"According to international relations, one party in the international game has a problem that must be resolved. Failure to resolve this problem will affect the country's development and may even backfire and lead to the country's demise. This problem often requires war to resolve."
Zhao Jun explained, "For example, during World War II, Japan's military began to seize power and used aggression to ease domestic conflicts in order to resolve serious domestic socioeconomic and political problems. However, Japan did not produce rubber or oil, and the United States cut off its oil supply. If Japan could not continue its aggression, then overseas problems would backfire on Japan, so war was inevitable between Japan and the United States. This is called the core contradiction."
"Hmm"
Everyone only understood half of what Zhao Jun said. Although Zhao Jun had talked about oil and rubber before, and had also talked about Japan's crimes of aggression against China, they had no idea about the specific situation and the importance of rubber, oil and other items to Japan, so they still didn't quite understand.
"You all know about the Three Kingdoms, right? Wei, Shu, and Wu divided the world into three parts. After Liu Bei and Sun Quan conquered the south, each became the core of their conflict, a problem that had to be resolved."
Seeing they didn't understand, Zhao Jun had to patiently explain, "It's just that Liu Bei, out of kindness and consideration for his friends, didn't attack Sun Quan. However, Sun Quan, unjustly, launched a war to resolve this core conflict. Ultimately, although he won the Battle of Jingzhou and the Battle of Yiling, he was unable to completely annex Ji Han, resulting in a situation of three kingdoms competing against each other."
"I see."
Everyone then understood the reason.
"For the Song Dynasty, the threat from the Western Xia and Liao became the core contradiction."
Zhao Jun continued, "As long as they continue to threaten the security of the Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty will be in trepidation whether it is internal reform or external development. Therefore, we must first resolve this core contradiction through external wars, so that the Song Dynasty can smoothly transition and develop steadily."
It is said that in order to resist foreign aggression, we must maintain domestic stability. This statement is not necessarily correct. At least, the current Song Dynasty is not suitable to be interpreted with this statement.
Because the Song Dynasty was currently in turmoil, with rebellions no less numerous than those of the Qing Dynasty, political chaos, constant natural disasters, and the people's livelihood was in dire straits. Under these circumstances, the Qingli New Deal and Wang Anshi's Reforms were born to resolve the internal strife.
The problem was that external pressure constantly affected the border security of the Song Dynasty. The emperor felt insecure, and the ministers did not have the courage to carry out the reform to the end, which led to the reform being on thin ice and ultimately failing.
If the external problems were completely resolved and the Western Xia and Liao were defeated, there would be no need to worry that the reform would lead to civil unrest. With the cooperation of external forces to attack the Song Dynasty, the emperor and his ministers would be much more determined to reform. It would not be like in history, where the emperor was indecisive and made the reform difficult to maintain.
This is also the reason why Zhao Jun did not carry out drastic reforms at present, but instead supported Fan Zhongyan to go to the northwest to fight!
"Um."
Zhao Zhen listened to Zhao Jun's words and felt that they made sense. He nodded and said, "This is indeed our top priority."
"As long as we repel the attacks of the Western Xia and Liao, we can then calmly reform our internal system."
Zhao Jun looked around and said, "There are still eleven years until the Yellow River is diverted. We still have ample time, but we can't let our guard down just because we have so much time. Once we've resolved the situation in the north, we must immediately accelerate and implement nationwide reforms."
Fan Zhongyan said, "Personally, I think it won't be difficult to defeat Xixia now that we've anticipated their advance. Xixia is small, poor, and weak, with insufficient military strength. If we can defeat them, should we seize the opportunity to attack Xiazhou?"
Zhao Zhen's eyes widened after hearing this and asked, "Lord Fan actually wants to directly attack Xixia?"
"hehe."
Fan Zhongyan smiled and said, "Han Long said that we should despise the enemy strategically and take him seriously tactically. So when I was thinking about how to fight at home, I simply decided on a strategy to directly attack Xixia. Isn't this strategy exactly despising them?"
Zhao Jun thought for a moment and said, "Western Xia has only a little over 100,000 soldiers. It's not impossible to annex them if we anticipate the enemy. But I don't think it's advisable for now. Let's leave them alone and focus on defeating and killing their active forces."
"Why?"
Fan Zhongyan was puzzled. He felt that he had at least an 80% chance of annexing Western Xia.
Although the Song Dynasty suffered consecutive defeats in history, its national strength was many times greater than that of the Western Xia. Even if it was defeated three times in a row, it forced the Western Xia to withdraw its troops and seek peace even if it won.
This shows that the national strength of Western Xia really cannot afford to delay. Apart from launching sneak attacks and achieving perfect tactics, it is almost impossible to completely defeat the Song Dynasty.
Now that Zhao Jun has appeared, even sneak attacks and clever tactics are no longer effective.
Because Zhao Jun had already told the Song army all of Xixia's tactics, which was equivalent to opening the entire map. The Song army was able to anticipate the enemy's moves and set traps, waiting for Li Yuanhao to rush in.
Once Li Yuanhao was defeated, given the national strength of Western Xia and the ethnic minorities around Western Xia that Li Yuanhao had offended through his conquests in recent years, it is likely that when the Song army defeated them, the surrounding Western Region Uighurs, Yellow-headed Uighurs and Tubo tribes would rise up to attack.
It was difficult to defeat the Song Dynasty, not to mention being beaten by a group of people. There was a very high possibility that the Western Xia would be destroyed as soon as it was founded.
However, Zhao Jun shook his head and said, "How will you defend it? How will you govern it? The Liao Kingdom is watching us covetously. Although the Liao Kingdom also wants to annex Western Xia, for them, the existence of Western Xia is in their best interests. So once we truly defeat Li Yuanhao, the Liao army will immediately march south."
"well"
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