Change the Sun

Both capitalist social relations and the racism which are immanent in American foreign policy ended up creating problems for the Western system over the long run. And given that the detriment caused by both factors are so blatantly obvious, it puts the West at a psychological disadvantage vis-à-vis its adversaries. If Hamas and Hezbollah are able to set the whole of the Western world into a whirlwind like this, imagine what China and Iran and North Korea and Russia will do collectively with their full force. 

Moreover, the visceral reaction on the part of these Eastern countries and groups is to “stand up.” And as Kissinger highlighted, to stand up consists of overcoming both domestic and foreign challenges. In terms of the domestic challenges, they consist of asserting political and territorial sovereignty and unifying the people. And in terms of the foreign challenges, Kissinger wrote:

“With respect to the rest of the world, Mao introduced a special style that substituted ideological militancy and psychological perception for physical strength. It was composed of a Sinocentric view of the world, a touch of world revolution, and a diplomacy using the Chinese tradition of manipulating the barbarians, with great attention paid to meticulous planning and the psychological domination of the other side.”

Mao chose to defy rather than accommodate the barbarians, as Kissinger highlighted. He added: “Diplomatic traditionalists would have rejected this attitude of aloof challenge as unfeasible. But Mao believed in the objective impact of ideological and, above all, psychological equivalence to the superpowers by calculated indifference to their military capabilities.” At the core, there is an indifference shown to the barbarians, even to their nuclear power, as was demonstrated by Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong. From a position of weakness, Mao was setting and accomplishing long-term goals for China, as Kissinger highlighted. Moreover, the courage and resolve to set and accomplish such goals led Mao to gain credibility even in the eyes of the West. Mao himself wrote: “It is the bitter sacrifices that strengthen our firm resolve, and which give us the courage to dare to change heavens and skies, to change the sun, and to make a new world.” 

Mao was also a gambler and chess master par excellence. As a result, the superpowers “had the most difficulty comprehending Mao’s strategic motives.” China’s interventions in North Korea and Vietnam with the aim of counterbalancing the United States during the Cold War were also impressive, and in turn, these interventions “caught almost all foreign observers – and each of the adversaries – by surprise.”

From a strategic standpoint, China seeks to thwart encirclement, which is perhaps why China is so successful when it intervenes in its periphery. Chinese interventions are driven by real national security imperatives and goals. If China were to intervene in Taiwan in the coming future, there is no reason to doubt that the Chinese would be just as successful – if not more successful – than they were during the Cold War. To borrow from Kissinger: “Long-range calculations of the configuration of forces around China’s periphery were considered more significant than a literal calculus of the immediate balance of power. This combination of the long-range and the psychological also came to expression in Mao’s approach to deterring perceived military threats.” 

But of course, there is an ambivalence towards any strategy, even the best ones, and Mao, as Kissinger noted, also had ambivalence towards his own strategy to a certain extent. The ambivalence arose as a result of an odd configuration, in the sense that Mao was “dedicated to world revolution, ready to encourage it wherever possible, yet also protective of the necessities of China’s survival.” In the end: “The prevention of war…was more important than the encouragement of global revolution.” But given China’s rise as a global behemoth over the course of the last few decades, it is uncertain as to whether China carries the same kind of ambivalence as before.