Grappling with Great Power Competition

Following the end of the Cold War, Pentagon war planners shifted to regional conflicts. During Iraq and Afghanistan, strategic planning was replaced by operational and tactical planning even at the level of day-to-day combat. With the reemergence of Great Power Competition (GPC), it is necessary to revert to global planning to set the conditions necessary for peace with peer competitors.

As discussed in Archuleta and Gerson’s “Fight Tonight”[1], war plans depend on three inputs: perceived and capable threats, the desired policy end state, and resource constraints.

Since the "setting of global conditions" must work across the continuum of competition (cooperation, competition below threshold of armed conflict, and armed conflict), it makes sense to consider the desired end state for three types of competition separately.

For lack of better terms, the competitor nation or non-state actor will be called "friend with benefits," "frenemy," or "enemy" depending on their place on the continuum. Actions the US Military takes are designed prevent or address armed conflict, which means moving the relationship with the competitor away from enemy status to frenemy or even friend status.

For each of these three types of relations, interactions we have with them must not only be appropriate for the current relation type, but also relevant to the next step on the continuum of competition.

For example, joint training exercises provide an opportunity to appraise the friendly nation's military capabilities for several reasons: first, this information would be useful if the US and the friendly nation should need to cooperate in a multinational military operation; second, to handle the situation where relations with the friendly nation should decay (so the formerly friendly nation becomes a frenemy). Bonds created by the joint training can help mend any move away from cooperation, however.

This addresses friends and frenemies. For enemies, the goal is to deter or address armed conflict. This is a third purpose for joint training exercises: they are shows of force, and also let the enemy know that we have friends (cooperative nations).

To get a very rough initial draft of a war plan, we run the area of interest through this framework. For example, in the Indo-Pacific Area of Operations, the primary perceived threat is China, with North Korea playing a secondary role. The desired policy end state would be containment. Joint training exercises with partners in the region, like Japan and India, serve as a deterrent to expansion. The resource constraints are the available U. S. military capabilities[2] in the region (U.S. Pacific Fleet and its component parts, Diego Garcia and other bases, etc.) plus the capabilities of friendlies.

B1-B Lancer departing from Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, 7 October 2021
Photo by Senior Airman Rebeca M. Luquin, U.S. Air Force

These are regional conditions for the Indo-Pacific AO. Extending this to global conditions (as recommended in Archuleta and Gerson[3]) involves doing the same sort of things in other parts of the world, especially for nations that are friendly or potentially friendly with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Does this accomplish GPC containment through deterrence?

China practices "unrestricted warfare" which involves military, economic, diplomatic, propagandistic, and other approaches to control other nations[4]. Meanwhile, Russia often practices “liminal warfare” which means they shape outcomes to their advantage using military and nonmilitary methods while staying below the threshold of armed conflict[5].

Maintaining bases or enacting treaties granting the right of entry into maritime ports raises the standard of living of friendly countries. This leads to trade agreements, mutual assistance, and diplomatic relations. This helps to counter the unusual types of warfare practiced by China and Russia but is perhaps not sufficient since China and Russia aren’t economically contained[6].

Footnotes

[1] Archuleta & Gerson, “Fight Tonight: Reenergizing the Pentagon for Great Power Competition.”
[2] Nicastro, L. “U.S. Defense Infrastructure in the IndoPacific.”
[3] Archuleta & Gerson, “Fight Tonight: Reenergizing the Pentagon for Great Power Competition.”
[4] Qiao & Liang. Unrestricted Warfare.
[5] Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes.
[6] Spalding, R. War Without Rules.

Bibliography

Archuleta, B. & Gerson, J. “Fight Tonight: Reenergizing the Pentagon for Great Power Competition.” Joint Force Quarterly 100. 17 February 2021. Retrieved 29 August 2024 from https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2498193/fight-tonight-reenergizing-the-pentagon-for-great-power-competition/

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

Nicastro, L. “U.S. Defense Infrastructure in the IndoPacific: Background and Issues for Congress.” Congressional Research Service. 6 June 2023. Retrieved 29 August 2024 from https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47589

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

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

Operation Desert Storm – an Analysis

Introduction

“Conventional warfare” is a relative term: what counts as conventional warfare depends on the time the war was fought, and frequently depends on the weapons or tactics used. Still, lessons learned in previous conflicts are applicable to subsequent wars: The Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae used phalanx formations which have not withstood the test of time, but they also used delay tactics, feign retreats, and use of geography to constrain the enemy, all of which are timeless. So, while the phalanx eventually became obsolete, the other aspects were fundamental in all future military operations.

