Unrestricted Warfare -- Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui -- Chapter 2: The War God's Face Has Become Indistinct

Unrestricted Warfare

Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui

Chapter 2: The War God's Face Has Become Indistinct

[pp. 34-59 in original]

"Throughout the Entire Course of History, Warfare is Always Changing." --Andre Beaufre

Ever since early man went from hunting animals to slaughtering his own kind, people have been equipping the giant war beast for action, and the desire to attain various goals has prompted soldiers to become locked in bloody conflict. It has become universally accepted that warfare is a matter for soldiers. For several thousand years, the three indispensable "hardware" elements of any war have been soldiers, weapons and a battlefield. Running through them all has been the "software" element of warfare: its purposefulness. Before now, nobody has ever questioned that these are the basic elements of warfare. The problem comes when people discover that all of these basic elements, which seemingly were hard and fast, have changed so that it is impossible to get a firm grip on them. When that day comes, is the war god's face still distinct?

Why Fight and for Whom?

In regard to the ancient Greeks, if the account in Homer's epic is really trustworthy, the purpose of the Trojan War was clear and simple: it was worth fighting a ten-year war for the beautiful Helen. As far as their aims, the wars prosecuted by our ancestors were relatively simple in terms of the goals to be achieved, with no complexity to speak of. This was because our ancestors had limited horizons, their spheres of activity were narrow, they had modest requirements for existence, and their weapons were not lethal enough. Only if something could not be obtained by normal means would our ancestors generally resort to extraordinary measures to obtain it, and then without the least hesitation. Just so, Clausewitz wrote his famous saying, which has been an article of faith for several generations of soldiers and statesmen: "War is a continuation of politics." Our ancestors would fight perhaps for the orthodox status of a religious sect, or perhaps for an expanse of pastureland with plenty of water and lush grass. They would not even have scruples about going to war over, say, spices, liquor or a love affair between a king and queen. The stories of wars over spices and sweethearts, and rebellions over things like rum, are recorded in the pages of history--stories that leave us not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Then there is the war that the English launched against the Qing monarchy for the sake of the opium trade. This was national drug trafficking activity on probably the grandest scale in recorded history. It is clear from these examples that, prior to recent times, there was just one kind of warfare in terms of the kind of motive and the kind of subsequent actions taken. Moving to later times, Hitler expounded his slogan of "obtaining living space for the German people," and the Japanese expounded their slogan of building the so called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." While a cursory look at these slogans would suggest that the goals must have been somewhat more complex than the goals of any previous wars, nevertheless the substance behind the slogans was simply that the new great powers intended to once again carve up the spheres of influence of the old great powers and to reap the benefits of seizing their colonies.  

To assess why people fight is not so easy today, however. In former times, the ideal of "exporting revolution" and the slogan of "checking the expansion of communism" were calls to action that elicited countless responses. But especially after the conclusion of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain running all along the divide between the two great camps suddenly collapsed, these calls have lost their effectiveness. The times of clearly drawn sides are over.

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? These used to be the paramount questions in regard to revolution and counterrevolution. Suddenly the answers have become complicated, confusing and hard to get hold of. A country that yesterday was an adversary is in the process of becoming a current partner today, while a country that once was an ally will perhaps be met on the battlefield at the next outbreak of war. Iraq, which one year was still fiercely attacking Iran on behalf of the U.S. in the Iran-Iraq War, itself became the target of a fierce attack by the U.S. military in the next year (see Endnote 1). An Afghan guerilla trained by the CIA becomes the latest target for an attack by U.S. cruise missiles overnight. Furthermore, NATO members Greece and Turkey have nearly come to blows several times in their dispute over Cyprus, and Japan and South Korea, who have concluded a treaty of alliance, have come just short of an open break as a result of their dispute over a tiny island. All of this serves to again confirm that old saying: "all friendship is in flux; self-interest is the only constant." The kaleidoscope of war is turned by the hands of self-interest, presenting constantly shifting images to the observer.

Astonishing advances in modern advanced technology serve to promote globalization, further intensifying the uncertainty associated with the dissolution of some perceived self-interests and the emergence of others. The reason for starting a war can be anything from a dispute over territory and resources, a dispute over religious beliefs, hatred stemming from tribal differences, or a dispute over ideology, to a dispute over market share, a dispute over the distribution of power and authority, a dispute over trade sanctions, or a dispute stemming from financial unrest.

