“Unrestricted Warfare”
Posted Jul 06, 2007
...a theory would accept that adversaries will wage -- are waging even as you read this -- neocortical warfare against us. (That China is quiet, for example, may not mean that we are not engaged in a conflict with China.)
Have you ever heard of "Unrestricted Warfare"? It's quite a spicy meatball. It's a document by two Chinese soldiers, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. NEEDLESS TO SAY, it was not originally subtitled "China's Master Plan to Destroy America", and considering it was released in 1999, that cover photo did not exist. I'm not suggesting that China was behind 9-11 (in fact, I'm not suggesting anything about 9-11, ever) -- but there's a number of people who sincerely believe that. It's an absurd theory, but exploring it leads to some fascinating data points, if you're so inclined. Most of the focus on this document is for all the wrong reasons -- the actual contents of the book are not a "master plan" for anything. However, it is some of the best writing on the nature and future of warfare I've found. Dig:
"New weapons concepts are completely different from new concept weapons. New weapons concepts is a broad conception of weapons that transcends the military field- whatever method can be used to fight a war is a weapon. In this view, whatever provides benefits to mankind can also be turned around to be a weapon to harm mankind. [...] To our way of thinking, a planned stock market crash, a computer virus attack, making the currency exchange rate of an enemy country erratic, and spreading rumors on the Internet about the leaders of an enemy country can all be thought of as new concept weapons. This new way of thinking puts weapons into the daily lives of civilians. New concept weapons can make of war something that even military professionals will find hard to imagine. Both soldiers and civilians will be disturbed to see items in their everyday lives become weapons that can attack and kill."
One more excerpt before we move along -- this whole document will be unpacked in detail later on when we take a look at China (or you could, like, actually read it...here's Unrestricted Warfare in it's English-translated entirety right here, courtesy of Brainsturbator Library.)
"War in the age of technological integration and globalization has eliminated the right of weapons to label war and, with regard to the new starting point, has realigned the relationship of weapons to war, while the appearance of weapons of new concepts, and particularly new concepts of weapons, has gradually blurred the face of war. Does a single "hacker" attack count as a hostile act or not? Can using financial instruments to destroy a country's economy be seen as a battle? Did CNN's broadcast of an exposed corpse of a U.S. soldier in the streets of Mogadishu shake the determination of the Americans to act as the world's policeman, thereby altering the world's strategic situation? And should an assessment of wartime actions look at the means or the results? Obviously, proceeding with the traditional definition of war in mind, there is no longer any way to answer the above questions. When we suddenly realize that all these non-war actions may be the new factors constituting future warfare, we have to come up with a new name for this new form of war: Warfare which transcends all boundaries and limits, in short: unrestricted warfare."
Can't help but be reminded of the McLuhan quote from earlier in the week:
"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America -- not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
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Filed in: Geopolitics
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