The Wars for Asia 1911–1949

The Wars for Asia 1911–1949 by S. C. M. Paine is an award-winning book published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press. The work presents a view of the "nested wars" in early twentieth century East Asia as distinct conflicts which for awhile carried on simultaneously: the Chinese Civil War 1911-1949; the Second Sino-Japanese War 1931-1945; the Second World War 1941-1945.

Contents
The principal participants were Japan, China, and Russia. The first part of Paine's work describes each in terms of their political-economic stance and condition, and the war aims and strategies of each. Mention is also made of Germany and the United States. Concerning Japan during this era, its Kwantung Army in 1931 regarding Manchuria made crucial decisions independently of the central government in Tokyo. Several assassinations of civilian politicians followed; in the end, the army's expansionists policies prevailed. In China a fragile republic which lacked country-wide authority had been founded by Sun Yat-sen. In the late 1920s under Chiang Kai-shek the republic became a national power, but unity of command eluded its government; it remained a shifting coalition of warlords. In 1917 the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia. The Soviet government inherited the expansionist policies of the Czars, yet, Paine argues, duplicitously managed to project a benign international image sustained by the allure of its then novel party ideology.

In her second and longer part, Paine gives a chronological narrative of the events of the three wars. After review of early Civil War, she picks up the thread in 1937 with the military history, while touching regularly on political matters, fiscal policy, and the world context. Paine situates the long Chinese Civil War in terms of a dynastic interregnum, which are recurrent in Chinese history. Normatively the passage between eras involves a transformative armed struggle for sovereign power between rivals. The Qing dynasty, whose Manchu rulers were in decline, fell in 1911. During the disorder and chaos caused by the ensuing violent struggle among the Chinese, the armies of Imperial Japan, already established in "Manchukuo", in 1931 launched a further invasion of China. This attack sparked Chinese nationalism and hatred of the Japanese. This Sino-Japanese war eventually spread across China and beyond, creating a regional war. According to Paine, in this contest Japan's chief target remained throughout the Chinese Republic; consequently this regional conflict tipped the balance in the preexisting civil war in favor of the Communists under Mao Zedong, despite Japan's continually reiterated state policy of hostility to communism. Paine further asserts that since the 1920s, Soviet Russia had recognized the importance of China, and hence became deeply involved politically, diplomatically, and militarily. The Soviets dealt not only with the Kuomintang party which led the Chinese Republic and with their Communists rivals, but also contended directly with Japan. Here the Soviets successfully managed to deter an all-out war with Japan and to steer the destruction of combat away from Russia's borders, thus avoiding during the early 1940s a two-front war. In 1941 the Japanese, in a strategic decision made in terms of winning the war in China, attacked Pearl Harbor. The entry of America substantially brought East Asia into the Second World War. That war, and with it the regional war, ended in 1945. Thereafter commenced the final act of the Chinese Civil War, starting in Manchuria, won by the Soviet-supplied Communists in 1949. Paine argues that despite massive American military assistance to the nationalist Kuomintang, it was the Communists who had secured what traditionally was called the "mandate of heaven" or the legitimacy to rule a unified China at the start of a new era.

Appraisal
The work covers ground in some detail that was previously rather neglected in the history literature written in English. The book won the 2012 PROSE award for European & World History and was longlisted for the Lionel Gelber prize.