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.

Bibliography

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Gershaneck, K. “To Win Without Fighting”. Expeditions with MCUP. Marine Corps University, 2020. https://doi.org/10.36304/ExpwMCUP.2020.04

Gross, T. “Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies?” NPR Fresh Air, 21 February 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2024 from https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1081435029/china-hollywood-movies-censorship-erich-schwartzel

Guzman, C. “Barbie is Just the Latest Hollywood Film to Get Caught in the Crossfire of Asian Geopolitics.” Time, 4 July 2023. Retrieved 7 May 2024 from https://time.com/6292066/barbie-ban-nine-dash-line-china/

Kilcullen, D. The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Manea, O. “Liminal and Conceptual Development: Warfare in the Age of Dragons.” Small Wars Journal, 26 May 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2024 from https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/liminal-and-conceptual-envelopment-warfare-age-dragons

Martin, M. & Williamson, C. “Mapping Chinese Influence in Hollywood” Kennedy Papers on Indo-Pacific Security Studies 4, January 2023. Retrieved 7 May 2024 from https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Papers/KP_04_Martin_Mapping_Chinese_Influence_in_Hollywood.pdf

McFarlane, R. & Paterson, A. “Is America Ready for Chinese-Russian Liminal Warfare?” The National Interest, 7 May 2022. Last retrieved 9 May 2024 from https://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-ready-chinese-russian-liminal-warfare-202205

Maxwell, D. “The First Rule of Fight Club and Irregular Warfare Should be the Same.” Small Wars Journal, 22 January 2023. Retrieved 8 May 2024 from https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/first-rule-fight-club-and-irregular-warfare-should-be-same

Qiao L. "One Belt, One Road." LimesOnline.com, 17 July 2015. Last retrieved 10 May 2024 from https://www.limesonline.com/en/regions/one-belt-one-road-14720766/

Qiao & Liang. Unrestricted Warfare. Shadow Lawn Press, 1999.

Spalding, R. Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept. Penguin Publishing Group, 2019.

Spalding, R. War Without Rules: China's Playbook for Global Domination. Sentinel Press, 2022.

Van Messel, J. “Unrestricted Warfare: A Chinese doctrine for future warfare?”, School of Advanced Warfighting, Marine Corps University, 2005. Retrieved 6 May 2024 from https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA509132.pdf

A Review of David Kilcullen’s The Dragons and the Snakes

Kilcullen’s “Dragons and Snakes,” hereafter abbreviated as “D&S,” is quite ambitious: it describes the evolution of warfare during and following the GWOT, arguing that state and non-state actors have undergone coevolution, with the end result that our adversaries’ warfighting techniques have changed in ways our military is currently unable to match.

D&S begins with a quick overview of the vast hinterland that was the time between the end of the Cold War and the earlier parts of the Global War on Terrorism. The important aspect of this overview is the relative sophistication of five of the dominant politicians of that era: Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin.

When Putin came into office, he inherited the shambles that was Russia after the fall of the Soviets. To rebuild his country, he proposed to Clinton that Russia be allowed to join NATO. Other than the presidents and the prime minister, politicians at the time regarded that proposal somewhere on the spectrum between absurdity and incredulity. None of those politicians recognized what Putin was really doing: in popular vernacular, he was “trolling.”

Putin was taken seriously, with Tony Blair proposing to create a NATO-Russia Council to have Putin’s representatives meet with NATO leaders before making key decisions. Bush proposed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia. After all, Bush said that he “looked the man [Putin] in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Eleven weeks later, Russia sent tanks into Georgia.

The Obama Administration then suggested a “reset” and created a commission to strengthen and expand security cooperation between us and Russia. Russian special forces were trained by US special forces, Russian officers received NATO training, and so on.

Yes, Putin was indeed trolling, and at a masterful level.

Kilcullen then moves into the period starting with the GWOT and leading up to today. Using a metaphor by former CIA Director James Woolsey, the author divides our enemies into “dragons” and “snakes.” The dragons are state actors (in the Westphalian sense) mainly China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The snakes are either collapsing states or non-state actors, principally Islamic terrorist organizations.

All throughout the GWOT, both the dragons and the snakes were keenly interested in our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were doing two things: observing and evolving.

Observing other countrys' wars is nothing new: the French, British, and Prussians sent observers to watch the Civil War, with interest in tactics, strategies, and technologies. Currently, everyone is watching the Russia-Ukraine war, with keen attention paid to the use of commercial-quality drones and other tactics.

