VOLUME V, PART FIVE
Position Between Nations
At the end of Part Four the lens lifted from inside a nation to the space between nations, and set the first stone of the ground there. Between nations there is no highest lawmaker and no highest enforcer, only the balance of force. This part, two chapters and seven layers, follows that ground and lays out the whole chessboard of taking and being taken between nations, from the ancient to the present, from the shallow to the deep, one layer at a time. The strong and the weak inside a nation still have a lawmaker overhead who can rule. Between nations there is nothing overhead at all, only force holding against force.
The part sorts the depth of international behavior first. A reader of history is quick to call everything between the strong and the weak by one name, colonization, but the behavior of a strong nation toward a weak one runs shallow or deep, and from shallow to deep it falls into five layers, colonization, the taking of resources and people, the taking of territory, the treaty, and occupying a position. The deeper it goes, the more thoroughly it marks that nation and its civilization, the harder it is to see through, the harder it is to turn back. The shallowest, colonization, means you came but you are still foreign, and one day you will be shown out. The deepest, occupying a position, means you came and you became this nation, the people of the place became your subjects, and the histories write you in as one of its dynasties. This is the layer hardest to reverse, because what it rewrites is who I am.
With depth set out, the part asks the two ends, what kind of nation goes to take, and what kind gets taken. Strip away the hero and the ambition and the taker is always the one whose output falls short and whose armies are strong enough, and output that falls short and output that runs to excess both push a nation outward, opposite in direction, one at the root. The taken is always the one with a house full of gold and jade and slack defenses. The thicker the estate and the emptier the guard, the greater the chance of being taken. Laozi's a house full of gold and jade, none can keep it speaks of the taken. Han Fei's when goods are few, men fight speaks of the taker. Join the two ends and the reason nations repeat the same story over and over is complete.
Chapter Thirteen walks into deeper and harder ground. It sets the deepest layer, occupying a position, beside the one everyone knows, colonization, to see the watershed between them clearly, and to see one thing the Chinese civilization has been peculiarly able to do, that occupying a position has always run both ways, that the Mongols and the Manchus occupied the position and were in the end absorbed by the civilization of this land and became a stretch of its own sequence. Then it returns to the cord of law and looks at how, after the taking, a treaty is used to stamp the thing legal, from the Treaty of Nanjing to the Charter of the United Nations, all of them at bottom the freezing of a balance of force into words, the law of one household written by the strong and stamped with the signature of the weak nation. Last it turns the ever-passive taken side over, and sets out three responses, to accept, to resist, to grow strong, each with its own cost, able to hand off one to the next, all still inside the frame of taking and being taken.
This part builds from the thirty-fifth layer, the five depths, to the fortieth, the responses of the taken. It speaks of occupying a position without prettying it, of resistance without working up feeling, of growing strong without boasting. The taker is not a born evil man, the taken is not a born good man, it all turns on which position each stood in at that moment, and today's taker may be yesterday's taken. It holds one line in particular. It lays out only the structure, hands down no good and evil, and gives the heaviest judgment back to the reader.
The part also leaves a question hanging. Accept, resist, grow strong, all three answer the same question, the taking has already come, how do I respond, and not one of them answers the deeper question, how do you keep the taking from happening at the root at all. And the root of taking was dug out long before, output falling short. To make the cycle of taking and being taken actually stop takes not a cleverer response but the day output grows large enough that no one need take anymore. How that road is walked this volume only points to here. The real way out waits for the next volume. The more clearly the positions are set, the more firmly that way out will stand.
Contents
Chapter Twelve. The Depth of International Behavior, the Taker and the Taken.
Chapter Thirteen. Occupying a Position, the Treaty, and the Turning Over of the Taken.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.