VOLUME V, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 2
The Position of the Taker, Output Falling Short and a Strong Army
The previous section laid out the five depths of international conduct, from colonization to occupying a position. But whichever layer it lands on, some nation first has to reach out and take. This section asks, what kind of nation becomes the taker. Strip away the heroes and the ambitions the history books hand us, and look only at the position a nation stood in before each great expansion, and a structure running straight through from ancient times to today surfaces. The taker is always the nation whose output falls short, and which happens, at the same time, to have an army strong enough to move.
One. First, State the Structure Plainly
The wars in the history books are often written as stories of heroes and ambition, Genghis Khan a genius given by heaven, Nurhaci a man of great vision and bold talent, and stories written this way make good reading, but they hide the pattern. Strip away the names and the legend, and look only at the position a nation stood in before it moved, and one shared structure surfaces, the taker is always the side whose output falls short, joined with the side whose military strength is enough to mobilize. Insufficient output supplies the motive, forcing it to reach outward. A strong army supplies the capacity, letting the reaching hand actually seize something. Motive plus capacity, and action follows. This is not excusing anyone, and not condemning anyone, it only lays the structure out and lets the pattern speak for itself.
Two. The Mongol Steppe Is the Clearest Starting Point for Seeing This Pattern
The grasslands deep in the Eurasian interior are dry, with little rain, unable to grow crops, fit only for herding, and their ceiling on output sits extremely low, the grassland can support only so much livestock, a fixed number, and that number caps the population as well. The moment drought or heavy snow strikes, that ceiling collapses at once, and a nomadic life carries no store of reserves to fall back on, leaving almost no room to maneuver in a bad year. The steppe's output is, by its own structure, insufficient, not the shortfall of one bad year, but the base color of generation after generation.
And yet this very steppe, its output falling short, raised the fiercest army the age of cold steel ever saw. People raised on horseback, skilled with bow and saddle, moved with a mobility farming peoples could not even imagine. Insufficient output pressed toward the south, a strong army grew on the back of every horse, and with both conditions met, moving south became inevitable, not the passing ambition of one khan, but the final result of this position worked all the way through. Before Genghis Khan came the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Turks, the same pattern replaying itself again and again. The very same movement south, seen from the steppe, was the only road to survival, and seen from the Central Plains, a calamity sweeping over everything, two faces of one and the same position. What forced both sides to this point was not anyone's cruel heart, it was the line of output, pressed too low on one side and piled too thick on the other.
Three. The Manchu Position Resembled the Steppe's in Some Ways, and Differed in Others
The ancestors of the Manchus lived east of the Changbai Mountains, around the Heilongjiang region, in a harsh climate with limited resources, living off fishing, hunting, and a little farming. When Nurhaci raised his army, Manchu resources, set beside all of Ming China, were disproportionate to an extreme degree, and by the time of Hong Taiji, trade with Ming had been cut off, and supplies beyond the pass grew tighter and tighter.
Trade with Ming has also been cut off. Without taking Korea, there is no way to supply ourselves. A Grand History of China.
With trade to Ming already severed, without conquering Korea there was no way even to sustain basic operation, a position of insufficient output, written plainly into the historical record. And yet this very small regime, over nearly thirty years across two generations, forged the highly mobilized organization of the Eight Banners, holding household registration, production, conscription, and warfare all inside one single framework, the whole population under arms, able to mobilize with extraordinary speed. Insufficient output sat beyond the pass, a strong army sat inside the Eight Banners, and in 1644, when Ming fell into internal chaos, the Qing army marched out in full force and took control of the Central Plains within a matter of years. One distinction is worth noting here. The Mongols' strong army was a gift of steppe geography. The Manchus' strong army was forged, by hand, across two generations. One a gift of nature, the other a product of institution, different starting points, and yet once each met that same gap of insufficient output, both led to the very same result, reaching outward for a larger territory. A strong army, it turns out, can be either a gift of geography or a product of institution, and there is more than one road to it.
Four. Step Outside Asia, and the Same Structure Replays Under a Different Face
Nineteenth-century Britain's output was not insufficient, it was overflowing. A reset of its industrial system brought production capacity never seen before, textiles, steel, and machinery piling up in surplus, more than the home market could absorb, and it grew urgent to sell abroad, just as urgent to import cheap raw material. This looks like the exact opposite of the steppe's insufficient output, one side wanting for too little, the other burdened with too much, and yet set into position, the two are the very same root, a mismatch between supply and demand, and both, necessarily, reach beyond their own borders. The steppe's output could not keep pace with its population, and it had to reach out for food. Britain's output ran far beyond what its own population could consume, and it had to reach out for buyers and raw material. One gap points inward, the other outward, and yet both are gaps, and both had to cross a border to be filled.