The goals of warfare have become blurred due to the pursuit of a variety of agendas. Thus, it is more and more difficult for people to say clearly just why they are fighting (see Endnote 2). Every young lad that participated in the Gulf War will tell you right up front that he fought to restore justice in tiny, weak Kuwait. However, the real reason for the war was perhaps far different from the high-sounding reason that was given. Hiding under the umbrella furnished by this high-sounding reason, they need not fear facing the light directly. In reality, every country that participated in the Gulf War decided to join "Desert Storm" only after carefully thinking over its own intentions and goals. Throughout the whole course of the war, all of the Western powers were fighting for their oil lifeline. To this primary goal, the Americans added the aspiration of building a new world order with "USA" stamped on it. Perhaps there was also a bit of missionary zeal to uphold justice. In order to eliminate a threat that was close at hand, the Saudi Arabians were willing to smash Muslim taboos and "dance with wolves." From start to finish, the British reacted enthusiastically to President Bush's every move, in order to repay Uncle Sam for the trouble he took on their behalf in the Malvinas Islands War. The French, in order to prevent the complete evaporation of their traditional influence in the Middle East, finally sent troops to the Gulf at the last moment. Naturally, there is no way that a war prosecuted under these kinds of conditions can be a contest fought over a single objective. The aggregate of the self-interests of all the numerous countries participating in the war serves to transform a modern war like "Desert Storm" into a race to further various self-interests under the banner of a common interest. Thus, so-called "common interest" has become merely the war equation's largest common denominator that can be accepted by every allied party participating in the war effort. Since different countries will certainly be pursuing different agendas in a war, it is necessary to take the self-interest of every allied party into consideration if the war is to be prosecuted jointly. Even if we consider a given country's domestic situation, each of the various domestic interest groups will also be pursuing its own agenda in a war. The complex interrelationships among self-interests make it impossible to pigeonhole the Gulf War as having been fought for oil, or as having been fought for the new world order, or as having been fought to drive out the invaders. Only a handful of soldiers are likely to grasp a principle that every statesman already knows: that the biggest difference between contemporary wars and the wars of the past is that, in contemporary wars, the overt goal and the covert goal are often two different matters.

Where to Fight?

"To the battlefield!" The young lad with a pack on his back takes leave of his family as his daughters and other relatives see him off with tears in their eyes. This is a classic scene in war movies. Whether the young lad is leaving on a horse, a train, a steamship or a plane is not so important. The important thing is that the destination never changes: it is the battlefield bathed in the flames of war.

During the long period of time before firearms, battlefields were small and compact. A face-off at close quarters between two armies might unfold on a small expanse of level ground, in a mountain pass, or within the confines of a city. In the eyes of today's soldier, the battlefield that so enraptured the ancients is a "point" target on the military map that is not particularly noteworthy. Such a battlefield is fundamentally incapable of accommodating the spectacle of war as it has unfolded in recent times on such a grand scale. The advent of firearms led to dispersed formations, and the "point" ["dian" 7820] type battlefield was gradually drawn out into a line of skirmishers. The trench warfare of the First World War, with lines extending hundreds of miles, served to bring the "point" and "line" ["xian" 4775] type battlefield to its acme. At the same time, it transformed the battlefield into an "area" ["mian" 7240] type battlefield which was several dozens of miles deep. For those who went to war during those times, the new battlefield meant trenches, pillboxes, wire entanglements, machine guns and shell craters. They called war on this type of battlefield, where heavy casualties were inflicted, a "slaughterhouse" and a "meat grinder." The explosive development of military technology is constantly setting the stage for further explosive expansion of the battlespace. The transition from the "point" type battlefield to the "line" type battlefield, and the transition from the two-dimensional battlefield to the three- dimensional battlefield did not take as long as people generally think. One could say that, in each case, the latter stage came virtually on the heels of the former. When tanks began roaring over military trenches, prop airplanes were already equipped with machine guns and it was already possible to drop bombs from zeppelins. The development of weapons cannot, in and of itself, automatically usher in changes in the nature of the battlefield. In the history of warfare, any significant advance has always depended in part on active innovating by military strategists. The battlefield, which had been earthbound for several thousand years, was suddenly lifted into three dimensional space. This was due in part to General J.F.C. Fuller's Tanks in the Great War of 1914-1918 and Giulio Douhet's The Command of the Air, as well as the extremely deep operations that were proposed and demonstrated under the command of Marshall Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky. Erich Ludendorff was another individual who attempted to radically change the nature of the battlefield. He put forth the theory of "total war" and tried to combine battlefield and non-battlefield elements into one organic whole. While he was not successful, he nevertheless was the harbinger of similar military thought that has outlived him for more than half a century. Ludendorff was destined only to fight at battlefields like Verdun and the Masurian Lakes. A soldier's fate is determined by the era in which he lives. At that time, the wingspan of the war god could not extend any farther than the range of a Krupp artillery piece. Naturally, then, it was impossible to fire a shell that would pass through the front and rear areas on its parabolic path. Hitler was more fortunate than Ludendorff. 20 years later, he had long range weapons at his disposal. He utilized bombers powered by Mercedes engines and V-1 and V-2 guided missiles and broke the British Isles' record of never having been encroached upon by an invader. Hitler, who was neither a strategist nor a tactician, relied on his intuition and made the line of demarcation between the front and rear less prominent in the war, but he never really understood the revolutionary significance of breaking through the partition separating battlefield elements from non-battlefield elements. Perhaps this concept was beyond the ken of an out-and- out war maniac and half-baked military strategist.

