Unrestricted Warfare: A Near-Peer Approach to Modern Conflict

Introduction

The Gulf War has spurred our near-peers China and Russia to consider radically different concepts of warfare, warfare that fits into the broad model specified by Sun Tzu but bearing little resemblance to contests of military force. This paper examines the new model of warfare coming from our nearest of peers, China. This new model is called unrestricted warfare, which is also the name of the text in which this this model is formulated.

The origin of unrestricted warfare is described in this paper, and the tactics it employs are examined along with the concepts upon which they rest. The Chinese authors of Unrestricted Warfare have been either denounced as “pseudo profound” or hailed as the best thing since Clausewitz, and this spectrum of responses by members of the US military will be surveyed. Finally, a general approach to counter unrestricted warfare tactics is outlined.

Genesis of Unrestricted Warfare

The Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui developed and wrote Unrestricted Warfare in response to lessons learned from America’s victory in the Gulf War. The saw us as immensely capable of conventional warfare that features the combined use of land and air forces. They understood how mastery of this type of warfare required a dependence – maybe an overdependence – on technology. They conjectured that this dependence on technology combined with our spectacular success in the Gulf War would lead us to think that this was the only way to fight wars and would blind us to other forms of warfare.

They took away other lessons, too: that Americans have become extremely averse to casualties. They saw the advantages to hastily arranged alliances of convenience over long-term alliances such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and how those alliances could be rapidly solidified by the UN. They saw the importance of media coverage in shaping public opinion of the war – and that the concept of “media objectivity” gave it more gravitas than official propaganda.

Finally, they realized that when confronted with the type of military force displayed in the Gulf War, that China could never ever win.

Qiao and Wang did what any smart individuals would do: they changed the battlefield. Thus, unrestricted warfare was born.

Redefining Fundamental Concepts

One of the most interesting things done in Unrestricted Warfare¹ (hereafter abbreviated as UW) is to redefine fundamental concepts.

The word “victory” used to mean that an enemy is forced to accept one’s will. Qiao and Wang redefined it to mean that an enemy is forced to serve one’s own interest. “The best way to achieve victory is to control, not to kill,”² they wrote.

A battlefield used to be a region of land or the surface of a body of water. Current battlefields can also be air, space, underwater, psychological, cyberspace, and anywhere reachable by long-range missiles. “Where is the battlefield?” the Chinese colonels asked. “Everywhere,” they answered.

The traditional warfighter working for a traditional (Westphalian) state can now include hackers working for non-state actor.

The dictum that "war is a continuation of politics" or "war is politics with bloodshed", has been extended by the US military to include information warfare, precision warfare, joint operations, and military operations other than war (MOOTW). The Chinese colonels now include “non-military war operations.”

What is a target? Just War Theory distinguishes between combatant and noncombatant and requires that only combatants should be targeted. In unrestricted warfare, the distinction between combatant and noncombatant is dissolved³.

Qiao and Wang give us a new concept of weapon. Instead of a tool to kill or destroy, they note that:

Everything that can benefit mankind can also harm him⁴. This is to say that there is nothing in the world today that cannot become a weapon, and this requires that our understanding of weapons must have an awareness that breaks through all boundaries.

The goal of these “new weapons” is to paralyze and undermine, not to cause casualties. The bloodless wars that result are essentially stealth wars⁵.

How do new weapons relate to their targets? Qiao and Wang write that "new weapons… are closely linked to the lives of the common people," and go on to state that

The new concept of weapons will cause ordinary people and military men alike to be greatly astonished at the fact that commonplace things that are close to them can also become weapons with which to engage in war. We believe that some morning people will awake to discover with surprise that quite a few gentle and kind things have begun to have offensive and lethal characteristics.

As the Chinese colonels write: “the war god’s face has become indistinct.”⁶

The “New Weapons”

What are these new weapons? They are essentially economic means of control. UW contains the following list of these new weapons for non-military war operations:

• Financial
• Ecological
• Psychological
• Smuggling
• Media warfare
• Drug warfare
• Network warfare
• Technological warfare
• Fabrication
• Resources
• Economic aid warfare
• Cultural warfare
• International lawfare

To demonstrate their operation, several of these weapons will be examined in detail.