Thousands of years after Thermopylae came the trench warfare of WWI, followed by the mechanized warfare of WWII, with its blitzkriegs and tanks. The Gulf War was primarily a technological war, with weaponry so advanced that those used in previous wars appeared to be as anachronistic as the phalanx formation. Thus the Gulf War became the “conventional” war of the day.

This paper examines the operational components of the Gulf War and the interpretation of that war by American military analysts as well as by near-peer competitors.

Goals of the Gulf War

The Gulf War had both strategic goals and strategic constraints. The goals were to remove the Iraqi invasion force from Kuwait, and to degrade the military to prevent it from attacking Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other nearby countries. The constraint was to not degrade the military so far that it wouldn’t be a credible deterrence to Iranian invasion.

To accomplish this, combined air and ground operations were employed. The air operation was designed to destroy Iraqi air power, weaken its ground forces, and prepare the way for the ground invasion.

The precursor to Operation Desert Storm was, of course, Operation Desert Shield. Desert Shield allowed the George H. W. Bush administration to assemble the Coalition forces, and to position those forces for what would come next, should Saddam not withdraw from Kuwait. It gave time for the economic sanctions placed upon Iraq to have an effect. Finally, it allowed Coalition forces to train in a desert environment.

Demolished vehicles line Highway 80, also known as the "Highway of Death", the route fleeing Iraqi forces took as they retreated from Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Joe Coleman, 18 April 1991.

Operation Desert Storm was divided into four phases¹. Phase I was to be a strategic air campaign designed to disrupt Iraq’s command and control over their forces, and to destroy NBC weapons research and production facilities. Phase II was to establish air supremacy over Kuwait. The goal of Phase III was to isolate Iraqi forces in Kuwait from reinforcement and resupply. Finally, Phase IV was to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

The first three phases were air campaigns and will be treated as a whole.

The Air Operation

The air operation lasted from 17 January 1991 to 23 February 1991, during which Coalition forces performed over 100,000 sorties and dropped 85,000 tons of bombs.

The air campaign began with the destruction of enemy radar sites near the Saudi-Iraqi border by American Apache and Pave Low helicopters. If left intact, those sites would warn Iraq of upcoming attacks. Following this, the weapons of choice were Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by ships positioned in the Persian Gulf, stealth bombers dropping “smart” bombs, and F/A-18 Hornets carrying anti-radar missiles. These latter homed-in on radar antennas, destroying them. This completed the destruction of Iraq’s radar system, thereby degrading their air capability. It further blinded Iraq from observing and responding to Coalition activities. Bombing continued using television-guided and laser-guided missiles.

At the time, Iraq’s air force was the sixth largest in the world. This changed due to three factors: first, aerial combat in which 36 Iraqi aircraft were downed; second, destruction of 254 aircraft while on the ground (either in standard or underground hangers); and finally, relocation of military assets into Iran.

It was originally thought that this movement of aircraft was a result of pilot desertion, but it was later proven that this was Saddam’s attempt at preserving Iraqi air power. This was confirmed from documents captured during the occupation of Iraq following the 2003 invasion². The US did not capture all the documents, however – some fell into the hands of Iran or Iranian-backed groups; these documents included the names of Iraqi pilots from the Iraq-Iran War, and those pilots were targeted for execution³.

Commercial aircraft were moved into Iran as well. Iraq’s deal with Iran for sheltering aircraft covered only civilian and transport aircraft, so it came as a surprise that Iraqi military aircraft were crossing into Iranian airspace.

When questioned over this, Iranian officials promised to keep Saddam’s aircraft until the conclusion of the Gulf War. Many of the aircraft would be incorporated into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Aviation Division and would never be returned⁴.

The Ground Operation

Following the destruction of Iraq’s radar and communication facilities, their command-and-control ability was thereby lost. This included Iraq’s logistic capabilities, leaving their ground forces in and around Kuwait unsupported. The ground operation began on 24 February 1991 when Marines began heading towards Kuwait City. Within the first 24 hours of the ground operation, 10,000 Iraqi troops surrendered (by end of operation, a total of 50,000 prisoners were taken). The large number of surrenders were caused by the incessant bombing operations of the Coalition forces, the inability of Iraqi ground troops to communicate with their commanders, and the shear lack of logistical support.

The opening hours of the land operation would also see the creation of a forward operating base (FOB Cobra) deep within Iraq territory. FOB Cobra would serve as a staging base for the tank war that followed.