This revolution, however, will be upon us in full force soon enough. This time, technology is again running ahead of the military thinking. While no military thinker has yet put forth an extremely wide-ranging concept of the battlefield, technology is doing its utmost to extend the contemporary battlefield to a degree that is virtually infinite: there are satellites in space, there are submarines under the water, there are ballistic missiles that can reach anyplace on the globe, and electronic countermeasures are even now being carried out in the invisible electromagnetic spectrum space. Even the last refuge of the human race--the inner world of the heart--cannot avoid the attacks of psychological warfare. There are nets above and snares below, so that a person has no place to flee. All of the prevailing concepts about the breadth, depth and height of the operational space already appear to be old-fashioned and obsolete. In the wake of the expansion of mankind's imaginative powers and his ability to master technology, the battlespace is being stretched to its limits.

In 1985, China implemented a "Massive Million Troop Drawdown" in its armed forces. With this as a prelude, every major nation in the world carried out round after round of force reductions over the next dozen or so years. According to many commentators on military affairs, the main factor behind the general worldwide force reductions is that, with the conclusion of the Cold War, countries that formerly were pitted against each other are now anxious to enjoy the peace dividend. Little do these commentators realize that this factor is just the tip of the iceberg.

The factors leading to armed forces reductions are by no means limited to this point. A deeper reason for the force reductions is that, as the wave of information technology (IT) warfare ["xinxihua zhanzheng" 0207 1873 0553 2069 3630] grows and grows, it would require too much of an effort and would be too grandiose to set up a large-scale professional military, cast and formed on the assembly lines of big industry and established according to the demands of mechanized warfare. Precisely for this reason, during these force reductions, some farsighted countries, rather than primarily having personnel cuts in mind, are instead putting more emphasis on raising the quality of military personnel, increasing the amount of high technology and mid- level technology in weaponry, and updating military thought and warfighting theory [see Endnote 4]. The era of "strong and brave soldiers who are heroic defenders of the nation" has already passed. In a world where even "nuclear warfare" will perhaps become obsolete military jargon, it is likely that a pasty-faced scholar wearing thick eyeglasses is better suited to be a modern soldier than is a strong young lowbrow with bulging biceps. The best evidence of this is perhaps a story that is circulating in Western military circles regarding a lieutenant who used a modem to bring a naval division to its knees [see Endnote 5]. The contrast between today's soldiers and the soldiers of earlier generations is as plain to see as the contrast which we have already noted between modern weapons and their precursors. This is because modern soldiers have gone through the severe test of an uninterrupted technological explosion throughout the entire 100 years of the twentieth century, and perhaps also because of the salutary influence of the worldwide pop culture; viz., rock and roll, discos, the World Cup, the NBA and Hollywood, etc., etc. The contrast is stark whether we are talking about physical ability or intellectual ability.

Even though the new generation of soldiers born in the 70's and 80's has been trained using the "beast barracks" style of training, popularized by West Point Military Academy, it is difficult for them to shed their gentle and frail natures rooted in the soil of contemporary society. In addition, modern weapons systems have made it possible for them to be far removed from any conventional battlefield, and they can attack the enemy from a place beyond his range of vision where they need not come face to face with the dripping blood that comes with killing. All of this has turned each and every soldier into a self-effacing gentleman who would just as soon avoid the sight of blood. The digital fighter is taking over the role formerly played by the "blood and iron" warrior--a role that, for thousands of years, has not been challenged.

Now that it has come on the stage of action and has rendered obsolete the traditional divisions of labor prevailing in a society characterized by big industry, warfare no longer is an exclusive imperial garden where professional soldiers alone can mingle. A tendency towards civilianization has begun to become evident [see Endnote 6]. Mao Zedong's theory concerning "every citizen a soldier" has certainly not been in any way responsible for this tendency. The current trend does not demand extensive mobilization of the people. Quite the contrary, it merely indicates that a technological elite among the citizenry have broken down the door and barged in uninvited, making it impossible for professional soldiers with their concepts of professionalized warfare to ignore challenges that are somewhat embarrassing. Who is most likely to become the leading protagonist on the terra incognita of the next war? The first challenger to have appeared, and the most famous, is the computer "hacker." This chap, who generally has not received any military training or been engaged in any military profession, can easily impair the security of an army or a nation in a major way by simply relying on his personal technical expertise.

