ABSTRACT

All guerrilla wars in modern history those in China and Vietnam have been the most important, and all others have been in comparison of regional significance only. The war in China resulted in the victory of a new social and political order in the most populous nation in the world; the Vietnamese war caused a deep crisis in the United States, and it is too early to assess its impact on the global balance of power. Guerrilla warfare in China developed against the background of peasant unrest, the breakdown of the central authority and the presence of Communist elite which, by trial and error, evolved a more effective strategy than did its rivals for coping with China’s problems. The Vietnamese war was the longest, bloodiest and most spectacular of all those modern wars in which guerrilla operations played an important role.