One reason why I think military history is important, when it comes to conflicts involving deep ideological splits that continue to this day, is that it offers a more objective look at social issues that is less at risk of bias. With Chinese Civil War, I actually find authors /1
such as Jung Chang and Frank Dikotter to be not entirely reliable and objective, because even though they rightfully point out the dangerous consequences of communism, they also gloss over the human rights abuses and excesses of the ostensibly democratic and constitutional /2
Republic of China regime, and of the middle-upper class society that was the basis of its power, that the communists were fighting against. This tendency to pick sides is perhaps rendered more tempting, because these authors’ primary focus was on the ideological conflict /3
itself. To support the theses of their works, it may be tempting to structure and color the whole narrative by selectively picking and interpreting evidence.
By contrast, with military history, the primary thesis is concerned not with the ideological social conflicts that /4
provide the backdrop for military operations. As such, military historians describe those ideological social conflicts in the context of how they affected military operations, and as such, authors are better situated in a more objective perspective with regards to ideological /5
conflicts, as it’s unlikely that any conclusions they come to regarding those ideological conflicts will conflict with the core military operational-focused theses around which they structure their work.
Use one field to get a more objective look at another field’s focus. /end
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In Western highly-educated social elite upper-middle class society, many people live in fear of getting “canceled” for something wrong they said on Internet 5 years ago. But for an authoritarian dictator’s subordinates, having embarrassing compromising material about themselves
(“kompromat”) can ironically be a valuable, even necessary, asset for them to survive in the dictator’s regime, as a dictator sees a subordinate’s embarrassing “kompromat” as a political insurance policy to ensure that the subordinate will forever be meek and submissive, and not
become too overly ambitious as to try to sideline the dictator with his supreme and unsurpassable glory and prestige. A dictator’s subordinate who completely lacks such “kompromat” is ironically in a more politically insecure position in regime, because in that case the dictator
One of most important adages in the East Asian communist revolutionary movement in 20th century is, "Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? That is the most important question of the revolution." One important and implicit corollary of this quote is that, in a revolutionary
framework, this consideration actually applies to both revolutionaries overthrowing a regime, and to the incumbent government regime, that is, developing an accurate intelligence picture of who are friends and who are enemies is of utmost importance to both revolutionaries and
government. In turn, this means that many revolutionary operators must actually stay concealed, and their true allegiance and beliefs carefully hidden, so as to deny their opponents (the government) an accurate intelligence picture of the situation. The strategic stupidity of the
When an undercover revolutionary operative is captured by the counterintelligence or police forces of the governing regime, the most critical hours are the first few days or so after capture, since that's when his (or her) comrades would still be residing in their temporary safe-
houses of which the imprisoned operative knows of the addresses and locations. If the operative breaks down under interrogation, even the most brutal interrogation, during these golden critical hours, and discloses secrets, then he can put his revolutionary comrades in severe
jeopardy, and likewise the Party's retribution against that imprisoned revolutionary operative's associates or family members for operative's "crime" of leaking secrets may also be accordingly severe. After those critical hours have passed, the secrets harbored in the operative's
1/ Before Xi Jinping took power 10 years ago, corruption in China's military occurred on such a massive scale, it would have made Fat Leonard look like a priest. Interest and motivation of many Chinese military officers >10 years ago primarily revolved around making $. Their mode
2/ of operations generally went along lines of: siphon off $ from military contracts and/or use military property and resources to conduct profitable commercial side businesses (which were pervasive back then, but historical background of that deserves its own discussion), use $
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3/ in April 1975, for example remains one of most astonishing defensive actions by any standing professional army in modern 20th century military history. Whether the casual dismissal of East Asian non-communist generals prevalent among US and Western