A classic example is given in the U.S. FM100-6 Information Operations regulations. In 1994, a computer hacker in England attacked the U.S. military's Rome Air Development Center in New York State, compromising the security of 30 systems. He also hacked into more than 100 other systems. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and NASA suffered damage, among others. What astounded people was not only the scale of those affected by the attack and the magnitude of the damage, but also the fact that the hacker was actually a teenager who was merely 16 years old. Naturally, an intrusion by a teenager playing a game cannot be regarded as an act of war. The problem is, how does one know for certain which damage is the result of games and which damage is the result of warfare? Which acts are individual acts by citizens and which acts represent hostile actions by non-professional warriors, or perhaps even organized hacker warfare launched by a state? In 1994, there were 230,000 security-related intrusions into U.S. DOD networks. How many of these were organized destructive acts by non-professional warriors? Perhaps there will never be any way of knowing [see Endnote 7].

Just as there are all kinds of people in society, so hackers come in all shapes and colors. All types of hackers, with varying backgrounds and values, are hiding in the camouflage provided by networks: curious middle school students; on-line gold diggers; corporate staff members nursing a grudge; dyed-in-the-wool network terrorists; and network mercenaries. In their ideas and in their actions, these kinds of people are poles apart from each other, but they gather together in the same network world. They go about their business in accordance with their own distinctive value judgments and their own ideas of what makes sense, while some are simply confused and aimless. For these reasons, whether they are doing good or doing ill, they do not feel bound by the rules of the game that prevail in the society at large. Using computers, they may obtain information by hook or by crook from other people's accounts. They may delete someone else's precious data, that was obtained with such difficulty, as a practical joke. Or, like the legendary lone knight-errant, they may use their outstanding on-line technical skills to take on the evil powers that be. The Suharto government imposed a strict blockade on news about the organized aggressive actions against the ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia. The aggressive actions were first made public on the Internet by witnesses with a sense of justice. As a result, the whole world was utterly shocked and the Indonesian government and military were pushed before the bar of morality and justice. Prior to this, another group of hackers calling themselves "Milworm" put on another fine performance on the Internet. In order to protest India's nuclear tests, they penetrated the firewall of the network belonging to India's [Bhabha] Atomic Research Center (BARC), altered the home page, and downloaded 5 MB of data. These hackers could actually be considered polite. They went only to a certain point and no further, and did not give their adversary too much trouble. Aside from the direct results of this kind of action, it also has a great deal of symbolic significance: in the information age, the influence exerted by a nuclear bomb is perhaps less than the influence exerted by a hacker.

More murderous than hackers--and more of a threat in the real world--are the non-state organizations, whose very mention causes the Western world to shake in its boots. These organizations, which all have a certain military flavor to a greater or lesser degree, are generally driven by some extreme creed or cause, such as: the Islamic organizations pursuing a holy war; the Caucasian militias in the U.S.; the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult; and, most recently, terrorist groups like Osama bin Ladin's, which blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The various and sundry monstrous and virtually insane destructive acts by these kinds of groups are undoubtedly more likely to be the new breeding ground for contemporary wars than is the behavior of the lone ranger hacker. Moreover, when a nation state or national armed force, (which adheres to certain rules and will only use limited force to obtain a limited goal), faces off with one of these types of organizations, (which never observe any rules and which are not afraid to fight an unlimited war using unlimited means), it will often prove very difficult for the nation state or national armed force to gain the upper hand.

During the 1990's, and concurrent with the series of military actions launched by non-professional warriors and non-state organizations, we began to get an inkling of a non-military type of war which is prosecuted by yet another type of non-professional warrior. This person is not a hacker in the general sense of the term, and also is not a member of a quasi-military organization. Perhaps he or she is a systems analyst or a software engineer, or a financier with a large amount of mobile capital or a stock speculator. He or she might even perhaps be a media mogul who controls a wide variety of media, a famous columnist or the host of a TV program. His or her philosophy of life is different from that of certain blind and inhuman terrorists. Frequently, he or she has a firmly held philosophy of life and his or her faith is by no means inferior to Osama bin Ladin's in terms of its fanaticism. Moreover, he or she does not lack the motivation or courage to enter a fight as necessary. Judging by this kind of standard, who can say that George Soros is not a financial terrorist?

Precisely in the same way that modern technology is changing weapons and the battlefield, it is also at the same time blurring the concept of who the war participants are. From now on, soldiers no longer have a monopoly on war.

