I received an email from the publisher of The Handbook of 5GW: A Fifth Generation of War? yesterday. He wanted to know what the dedication and epigraph should be.

I’m open to suggestions.

What do you think?

It takes a special kind of man to make Josef Stalin look like a leader who truly just wanted the best for all people. Mao was that special kind of man.

Stalin and other Soviet Communists defined imperialism as the maintenance of a large-scale, multinational, state which extended overseas. Thus, in Stalin’s view, the United Kingdom and France were major imperialist powers, with extensive overseas possessions, while China, India, and the Soviet Union were simply large countries with extensive territories and a multinational population. Whether Stalin’s dislike of “imperialism” was ideological or pragmatic is besides the point — Stalin’s post-war Soviet Union was focused on dismantling the “imperialist” powers, and not a general world revolution against capitalism.

In early post-war India, the Communists acted in a “united front” with the ruling Indian National Congress to consolidate Indian national power. The Communist “revolutions” in India, such as the against against Hyderabad, were simply a part of Congress’s war against the princely states. The Communist Party of India never achieved national power, and from the point of view of Stalin, this was fine. India steadily removed the “imperialist” remnants, while the Communists patiently waited for India to develop economically.

Stalin’s plan for China was similar. The purpose of the Chinese communists was not to establish a democratic people’s republic in East Asia, but to assist the KMT in abolishing the treaty ports, extraterritoriality, and not assist the United Kingdom or France in foreign policy endeavours. The Chinese Communists, who were more ambitious than their Indian counterparts, could not understand why Stalin and COMINTERN kept instructing them to harm their own interests and support the KMT. The reason was that Stalin’s objective was not a “Communist” China… Stalin’s objective was an “anti-imperialist” China. If the early General Secretaries of the Chinese Communist Party — such as Chen Duxiu, Xiang Zhongfa, and Wang Ming — had triumphed, China would have slums but no Great Leap Forward and no Cultural Revolution. If Zhou Enlai had not sided with Mao, Zhou (and tens of millions of other Chinese) might have lived longer.

Instead of the guiding hand of Stalin, the Chinese Communists followed Mao into catastrophe.

There are very few countries in the world, where if the leadership had been more affectionate toward Stalin, there would have been less trouble.

China is one of those countries.

From The Life of the World to Come

My dissertation proposal was today. My advisor, an out-of-area professor, a methodologist, and another educational psychologist were in attendence. My initial presentation went 20 minutes, and after that was about an hour-and-a-half of questions.

At the end, a motion to accept my dissertation proposal, and seconded. It passed unanimously. I have successfully defended my doctoral dissertation proposal. Huzzah!

Thanks to all who have sent congratulations on twitter and facebook!

On Mao

On Twitter, Purpleslog asked for a good book on Mao Zedong. OF course, the answer is Mao Zedong: The Unknown Story. I warned him, though, that “Problem is, he is a rotten human being. Absolutely unsympathetic. Hard to stomach.

This is true.

If Jawaharlal Nehru was the “last British ruler of India,” then Mao Zedong was the last Chinese. China’s first attempt at Westernization was the Hundred Days of 1898, and while that was aborted, the Xinhai Revolution would come just 13 years later. Soon the Three Principles of the People were promulgated by China’s first President, the Hawaiian-educated Dr. Sun Yatsen. The Three Principles have an obviously American source: that a China of the people (民族主義), by the people (民權主義), and for the people (民生主義), will not perish from the Earth. Other pioneers included the triracial (Chinese/Spanish/Black) Eugene Chen, the London-educated Foreign Minister, and Feng Yuxiang, the influential warlord and member of the Methodist Episcopol Church.

Mao early on co-opted the Japanese- and French-educated Zhou Enlai. Important members of the next generation included Lin Biao (who studied under Zhou and Vasily Blucher), as well as Deng Xiaoping (educated in France and the Soviet Union), Liu Shaoqi (educated in the Soviet Union), Yang Shangkun (educated in the Soviet Union), and others.

Mao, by contrast, graduated from the First Provincial Normal School in Hunan, though for a time he worked as a librarian in Beijing.

Mao was left behind by time. He was out-of-step with the rest of the leadership class of China, though his connected him more firmly to both China’s past and China’s peasantry than the modern education of his rivals. Mao Zedong was the last Supreme Leader of China to enjoy writing poetry. He left the math portion of his college entrance exam blank, because math offended him. His first attempt to leave the country was denied — he couldn’t pass an exam for foreign exchange students, because he couldn’t speak standard Chinese.