From these observations, two critical events serve to shape the evolution of military thought amongst both the dragons and the snakes: the US invasion of Iraq in 1992, and America’s difficulties in the asymmetric wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 1992 invasion proved that the US was masterful at a particular style of war: conventional force-on-force battles with integrated land and air operations. China and Russia observed this and deduced that America cannot be dominated using this form of warfare. They also deduced something else: that Americans, in part due to the smashing success of the invasion, had constrained itself into believing that the type of war demonstrated during that invasion was the only type of warfare.

The second observation was the difficulty the US had in fighting insurgent forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as the GWOT switched from being a symmetric to an asymmetric conflict. This was also nothing new, as Russia saw in its own involvement in Afghanistan and during the Chechen Wars. What made the American experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq different was that it was America that was involved: the insurgents were able to hold their own against the same military that won so easily the pre-insurgent phase of the Iraq war. If Russia had suspicions that their losses in Afghanistan and the First Chechen War were due to military inadequacy, then America’s experience, with its preeminent military, dispelled those suspicions.

Faced with this, Russia and China had to evolve, to discover new types of warfare.

The route taken by Russia was to pursue “liminal warfare,” which adds cyber, economic, and psychological tools to the kinetic weapons endemic to conventional warfare. The idea is to operate using those new tools below a threshold (what Kilcullen calls the “response threshold”) that America and other Western nations would resort to conventional warfare. The bulk of the desired outcomes are achieved below this threshold (the luminal stages), and these desired goals are primarily to “shape” not only particular actions of the Unites States but also to provide cover or at least plausible deniability should the response threshold be crossed.

Kilcullen provides numerous examples of liminal warfare in action, the most important one being Russia’s capture of the Crimea in February 2014 – the world didn’t know what Russia was doing until it was too late.

Russia’s new approach to warfare is “vertical” in that the stages of war are cumulative, determined by the extent the US recognizes that clandestine activities occurring and our ability to determine who is performing these acts; Russia attempts to minimize the operational signatures of their operations, move the thresholds, and so on.

In contrast, Kilcullen portrays China’s approach as “horizontal.” China’s approach is to use “unrestricted warfare” as described by Qiao and Liang in their book with the same name. (Kilcullen notes that the title “Unrestricted Warfare” would be better translated as “Warfare Beyond Rules”). Unrestricted warfare uses several non-lethal tactics including international lawfare, economic aid warfare (think Belt and Road Initiative), drug war (fentanyl in particular) and so on. These tactics aren’t used in isolation, instead they use a “diversity of tactics” as Antifa would say. The number of available tactics is what gives unrestricted warfare its horizontal quality.

It is interesting to compare luminal and unrestricted warfare, but it is more illuminating to compare those forms of warfare with the way warfare is conceived in the West. The primary difference is that the West considers warfare to be strictly one involving military action, whereas liminal and unrestricted warfare involve both military and non-military forms of action.

We essentially have a mismatch in the concepts of warfare. There are three consequences to this mismatch:

1. Many of our actions (in particular, economic policies related to international trade) we think of as peace time competition but are considered to be warfare, especially in unrestricted warfare.
2. China and Russia can be engaging in warfare, but we don’t know it and we cannot respond militarily.
3. Because we don’t know we’re being attacked, we cannot predict escalation.

What can be done about all this? How do we fight the ascension of these dragons? With regards to foreign policy, Kilcullen offers several options:

1. Double down - continue interventionalist foreign policy, strengthen our military accordingly, and incorporate new technology along the lines of the Pentagon’s “Third Offset Strategy.”
2. Go with a “managed decline” approach (presumably only regarding foreign policy).
3. Take a Byzantine approach, meaning, delay until something better comes along.

Kilcullen’s recommendations on foreign policy are as follows:

“…return to offshore balancing, disengaging from permanent wars of occupation, ceasing any attempt to dominate rivals or spread democracy by force, and focusing instead on preserving and defending our long-term viability.”

This is very reasonable, except the part about “offshore rebalancing.” Continuing with his recommendations:

“Rather than dominating potential adversaries, our objectives can and should be much more modest: to prevent them from dominating us, to do so at an acceptable and sustainable long-term cost, and to avoid any action that harms the prosperity of and civilizational values that make our societies worth living in.”

Thus, by quitting our “forever wars,” we get a type of peace dividend: we get a chance to focus on societal resilience and attempt to reconcile our current domestic political differences.

D&S is extremely readable, even by someone lacking deep knowledge of foreign policy. The most valuable part for me was the discussion of liminal warfare. My only criticism is that it didn’t go into sufficient depth on liminal maneuvers. This is a minor complaint, and quite understandable given the text’s wide scope.