Global terrorist activity is one of the by-products of the globalization trend that has been ushered in by technological integration. Non-professional warriors and non-state organizations are posing a greater and greater threat to sovereign nations, making these warriors and organizations more and more serious adversaries for every professional army. Compared to these adversaries, professional armies are like gigantic dinosaurs which lack strength commensurate to their size in this new age. Their adversaries, then, are rodents with great powers of survival, which can use their sharp teeth to torment the better part of the world.

What Means and Methods Are Used to Fight?

There's no getting around the opinions of the Americans when it comes to discussing what means and methods will be used to fight future wars. This is not simply because the U.S. is the latest lord of the mountain in the world. It is more because the opinions of the Americans on this question really are superior compared to the prevailing opinions among the military people of other nations. The Americans have summed up the four main forms that warfighting will take in the future as: 1) Information warfare; 2) Precision warfare [see Endnote 8]; 3) Joint operations [see Endnote 9]; and 4) Military operations other than war (MOOTW) [see Endnote 10]. This last sentence is a mouthful. From this sentence alone we can see the highly imaginative, and yet highly practical, approach of the Americans, and we can also gain a sound understanding of the warfare of the future as seen through the eyes of the Americans. Aside from joint operations, which evolved from traditional cooperative operations and coordinated operations, and even Air- Land operations, the other three of the four forms of warfighting can all be considered products of new military thinking. General Gordon R. Sullivan, the former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, maintained that information warfare will be the basic form of warfighting in future warfare. For this reason, he set up the best digitized force in the U.S. military, and in the world. Moreover, he proposed the concept of precision warfare, based on the perception that "there will be an overall swing towards information processing and stealthy long-range attacks as the main foundations of future warfare." For the Americans, the advent of new, high-tech weaponry, such as precision-guided weapons, the Global Positioning System (GPS), C4I systems and stealth airplanes, will possibly allow soldiers to dispense with the nightmare of attrition warfare.

Precision warfare, which has been dubbed "non-contact attack" by the Americans, and "remote combat" by the Russians [see Endnote 11], is characterized by concealment, speed, accuracy, a high degree of effectiveness, and few collateral casualties. In wars of the future, where the outcome will perhaps be decided not long after the war starts, this type of tactic, which has already showed some of its effectiveness in the Gulf War, will probably be the method of choice that will be embraced most gladly by U.S. generals. However, the phrase that really demonstrates some creative wording is not "information warfare" or "precision warfare," but rather the phrase "military operations other than war." This particular concept is clearly based on the "world's interest," which the Americans are constantly invoking, and the concept implies a rash overstepping of its authority by the U.S.--a classic case of the American attitude that "I am responsible for every place under the sun." Nevertheless, such an assessment does not by any means stifle our praise of this concept because, after all, for the first time it permits a variety of measures that are needed to deal comprehensively with the problems of the 20th and 21st centuries to be put into this MOOTW box, so that soldiers are not likely to be in the dark and at a loss in the world that lies beyond the battlefield. Thus, the somewhat inferior "thought antennae" of the soldiers will be allowed to bump up against the edges of a broader concept of war. Such needed measures include peacekeeping, efforts to suppress illicit drugs, riot suppression, military aid, arms control, disaster relief, the evacuation of Chinese nationals residing abroad, and striking at terrorist activities. Contact with this broader concept of war cannot but lessen the soldiers' attachment to the MOOTW box itself. Ultimately, they will not be able to put the brand new concept of "non-military war operations" into the box. When this occurs, it will represent an understanding that has genuine revolutionary significance in terms of mankind's perception of war.

The difference between the concepts of "non-military war operations" and "military operations other than war" is far greater than a surface reading would indicate and is by no means simply a matter of changing the order of some words in a kind of word game. The latter concept, MOOTW, may be considered simply an explicit label for missions and operations by armed forces that are carried out when there is no state of war. The former concept, "non-military war operations," extends our understanding of exactly what constitutes a state of war to each and every field of human endeavor, far beyond what can be embraced by the term "military operations." This type of extension is the natural result of the fact that human beings will use every conceivable means to achieve their goals. While it seems that the Americans are in the lead in every field of military theory, they were not able to take the lead in proposing this new concept of war. However, we cannot fail to recognize that the flood of U.S.-style pragmatism around the world, and the unlimited possibilities offered by new, high technology, were nevertheless powerful forces behind the emergence of this concept.

So, which [of many kinds of unconventional] means, which seem totally unrelated to war, will ultimately become the favored minions of this new type of war--"the non-military war operation"--which is being waged with greater and greater frequency all around the world?

Trade War: If one should note that, about a dozen years ago, "trade war" was still simply a descriptive phrase, today it has really become a tool in the hands of many countries for waging non-military warfare. It can be used with particularly great skill in the hands of the Americans, who have perfected it to a fine art. 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. Any one of these means can have a destructive effect that is equal to that of a military operation. The comprehensive eight-year embargo against Iraq that was initiated by the U.S. is the most classic textbook example in this regard.

