The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 Quotes

“As U.S. forces later discovered in the long Vietnam War, conventional and guerrilla operations are different items; expertise in the one form of warfare does not translate to the other.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Despite the shameless false advertising from air power buffs, precision bombing did not become technically feasible for nearly three decades, until late in the Vietnam War.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“in the long Chinese civil war from 1912 to 1949, Russia funded not just the Communists but also numerous warlords. It placed bets on all horses to protract the conflict and render China prostrate.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Often their choices do not seem “normal” and “rational” to many Americans because (surprise, surprise) their actions did not reflect American norms.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Those who lead in peacetime and perhaps deftly dodge war receive no credit, while those who fall into deep holes receive accolades for the heroic climb out, instead of assuming culpability for the fall.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Postwar U.S. policies in Japan, enforced by boots on the ground, succeeded beyond expectations, transforming a bitter foe into America’s strongest ally in Asia.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Chiang Kai-shek understood the magnitude of Japan’s blunder. Upon learning of the attacks, he celebrated by playing “Ave Maria” on his gramophone.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“It takes two bad drivers or one stupendously reckless driver to produce a collision. Asia in the mid-twentieth century had both.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“For the last generation, military history has fallen into disfavor among professional historians. Yet in East Asia the pivotal events occurring from 1931 to 1949 were overwhelmingly military.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“The Chinese have yet to discover a graceful exit from communism, a system whose record for human carnage is unparalled.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Although protectionism resounded with American voters in 1930, it helped tank the international economy and made less wealthy countries desperate.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“In the end Japanese national strategy created a world of enemies, bereft of friends.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“took the lives of a generation of young men, lives that could have been more productively spent in virtually any other pursuit than in killing each other.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Under anything but the most extreme circumstances, the United States was not positioned to intervene aggressively in Asian affairs, let alone in Japanese domestic affairs. Japanese attacks throughout the Pacific produced the extreme circumstances”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Foreign intervention in other people’s civil war has unpredictable results.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“The global war in combination with the regional war altered the outcome of the long Chinese civil war.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Chiang could not believe that the United States would ever abandon him, since this would result in a unified, hostile Communist China. He guessed wrong. China was not the center of the universe after all.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Culture and beliefs differ, and the differences matter.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Unlike in the West, where defections of entire armies are rare, they are common in Chinese history.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Mao also derived insights from board games.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Do not treat the classics as religious texts of faith; although they have spoken to many generations, they still require a critical reading and an adaptation to changed circumstances.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“in China, the Communists’ Russian advisers were fresh from long combat tours fighting and defeating the world’s most lethal army.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“One can speculate that the brave and true undoubtedly died first, leaving behind the brutal, the cynical, and the desperate.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Thus, Japanese operational strategy produced strategic disaster throughout the war. By focusing on military operations, the Japanese failed to give adequate attention to the social, diplomatic, and economic repercussions”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Everywhere the Japanese went, they alienated those whom they encountered.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Japan’s brutality proved singularly counterproductive. If the goal was empire and autarky, making the colonies ungovernable by leaving the colonial population no alternative but resistance indicated”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Constitution, written by U.S. military lawyers in one week, which has remained the unamended fundamental law of Japan.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“American military personnel deployed to China consumed 73 percent of the airlifted Lend-Lease aid and burdened a fragile economy. Their demands for beef decimated the stocks of water buffalo essential for farming.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“As usual when major policy differences arose, Japanese leaders did not choose, synthesize, or compromise.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

“Thirty-one-year-old Snow’s book Red Star over China would do for China what a thirty-year-old John Reed’s 1919 best seller, Ten Days That Shook the World, had done for the Russian Revolution.”
― S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949