 

Bibliography

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Kilcullen, D. “The Evolution of Unconventional Warfare.” Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies 2 (no. 1), 2019.

Kilcullen, D. The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Nadeau, R. "Justus Scheibert and International Observation of the Civil War". The Gettysburg Compiler, 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2014/12/12/justus-scheibert-and-international-observation-of-the-civil-war/

Qiao L. & Wang, X. Unrestricted Warfare. Albatross Publishers, 2020.

Comparison of Three Defense Strategies

Introduction

The "National Strategy for Homeland Security", "National Defense Strategy", and "Interim National Security Strategic Guidance" documents represent three different visions of what constitute American interests, and three different ways of advancing those interests.

Comparison of the Three Documents

In "National Strategy for Homeland Security" we have a statement that includes the broadest scope in what counts as national interest - not only territorial integrity but also infrastructure and key resources. The threats to these include both man-made dangers (terrorist attacks and industrial accidents), natural disasters (especially Hurricane Katrina), and mixtures of the two (infectious diseases). 

To protect all this, the goal was to prevent and disrupt terror attacks by denying access to and import of WMDs, securing the borders, cargo screening, "Intelligence-Led Policing," and engaging "key communities."

The solution that was implemented was a "bureaucratic" approach. This involved the creation of new intelligence agencies, departments, and offices such as:

• Department of Homeland Security
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence
• Homeland Security Council
• National Counterterrorism Center
• U.S. Northern Command

Along with these new agencies there was also sweeping legislation including:

• USA PATRIOT Act
• Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004
• Protect America Act of 2007
• Reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)

State, local, and tribal emergency response agencies were pressured to integrate with each other and their federal counterparts. This integration included a common command structure (the FEMA ICS) as well as shared communication systems. Finally, there was a call for citizen involvement (the "see something, say something" mantra).

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Mattis' "National Defense Strategy" presents the most concrete and realistic approaches to national defense. The document advocates inoperability of defense agencies with the intel community, the modernization of key capabilities, cultivating workforce talent, and to prioritize the preparedness for war. 

Of the three documents, this one is the only to recognize asymmetrical warfare and irregular tactics by requiring the agencies charged with defending the United States to "be strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable." It recognized that our enemies would engage in economic sabotage and other "Fourth Generation Warfare" tactics, and that we must "counter coercion and subversion".

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The "Interim National Security Strategic Guidance" is the only one of the three to list non-military threats to the United States, specifically:

• The pandemic
• Economic downturn
• Racial justice
• "Climate emergency"

The document attributes our current geopolitical situation to changes in the "distribution of power across the world." It states that we will be unable to close the southern border overnight. 

This is the only one of the three documents to specifically mention the policies of the previous administration.

Conclusion

Of the three documents, the one that directly addresses how American engages in warfare is Mattis' "National Defense Strategy." It explicitly addresses the need to prepare for war and that our enemies will be using irregular tactics including economic sabotage. The Bush-era "National Strategy for Homeland Security" advocates the centralization of executive branch political power into the Department of Homeland Security. The "Interim National Security Strategic Guidance" is the only one to mention non-military threats to this country, and to treat these as equivalent in importance to military threats.

MISTER James Mattis

Bibliography

Homeland Security Council. (October 2007). "National Strategy for Homeland Security". Last retrieved 18 April 2021 from https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nat_strat_homelandsecurity_2007.pdf

Department of Defense. (2018). "Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America." Last retrieved 18 April 2021 from https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf

The White House. (March 2021). “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance.” Last retrieved 18 April 2021 from https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf

The Most Dangerous Form of Warfare

Introduction

Both symmetric and asymmetric warfare are dangerous, but to answer the question “what is the most dangerous form of warfare?” it is necessary to examine asymmetric warfare and its tactics. Once this is complete, a comprehensive and valid comparison can be made between symmetric and asymmetric warfare.

Characteristics

Asymmetric warfare is one where the two opponents have incomparable military strengths. Freedman¹ lists several qualities of the weaker party (guerrillas, insurgents, etc.): they are involved in a defensive war, fighting on home territory; they depend on popular support and use local knowledge of the terrain and other geographic factors; the insurgents employ a strategy of exhaustion, “gaining time on the hope that the enemy would tire or that something else would turn up.”

To all this it must be added that insurgents replace a traditional logistic system with popular support as well as “living off the enemy.”

Relation with Conventional Forces

None of the writers on asymmetric warfare – from theoreticians such as Clausewitz and Jomini, to practitioners such as von Lettow-Vorbeck, T.E. Lawrence, and Mao Tse-Tung – view an insurgency as effective by itself.

