Reds, Revolutions, and Rebellions

Reds, Revolutions, and Rebellions investigates how insurgent strategies from three revolutionary states – Mao's China, Guevara's Cuba, and Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam – shaped the tactics of armed movements across the Global South. The afterlife of twentieth-century communist guerilla warfare still echoes in contemporary warfare as armed Islamist groups, often seen as violently opposed to leftist principles, adopt the same military methods and tactics that Chinese leader Mao Zedong once espoused. Investigating the strategic thought of communist revolutionary movements in China, Cuba, and Vietnam, within the framework of the Global Cold War and the theoretical tensions that existed within and around the Third World Left, Benjamin R. Young exposes how these movements became the centers of revolutionary strategy and offered the most viable examples for decolonization.

To examine the historical trajectory and genealogy of communist insurgency strategy from the Chinese and Cuban revolutions to the present day, Young draws on declassified intelligence reports, memoirs, and security studies scholarship to follow the migration of insurgent ideas and reveal how armed groups have studied and repurposed leftist military doctrine. He traces the ways in which communist military theory traveled far beyond its original context, challenging the assumption that insurgency was always local or ideologically fixed.

In showing how leftist revolutionary war theory became a global language of resistance, Reds, Revolutions, and Rebellions reframes our understanding of both insurgency and counterinsurgency and provides a reason why, long after their revolutions, China, Cuba, and Vietnam still shape how rebels fight and how empires respond.

Benjamin Young is Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies at Fayetteville State University. He is the author of Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader.