S. plays with one hand tied behind its back, the terrorists do not. Mao Zedong

He led the People's Republic of China for almost 30 years and created the set of communist policies now known as Maoism (Lynch, p. 126). He was a creative, shrewd politician and a masterful military strategist. He destroyed U.S.-backed Nationalist China's 4-million strong armies in a long line of huge battles, and forced them to escape to Taiwan .

Today, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States faces terrorist enemies and insurgents that are fully utilizing versions of Maoist military strategy. Mao called for careful and capable organization, patience in military commanders, and intelligent and astute political operatives.

Mao has been called the "consummate Clausewitzian strategist" (Grant).

Maoist strategy for war comes in three phases. Revolutionaries, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, begin as relatively weak and desperate, and end up eventually, as a strong, politically motivated and almost unstoppable military entity.

Phase one involves the terrorists (revolutionaries) constructing the organization. This is a quiet, patient buildup of the command and military structure. The rural and remote outlands of a country are the place to do this, as it was with Mao's Chinese Revolution and as it is today with the Taliban. Phase two begins the action of the terrorism (revolution). This involves avoiding direct head-on confrontation with government military. Strike where the enemy is weakest, says Mao. And this is precisely the strategy the Taliban are taking in Afghanistan....

In phase two, the point is to establish an infrastructure, propagandize in those areas that are liberated, and win over the population. Phase three, in the ideal Mao scenario, involves the crumbling of existing government (Grant).
And in Afghanistan, to this day, the Taliban continues to rebound and fight using these same strategies that proved successful for Mao. The Taliban has a firm foothold in the myriad of remote mountains, foothills, and caves of the country. They already defeated the mujahedeen in a war in which they utilized Mao's tactics. They are now fighting the same kind of war against us.

They have succeeded in winning over the population in certain areas of the country and established footholds of resistance to propagandize the local people against their enemies. They are attacking the U.S. forces at will and at their vulnerable points. They have been so successful that President Obama called for a surge of tens of thousands of troops. and, only in the past few weeks, the U.S., with this new influx of troops, has had to move into populated areas of the country to destroy and remove the Taliban from the strongholds they have established (Grant).

Bibliography

Clausewitz, Carl von, et al. On War. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Grant, T. "Revolutionary strategies: Maoism." 24 June 2005. armsandinfluence.typepad.com. 20 February 2010 .

Heerwagen, B. "Carl Von Clausewitz and his Relevance as a Contemporary Theorist." 27 March 2007. dtic.mil. 19 February 2010 .

Lynch, M.J. Mao. New York: Routledge, 2004.