Maoists Work to Hold the Strategic Initiative

(Courtesy: Dr. Thomas A. Marks)

Much ink has been spilled of late as to what the Maoists are up to. One particularly strained line of thought contineus to hold that they have accepted "participation in the democratic process." This is not the case. They simply see themselves as achieving victory by other means.

All Maoist movements advance along five lines of operation: mass line -- political action; united front -- "useful idiots" (Lenin's term, not mine); violence -- of various sorts, with a particular sort "leading" in each strategic phase -- but "leading" only in terms of violence itself; political warfare (Chinese terminology) -- nonviolence to facilitate violence; and international -- anything overseas that strengthens the domestic struggle.

All these lines of action are comprised of campaigns and battles and tactics; in that order, analytically, tactics bundled into battle, battles bundled into campaigns, campaigns bundled into lines of operation. They all go on simultaneously, what the Vietnamese called (in translation) "the war of interlocking."

Toppling the monarchy, for instance, though important, is not the Maoist goal. To them, it is no more than capturing a decisive position in conventional war -- it may give the Maoists tactical advantage, it may give you a battle, it may be the turning point in a campaign -- or, it may mobilize their downfall if outrage sparks a backlash (theoretically -- this is precisely what happened in Thailand). Regardless, it is but a battle in a larger effort.

It is true, in the Maoist approach, that violence makes everything possible. Yet violence need not "lead." Indeed, a sophisticated Maoist movement (or any insurgent movement) of necessity emphasizes other lines of operation.

Violence is inefficient and expensive. Overplaying violence, as Sendero Luminoso did in its terror campaign in Peru, may mobilize such a backlash that the movement is swamped. At all times, therefore, a Maoist movement is balancing its lines of operations, just as commanders do in conventional action, reinforcing now one, then another.

Within the "violence" line of operation, it is entirely logical that when the movement is weak, on the defensive, it relies upon the tools of the weak, terror and guerrilla warfare. In order to neutralize state power, however -- i.e., the military -- it must engage in force-on-force warfare of main forces against main forces, thus in "mobile" or "maneuever" warfare. This is why, even as they were cutting off the heads of teachers and torturing their victims, the Maoists were fielding "battalions" and "brigades" (and ultimately "divisions") in an effort to neutralize government battalions (the old Roman cohorts). Only when this has been achieved, argued Mao, could the movement go over to the offensive and hold what it gained, "war of position."

Throughout, however, the other lines of operation continued, and Mao's theory states that just as contradictions will be primary and secondary, so must they be addressed appropriately. The appropriate Chinese response to the primary contradiction exposed by World War II, for instance, had to be met by entering into a united front strategically with the KMT government in order to make possible violent action. Mao's logic was very clear: the primary contradiction was so salient that without the united front there would be no more China to undergo revolution!

What we see in Nepal, then, is the Maoist model used well. At the correct time, perhaps beyond their wildest dreams, the Maoists were able to gain what all the other movements I have studied did not achieve: a united front that mattered. That they were able to do so was as much a result of Nepalese structural particulars as the human agency of SPA. SPA, in other words, Mao (and Lenin!) would say, was singularly naive as to where its real interests lay.

For the Maoists see the monarchy and SPA as but different spots upon the scale by which they measure the old-order. The monarch, with his army, is simply to them the most powerful element of ancien regime. The one stumbling block to the Maoists simply walking into power remains the security forces, though the police have so quickly slipped back to their old ways that one has to narrow "security forces" to perhaps only the army (NA) and armed police force (APF).

And they together are yet a force with which the Maoists must reckon. That is why the Maoists are playing every card they can to destroy those organizations from within and cut them off from support without -- even as they keep doing precisely what they were doing before: extortion, kidnapping, murder, and organizing for ultimate confrontation. Even the Maoist assassination squads dismantled in the Kathmandu Valley have publicly tried to claim they were but innocent students.

This highlights that the struggle is always going on at different levels of war. Tactical use of disinformation, such as the case of the assassination squads, would be the use of a method of battle to further the operational (i.e., campaign) goal of neutralizing the security forces, which itself would be but one of the campaigns in the appropriate line of operation.

At this point we add a layer of complexity, for the insurgents exist in multidimensional space. Mao's lines of operation are his strategy for waging war. Yet he also had to have plans in time and space for guiding his waging of war. Thus one can see a variety of campaigns, even lines of operation, which play themselves out on the ground much like conventional battle -- and also like an electoral campaign. The latter, however, is an armed political campaign, and the distinction is just what Mao meant when he said a "revolution is not a dinner party."

The Maoists, in other words, have not only shifted the weight of their Maoist lines of operation between violence and "the others," they have also followed plans for gaining control of space, population, financing, weapons, and so on. Whether they have assistance from SPA or others, whether they use this technique or that, is not the proper focus. All "that" is immaterial to what is happening: people's war continues to be waged.

The "Violence" line of operation has gotten the Maoists to the war of position. In saying that violence would be necessary in that phase, Mao was again very specific -- it was only so because his enemy was so formidable that the other lines of operation could not be strategically decisive.

The CPN(M)'s enemies are much less formidable than anything Mao faced, and the Maoists have exercised the good sense to weight at this moment their "political warfare" line of action -- the "united front" and "international" lines of action having gotten them into all the urban areas where they were previously were denied. Their "mass line" campaign is being exercised primarily in the areas they control -- and continue to deny access to other political forces despite their agreements.

They must deny access to other political forces, because the longer events drag out, the more conscious become rivals that they have been had -- and that the Maoists have them by the short hairs.

It is therefore entirely predictable and logical that at present, the Maoists are preparing, if things do not go their way, to rise up in a replica of April (2006) but with their own cadres providing the leadership and energy, not to mention the appropriate violence necessary to make the security forces over-react. They are convinced that they can simply "swamp" the system, and that is why they have been working so hard to suck new members into their "unions" and to extort the money to fund their operations.

One could call this tatical use of united fronts and political warfare techniques within the "political warfare" line of operation. Just as violence has tactics, operational art, and strategy, so does nonviolence, and this is taught in the political warfare schools of China and Taiwan (see my book, Counterrevolution in China, for a complete explanation).

As Prachanda has stated yet again recently, as clearly as any Maoist can, his forces are willing "peacefully" to gain their ends. Thwarted in this, however, they will press on "not so peacefully." Most observers would call that "menace," using threat of violence to achiedve the ends of violence. In fact, the Maoists are incapable of plain-speaking.

Unfortunately, neither are Nepal’s hapless SPA politicians, so one must be prepared for tragedy. By “peace” the Maoists mean only that the system can surrender and thus avoid "violence." They have no conception of "politics" as we know it.

That the usual suspects in New Delhi's South Asian "Great Game" haven't a clue what we are talking about here only highlights the nastiness that is coming. New Delhi had best start working on its refugee camps now. If South Block thinks what occurred in July 1983 Sri Lanka produced dislocation in Tamil Nadu, it has no idea what is in store when the Nepali Maoists make their play.