Financial War: Now that Asians have experienced the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, no one could be more affected by "financial war" than they have been. No, they have not just been affected; they have simply been cut to the very quick! A surprise financial war attack that was deliberately planned and initiated by the owners of international mobile capital ultimately served to pin one nation after another to the ground--nations that not long ago were hailed as "little tigers" and "little dragons." Economic prosperity that once excited the constant admiration of the Western world changed to a depression, like the leaves of a tree that are blown away in a single night by the autumn wind. After just one round of fighting, the economies of a number of countries had fallen back ten years. 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. Non-state organizations, in this their first war without the use of military force, are using non-military means to engage sovereign nations. Thus, financial war is a form of non-military warfare which is just as terribly destructive as a bloody war, but in which no blood is actually shed. Financial warfare has now officially come to war's center stage--a stage that for thousands of years has been occupied only by soldiers and weapons, with blood and death everywhere. We believe that before long, "financial warfare" will undoubtedly be an entry in the various types of dictionaries of official military jargon. Moreover, when people revise the history books on twentieth-century warfare in the early 21st century, the section on financial warfare will command the reader's utmost attention [see Endnote 12]. The main protagonist in this section of the history book will not be a statesman or a military strategist; rather, it will be George Soros. Of course, Soros does not have an exclusive monopoly on using the financial weapon for fighting wars. Before Soros, Helmut Kohl used the deutsche mark to breach the Berlin Wall--a wall that no one had ever been able to knock down using artillery shells [see Endnote 13]. After Soros began his activities, Li Denghui [Li Teng-hui 2621 4098 6540] used the financial crisis in Southeast Asia to devalue the New Taiwan dollar, so as to launch an attack on the Hong Kong dollar and Hong Kong stocks, especially the "red-chip stocks." [Translator's note: "red-chip stocks" refers to stocks of companies listed on the Hong Kong stock market but controlled by mainland interests.] In addition, we have yet to mention the crowd of large and small speculators who have come en masse to this huge dinner party for money gluttons, including Morgan Stanley and Moody's, which are famous for the credit rating reports that they issue, and which point out promising targets of attack for the benefit of the big fish in the financial world [see Endnote 14]. These two companies are typical of those entities that participate indirectly in the great feast and reap the benefits.

In the summer of 1998, after the fighting in the financial war had been going on for a full year, the war's second round of battles began to unfold on an even more extensive battlefield, and this round of battles continues to this day. This time, it was not just the countries of Southeast Asia, (which had suffered such a crushing defeat during the previous year), that were drawn into the war. Two titans were also drawn in--Japan and Russia. This resulted in making the global economic situation even more grim and difficult to control. The blinding flames even set alight the fighting duds of those who ventured to play with fire in the first place. It is reported that Soros and his "Quantum Fund" lost not less than several billion dollars in Russia and Hong Kong alone [see Endnote 15]. Thus we can get at least an inkling of the magnitude of financial war's destructive power. Today, when nuclear weapons have already become frightening mantlepiece decorations that are losing their real operational value with each passing day, financial war has become a "hyperstrategic" weapon that is attracting the attention of the world. This is because financial war is easily manipulated and allows for concealed actions, and is also highly destructive. By analyzing the chaos in Albania not long ago, we can clearly see the role played by various types of foundations that were set up by transnational groups and millionaires with riches rivaling the wealth of nation states. These foundations control the media, control subsidies to political organizations, and limit any resistance from the authorities, resulting in a collapse of national order and the downfall of the legally authorized government. Perhaps we could dub this type of war "foundation-style" financial war. The greater and greater frequency and intensity of this type of war, and the fact that more and more countries and non-state organizations are deliberately using it, are causes for concern and are facts that we must face squarely.

New Terror War in Contrast to Traditional Terror War: 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. This explains how a terrorist organization made up of just a few inexperienced members who are still wet behind the ears can nevertheless give a mighty country like the U.S. headaches, and also why "using a sledgehammer to kill an ant" often proves ineffective. The most recent proof is the case of the two explosions that occurred simultaneously at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The advent of bin Ladin-style terrorism has deepened the impression that a national force, no matter how powerful, will find it difficult to gain the upper hand in a game that has no rules. Even if a country turns itself into a terrorist element, as the Americans are now in the process of doing, it will not necessarily be able to achieve success.

