Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Operational Code of Mao Zedong: Defensive or Offensive Realist?

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09636410500468818

1556-1852

Huiyun Feng,

Peacebuilding and International Security

Whether China's strategic culture is offensive or defensive in nature is an interesting question in understanding Chinese foreign policy behavior. Alastair Johnston argues for a parabellum culture of offensive realism that leads to a pattern of Chinese aggressive behavior. But China's behavior in the Korean War, the Sino-Indian War, and the Sino-Vietnam War shows a defensive pattern that Johnston's analysis cannot fully explain. By analyzing the operational code of Mao Zedong's public foreign policy speeches, using the automated Verbs in Context System (VICS) of content analysis, this article attempts to determine whether Mao's belief system reflected the influence of a defensive or an offensive strategic culture, and compares the results to Johnston's analysis. The results indicate that Johnston's cultural realist argument is only partially correct and needs to be qualified in important respects. The operational-code analysis of Mao Zedong reveals a more complex reality than did Johnston's analysis. The results partly support Johnston's claim about Mao as an offensive realist, but this result cannot be generalized across situations, as the operational code analysis shows that strategic beliefs are not static. Mao's beliefs were also the product of his personality and of the international historical setting. Acknowledgments This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Portland, Oregon, 25 February–1 March 2003; the underlying research was supported by a Peace Scholar award from the U.S. Institute of Peace. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The author thanks Michael Young and Social Science Automation, Inc., for permission to use Profiler+ as the automated content-analysis software for this project, and Mark Schafer for assistance in constructing the VICS dictionaries and advice on the statistical analysis. Above all, the author thanks Stephen Walker for all the effort and time he spent on this project. Notes 1Alastair I. Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Although Johnston himself no longer appears to hold these views, others in the academic and policy communities continue to do so. See Alastair Iain Johnston, "Is China a Status Quo Power?" International Security 27, no. 4 (spring 2003): 5–56. 2In the Korean War, China sent its forces to support the "buffer state" of North Korea not just for ideological reasons but also out of security concerns; the United States was approaching the border area close to northeastern China. In the Sino-Indian War, the Chinese troops withdrew after victory without occupying any territory. In the Sino-Vietnam War, the Chinese leaders sent its troops to teach the Vietnamese a lesson and did not remain to occupy any territory. 3 VICS is a computer software program for content analysis that retrieves and analyzes a leader's operational code. See Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael D. Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes of Political Leaders," in The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders: With Profiles of Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton, ed. Jerrold M. Post (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003): 215–45. 4Overviews of the defensive and offensive realism debate include Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller, "Preface," in The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security, ed. Michael E. Brown, Owen M. Cote, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995): ix–xii; Benjamin Frankel, "Restating the Realist Case: An Introduction," Security Studies 5, no. 3 (spring 1996): xiv–xx; Sean M. Lynn-Jones, "Realism and America's Rise: A Review Essay," International Security 23, no. 2 (fall 1998): 157–82; Robert Jervis, "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate," International Security 24, no. 1 (summer 1999); Jack L. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Fareed Zakaria, "Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay," International Security17, no. 1 (summer 1992): 177–98. 5 According to Jeffrey Taliaferro, Robert Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics 30, no. 2 (January 1978): 167–214, provides the theoretical foundations for defensive realism. Defensive realism as defined by Taliaferro has four auxiliary assumptions that specify how structural variables translate into international outcomes and states' foreign policies: the security dilemma is an intractable feature of anarchy; structural modifiers, such as the offense-defense balance, geographic proximity, and access to raw materials, influence the severity of the security dilemma between particular states; material power drives states' foreign policy through the medium of leaders' calculations and perceptions; and domestic politics can limit the efficiency of a state's response to the external environment. See Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy," International Security 25, no. 3 (winter 2000–2001): 128–61. Examples of defensive realist works are Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity," International Organization 44, no. 2 (spring 1990): 137–68; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics(Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979); Stephen Van Evera, "Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War," International Security 22, no. 4 (spring 1998): 65–98; Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Charles L. