What are some of these 20-year-old methods mentioned?
Trade War – “Some of the means used include: the use of domestic trade law on the international stage; the arbitrary erection and dismantling of tariff barriers; the use of hastily written trade sanctions; the imposition of embargoes on exports of critical technologies; the use of the Special Section 301 law; and the application of most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment, etc., etc. Anyone of these means can have a destructive effect that is equal to that of a military operation.”
Notice that the authors mention trade wars,
which are taking place today between China and the U.S. A “trade war” became a necessity if one wanted to claw back the jobs sent to China decades ago since China would not let them go back willingly. It also points out how removing tariffs and “Most-Favored-Nation” trade status used as weapons.
Financial War – What is more, such a defeat on the economic front precipitates a near-collapse of the social and political order. The casualties resulting from the constant chaos are no less than those resulting from a regional war, and the injury done to the living social organism even exceeds the injury inflicted by a regional war.
Many have suggested
that WWIII would be an economic one. China was clearly paying attention to the Western tactics used worldwide then (and currently still being used) to destroy sovereign governments who refused to follow Washington’s dictates. Today’s China has been hard at work with the same tactics, creating its version of the book’s foundations.
Terrorism – Due to the limited scale of a traditional terror war, its casualties might well be fewer than the casualties resulting from a conventional war or campaign. Nevertheless, a traditional terror war carries a stronger flavor of violence. Moreover, in terms of its operations, a traditional terror war is never bound by any of the traditional rules of the society at large. From a military standpoint, then, the traditional terror war is characterized by the use of limited resources to fight an unlimited war.
This characteristic invariably puts national forces in an extremely unfavorable position even before War breaks out, since national forces must always conduct themselves according to certain rules and therefore are only able to use their unlimited resources to fight a limited war.
Many terrorist organizations and attacks, such as the simultaneous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are mentioned in this portion of the book. Also mentioned are terrorists using new high technologies combined with their other methods. The authors even said these new technologies would evolve into superweapons.
Terrorism and urban warfare described in these paragraphs may have seemed impossible to create on a massive scale in the United States before and even after 9/11. However, decades of economic decay, destruction of the family unit, degradation of the education system, mainstream media, and social media outlets have combined to create the perfect storm for violence. One need only look as far as t
he recent battles in most major American cities’ streets to see that such urban warfare and abject chaos are beginning to take hold in the United States.
Ecological War – Ecological War refers to a new type of non-military warfare in which modern technology is employed to influence the natural state of rivers, oceans, the crust of the earth, the polar ice sheets, the air circulating in the atmosphere, and the ozone layer. By methods such as causing earthquakes and altering precipitation patterns, the atmospheric temperature, the composition of the atmosphere, sea level height, and sunshine patterns, the earth’s physical environment is damaged or an alternate local ecology is created. Perhaps before very long, a man-made El Nino or La Nina effect will become yet another kind of superweapon in the hands of certain nations and/or non-state organizations.
This one is interesting. The Chinese military knows and is willing to speak openly about a human-made superweapon used to damage the earth. Meanwhile, Western governments continue to claim this is “conspiracy theory” nearly twenty years on.
Are there any other tactics mentioned?
- Psychological War – “Spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will” (Example)
- Smuggling War – “Throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order”
- Media War – “Manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along” (Example)
- Drug War – “obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries”
- Network War – “Venturing out in secret and concealing ones identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against” (Example)
- Technological War – “creating monopolies by setting standards independently”
- Fabrication War – “presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy”
- Resources War – “grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources”
- Economic Aid War – “bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret”
- Cultural War – “leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views” (Example)
- International Law War – “seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations”