Why did Nikita Khrushchev send missiles to Cuba? This chapter argues that Cuba was important to him for two reasons: it bolstered his self-perception as an equal to the United States and addressed his concerns over a potential US invasion of Cuba, which would affect his reputation in the revolutionary world. He faced a challenge from Mao Zedong, who wanted to wrest the mantle of revolutionary leadership from the Soviets. Yet, having come to the brink over Cuba, Khrushchev backed off, understanding that reputational concerns were not as important as the imperative of avoiding a global nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis provides not just a useful window into understanding Khrushchev's American policy, with its perennial fears of humiliation and sensitivity to slights, but also a crucial snapshot of Sino-Soviet relations on their downward slide towards an outright confrontation.

In 1958–59, Khrushchev acted aggressively, most notably with his ill-conceived attempt to force the Allies out of Berlin. This move was partly a response to Mao's actions in the Taiwan Strait and a similar calculation of war risks. Both leaders believed their gambles would not trigger a military response from the United States, but Khrushchev soon realized he had miscalculated. Instead of adhering to his deadline, Khrushchev engaged the West in a dialogue. In September 1959, he visited the United States, gaining the recognition he so desired. Meanwhile, the Great Leap Forward, which Mao launched to prove that China was better than the USSR at building socialism, resulted in a massive famine in China. The failure of the Great Leap boosted Khrushchev's confidence, but Sino-Soviet relations continued to worsen.

In July–September 1958, the world faced the threat of war twice due to a revolution in Iraq and Mao's actions near China's shores. The Iraqi Revolution led to the landing of US Marines in Beirut, prompting the Kremlin to brandish the nuclear stick, though it is clear that Khrushchev was simply bluffing: he had no intention of starting a nuclear war over US actions in the Middle East. Elsewhere, Mao Zedong, leveraging his belief that the socialist camp held the upper hand in the historic struggle against capitalism, pushed the world to the brink by provoking a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Khrushchev's performance in these crises was mixed. The coup in Iraq weakened the Eisenhower doctrine and the Baghdad Pact, and Khrushchev claimed credit for these outcomes. However, his hopes for extending Soviet influence in the Middle East were left unfulfilled. The crisis off the Chinese coast forced Khrushchev to commit to defending an unpredictable ally in a nuclear war with the United States, undermining his faith in the alliance. In 1959, he cancelled an agreement to supply China with a prototype nuclear bomb. The Sino-Soviet alliance survived the tribulations of 1958, but the crises exposed their rivalry in the socialist camp, the third world, and their respective quests for America's recognition.

The Introduction broadly contextualizes how the CCP dealt with historical injustices after Mao Zedong’s death. It provides the necessary framework for understanding the processes and practices that are further explored and examined in the following sections and chapters of the book while shedding light on how selectively applied approaches today associated with the concept of transitional justice may serve to strengthen rather than subvert authoritarian rule. It also highlights the most outstanding features of the CCP’s politics of historical justice before placing these strategies against the backdrop of recent debates on crucial paradigms of transitional justice. Specifically, it introduces two key channels (“property” and “the mechanics of rehabilitation”) through which the government and public sought to concretely redress Mao-era historical injustices and efforts to construct meaningful “truths” of these injustices (“the politics of truth” and “memory”)

One of the most influential individuals of modern history is Mao Zedong – or Chairman Mao. He lived an extraordinary life. Influenced by the Marxist-Leninist ideology of communism while a student at Peking University, Mao was a founding member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1927. He immediately led an insurrection – the Autumn Harvest Uprising – that initiated a civil war with the Kuomintang (KMT), the nationalist party that then ruled China. It was a war that would last until 1949 (although interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945). When Mao’s CPC finally defeated the nationalists, the KMT and its followers retreated to Taiwan. This is the reason that China still does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country today.

