This wide-ranging book begins with the fruitful notion that the “wars for Asia” are not separate and separable conflicts. Instead, they are systemically related, the earlier wars setting the stage for later wars, culminating in the nesting of the local Kuomintang–Communist civil war within the larger regional second Sino-Japanese War, both surrounded by the global Second World War. Paine, professor of strategy and policy at the US Naval War College, argues persuasively that the interplay among these three nested conflicts is necessary to the understanding of each of them individually and to all of them collectively.
The elaboration of this vision is a tall order, involving frequent temporal shifting back and forth and switching among canvasses of different size and scale, so it is no surprise that on smaller scales there is sometimes too much detail, while on the larger scale, essential complexity is too often obscured by overly broad generalizations. These will be most evident to those who already have some familiarity with the various historical threads she seeks to weave together.
Chronological issues emerge early. Following an introductory statement, Paine's next three chapters are devoted, respectively, to Japan (1931–1936), China (1926–1936), and Russia (1917–1936). Only then does she return to China in a quick “Flashback to 1911” before jumping ahead again to the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Second World War, and the KMT-CCP civil war culminating in communist victory.
These zigzagging narratives make only passing references to the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), though they were the seedbeds of the conflicts which are her principal concern. Brief attention to these wars would have further strengthened her main thesis; their absence is puzzling since she is familiar with both and is the author of a well-reviewed monograph on the first war between Japan and China.
Also debatable is her contention that the entire 1911–1949 period “was China's long civil war . . . a dreaded interregnum between the Qing dynasty and its successor system of government” (p. 109), with its implication of being just another dynastic succession. It would have been better to distinguish the chaos of the warlord era before 1927 from the years of the Nanjing decade (1927–1937) when conflict with the CCP better fits the civil war model.
Throughout the book, strong and mostly persuasive passages give way to others far more questionable, often expressed with a breezy certainty that flattens the complexity of important events and personalities. Among the best contributions here are the several dealing with Manchuria, which plays a starring role in these intertwined dramas: its importance to Japan both before and after its seizure in 1931; as the scene of Soviet involvement in the last act of the war against Japan, whose surrender was accelerated partly by fear of greater Russian involvement in the occupation of Japan; and as the crucial battlefield in the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, where the tipping point tilted permanently in favour of the latter.
The first section of Paine's concluding chapter is a generalized statement of her arguments, a testimony to incompatible visions among each of the major contenders; their frequent miscalculations; the laws of unforeseen outcomes, unintended consequences and getting stuck without an acceptable end game. It is a testimony also to the superiority of her historian's hindsight to the participants' foresight. The second half of this final chapter chronicles the fate of many major and some minor players. Japanese, Chinese, Russian, American – one way or another, they all died.
Back matter comprises an unusual 40 per cent of the total (186 of 487 pages). The bibliography in four languages (English, Chinese, Japanese and a little Russian) is impressive in length (52 pages) but uneven. By way of examples, Mao Zedong is presented solely by the heavily redacted Selected Military Writings and by the deeply flawed work of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. None of the major biographies, translations and studies of Mao by Stuart Schram, Philip Short, Jonathan Spence, Frederic Wakeman or Franz Schurmann appear at all. The journalistic biography of Chiang Kai-shek by Jonathan Fenby is cited often, almost to the exclusion of Jay Taylor's magisterial study of Chiang, which is based on primary sources. Chalmers Johnson's seminal Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (Stanford University Press, 1962) is nowhere referenced, though her own analysis (pp. 223–24, and passim) follows his thesis closely.
Documentation, likewise abundant (100 pages), is equally perplexing. Footnotes abound, but very many cite three, four or more sources in a single note, often in two or three languages, thus making fact checking a practical impossibility. None of them provide any elaboration or discussion of alternative interpretations.
In the end, the reader may wonder whether a less bold, less sweeping, and also less problematic work both in its generalizations and in its particulars might have been preferred. Yet this book raises big issues and it is these very qualities that stir things up. Moreover, the use of conflict as an organizing principle and narrative theme has considerable force. Indeed, the inter-related regional wars for Asia of the second half of the 20th century – the Korean War, the stalemated situation of Taiwan, and the Vietnam War all nested within the global Cold War – could well be viewed through this prism. Readers will be stimulated to engage with the author, to think critically about the events she describes, and to ponder her historiographical conclusions.
