China Laughs at the US Approach to Irregular Warfare!

Small Wars Journal | Russell D. Howard

China is executing an orchestrated, multi-domain irregular warfare campaign against the United States homeland and its partners to achieve strategic victory without conventional military conflict. This offensive spans twelve distinct fronts, including algorithmic cognitive warfare, critical infrastructure cyber pre-positioning by Volt Typhoon, and maritime militia swarming in the South China Sea.

These contemporary operations stem from deep-seated historical doctrines dating back to Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong, which reject Western binaries between peace and conflict by treating civil society as an extension of martial force. By weaponizing critical mineral supply chains, siphoning dual-use academic research, and deploying transnational lawfare through illicit overseas police stations, Beijing systematically erodes American societal cohesion and industrial capacity. To counter this comprehensive threat, Washington must immediately transition from passive semantic debates over definitions to an active, cost-imposing posture of public attribution and aggressive, multi-domain asymmetric retaliation before its strategic advantages are permanently lost.

Comment

New Delhi faces the immediate brunt of this multi-domain doctrine. The weaponisation of upstream hydrology on the Brahmaputra River via the Zangmu dam directly threatens the ecological security of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Concurrently, Beijing's acquisition of dual-use ports at Hambantota and Gwadar operationalises a maritime encirclement strategy under the guise of commercial development. Indian national security planners must establish proactive asymmetric countermeasures rather than relying solely on conventional military deterrence along the Line of Actual Control.

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