Chapter 65 Innovating People's War Thoughts with Overall Strategic Thinking

In recent years, the "obsolete theory" of people's war thought has filled various academic journals at home and abroad.In the new historical period, people's war thinking is indeed facing challenges.How to innovate and develop people's war thinking under the new situation is a new task entrusted to us by the times.Marshal Ye Jianying once pointed out: "We started and won by relying on the people's war. This magic weapon, we relied on it in the past, relied on it now, and will continue to rely on it in the future." Mao Zedong's thought on people's war is the thought of overall warfare. It must be an overall battle.

War has never been merely a mere armed struggle between opposing sides.Any class, nation, country or political group engaged in war will do everything possible to mobilize its own strength in all aspects to fight the enemy desperately in the face of a war about its own life and death.It was on the basis of a deep understanding of the law of war that Mao Zedong creatively proposed a form of people's war that focuses on armed struggle and cooperates with various fronts and forms of struggle in politics, economy, culture, and diplomacy. , so that various forms of struggle form a powerful whole.

Japan's war of aggression against China was a so-called "total force war" that was led by the military and closely coordinated with politics, economy, and culture.At the critical moment of life and death for the Chinese nation, Mao Zedong published "Policies, Measures and Prospects for Opposing Japanese Attacks", "To Mobilize All Forces to Struggle for Victory in the War of Resistance", "Strategic Issues in Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War", "On Protracted War", etc. The book proposes the general war of countering the Japanese imperialist aggression with the people's war, so as to unite the people of all ethnic groups and various progressive political forces in China to fight for the survival of their motherland.According to Mao Zedong's people's war thought, it is to change the simple government's war of resistance into the whole nation's overall war of resistance; change the simple frontal battlefield into the front and the enemy's rear as a whole;From this perspective, Mao Zedong's people's war thought is to use the "whole-body war" of the Chinese people's revolution to fight against the "total force or total war" of imperialism.This fully shows that Mao Zedong's people's war thought is the overall war thought, and it also conforms to the "integral" characteristic of one of the three major characteristics of Mao Zedong's people's war thought.

The theoretical proposition and theoretical exploration of "Mao Zedong's people's war thought is the overall war thought" are mainly manifested in three aspects: First, form an overall power in terms of strength.In order to organize the masses of the people into the revolutionary war, effective forms of organization are needed.For this reason, Mao Zedong creatively proposed the "three-in-one" organizational form of war forces.The "three combinations" here are: first, the armed force system that combines the field army, local army and militia; second, the combination of the main corps and the local corps, and the combination of the regular army, the guerrillas and the militia; and the third, the combination of the armed masses and the unarmed masses. organizational system of armed struggle.This "three-in-one combination" is a great creation, and it is a huge organizational form that gives full play to the great power of the people.Practice has proved that it can give full play to the role of various armed forces and cooperate with each other to form an overall power, so that the enemy will fall into the overall encirclement of our people.

Second, carry out extensive overall mobilization in form.After finding out that the source of war power is the masses of the people, especially the peasant masses.How to mobilize them and make them join the great revolutionary war is a question that must be answered in the planning of war forces.It includes political mobilization, economic mobilization, ideological mobilization and so on.For example: On political mobilization, Mao Zedong pointed out: "What is political mobilization? First of all, it is to tell the army and the people the political purpose of war. Every soldier and every people must understand why war is fought and what relationship it has to them. It is not enough to explain the purpose, but also to explain the steps and policies to achieve this goal, that is to say, there must be a political program...Secondly, one mobilization is not enough, political mobilization in the War of Resistance Against Japan is frequent. This is a huge Wars must first rely on them to win victory.” In all previous revolutionary wars, our Party and our army carried out extensive and in-depth mobilization in various forms in accordance with Mao Zedong’s requirements, resulting in an upsurge of the masses to join the army and support the frontlines, forming the people’s A powerful overall torrent of war.

Third, the various forms of struggle are coordinated and coordinated with each other.It means directly and indirectly coordinating armed struggle with various fronts and various forms of struggle.This is another great pioneering work. The overall struggle system formed by various coordination, in politics, closely links the armed struggle of the people with the struggle of the political power. , organize armed struggles, support armed struggles, and leave the enemy alone and helpless; militarily, make the enemy encounter resistance and be hit everywhere; economically, use various means to attack the enemy, profiteers and other criminals The destruction of our economy protects the development of our economy to support the revolutionary war, and uses all means to destroy the enemy's economy in order to weaken the enemy's ability to withstand war, so that the enemy's economy is severely damaged and the war power is exhausted; culturally, Mao Zedong Emphasis should be placed on combining the struggle on the ideological and cultural front with armed struggle, and give full play to the ideological and cultural front in propagating the masses, educating the masses, exposing the enemy, hating the enemy, and uniting the people, so that the reactionary face of the enemy is fully exposed, and the people are encouraged to rise up and resist the enemy.In diplomacy, strive for the sympathy and support of international public opinion, unite all friends who can be united as much as possible, and isolate and attack enemies as much as possible.For example, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, our foreign policy was to unite all anti-fascist countries and peoples, isolate the German, Italian, and Japanese fascist countries as much as possible, and make the enemy fall into our comprehensive and overall attack, passive everywhere, and ultimately unable to escape destruction fate.