Be that as it may, if all terrorists confined their operations simply to the traditional approach of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, and plane hijackings, this would represent less than the maximum degree of terror. What really strikes terror into people's hearts is the rendezvous of terrorists with various types of new, high technologies that possibly will evolve into new superweapons. We already have a hint of what the future may hold--a hint that may well cause concern. When Aum Shinrikyo followers discharged "Sarin" poison gas in a Tokyo subway, the casualties resulting from the poison gas accounted for just a small portion of the terror. This affair put people on notice that modern biochemical technology had already forged a lethal weapon for those terrorists who would try to carry out the mass destruction of humanity [see Endnote 16]. In contradistinction to masked killers that rely on the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people to produce terror, the "Falange Armed Forces" [Changqiangdang Wuzhuang 7022 2847 7825 2976 5944] group in Italy is a completely different class of high-tech terrorist organization. Its goals are explicit and the means that it employs are extraordinary. It specializes in breaking into the computer networks of banks and news organizations, stealing stored data, deleting programs, and disseminating disinformation. These are classic terrorist operations directed against networks and the media. This type of terrorist operation uses the latest technology in the most current fields of study, and sets itself against humanity as a whole. We might well call this type of operation "new terror war."

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. It is more likely that a non-state organization will become the prime initiator of ecological war, because of its terrorist nature, because it feels it has no responsibility to the people or to the society at large, and because non-state organizations have consistently demonstrated that they unwilling to play by the rules of the game. Moreover, since the global ecological environment will frequently be on the borderline of catastrophe as nations strive for the most rapid development possible, there is a real danger that the slightest increase or decrease in any variable would be enough to touch off an ecological holocaust.

Aside from what we have discussed above, we can point out a number of other means and methods used to fight a non-military war, some of which already exist and some of which may exist in the future. Such means and methods include psychological warfare (spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will); smuggling warfare (throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order); media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along); drug warfare (obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries); network warfare (venturing out in secret and concealing one's identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against); technological warfare (creating monopolies by setting standards independently); fabrication warfare (presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy); resources warfare (grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources); economic aid warfare (bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret); cultural warfare (leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views); and international law warfare (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations), etc., etc In addition, there are other types of non-military warfare which are too numerous to mention. In this age, when the plethora of new technologies can in turn give rise to a plethora of new means and methods of fighting war, (not to mention the cross-combining and creative use of these means and methods), it would simply be senseless and a waste of effort to list all of the means and methods one by one. What is significant is that all of these warfighting means, along with their corresponding applications, that have entered, are entering, or will enter, the ranks of warfighting means in the service of war, have already begun to quietly change the view of warfare held by all of mankind. Faced with a nearly infinitely diverse array of options to choose from, why do people want to enmesh themselves in a web of their own making and select and use means of warfare that are limited to the realm of the force of arms and military power? Methods that are not characterized by the use of the force of arms, nor by the use of military power, nor even by the presence of casualties and bloodshed, are just as likely to facilitate the successful realization of the war's goals, if not more so. As a matter of course, this prospect has led to revision of the statement that "war is politics with bloodshed," and in turn has also led to a change in the hitherto set view that warfare prosecuted through force of arms is the ultimate means of resolving conflict. Clearly, it is precisely the diversity of the means employed that has enlarged the concept of warfare. Moreover, the enlargement of the concept of warfare has, in turn, resulted in enlargement of the realm of war-related activities. If we confine ourselves to warfare in the narrow sense on the traditional battlefield now, it will very difficult for us to regain our foothold in the future. Any war that breaks out tomorrow or further down the road will be characterized by warfare in the broad sense--a cocktail mixture of warfare prosecuted through the force of arms and warfare that is prosecuted by means other than the force of arms.

The goal of this kind of warfare will encompass more than merely "using means that involve the force of arms to force the enemy to accept one's own will." Rather, the goal should be "to use all means whatsoever--means that involve the force of arms and means that do not involve the force of arms, means that involve military power and means that do not involve military power, means that entail casualties and means that do not entail casualties--to force the enemy to serve one's own interests."

ENDNOTES

1. For more on the close relationship between Iraq and the U.S., the reader may refer to Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander, Junshi Yiwen [6511 0057 6146 2429] Publishing House, p. 212. "Iraq had established extremely close relations with the United States. Iraq had received weapons and valuable intelligence regarding Iranian movements from the U.S., as well as U.S. military support for attacks on Iran's navy."