Financial Warfare

Financial warfare is the easiest to understand. There is no single tactic, but the idea is to solidify economic ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to the point where exit becomes impossible. For example, China could nationalize foreign assets and return them only should their owner perform certain actions. Requiring that transactions between Chinese and foreign companies take place using Chinese yuan renminbi freezes the foreign company into a relationship with the Chinese one, since China’s yuan is a non-convertible currency.

Media Warfare

A very blatant example of media warfare is the way Hollywood kowtows to China. Consider how the plots or characters of Hollywood films are altered to present China in a positive light, or at least in a non-threatening manner⁷. An example of this is with the movie called “Red Dawn”. In the 1984 version, the US is invaded by the Soviets. The original script to the 2012 remake involved the Chinese invading the US. In the final release of “Red Dawn”, it was the North Koreans who did the invading.

The 2018 film “Bohemian Rhapsody” told the story of Freddie Mercury and the band he fronted, Queen. All mention that Mercury was gay was removed for the version of the film released in China. The net effect of erasing this aspect of Mercury was to shift focus to the band.

Three movies, “Barbie” (2023), “Uncharted” (2022), and “Abominable” (2019), all included brief scenes showing a map of the South China Sea depicting the “nine-dash line,” a maritime border which China uses to indicate its claims over that area⁸. “Abominable” was a co-production between DreamWorks and the Chinese production firm Pearl Studio. The Chinese connections with the other movies are not clear.

There are product placements: in “Transformers: Age of Extinction” (2024), one character (while in Texas) withdraws cash from a Chinese ATM, while another character purchases Chinese protein drink (in Chicago).

Even movie posters have been altered to appease to China. For example, the movie poster for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” was altered to minimize photo of the main Black character in the film.

The Chinese market for movies is an even larger market than all of North America⁹. That in part explains the appeasement coming from Hollywood.

Drug Warfare

Of the methods of unrestricted warfare examined here, drug warfare is the easiest to quantify. China is the source of multiple illicit drugs commonly used in the United States including xylazine (“tranq”), methamphetamine, and of course fentanyl. This latter has been a scourge on America, with the number of fentanyl-related overdoses rising at a staggering rate over the past decade.

There have been attempts to force China to stop the export of fentanyl, but they have come to naught. For example, in retaliation for Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, Beijing suspended collaboration with the United States to halt the manufacture and export of fentanyl precursor chemicals either directly to the United States or to Mexico cartels which then traffics the drug into America.

Economic Aid Warfare

The best example of economic aid warfare is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is a massive infrastructure investment program to create networks of highways, railways, and pipelines through former Soviet-bloc countries as well as throughout south and southeast Asia. Announced in 2013, the program has since expanded into Africa and parts of South America. The infrastructure programs are funded by loans from China. The debt financing contracts frequently prevent restructuring, and China retains the right to recall the loans at any time. These give China the power to enforce their interests using financial controls¹⁰.

The BRI is not simply a physical infrastructure program – it also involves the creation of streamlined border crossings as well as special economic zones that encourages industrialization and the adoption of Chinese technology. This network expands the use of Chinese currency and thus the political influence of China.

As of 2023, 147 countries have either began work on BRI projects or have shown interest in doing so. This accounts for 40% of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population.

When economic factors force a country to default on BRI loans, the county results to sovereign default, which happened in Ghana and Zambia. When Pakistan defaulted, they were bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. When Sri Lanka defaulted on a $435 million BRI loan to build a harbor there, China enforced a debt-for-equity swap giving China 70% stake in the harbor.

For countries that do not default on BRI loans, they become vassal states to China.

New Weapon Commonalities and a Comparison to Liminal Warfare

These examples of unrestricted warfare tactics – financial warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, and economic aid warfare – show a variety of methods of operation, a range of precision, and a common goal.

The mechanisms of financial warfare are obvious: China essentially “locks in” a business owner by nationalizing assets or conducting transactions in non-convertible Chinese currency. This gives the CCP leverage over the business owner, forcing him to work to China’s advantage.

Media warfare works by the using the profit motive of Hollywood executives to produce movies that serve as propaganda in the east Asian markets and to soften and elevate the image of China in Western markets. Should a Hollywood executive not alter one of his films for Chinese consumption, the film is banned by Chinese sensors, and its earnings are greatly decreased. Here, the object of control is not America itself but rather one of its industries.

