This summer, Dr. Christopher C. Harmon will teach a new two-credit course at IWP entitled “Maoist Revolutionary Wars Outside China” (IWP 706).
The course will focus on the theory and practice of Maoist warfare, after an introduction to prominent events in Mao’s life. Students will explore Maoist theory, strategy, and practice as to revolution, insurgency, and war and examine the efforts foreign revolutionaries made after 1949 to adopt Maoism in their countries, as in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Peru.
Dr. Harmon commented: “The patterns in Chinese export of revolutionary violence have always fascinated me. Such behavior was central to Beijing’s ideology, policy, and strategy. With Mao’s death in 1976, the export lessened dramatically, so a Maoist group such as the Filipino ‘New Peoples Army’ is frustrated for lack of aid. And yet Beijing does have a few violent foreign proxies, such as the United Wa State Army in Myanmar. All this can keep any scholar quite engaged.”
Dr. Harmon is an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. He directed “Comprehensive Security Responses to Terrorism” at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, a program detailed in Jane’s Intelligence Review (“Regional Teamwork,” September 2018). Dr. Harmon lectured on Maoist revolutionary warfare for many years at the staff college for Majors at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, where he later held three academic chairs. He has published on the Peruvian Maoists of “Shining Path” in the journal Small Wars and Insurgencies. Dr. Harmon’s eighth book — Warfare in Peacetime, forthcoming this spring — includes a study of nationalist Insurgency in Sri Lanka.