Prof. Kerry K. Gershaneck and Eric Chan
Political warfare is the art of achieving strategic objectives through influence, subversion, and coercion. George Kennan, in a 1948 policy memorandum for the US Department of State, defined it as “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.”1 His warning was aimed at Soviet operations, which he called “the most refined and effective of any in history.” But even as Kennan wrote this memo, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was proving that his definition was incomplete. The Party secured victory in the Chinese Civil War through battlefield successes empowered by political warfare, including the use of ideological subversion, propaganda, and coercion.2
With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the subsequent dismantling of America’s own political warfare capabilities, Beijing has refined and expanded its political warfare strategies and tactics, securing strategic gains with little resistance. The militarization of the South China Sea is a textbook case. Declaring sovereignty over vast swaths of international waters, constructing artificial islands, and turning them into forward military bases—all accomplished without provoking a meaningful global response.3 Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Wallace C. Gregson described it as “a feckless global response,” a verdict reinforced when the Obama administration failed to act after Xi Jinping publicly reneged on his 2015 pledge not to militarize the region.4 Beijing’s island-building campaign sent an unmistakable message: the United States was unwilling to confront the PRC in the South China Sea. The artificial islands, now fortified military outposts, serve a dual purpose: complicating US and allied access to the region while advancing the CCP’s broader objective of pushing the United States out of the Western Pacific.
No comments:
Post a Comment