Mao is like an emperor, like some figure from history. This is because he was. He was the last Chinese leader who fit the role of poetic Emperor perfectly, dismissing five year plans and (seemingly, truly believing) that adoration of his thought would be more helpful to workers than proper diet, proper tools, or technical training. Mao’s unpredictable, go-with-the-flow attitude served him well as a guerrilla leader, but was disastrous for everyone else. To use just one example, when his Defense Minister fled to Russia (with the obvious intent of forming a ‘Free China’ movement that would serve as a figurehead to any future Russian invasion), Mao’s reply was: “Rain falls, birds fly, girls want to be married. Some things can’t be helped.” No normal person thinks this way.

For modern readers, Mao is inexplicable. Like the smiling cannibals on Papua New Guinea, we share too little with him to empathize with him. He’s a weird leader, and only the poor, the backward, the uneducated, and the weird adore him.

Given that this argument appears to be between Glenn Beck and Barack Obama — two men I do not entirely trust — I would like some more context.

I appreciate Glenn Beck allowing Dunn to speak for about three minutes, but Anita Dunn‘s statement is so stupid and mindless that it is hard to take seriously. Anita’s statement sounds like someone praising Hitler for his tough but firm efforts to popularize beef consumption — the analogies baselessness is only trumped by its outrageousness. Mao Zedong — besides being the killer of millions of people, and someone who has harmed more people on both sides of my family than anyone else I can think of — was an advocate of Leninist centralism.

Anita Dunn has defended herself, and said she was only plagiarizing Lee Atwater. In which case, she should resign for being a plagiarist, like Bush aides did.

Alternatively, this is just another symptom of a frightening, and stupid, revisionism when it comes to Communist China. Chas Freeman withdrew his name from consideration when his bought-and-paid-for commentary on the Tiananmen Massacre (the government was too soft on the protesters) was brought to life. Anita Dunn should have the class of Chas Freeman.

In either case, Anita Dunn should resign,

Standing up for freedman is passe when you’re running the largest deficit (in terms of GDP) since 1945.

To Barack Obama, Henry Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke, preventing politically connected bankers from losing money is as important as defeating Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan.

Victims of Communism Memorial

Some evidence of the collapse of an independent American security policy in the Pacific:

Obama losens missile technology controls to China
“The closer we move to Beijing, the farther we move from democracy
U.S. Hopes to Strengthen Ties With China’s Expanding Military

So who are the friends of Geithner, the pals of Paulson, the men we are sacrificing our nation’s future to? According to one analysis: “guys from Harvard who had lower-than-average SAT scores (for Harvard) but played sports.” We threaten the long-term and short-term stability of our nation to save bankers from losing money, and the best a brain-dead opposition can come up with is criticize a government bureaucrat for clawing back one million out of trillions stolen.

The Obama Administration talks about reform while doing nothing. Government-funded banks like Bank of America continue to bleed billions, and will do so until we forgive the “loans” of these zombie banks.

It is probably good for China and the US to become closer friends — but I honestly did not except it to happen to a background of self-imposed collapse.

Update: More stories, all to a theme. Taxes will go up to pay for ObamaCare. Tom calls for no longer selling arms to Taiwan, in spite of US law. Tom cheerleads the collapse of the dollar, which its it harder for us to fund our SysAdmin and pay our debts.

I was chatting with a friend on google, who hung up on me when I noted that Al Gore was like Sarah Palin. Both of them express natural sentiments — that global warming is bad, that most of American social life happens outside the social worlds of New York, DC, and Los Angeles. Both were close to the Presidency — though Gore was much closer than Palin. Both have an emotional fan base.

And both, if they ever became President, would be constraint by party and governmental politics. They would not be as good as their fans hope, or as bad as their enemies fear.

Geithner’s friends can’t bail themselves out. (They can’t even avoid bankruptcy without Geithner’s generosity with your money.)

Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for America, the lights are on in the Treasury Department, as large banks are protected from ever, every going bankrupt.

The Suez Crisis was the end of Britain’s pretentions to be an independent power.

Our Suez Crisis is slower, and entirely self-inflicted.

Don’t celebrate Dow 10,000. It is really only Dow 3,333.

The number 10,000, of course, refers to 10,000 U.S. Dollars, a currency whose entire value depends on the credibility of Treasury Secretaries. In the last few years are Treasury Secretaries have been men like Henry Paulson (who made millions from his friends on Wall Street) on Tim Geithner (whose unaccountable aides, or “czars,” made millions on Wall Street).

Another way of thinking about the past ten years, not as a recovery but as a collapse, is to count in terms of ounces of gold, instead of U.S. dollars. Unlike U.S. Dollars. the value of an ounce can be silently inflated by men like Paulson and Geithner, who are more concerned with Wall Street profits than American power.

In 1999, Dow $10,000 = Dow 30 ounces of gold.
In 2009, Dow $10,000 = Dow 10 ounces of gold.

In other words, in constant points, our “Dow 10,000″ is just “Dow 3,333.”

No foreign country did this to us.

Only men like Henry Paulson, and Tim Geithner.

And their friends on Wall Street.

Update: Thanks to Robert Patterson for the link!