Status Updates From The Pacific War, 1931-1945 ...

A famous student of war, Mao Tse-tung, found wisdom in Sun-tzu's Art of War: "Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster." Mao wrote that war, the highest form of struggle, is the most difficult social phenomenon to understand cor-rectly. Yet man inevitably goes to war and when he does, his mistakes arise from ignorance of the enemy and himself.

The Imperial Army march into Manchuria was presented as an act of self-defense… North China and Inner Mongolia had to be controlled to guard Manchuria. Protecting these areas required further advances into the heartland of China.
This pattern of ever-expanding military operations confirmed a truism about international conflict: once started, a war escalates uncontrollably in the quest for elusive victory.

It was a viscous cycle: the weakness of democracy was one cause of the war, and the war further eroded freedom.