This is the most important layer in this section. Insufficient output forces a nation outward, and output in excess forces a nation outward just the same, opposite directions, the same root. One household, its rice jar scraped empty, goes out looking for food. Another household, its warehouse piled past capacity, goes out looking for buyers just the same, one fearing starvation, the other fearing spoiled stock, and at bottom it is the same thing, the pot at home no longer matches the mouths outside, and going outward becomes necessary. What Britain wanted was not grain, it was markets and raw material, and the way it filled that gap was not fair trade, it was the strongest royal navy on earth at the time, what came to be called gunboat diplomacy, the show of force from warships pressing the other side to put pen to a treaty. Surplus output piled in the factories, a strong army arrayed on the sea, and the Opium War of 1840, and the Mongol cavalry riding south in the thirteenth century, wore two different coats and walked the very same logic.
Five. Japan After the Meiji Restoration Is This Same Pattern's Most Typical Modern Instance in Asia
Before the Restoration, Japan was a closed agricultural society, short on resources, limited in farmland, and under heavy population pressure. After the Restoration, it threw its full effort into learning Western industrialization and military modernization, raising a modern army and navy in a very short span, and yet its rise in output could not keep pace with the speed of its swelling military ambition, cotton, iron ore, and oil all falling short at home. The First Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, the occupation of Manchuria in 1931, and the full-scale invasion of China in 1937, each step carried the same one driving force behind it, the gap that could not be closed between output and resources, joined with a military strong enough to act on it. This is not a defense of any part of that history, it is a laying out of the structure that drove it.
Japan's line adds one more thing rarely seen elsewhere, self-acceleration. The larger the army grows, the more resources it takes to sustain it, and when the home output cannot supply it, the hand reaches outward again, and seizing new ground demands still more troops to hold it, and more troops demand still more resources, and so the hand reaches out once more, one ring inside another, and the gap, far from closing, only grows wider with every turn. This is the frightening part of position, once it starts turning, even the people caught inside it find it hard to call a halt, because every single step, looked at on its own, looks like something forced by the step before it.
Six. There Is Also a Most Particular Kind of Taking, the Taking of People
The transatlantic slave trade, touched on in the previous section, is looked at here once more, only from the taker's position. The plantations European colonizers built in the Americas needed vast cheap labor, and the indigenous population of the Americas had died in enormous numbers from imported disease, leaving local labor severely short. The gap sat in the plantations, and the strong force sat in the slave ships and the colonial militia, and Africa at the time held no force able to stand against seizure on this scale, so that people themselves became the thing seized. The four samples before this took land, markets, and resources. This one alone took living people, treating a human being as a part to fill the gap in output, pulled wholesale from one stretch of land and installed on the plantations of another. And yet even taken this far, the root beneath it is still the same two things, a gap that could not be closed, and a force strong enough to hold the other side down. This pattern does not even discriminate by the color of anyone's skin.
Seven. The Position Set by This Section
This section sets the thirty-sixth layer. The taker's position is insufficient output joined with a military strong enough to mobilize, and neither condition alone is enough. A gap with no army behind it cannot take anything, and can only be taken from. An army with no gap behind it has no reason to risk taking anything at all. Put the two together, and taking becomes the inevitable result the position works its way through to, not the personal choice of some hero or some man of ambition.
Set the Mongol steppe, the land beyond the Manchu pass, Britain after its industrial reset, Japan after the Meiji Restoration, and the Atlantic slave ships all side by side, and on the surface they could not look more different, and yet underneath runs the very same root, a gap in output, joined with an army strong enough to fill it. This pattern does not choose by era, by region, by civilization, or by skin color. So no people is born a taker, and no people is born one who is taken from, it depends entirely on which position it happens to stand in at that moment, and today's taker may well have been yesterday's taken. Han Fei's line lands here once more.
Today people fight over them, not out of baseness, but because goods are scarce. Han Fei, Han Feizi, The Five Vermin.
Contest does not come from hearts turning bad, it comes from there not being enough to go around, and the international version of goods are scarce is insufficient output, and the international version of contest is crossing a border to take.
The next section turns the lens around, to look at the position of the taken, what circumstance leads a nation to slide, step by step, from the wealthy into the taken. Laozi's line, a hall filled with gold and jade, no one can keep it safe, is about to take the stage directly. Carry the taker's position, and walk into the next section.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. The Position of the Taken, Gold and Jade That None Can Keep.