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help," International Security 19, no. 3 (winter 1994–95); Charles L. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," World Politics 47, no. 1 (October 1997): 171–201; and Charles L. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models," World Politics 44, no. 4 (July 1992): 497–538. 6Examples of offensive realist works are John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001); John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, no. 3 (winter 1994–95): 5–49; Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Randall L. Schweller, "Neorealism's Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?" Security Studies 5, no. 3 (spring 1996): 90–121; Randall L. Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In," International Security 19, no. 1 (summer 1994): 72–107; Eric Labs, "Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims," Security Studies6, no. 4 (summer 1997): 1–49; and Andrew Kydd, "Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Why Security Seekers Do Not Fight Each Other," Security Studies7, no. 1 (autumn 1997): 114–55. 7Kydd, "Sheep in Sheep's Clothing." 8Joseph M Grieco, "Realist International Theory and the Study of World Politics," in New Thinking in International Relations Theory, ed. Michael W. Doyle and G. John Ikenberry (Boulder: Westview, 1997). 9Barry Posen points out that there are disagreements among scholars over the concepts of strategies and doctrines. "Military writers do not agree on definitions of the terms strategy, military doctrine, and tactics. In simplest terms, however, tactics is the study of how fights are fought. In my view, once one begins to ask questions about how battles are fought, one has entered the realm of military doctrine. When one begins to ask which wars shall be fought, or if war should be fought, one has entered the realm of strategy." Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 245n3. The ambiguity over military doctrine and grand strategy is also one problem with Johnston's analysis of Chinese grand strategy. He constantly refers to "grand strategic means," and he states that it is not all that helpful "to subsume political ends and grand strategic means within the same concept." Therefore, his use of the term "grand strategy" focuses mainly on the grand strategic means, which does not emphasize other means much besides the military ones. See Johnston, Cultural Realism, 110–17. 10Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, ed., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3–6; and Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 24–25. Rosecrance and Stein state that "grand strategy considers all the resources at the disposal of the nation (not just military ones), and it attempts to array them effectively to achieve security in both peace and war" (p. 4). Posen states that he conceives of grand strategy as a chain of political ends and military means: "Its effectiveness is highly dependent on the extent to which the ends and means are related to one another," which he terms the "political-military integration." "In peace or war, the fundamental question of political-military integration is whether the statesman has at hand the military instruments required to achieve those political goals deemed essential to the security of the state" (p. 25). 11Strategic culture as a concept was coined in the cold war by Jack Snyder in his famous study of the Soviet strategic decision-making process. Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations RAND Corporation report R-2154-aF (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, September 1977); see also Jack L. Snyder, "The Concept of Strategic Culture: Caveat Emptor," in Strategic Power: USA/USSR , ed. Carl Jacobsen (London: MacMillan, 1990). Some recent works on Chinese strategic culture include Jonathan R. Adelman and Chih-yu Shih, Symbolic War: The Chinese Use of Force, 1840–1980 (Taiwan: National Chengchi University, 1993); Shu Guang Zhang, "China: Traditional and Revolutionary Heritage," in Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region, ed. Ken Booth and Russell Trood (New York: St. Martin"s, 1999); Jing-Dong Yuan, "Culture Matters: Chinese Approaches to Arms Control and Disarmament," in Culture and Security: Multilateralism, Arms Control, and Security Building. ed. Keith R. Krause (London: Frank Cass, 1999); Michael D. Swaine and Ashley J. Tellis, Interpreting China's Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2000); Andrew Scobell, "China and Strategic Culture," Strategic Studies Institute occasional paper (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, May 2002), available at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2002/culture/culture.htm; Andrew Scobell, "The Chinese Cult of Defense," Issues and Studies 37, no. 5 (September–October 2001): 100–127; Yuan-Kang Wang, "Culture and Foreign Policy: What Imperial China Tells Us," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, September 2002 (cited with author's permission); Guangwu Wang, "The Chinese Way: China's Position in International Relations," Norwegian Nobel Institute Lecture Series (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press:, 1995), 89; Shu Guang Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949–1958 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Tiejun Zhang, "Chinese Strategic Culture: Traditional and Present Features," Comparative Strategy 21, no. 2 (April 2002): 73–90; and Lawrence C. Katzenstein, "Change, Myth, and the Reunification of China," and Rosita Dellios, "'How May the World Be at Peace?': Idealism as Realism in Chinese Strategic Culture," both in Culture and Foreign Policy, ed. Valerie M. Hudson (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1997). 