Approximately 1,900 tanks, mostly M1A1 Abrams were brought in to battle Soviet-built T-72s, manned by Republican Guard members. Coalition forces destroyed over 3,300 of these tanks through air and ground attacks in what were some of the largest tank battles in American history. At least 100 tanks were destroyed by AH-64 “tank-killer” helicopters, which challenged the prevailing belief that the best weapon against a tank was another tank.

Iraq withdrew from Kuwait almost immediately, but not before setting fire to 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, some of which they surrounded by mines.

All Coalition military operations were halted 100 hours after the start, but under four conditions: all Iraqi military operations must stop, including Scud missile attacks; all Coalition military prisoners and Kuwaiti civilian hostages must be immediately released; Iraq would comply with all relevant UN resolutions; and the Iraqi army must assist in locating and removing all land and sea mines.

On 27 February Saddam surrendered, and on 3 March 1991 Iraq signed the official cease fire agreement.

Consequences – Interpretation by American Analysts

Taken together, the air and land operations achieved the war’s strategic goals: it removed the Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait, it degraded Iraq’s military so that it could no longer attack Saudi Arabia and Israel, but it didn’t degrade them to the point where they were unable to defend themselves against Iran.

Operation Desert Storm has been described as an “effects-based operation” (EBO) in that the purpose was to neutralize the enemy without necessarily destroying their forces. While this is true at face value, EBO was reformulated as a “software approach to warfare” when it was systemized by the United States Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). This introduced considerable baggage: computer-modeling software, operational net assessment, and system-of-system analysis.

The EBO doctrine was criticized by Lt. General Paul Van Riper and General James Mattis⁵ because operational control moved from commanders to staff; it entailed centralized decision-making along with consequent micromanagement; and that the doctrine gave the illusion of complete knowledge of the enemy’s present and future states. Finally, it overemphasized the importance of air power and minimized the usefulness of ground forces.

The EBO interpretation of the Gulf War was rejected, as was the entire concept of effects-based operations.

The “naïve” formulation of EBO was retained, however, and is now called “effects-based approach to operations” (EBAO) in Air Force doctrine⁶. EBAO is no longer a strategy but instead a “way of thinking.” While annihilation and attrition are still viable options, “the ultimate aim in war is not just to overthrow the enemy’s military power but to compel them to do one’s will.”⁷

Interpretation by Near-Peer Competitors

The success of Operation Desert Storm was noted by our near-peer competitors. Both China and Russia realized that it was impossible for them to compete against America in conventional conflicts, so they began considering alternative means of warfare.

Russia pursued what Kilcullen called “liminal warfare”⁸ which involves covert actions operating below the threshold which a military response would be warranted… until it was too late. It is a refined version of gray zone warfare. A good example of this strategy was the Russian take-over of Crimea⁹: Russians created and supported sympathetic unions and political parties; Cossacks and Serbian paramilitary groups were imported, which appeared to destabilize the region. Russia responded with “relief columns” in response to this “humanitarian crisis,” but the true goal was to support pro-Russian forces already inside the country. By the time the true purpose of Russia’s “relief” became clear, a military response from NATO was not possible because there apparently was no military invasion.

For China, the new warfare was called “unrestricted warfare” (UW) which consists of cultural, economic and political moves as forms of warfare¹⁰, either applied individually or in combination. UW is founded on the belief that “everything that can benefit mankind can also harm him.”¹¹ Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, the authors of Unrestricted Warfare, the text that gave us the name UW, state that “the best way to achieve victory is to control, not to kill.”¹² The similarity of goals with the Air Force’s conception of EBAO is striking.

The clearest example of UW in action is the Belt and Road Initiative, in which China loans money to a host country to build infrastructure in that host country. These loans included predatory interest rates and backed by unconvertible Chinese currency. The actual construction requires that only Chinese labor be used so no local jobs were created. If the country defaults on the loan, ownership of the new infrastructure goes to China; if the host country does not default, the country must repay the loan to China. Either way the host country becomes a vassal state.

The direct correlation between the results of the Gulf War and unrestricted warfare is explicit: the text Unlimited Warfare has an entire chapter describing the Gulf War and the lessons Americans learned and what we did not learn. The connection between the Gulf War and liminal warfare is not so clear, though the ease at which American M1A1 Abrams tanks destroyed Soviet-made T-72 tanks surely made an impression on the Russians.