With drug warfare, China permits the manufacture of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors which, when imported to America, directly harms Americans. China is perhaps the most pernicious surveillance state ever to exist, and their protestations that they cannot limit its manufacture and export are simply that: protestations. China never intends to control fentanyl export, but they use promises to do so to either influence American politicians to operate in their favor, or punish politicians when they don’t, as illustrated by China’s reaction to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Given that China has no intention of limiting fentanyl export, their reaction was as staged and hollow as their promises.

Of all the weapons listed in UW, the Belt and Road Initiative is closest to the tributary system practiced by China during certain parts of its dynastic period: both involved turning other nations into vassal states. Enforcement of the tribute was by stick: the threat of invasion. With BRI both the carrot and stick are used: the carrot is in the form of loans, and the stick is economic ruin in response to either defaulting on the loans or taking some action contrary to the CCP. The BRI is the weapon that least directly harms the United States, but it does certainly decrease Western influence on the global stage.

These new weapons and indeed all the weapons listed in UW have several things in common: first is that China gains leverage over the economy, politicians, or businesses of a target country and uses that leverage to its own advantage. Second, they operate at a level below which military reprisal would be seen as just. Third, the weapons operate along a continuum – the “pressure” can be turned up or down depending on the victim’s level of compliance. Fourth, the weapons do not operate in covert or clandestine manner, to a certain extent.

This last commonality is a way unrestricted warfare differs from the liminal warfare practiced by Russia¹¹. Liminal warfare depends on secrecy to operate, and a particular liminal operation comes to an end once its existence and perpetrator become known. Unrestricted warfare is carried out in public, but if the extent of, say, the BRI should become known all at once, the pattern would be clear, and resistance would be universal. Thus, unlimited warfare is subject to thresholds (one being the threshold for which a military response is acceptable, the other threshold being the discovery of the entirety of the operation), and maneuver between the thresholds is necessary for success¹², just like with liminal warfare¹³.

Analysis of Unrestricted Warfare by the U.S. Military

Before reviewing some of the evaluations of UW made by members of the U.S. military, it must be asked: how does China itself evaluate unrestricted warfare? As seen from the above examples, China is using the new weapons listed in UW, but that isn’t necessarily the same as taking UW as a far-reaching military policy. The best proof that they are considering UW seriously are the careers of the two authors following the text’s publication.

At time of publication, Qiao Liang was a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. He retired with the rank of major general and is now secretary general of the Council for National Security Policy Studies. His co-author Wang Xiangsui was a colonel in the PLA when UW was released. He had since retired with the rank of senior colonel and is currently the director of the Center for Strategic Issues.

Qiao and Wang have both advanced in rank since the publication of UW and now hold leading positions at security institutions in China. It appears that they are indeed taken seriously by the CCP.

Wang Xiangsui and Qiao Liang

The response to UW by either current or former members of the U.S. military has been mixed. At the one extreme is Major John A. van Messel, who in his 2005 master’s thesis¹⁴ for the Marine Corps University, concludes that “Unrestricted Warfare, as it is currently written, is less of an executable doctrine than a collection of tactics, techniques, and procedures for future war adversaries.” His appraisal is that “Unrestricted Warfare is neither a revolution in military thought nor an executable doctrine for future warfare…”

To justify these conclusions, van Messel notes that most if not all theoretical concepts in UW, from the idea that new weapon systems can alter the form of war to the idea of non-military weapons, have been in circulation prior to the publication of UW. He also notes that the Chinese colonels’ analysis of the Gulf War was taken from various DoD documents.

Van Messel then conducts thought experiments, simulating the success a large nation (China), a small nation (Taiwan), and a non-state actor (Abu Sayyaf) would have in using the particular “new weapons” of unrestricted warfare against an adversary. He concludes that only a large nation such as China would have the ability to use all the “new weapons.” He adds, correctly, that unrestricted warfare does not explain how a nation would organize, train, and equip the necessary elements of national power to implement these “new weapons.”

He concludes that China would have the most success in applying the “new weapons,” but the operationalization of these weapons would be negatively “impacted by adhering to rules of law and the effects of globalization.”

Van Messel’s position can thus be summarized as “nothing to see here.” At the other extreme is retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding, who explains in his 2022 book titled War Without Rules¹⁵ that the weapons described in UW pose a major threat to the United States.

Spalding does not examine the originality of the theoretical framework presented in UW, but he does take note of it.

