proceed like he anticipated; it was mostly a series of insurgent operations using local cells and individual networks in hit-and-run operations in avoidance of frontal attacks on French troops. Although in later phases Algerians made efforts to modernize forces, the center of gravity lay in the underground terrorist cells. Therefore, the war was highly divergent from the people’s war concept, although it had apparent links with sequencing ideas. These revolutionary leaders inherited the intellectual impetus from Lenin and Mao and localized the practice in ways that fit their strategic environments. Sequencing strategies gradually disseminated in small pieces from the mainstream approach while retaining distinctive revolutionary characteristics.
CHAPTER 3
How Sequencing Theory Works
What Makes Sequencing Theory?
Recent proliferation of sequential strategies, both in practice and through academia, attests to the growing recognition of the importance of using sequences in conflict. The existing ideas and works, however, need an overarching framework, which requires us to explore precisely how sequencing theory works. To answer this question I disaggregate its components in the context of extrasystemic war. In so doing, I reveal the presence of three phases—guerrilla war, conventional