Mao Zedong's people's war thought is the great strategic legacy of the Chinese people's opposition to the war of aggression, and its essence is immortal.Mao Zedong's people's war thought is a military theory formed and developed in the practice of China's revolutionary war, and it will continue to seek innovation and development with the changes of the times.For this reason, the academic proposition that "contemporary people's war must also be an overall war" is put forward, mainly focusing on the following aspects: One is the understanding of the way countries compete in the era of globalization.Whether to win by means of violence or by means of peace are the two major choices faced by human beings in the struggle for survival and development.Mankind has entered the 21st century. With the development and changes of society, the form of war is also changing.Due to the development of information technology, the space for competition between countries and nations, and between nations has extended to the fields of social politics, economy, and culture. Various means to seek and maintain their own greater interests, this kind of competition presents a kind of integrity.For example, along with economic globalization comes the political expansion, economic expansion, cultural expansion, and military expansion of hegemony.When Western powers seek to achieve world hegemony, they mainly use the so-called suppression strategy of democracy and human rights in politics, the capital expansion strategy in economy, the infiltration strategy in culture and the means of war to open up channels.

The second is a local war under modern high-tech conditions. Although the scale of the war is local, the scope involved is more holistic.War has never been limited to a contest of military strength, but an overall contest in politics, economy, science and technology, culture, and diplomacy.The overall content of war expands with the development of society.The information age is truly an era of overall warfare, and there is no distinction between peacetime and wartime.Peace, arms race, local conflicts under nuclear deterrence, as well as politics, economy, military, culture, mass media, public opinion, psychology, law, etc., all take place in all time and space.In such an extremely complicated overall war, without the general mobilization of the people and the full support of the people, it is absolutely impossible to win.

Third, war and peace, peacetime and wartime are also a holistic issue.Information warfare goes beyond the scope of armed struggle, and involves the security of the entire country, society, and even the infrastructure of an international region.Strategic planning includes not only war preparation and conduct, but also when and how to end war and restore peace.The contemporary military revolution itself is an overall phenomenon, which is reflected in the overall combination of various elements such as breakthroughs in science and technology, influence of military theory, strategic adjustment, update of weapons and equipment, improvement of establishment system, cultivation of talents and army training.

Fourth, the information war will be the overall war of the people's war.The war we are facing will involve the vast space of our country's territory and territorial waters. From the beginning of the war, we may be attacked by the enemy in multiple directions and in various forms from land, sea, and air.The enemy and the enemy not only engage in battle on vast land, but also the air, sea, and even outer space, including psychology, information, media, and the Internet, will become fierce battlefields. Information warfare will change people's concept of "front" and "rear" , is a veritable overall battle.This kind of overall space combat not only refers to the integrated joint operations of various services and arms, but also includes the coordination between various armed forces and non-armed forces.Information network warfare and mass media warfare will all become new forms of people's war.This requires that the ways and means for the people to participate in the war support should be changed from the fixed pattern formed only on the land, sea and air battlefields, and in particular, they should not be constrained by the experience gained on the land battlefield, but should be developed according to the new war space and battlefield needs. Design and explore a variety of flexible strategies and tactics, you fight yours, I fight mine, no matter which space the enemy comes from or when the enemy comes, there is a set of tactics to deal with it.As long as we focus on traditional advantages and continue to explore and innovate, the strategy and tactics of the people's war under the conditions of informationization will surely shine.

In accordance with the academic proposition that "Mao Zedong's thought on people's war is an overall war, the contemporary people's war must also be an overall war", in the future national competition, we must adhere to the correct guidance of the overall people's war.The key to the construction of the contemporary people's war overall warfare lies in peacetime, that is, in political construction, economic construction, cultural construction, military construction, and social governance, it must reflect and conform to the fundamental interests of the people. Only in this way can the broad masses of the people be supported. Support and support, and participate in the overall battle of the people's war with conscious actions.For example, in the political field, a "people's war" is needed to deal with the so-called democratic expansion of power, the use of human rights to interfere with sovereignty, and the dismemberment of sovereignty; ; In the cultural field, "people's war" is needed in the face of power's value conquest, public opinion attack, media deception, and cultural infiltration;In this regard, in particular, it is necessary to earnestly study the new theory of the overall warfare of the people's war under the conditions of informationization, and to thoroughly explore the ways in which the masses of the people participate in the war and the composition of the armed forces of the people's war in light of the new changes in the form and style of the overall warfare of the contemporary people's war. , and the coordination of various armed and unarmed forms of struggle.Give full play to the advantages of our country's rich material resources, talent groups, and rapid development of information technology to form a huge advantage in the overall people's war against the background of information warfare.Carrying out the overall people's war in the information age requires not only the support of the people of the country, but also the moral support of the people of all countries in the world.The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence advocated by China and the concept of building a harmonious world are conducive to the establishment of the most extensive "moral" united front in the world, and the use of justice by the people of the world to fight against the injustice launched by power and hegemony Fight for peace and build a permanent peace for mankind.