Cultural Realism Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Ming China

Summary: "Johnston contends that the Chinese classics stressed the value of violent solutions to security conflicts and of offensive over defensive strategies. True, they also called for flexibility, for using noncoercive means when confronting a more powerful enemy--but only as an expedient, until China could be sure of prevailing. Negotiations were a device for delaying action until the moment was auspicious. The goal would... remain annihilation of the enemy. Johnston concludes that there was no pacifist bias in the Chinese strategic tradition but only realpolitik sometimes cloaked in Confucian-Mencian rationalizations." [read more]