Both liminal warfare and unrestricted warfare build upon elements of past techniques. Liminal war is similar to Soviet attempts to undermine Western institutions, and unrestricted warfare – in particular the Belt and Road Initiative – is like the tributary system practiced by the Chinese during their dynastic era. Much as the tactics used by the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae served as the foundation for future battles, these historical precedents underly Russia’s and China’s new approaches to warfare.

Conclusion

The Gulf War left Saddam Hussein in place – regime change was not part of the UN mandates and it was expected that he would be toppled by internal rebellions. Insurgencies by Kurdish and Shiite groups within Iraq lead to crackdowns by Saddam, and in response, US and British forces established two no-fly zones: one in the north to protect the Kurds and one in the south to protect Shiite Muslims. These no-fly zones would remain in place until the 2003 Iraq War.

Something else that remained in place were the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the US and the UN. Because they were still in effect at the time of the later invasions, those sanctions could not be used to pressure Saddam to leave office.

The Gulf War became the model of conventional warfare due to its success, speed of execution, and relatively small number of Coalition casualties. It was a “textbook” war, but that textbook was studied by Russia and China. In response, they devised their own counterstrategies: liminal warfare and unrestricted warfare, respectively. If these are the future forms of warfare, then what counts as “conventional warfare” must be updated.

Footnotes

1. Snow & Drew, From Lexington to Baghdad and Beyond: War and Politics in the American Experience.
2. Michael Brill, “Remembering Desert Storm and the Gulf War(s) Odyssey of Iraq’s Air Force, Part 1”
3. Ibid.
4. Michael Brill, “Remembering Desert Storm and the Gulf War(s) Odyssey of Iraq’s Air Force, Part 2”
5. James Mattis, “USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-based Operations.”
6. John T. Correll, “The Assault on EBO.”
7. U.S. Air Force, AFDP 3-0 Operations and Planning, p. 19.
8. David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West.
9. Robert Leonhard, Little Green Men: A Primer on Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine 2013-14.
10. Dean Cheng, “Chinese Lessons from the Gulf War.”
11. Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare.
12. Ibid.

 

Bibliography

U.S. Air Force, AFDP 3-0 Operations and Planning, 4 November 2016. Retrieved 23 November 2024 from https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/AFDP_3-0/3-0-AFDP-OPERATIONS-PLANNING.pdf

Brill, M. “Remembering Desert Storm and the Gulf War(s) Odyssey of Iraq’s Air Force, Part 1” Wilson Center Sources and Methods. 14 January 2021. Retrieved 22 May 2024 from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/remembering-desert-storm-and-gulf-wars-odyssey-iraqs-air-force-part-1

Brill, M. “Remembering Desert Storm and the Gulf War(s) Odyssey of Iraq’s Air Force, Part 2” Wilson Center Sources and Methods. 15 January 2021. Retrieved 22 May 2024 from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/remembering-desert-storm-and-gulf-wars-odyssey-iraqs-air-force-part-2

Cheng, D. “Chinese Lessons from the Gulf War.” November 2011. Retrieved 22 May 2024 from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep11966.8.pdf

Correll, J. “The Assault on EBO” Air Force Magazine, January 2013. Retrieved 23 May 2024 from https://www.airandspaceforces.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/2013/January%202013/0113EBO.pdf

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

Leonhard, R. Little Green Men: A Primer on Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine 2013-14. United States Army Special Operations Command, 2015. Retrieved 21 May 2024 from https://www.jhuapl.edu/sites/default/files/2022-12/ARIS_LittleGreenMen.pdf

Mattis, J. “USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-based Operations.” Parameters 38, no. 3 (2008), doi:10.55540/0031-1723.2437. Retrieved 23 May 2024 from https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2437&context=parameters

Qiao L. & Wang X. Unrestricted Warfare. PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, Beijing, 1999.

Snow, D. & Drew, D. From Lexington to Baghdad and Beyond: War and Politics in the American Experience. Routledge, 2009.

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

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

Baughman, J. “’Unrestricted Warfare’ is Not China’s Master Plan.” China Aerospace Studies Institute, 25 April 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2024 from https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Research/CASI%20Articles/2022-04-25%20Unrestricted%20Warfare%20is%20not%20China's%20master%20plan.pdf

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. Retrieved 8 May 2024 from https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf

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

Chase, S. “Marketing Violence: A Closer Look at the “Diversity of Tactics” Slogan.” Minds of the Movement Blog, 2017. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/blog_post/marketing-violence-closer-look-diversity-tactics-slogan/

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 & Liang. Unrestricted Warfare. Shadow Lawn Press, 1999. Retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf