During the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, a 26-year-old company commander’s unit was pinned down by a fortified hilltop. After frontal assaults failed, the junior officer made an extraordinary request: an entire battalion, four times the size of his own unit, for a jungle flanking maneuver. The regimental commander agreed. The surprise assault broke the Vietnamese defense. This company commander’s pedigree was as formidable as his tactics: His father was a founding general who had just retired as head of the Chinese military’s General Logistics Department.Five years later, that same officer commanded the regiment tasked with the main assault at the BattleThe post The Mountaintop Mirage: Why Xi’s Military Purges Cannot Produce the Force He Wants appeared first on War on the Rocks.