Tse-Tung saw⁶ guerrilla warfare as a “stop gap” until conventional forces could be stood-up: “during the progress of hostilities, guerrillas gradually develop into orthodox forces that operate in conjunction with other units of the regular army.”

T.E. Lawrence described³ guerrilla warfare as “…a war that might be won without fighting battles” and that the role of the Arab Revolt in WWI was a “side-show of a side-show”. He summarized the lack of conventional support by noting that “we had no base machinery, no formal staff, no clerks, no government, no telegraphs, no public opinion, no troops of British nationality, no honour, no conventions.”

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, in using guerrilla warfare in German East Africa during WWI, asked⁴ whether “it was possible for us in our subsidiary theatre of war to exercise any influence on the great decision at home.” His plan was to draw Allied forces away from Europe, and to do that “it was necessary, not to split up our small available forces in local defense, but, on the contrary, to keep them together, to grip the enemy by the throat and force him to employ his forces for self-defense.” He was able to do this for the duration of that war.

Asymmetrical Warfare Tactics

The tactics used by insurgents follow from their relative weakness: they do not have comparable weapon systems, nor do they have a stable base of operations. The general tactic used has been described⁵ by William S. Lind as the "DOCA loop” - disperse, orient, concentrate, act. Being dispersed except when executing an operation gives the guerrilla force survivability, whereas concentration gives the force the ability to focus its power on a target which a single insurgent cannot alone bring to bear.

What should these targets be? “The enemy’s rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points,” Tse-Tung writes⁶, “and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted, and annihilated.” The insurgency must thus compensate for his lack of firepower with ingenuity in attacking the enemy’s communication and supply lines, as well as other weaknesses.

What is the Most Dangerous Form of Warfare?

Several metrics can be used to determine how dangerous a particular form warfare is:

• Number of combatant casualties
• Number of civilian casualties
• Infrastructure damage
• Economic cost
• Loss of freedoms
• Loss of political will or even destabilization of political system
• Prolongation of the war
• Reputation of the country doing the conventional fighting
• Destructiveness of the weapons used

In conventional warfare, civilian and combatant casualties are always present. Indiscriminate civilian deaths have decreased considerably with the recent availability of precision-guided weapons. Still there are non-combatant casualties. With asymmetric warfare, the primary targets of the insurgents are enemy soldiers and collaborators. The number of deaths is far fewer, to the point where the taking of a life by an insurgent is closer to targeted assassination than to indiscriminate killing.

Infrastructure has been a target in both symmetric and asymmetric warfare. In asymmetric warfare, when an attack on infrastructure fails, the insurgents either try again or move to the next target. Compare this with how failed infrastructure attacks evolve in conventional war. The “Bomber Mafia”² (a group of USAAF commanders who advocated using long-range heavy bombers to defeat Nazi Germany) wanted to use precision bombing against German industries and military targets; when this plan proved unworkable, they switched to using area incendiary weapons against cities in Japan.

The loss of freedom through conscription, taxation, inward-pointing intelligence services, propaganda, and media manipulation have always been higher in conventional warfare. This damages the reputation of the country doing conventional fighting, weakening its presence on the international stage as well as damaging the political will (the consent) of the populace. Propaganda is also part of asymmetrical warfare, but it is aimed only against the conventional opponent.

While the longest wars in American history were asymmetric wars - the War in Afghanistan and the Vietnam War (lasting just under 20 years each) - there have been conventional wars that lasted far longer, such as the Roman-Germanic Wars (708 years). The most prolonged conventional war was the Reconquista, which lasted for 781 years.

Finally, the destructive power of the weapons used must be compared. Nuclear weapons have been used in conventional wars, as has mustard gas and other chemical agents. There are no analogs in asymmetric warfare.

For these reasons, conventional wars are the most dangerous. They are the costliest in terms of life, treasury, and political freedoms.

References

1. Freedman, L. (2013). Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press.

2. Gladwell, M. (2021). The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War. Little, Brown, and Company.

3. Lawrence, T.E., (1920) The Evolution of a Revolt. Praetorian Press.

4. Lettow-Vorbeck, P. v. (2022). My Reminiscences of East Africa. Good Press.

5. Lind, W. S. & Thiele, G. A. (2015). 4th Generation Warfare Handbook. Castalia House. Retrieved 28 March 2024 from https://ia802901.us.archive.org/27/items/4thGenerationWarfareHandbookWilliamS.Lind28129/4th_Generation_Warfare_Handbook_-_William_S._Lind%25281%2529.pdf

6. Tse-Tung, M. (2015). Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, Samuel B. Griffith, trans. Hauraki Publishing.