Spalding’s position on operationalizing the “new weapons” is directly opposite from van Messel’s: the new weapons depend on globalization, and that China does not adhere to international rule of law. Spalding justifies these conclusions by describing how recent Chinese foreign relations and economic policies demonstrate the “new weapons” in use, including the Belt and Road Initiative.

Spalding concludes by listing very concrete steps we can take to limit the harm the new weapons can have on the United States and the world. These steps include increasing the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, strengthening our currency, and monitoring the security implications of Chinese land and business purchases.

Other authors mix the extremes represented by van Messel and Spalding. Take, for example, Dave Maxwell, a retired Special Forces Colonel, Editor-in-Chief of Small Wars Journal, and Vice President of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. The position he put forward in a 2023 paper¹⁶ is that discussions of the underpinning theoretical concepts of UW are a distraction from addressing the actions of the People’s Liberation Army.

The sinologist and Executive Assistant at the National Defense University Josh Baughman completely dismisses UW, stating that it is not China’s “Master Plan.” After doing a chapter-by-chapter study of UW, he concludes¹⁷ that it is “pseudo profound.” His opinion is based on a chapter of UW that attempts to apply Chinese numerology to warfare, and that one chapter poisons the rest of the book.

An Alternative Analysis

The problem with the analyses described above is that they all miss the most important part of UW: its reinterpretation of fundamental concepts like “victory”, “weapon”, “target”, and so on. These redefinitions explain the choices of “new weapons” presented in the text.

More importantly, the new definitions of fundamental concepts allow us to predict future weapons - future means of control - not mentioned in UW. Examples of the weapons missed by Qiao and Wang include control of medicine, the Chinese purchase of American land and businesses, and mass migration.

By focusing on fundamental concepts, we can defend against a wider class of weapons. The key to doing so lies in Qiao and Wang’s statement “everything that can benefit mankind can also harm him.” The accurate rephrasing should be: “everything that can benefit mankind and that we control can also harm him.” This makes clear the two conditions that make unrestricted warfare effective: globalization, and the omnipotent CCP - unrestricted warfare requires “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

These observations point to a fundamental way to stop unrestricted warfare: rigorously enforce private property rights, especially in financial transactions. This, combined with strong currency and rational fiscal policies, would go a long way to block new weapons, both those mentioned in UW as well as those yet to be invented.

Conclusions

In summary, UW is quite important both in that it describes the economic and foreign policy decisions currently being made by China, and that it provides a conceptual framework explaining why those decisions are being made.

By understanding this conceptual framework, strategies and tactics to counter unrestricted warfare become apparent. Spalding’s recommendations block the effects of unrestricted warfare only in a piecemeal fashion, but shoring-up property rights counters China’s influence on America in one swoop. Considering the extent that politicians and corporations benefit from cooperating with China¹⁸, though, one must wonder if they are willing to take these steps and counter China’s “new weapons.”

 

Footnotes

1. Qiao & Liang, Unrestricted Warfare.
2. Ibid, as are all quotes in this section, unless specified otherwise.
3. This is similar to a "Realist War Theory": instead of combatants/noncombatants, RWT has combatants/enablers or combatants/supporters.
4. Emphasis added.
5. Kerry Gershaneck, “To Win Without Fighting”.
6. Qiao Liang also happens to be a fiction writer, and this may explain odd phrasings like this that occur at numerous places in UW.
7. Morgan Martin and Clinton Williamson, “Mapping Chinese Influence in Hollywood”
8. Chad Guzman, “Barbie is Just the Latest Hollywood Film to Get Caught in the Crossfire of Asian Geopolitics.”
9. Terry Gross, “Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies?”
10. Qiao, “One Belt, One Road."
11. David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes.
12. Octavian Manea, “Liminal and Conceptual Development: Warfare in the Age of Dragons.”
13. A similar point is made by McFarlane and Paterson in ”Is America Ready for Chinese-Russian Liminal Warfare?”
14. John van Messel, “Unrestricted Warfare: A Chinese doctrine for future warfare?”
15. Spalding, War Without Rules.
16. David Maxwell, “The First Rule of Fight Club and Irregular Warfare Should be the Same.”
17. Josh Baughman, “’Unrestricted Warfare’ is Not China’s Master Plan.”
18. Robert Spalding. Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept.

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