2. An article by the then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin entitled "On the Sea Change in the Security Environment" was published in the February, 1993, issue of The Officer magazine, (published in the U.S.):

A Comparison of The New and the Old Security Environments

1. In Regard to the Geopolitical Environment OLD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT Bipolar (rigid) Predictable Communism U.S. the number one Western power Permanent alliances A paralyzed U.N.            Multipolar (complex) Uncertain Nationalism and religious extremism U.S. only the number one military power Temporary alliances A dynamic U.N. 2. In Regard to Threats Faced by the U.S. OLD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT       NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT Single (Soviet) Threat to U.S. survival Clear Deterrable Europe-centered High risk of escalation Use of strategic nuclear weapons Overt     Diverse Threat to U.S. interests Unclear Non-deterrable Other regions Little risk of escalation Terrorists using nuclear weapons Covert 3. In Regard to the Use of Military Force OLD SECURITY ENVIRONMENT NEW SECURITY ENVIRONMENT Attrition warfare War by proxy Reliance primarily on high technology Forward deployed Forward based Host nation support               Decisive attacks on key targets Direct reinforcement Integrated use of high, medium and low technology Power projection Home based Reliance on own strength

From the table above, one can see the sensitivity of the Americans to the changes in their security environment, and also the various types of forces and factors that are constraining and influencing the formation of the world's new setup since the conclusion of the Cold War.

3. "Technological space" is a new concept that we are proposing in order to distinguish this type of space from physical space.

4. According to the U.S. Department of Defense National Defense Report for fiscal year 1998, the number of U.S. military personnel has been cut by 32% since 1989. In addition, the U.S. retired a large amount of obsolete equipment, thus actually increasing combat strength to some degree even while large reductions in U.S. military personnel were being carried out. The U.S. DOD issued its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in May of 1997. The QDR emphasized "taking the future into consideration and reforming the U.S. military." It advocated continued personnel cuts and building the U.S. military in accordance with new military affairs theories. However, it also advocated comparatively greater expenditures for the purchase of equipment.

5. This story first appeared in the British Sunday Telegraph. According to this report, the U.S. military carried out a "Joint Warrior" exercise from Sep 18 until Sep 25, 1995, in order to test the security of its national defense electronics systems. During the exercise, an Air Force officer successfully hacked into the naval command system, (see The Network is King by Hu Yong [5170 3144] and Fan Haiyan [5400 3189 3601], Hainan Publishing House, pp. 258-259.) There are many similar stories, but there also are some military experts who believe that these are cases of "throwing up a confusing mist before someone's eyes."

6. In their book War and Anti-War, Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote: "If the tools of warfare are no longer tanks and artillery, but rather computer viruses and microrobots, then we can no longer say that nations are the only armed groups or that soldiers are the only ones in possession of the tools of war." In his article entitled "What the Revolution in Military Affairs is Bringing--The Form War Will Take in 2020," a Colonel in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces by the name of Shoichi Takama has noted that the civilianization of war will be an important characteristic of 21st century warfare.

7. Many hackers are adopting a new tactic which might be styled "network guerrilla warfare."

8. Precision warfare is a new form of warfighting. It came about as a result of combining increased weapons accuracy with increased battlefield transparency. (See "From Gettysburg to the Gulf and Beyond," by Colonel Richard J. Dunn III [McNair Paper 13, 1992], quoted in World Military Affairs Yearbook for 1997, [1997 Nian Shijie Junshi Nianjian], published by the PLA in Chinese, pp. 294-295.)

9. "Joint Vision 2010," a document prepared by the [Chairman of the] U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff/Joint Staff. See Joint Force Quarterly, Summer 1996.

10. See the U.S. Army's 1993 edition of Operations Essentials, [translator's note: this probably refers to FM 100-5, "Operations," Department of the Army, June, 1993]. Consult ARMY Magazine (U.S.), June, 1993.

11. After his research on the Gulf War, the Russian tactical expert I.N. Vorobyev pointed out that remote combat is a warfighting method that has great potential. (Military Thought, in Russian, 1992, #11.)

12. There was an article entitled "Financial Markets are the Biggest Threat to Peace" in the August 23, 1998, issue of the Los Angeles Times. The article noted: "At present, financial markets constitute the biggest threat to world peace, not terrorist training camps." (See Reference News [Cankao Xiaoxi 0639 5072 3194 1873], Beijing, September 7, 1998.)

13. Who Has Joined the Fray?--Helmut Kohl, by Wang Jiannan [3769 0494 0589], China Broadcasting Publishing House [in Chinese], 1997, pp. 275, 232, 357.

14. An article entitled "A New York Corporation that Affects Economies" in the July 29, 1998, issue of The Christian Science Monitor disclosed how Moody's credit rating reports influence and even manipulate economic trends in Italy, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia. See Reference News, August 20, 1998.

15. Soros pours out all his bitterness in his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism. On the basis of a ghastly account of his investments in 1998, Soros analyzes the lessons to be learned from this economic crisis.

16. Some security experts in the U.S. have suggested to the government that it lay up large stores of antidotes, in order to guard against a surprise chemical attack by a terrorist organization.