12See the debate between Alastair I. Johnston and Colin Gray in the following works: Colin S Gray, "Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back," Review of International Studies 25, no. 1 (January 1999): 49–69; Johnston, Cultural Realism; and Alastair Iain Johnston, "Strategic Cultures Revisited: Reply to Colin Gray," Review of International Studies 25, no. 3 (July 1999): 519–23. Gray acknowledges that gathering all scholars working on the topic makes only "a small party." Gray, "Strategic Culture as Context," 49 n1. 13See Yitzhak Klein, "A Theory of Strategic Culture," Comparative Strategy 10, no. 2 (January–March 1991): 3–23; Jing-Dong Yuan, "Culture Matters," 87; and Johnston, Cultural Realism. In this paper, I adopt Johnston's definition, which I think is more comprehensive than the other definitions in structuring the concept and in pointing out a method of measurement. 14Klein, "Theory of Strategic Culture," 11. 15Although acknowledging that Chinese strategic culture is offensive, these scholars disagree about how many strategic cultures China has—i.e., if it has one or two strategic cultures. Some state that China has only one strategic culture, realpolitik, because Confucianism does not function in actual policymaking. Others stress that China has one strategic culture, but that it is the Confucian strategic culture that is influencing the beliefs and behavior of Chinese leaders. A more complex view is that there are two strategic cultures, and the Chinese apply the Confucian strategic culture when building on their self-image and resort to the realist parabellum norms when encountering other countries. Thomas Kane, for example, argues for the influence of legalism, which is the realpolitik counterpart of Confucianism. See Thomas Kane, "China's Foundations: Guiding Principles of Chinese Foreign Policy," Comparative Strategy 20, no. 1 (January 2001): 45–55; Johnston, Cultural Realism; Alastair I. Johnston, "Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China," in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Alastair I. Johnston, "Realism(s) and Chinese Security Policy in the Post–Cold War Period," in Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies after the Cold War, ed. Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999);Thomas J. Christensen, "Chinese Realpolitik: Reading Beijing's World-View," Foreign Affairs75, no. 5 (September–October 1996): 37–52; Wang, "Culture and Foreign Policy"; John K. Fairbank, The United States and China(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); Zhang, "Chinese Strategic Culture"; Scobell, "China and Strategic Culture"; and Scobell, "Chinese Cult of Defense." 16As Deng Xiaoping said during his visit to the United States in 1979, "The Chinese People suffered amply from the miseries of war. We do not wish to fight a war unless it is forced upon us. We are firmly against a new world war. … [W]e want peace—a genuine peace in which the people of each country may develop and progress as they wish, free from aggression, interference, and bullying." Beijing Review, February 9, 1979. 17Neville Maxwell, India's China War (Garden City, NJ: Anchor, 1972); Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960); Allen S. Whiting, "China's Use of Force, 1950–96, and Taiwan," International Security 26, no. 2 (autumn 2001): 103–31; and Allen S. Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). 18Johnston, Cultural Realism, 66. 19Face validity is the first criterion for selecting items for an index. If you want to measure political conservatism, for example, each of the items should appear on its face to indicate conservatism or its opposite, liberalism. In other words, you are measuring what you intend to measure. See Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 9th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001), 152. Face validity does not depend on established theories for support. See Arlene Fink, How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995). 20Johnston, "Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China," 217n2. 21Johnston's use of sources displays a selection bias that some other scholars, such as Zhang in "Chinese Strategic Culture," have also pointed out. Johnston's reliance on the seven military classics, first of all, produces a focus on the military strategies and tactics of how to fight a war once it has started. These classics do not focus on grand strategy. Second, the cases that he uses to test his theory focus mostly on military generals. Third, the Ming Dynasty, which he uses as a case study, was a particularly belligerent time period. The Mongols invaded the Han people's southern Song Dynasty from the north immediately after the end of the Yuan Dynasty. As a result, the northern border of the Ming Dynasty was constantly harassed by Mongol troops. Defense of the northern border by the Ming Dynasty was tough and urgent because threats there were always high. On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty was weak in control and governance, enticing the Mongols to try to take back the lands from the Han. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty would naturally have been a time of belligerence. Some scholars, however, argue that the Han had always been offensive toward minorities as a result of the Han Chinese imperial expansion. Even the Great Wall was evidence of offensive expansion rather than a defensive barrier: it was built to secure conquered territory. See Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Another point worth mentioning was that the Han Dynasty's Emperor Wu was particularly aggressive in expansion. Therefore, had Johnston chosen to use other dynasties, such as the Han, Yuan, or Qing, as his cases, he might have strengthened his argument. I am questioning Johnston's case selection, however, based on his definition of strategic culture, which skews toward military representations. In addition, some of Johnston's interpretations of ancient Chinese raise some questions. Ancient Chinese differs significantly from modern Chinese. For example, one character in Chinese can have different pronunciations and can be translated into different meanings. The word "yi," spoken with a third tone, can mean "use," or "through means of," or "depending on." Also, the punctuation of sentences may mean different things. Misinterpreting some key characters may result in a completely different meaning. In Appendix B of Cultural Realism, for example, Johnston defines certain verbs of ancient Chinese as offensive or violent. Yet in certain contexts, some Chinese verbs reflect the passive voice: "kun," for instance, might mean "surround the enemy" or "being surrounded." Furthermore, some of the strategies are difficult to define unless specified by circumstances: the use of the word "jiu" ("to fight protractedly against the enemy, usually in the context of an invasive campaign) easily draws our attention to Mao's protracted war strategy in the war against the Japanese. If Mao's strategies of "you," "lao," and "pi," for example, are already translated as referring to offensive violent means, then before even looking into Mao's speeches we already know that he is going to be an offensive realist. 22Nathan C. Leites, The Operational Code of the Politburo (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951); Nathan C. Leites, A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe: Free Press, 1953); and Alexander L. George, "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision Making," International Studies Quarterly 13 (June 1969): 190–222; Ole R. Holsti, "The 'Operational Code' as an Approach to the Analysis of Belief Systems," final report to the National Science Foundation, grant no. SCO 75-14368 (1977); Stephen G. Walker, "The Interface between Beliefs and Behavior: Henry Kissinger's Operational Code and the Vietnam War," Journal of Conflict Resolution21, no. 1 (March 1977): 129–68. 23Johnston, Cultural Realism: 37–38. 24George, "'Operational Code'," 201–16. 25Ibid.; Alexander L. George, "The Causal Nexus between Cognitive Beliefs and Decision-Making Behavior," in Psychological Models in International Politics, ed. Lawrence Falkowski (Boulder: Westview, 1979), chap. 5; Stephen G. Walker, "The Motivational Foundations of Political Belief Systems," International Studies Quarterly 27, no. 2 (June 1983): 179–202; and Stephen G. Walker, "The Evolution of Operational Code Analysis," Political Psychology 11, no. 2 (June 1990): 403–18. 26See Leites,Operational Code of the Politburo; Leites, Study of Bolshevism; Walker, "Motivational Foundations"; and Walker, "Evolution of Operational Code Analysis." 27Walker, "Motivational Foundations." 28Leites, Operational Code of the Politburo, 15; Leites, Study of Bolshevism, xii; and George, "'Operational Code'." 29Alastair Iain Johnston, "Thinking about Strategic Culture," International Security 19, no. 4 (spring 1995): 32–64, esp. 48n31. He made the same argument in Cultural Realism, 37n3. 30Leites, Study of Bolshevism,15. 31Holsti, "The 'Operational Code;"' Walker, "Motivational Foundations." 32Walker, "Motivational Foundations"; and Walker, "Evolution of Operational Code Analysis." 33Walker, "Interface between Beliefs and Behavior"; and Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes." 34Johnston, Cultural Realism: 112–13. 35Ibid., 113. 36Accommodationist strategy relies primarily on diplomacy, political trading, economic incentives, bandwagoning, and balancing alliance behavior, among other low-coercion policies. For details see Johnston, Cultural Realism: 112–13. 37Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael Young, "Systematic Procedures for Operational Code Analysis," International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 1 (March 1998): 177. 38Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Systematic Procedures." See also Robert Dahl, "The Concept of Power," Behavioral Science 2, no. 3 (July 1957): 201–15; John R.P. French and Bertram Raven, "The Bases of Social Power," in Studies in Social Power, ed. Dorwin Cartwright (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959): 150–67; Charles A. McClelland, "Access to Berlin: The Quantity and Variety of Events," in Quantitative International Politics, ed. David Singer (New York: Free Press 1968): 158–86; Charles A. McClelland, Theory and International System (New York: Macmillan 1969); David Baldwin, "Thinking about Threats," Journal of Conflict Resolution 15, no. 1 (March 1971): 71–78; David Baldwin, "The Power of Positive Sanctions," World Politics 24, no. 1 (October 1971): 19–38; David Baldwin, "Power and Social Exchange," American Political Science Review 72, no. 4 (December 1978): 1229–42; David Baldwin, "Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends and Old Tendencies," World Politics 31, no. 2 (January 1979): 161–94; David Baldwin, "Interdependence and Power: A Conceptual Analysis," International Organization 34, no. 4 (autumn 1980): 471–506; and Steven Lukes, ed., Power(New York: New York University Press, 1986). 39 VICS is a computer software program for content analysis based on verbs in a leader's speeches. The verbs are coded with a dictionary to construct indices of a leader's view of the political universe and preferences for four different outcomes: domination, accommodation, submission, or deadlock. See Stephen G. Walker, Forecasting the Political Behavior of Leaders with the Verbs in Context System of Operational Code Analysis (Hilliard, Ohio: Social Science Automation, 2000); Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes"; and Michael D. Young, "Building Worldviews with Profiler+," in Applications of Computer Content Analysis, ed. Mark D. West (Westport: Ablex, 2001). 40The WEIS taxonomy, developed by Charles McClelland for the World Event/Interaction Survey Project, is a system of coding events during a political crisis. 41The Operational Code Analysis program in the Profiler+ package comes with a dictionary of self-references that includes those used most often, such as "I," "we," "us," "our," etc. The self-reference dictionary that I worked out after reading the speeches by Mao includes references such as "China," "the Chinese people," and "the Chinese Communist Party"; those words are usually used as "self" references in Mao's speeches. When working out the dictionary, help was sought from Professor Mark Schafer of Louisiana State University and Dr. Michael D. Young of Social Science Automation, Inc. The core WEIS categories of cooperative and conflict words and deeds include the following: Verbal cooperation: approve, promise, agree, request, propose; Verbal conflict: reject, protest, deny, accuse, demand, warn, threaten; Cooperative deeds: yield, grant, reward; Conflict deeds: demonstrate, reduce relationship, expel, seize, force. See Charles A. McClelland and Gary D. Hoggard, "Conflict Patterns in the Interactions among Nations," in International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory,ed. James Rosenau (New York: Collier-MacMillan, 1969): 711–24. The VICS dictionary, totaling over 750 verbs, has these verbs plus their synonyms and other verbs identified by hand coding documents prior to building the software. 42Baldwin, "Thinking about Threats"; Baldwin, "The Power of Positive Sanctions"; Baldwin, "Power and Social Exchange"; Baldwin, "Power Analysis and World Politics"; and Baldwin, "Interdependence and Power." *All indices vary between 0 and 1.0 except for P-1, P-2, I-1, and I-2, which vary between –1.0 and 1.0. P-2 and I-2 are divided by 3 to standardize the range (Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Systematic Procedures"; and Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael D. Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes of Political Leaders," in The Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders: With Profiles of Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton, ed. Jerrold M. Post [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003]: 215–45). **"The Index of Qualitative Variation is a ratio of the number of different pairs of observations in a distribution to the maximum possible number of different pairs for a distribution with the same N [number of cases] and the same number of variable classifications." George Watson and Dickinson McGaw, Statistical Inquiry (New York: Wiley, 1980), 88. 43Walker, Forecasting the Political Behavior of Leaders; and Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes." 44The VICS method draws inferences about a leader's operational code beliefs from "public sources—speeches, interviews, or other public statements by the individual." But "the most relevant source for the systematic prediction of the state's behavior is probably the public speeches." Mark Schafer, "Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance: An Introduction to the Symposium," Political Psychology 21, no. 3 (September 2000): 511–28. Schafer identifies problems of authorship, impression management, selection bias, spontaneous vs. prepared public statements, and private vs. public statements in drawing inferences about beliefs from the public statements of leaders. Yet he concludes that public statements can be used for assessing leaders' psychological characteristics at a distance because the public speeches will present consistency of public beliefs and constrain public behavior. See also "Appendix B: Research Methods," in Jerel Rosati, The Carter Administration's Quest for Global Community: Beliefs and Their Impact on Behavior (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 188–95. 45See http://www.maoism.org/msw/mao_sw.htm. 46My later research, using a much larger sample of speeches covering a longer time frame, presents results that support my argument even more forcefully. The reason for including only one of the four speeches that Johnston analyzed in his 1996 book chapter in the larger sample of eighteen speeches is that the others are either out of the time frame for the Korean War test case or too short for meaningful content analysis with VICS based on mean scores for subgroups of speeches. 47See Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes," "William Jefferson Clinton: Beliefs and Integrative Complexity: Operational Code Beliefs and Object Appraisal," and "Saddam Hussein: Beliefs and Integrative Complexity: Operational Code Beliefs and Objective Appraisal," in Post, Psychological Assessment of Political Leaders. 48Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Profiling the Operational Codes," 215–45. 49For speech selection, I am using the same source as Johnston. The foreign policy speeches by Mao are selected from the digital version of Mao's Selected Works available at http://www.maoism.org and at http://www.marx2mao.org/Mao/QCM66.html. I am conducting convergent validity tests as defined by Ted Carmines and Richard Zeller to see the actual general agreement among ratings gathered independently of one another, where measures should theoretically be related. Edward G. Carmines and Richard A. Zeller, Reliability and Validity Assessment(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), 22–23. 50The scores for the norming group were provided by Mark Schafer of the Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. The norming group at the time this article was written (March 2003) contained 164 written speeches by 33 world leaders. 51Standard deviations from the mean in Table 2 and Figure 2 are converted from the leader's raw mean scores to standard deviations. One standard deviation from the mean for the norming group's scores is P-1 = ± .28, I-1 = ± .42 and P-4 = ± .12; standard deviations are reported in Table 3. 52The period before 1950 was arguably not so peaceful for Mao as a leader and for China as a nation. After the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), the civil war started between the Communists and the Guomindang. Even after the People's Republic of China was founded, the domestic situation was by no means stable. Compared to the Korean War, however, these domestic sources of instability did not pose as serious a threat to the survival of the nation and Mao's leadership. 53Whiting argued that China crossed the Yalu River out of concern for national security. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu. In his recent study, Chen Jian challenges this hypothesis and argues that Mao's strong ideology and personality and China's domestic situation were the major driving force behind China's decision to enter Korea. Furthermore, drawing on recently released documents, Chen argues that the Chinese leadership was aware of the plan of the North Korean leadership to invade the South, although the specific details were not released to the Chinese leaders until after the North attacked the South. Recent evidence from Soviet sources also shows that Josef Stalin had a significant role in pushing the Chinese into Korea. China was focused more on recovering Taiwan to finalize its unification than on getting involved with a superpower, as indicated by its troop deployment in southeastern China prior to the Korean War (see Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu). Although there is no denying that Mao's strategic planning encompassed preparations for fighting a war with the Americans, in Korea that war would have been a defensive realist's war of safety, not an offensive realist's war of gain. See Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Shu Guang Zhang, Mao's Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995). For a Chinese perspective, see Yufan Hao, and Zhihai Zhai, "China's Decision to Enter the Korean War: History Revisited," China Quarterly 121 (1990): 94–115; and Zhihua Shen, "Sino-Soviet Relations and the Origins of the Korean War: Stalin's Strategic Goals in the Far East," Journal of Cold War Studies 2, no. 2 (spring 2000): 44–68. 54Walker, Schafer, and Young, "Systematic Procedures"; and Stephen G. Walker, Mark Schafer, and Michael D. Young, "Presidential Operational Codes and the Management of Foreign Policy Conflicts in the Post–Cold War World," Journal of Conflict Resolution 43, no. 5 (October 1999): 610–25. 55David Shambaugh, "China's Security Policy in the Post–Cold War Era," Survival34, no. 2 (summer 1992): 89. 56Ibid., 90. 57Whiting, "China's Use of Force." 58Johnston, "Realism(s) and Chinese Security Policy." 59Huiyun Feng, "A Dragon on Defense: China's Strategic Culture and War," PH.D. diss., Arizona State University, May 2005. 60Johnston, "Is China a Status Quo Power?" 61Johnston provides a thorough literature review in ibid., 13–22. 62Ibid., 5–6. 63Ibid., 50. 64Ibid., 48. Additional informationNotes on contributorsHuiyun Feng Huiyun Feng is a faculty associate in the Department of Political Science at Arizona State University.