Chapter 2 surveys and analyzes the greatest ideas and theorists in war theory and strategy – including the philosophies of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, Jomini, Clausewitz, Liddell Hart, and Mao. This chapter makes war theory and its recurring themes more accessible by presenting diverse perspectives spanning all eras of military thought from classical through the twentieth century. Each theorist’s background and main ideas are presented, and their strengths and weaknesses are summarized. As history’s preeminent but also most misunderstood war theorist, special attention is given Clausewitz. Principal themes include war’s fluidity, unpredictability, violence, and reciprocity; concentration and momentum; adaptability, intelligence, and relative capacity; military genius; centers of gravity and decisive points; fog, friction, chance, and policy; guerrilla, asymmetric, and nuclear warfare; and war’s moral and physical dimensions.

The introduction begins by articulating the volume’s two main aims: to offer a rich account of the origins of the new modernist studies (part 1) and to suggest possible new paths of inquiry for the field in the near future (part 2). The introduction then surveys key features of the new modernist studies; examines ongoing debates over what the term “modernism” can encompass; and considers the position of modernist studies vis-à-vis recent critiques of contextualist scholarship. Throughout, it recurs to the strong institutional grounding by which the new modernist studies has been shaped. It also highlights how the collection’s individual chapters speak to the new modernist studies’ intersections with other areas of inquiry; to the continuing importance of examining modernist works in relation to non-, anti-, or not quite modernist ones; and to the value of working close analysis of textual intricacies together with elaboration of historical and cultural contexts.

Chapter 7 argues that while the Red Guards shouted support for the Socialist Revolution, their everyday actions furthered the practices of consumerism that negated the revolution. The Cultural Revolution’s mobilization of young people helped spread consumerism through the Mao badge fad to demonstrate how widely the Cultural Revolution spread consumerism throughout China. Soon, tens of millions of Red Guards nationwide aspired to attend a rally in Beijing, catch a glimpse of Mao, declare their commitment to Mao and the Revolution, and bring home a Mao badge as proof of their visit. Mao badges, and the symbolic and social value they conferred on their owners, provoked a wave of material desire and a Mao badge fad that eventually propelled the production, distribution, and accumulation of billions of badges across the country and globe. The chapter examines the Mao badge fad in detail because consumer fads are a quintessential example of the self-generating and compulsive nature of consumerism.

The fall of the Qing dynasty was followed by the successive creation of two republics: the Republic of China (‘ROC’), established in 1912 and ultimately dominated by the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’), established in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (‘CCP’) headed by Mao Zedong. Treatment of the two Chinas in the international arena could hardly have been more different. Never exercising more than nominal control over the entirety of the territory it claimed, the ROC was riven by an endless succession of warlords, an even greater number of Westerners holding onto semi-colonial privileges they claimed to have inherited from the Qing, a civil war between Nationalists and Communists, and a brutal occupation by Japan. Nevertheless, while there was no shortage of people in China rejecting the claims of the Nationalist Government, internationally no one doubted its legal existence, even when contradicted by facts.

This chapter examines planned revolutions, which emerge from deliberately organized and orchestrated rebellions. Planned revolutions contain several key, interrelated elements. First, regardless of their declared ideological beliefs, all self-declared revolutionaries are essentially nationalist. Two other, related elements characteristic of planned revolutions are those of leadership and the party. Planned revolutions will not appear unless several highly dedicated individuals commit themselves to planning, organizing, and leading a takeover of power. Sooner or later, the cabal gives rise to a political party or a guerrilla organization whose chief, often only, mission is to lead a revolution. The party sees itself as the revolution’s vanguard. Among the planners involved in this vanguard, usually an individual with greater ambitions, or better organizational skills and opportunities, or through sheer chance, emerges as its leader. While planned revolutions cannot succeed without the work of an organized revolutionary party, the party’s leader becomes the face of the revolution, and, if the revolution succeeds, he then becomes the leader of the country. The October 1917 Russian revolution, and the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions belong in this category. As starkly evident by Che Guevara’s failed movement in Bolivia, not all attempts at revolutionary capture of power succeed.