Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui

Notwithstanding the amphetamine-induced psychotic utterances, eg. ...

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.

...

For hundreds of years, people have found it difficult to understand why the Mongol cavalry of Gengis Khan were, like a hurricane, able to sweep across the Eurasian continent. Such factors as the barbarians' truculence, cruelty, and cunningness or the mobility of the cavalry did not provide convincing explanations. Perhaps there were other more important reasons? As can be expected, the rule of the golden ratio showed its miraculous power again: We can see that the battle formation of the Mongol cavalry was different from the Western traditional phalanx. In regard to their five-row formation, the ratio of heavy cavalry to light cavalry was 2:3, with 2 for armored heavy cavalry and 3 for fast and mobile light cavalry, that is, another example of the golden ratio!

The authors raise the point that conventional warfare will not succeed when there are large deltas (eg. against a superpower), leaving only the combination of many weapons into an arrayed offense, where weapons can be anything....

Even though they are the same ancient territorial disputes, nationality conflicts, religious clashes, and the delineation of spheres of power in human history, and are still the several major agents of people waging war from opposite directions, these traditional factors are increasingly becoming more intertwined with grabbing resources, contending for markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions, and other economic factors, to the extent that they are even becoming secondary to these factors. They comprise a new pattern which threatens the political, economic and military security of a nation or nations. This pattern possibly does not have the slightest military hue viewed from the outside, and thus they have been called by certain observers "secondary wars" or "analogous wars." However, the destruction which they do in the areas attacked are absolutely not secondary to pure military wars. In this area, we only need mention the names of lunatics such as George Soros, bin Laden, Escobar, [Chizuo] Matsumoto, and Kevin Mitnick.

Essentially, the race is to generate a huge economic delta (capital, labor, technology) while minimizing any destabilizing possibilities.

One war changed the world. Linking such a conclusion to a war which occurred one time in a limited area and which only lasted 42 days seems like something of an exaggeration. However, that is indeed what the facts are, and there is no need to enumerate one by one all the new words that began to appear after 17 January 1991. It is only necessary to cite the former Soviet Union, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, cloning, Microsoft, hackers, the Internet, the Southeast Asian financial crisis, the euro, as well as the world's final and only superpower -- the United States. These are sufficient. They pretty much constitute the main subjects on this planet for the past decade.

When people begin to lean toward and rejoice in the reduced use of military force to resolve conflicts, war will be reborn in another form and in another arena, becoming an instrument of enormous power in the hands of all those who harbor intentions of controlling other countries or regions. In this sense, there is reason for us to maintain that the financial attack by George Soros on East Asia, the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy by Usama Bin Laden, the gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the disciples of the Aum Shinri Kyo, and the havoc wreaked by the likes of Morris Jr. on the Internet, in which the degree of destruction is by no means second to that of a war, represent semi-warfare, quasi-warfare, and sub-warfare, that is, the embryonic form of another kind of warfare.

Stirred by the warm breeze of utilitarianism, it is not surprising that technology is more in favor with people than science is.

Compared to the M-60 tank, the "Cobra" helicopter, and the B-52, the main battle weapons of the 60s-70s, the "Abrams" tank, the "Apache" helicopter gunship, the F-117, the "Patriot" missiles, and the "Tomahawk" cruise missiles are high tech. However, faced with the B-2, the F-22, the "Comanche" helicopter, and the "J-Stars" joint-surveillance target-attack radar system, they in turn seem outmoded. It is as if to say there is the concept of high-tech weapons, which is a variable throughout, and which naturally becomes the title of the "bride." Then, as the "flowers bloom each year, but the people change," all that is left is the empty shell of a name, which is continually placed on the head of the girl who is becoming the next "bride."

These two sentences, "fight the fight that fits one's weapons" and "build the weapons to fit the fight" show the clear demarcation line between traditional warfare and future warfare, as well as pointing out the relationship between weapons and tactics in the two kinds of war. The former reflects the involuntary or passive adaptation of the relationship of man to weapons and tactics in war which takes place under natural conditions, while the latter suggests the conscious or active choice that people make regarding the same proposition when they have entered a free state. In the history of war, the general unwritten rule that people have adhered to all along is to "fight the fight that fits one's weapons." Very often it is the case that only after one first has a weapon does one begin to formulate tactics to match it. With weapons coming first, followed by tactics, the evolution of weapons has a decisive constraining effect on the evolution of tactics. Naturally, there are l! imiting factors here involving the age and the technology, but neither can we say that there is no relationship between this and the linear thinking in which each generation of weapons making specialists only thinks about whether or not the performance of the weapon itself is advanced, and does not consider other aspects. Perhaps this is one of the factors why a weapons revolution invariably precedes a revolution in military affairs.

Viewed from the performance of the U.S. military in Somalia, where they were at a loss when they encountered Aidid's forces, the most modern military force does not have the ability to control public clamor, and cannot deal with an opponent who does things in an unconventional manner.

The "generation gap"[11] in weapons and military forces is perhaps an issue that requires exceptional attention. The closer the generation gap is, the more pronounced are the battle successes of the more senior generation, while the more the gap opens, the less each party is capable of dealing with the other, and it may reach the point where no one can wipe out the other.

Marshal Orgakov, the former chief of the Soviet general staff, was acutely aware of the trend of weapons development in the "nuclear age," and when, at an opportune time, he proposed the brand-new concept of the "revolution in military technology," his thinking was clearly ahead of those of his generation. But being ahead of time in his thinking hardly brought his country happiness, and actually brought about disastrous results [13].

Not only was this true for the former Soviet Union, today the Americans seem to be following in the footsteps of their old adversary, providing fresh proof of the paradox of weapons development that we have proposed. As the outlines of the age of technology integration become increasingly clear, they are investing more and more in the development of new weapons, and the cost of the weapons is getting higher and higher. The development of the F-14 and F-15 in the 60s-70s cost one billion dollars, while the development of the B-2 in the 80s cost over $10 billion, and the development of the F-22 in the 90s has exceeded $13 billion. Based on weight, the B-2 [14], which runs $13-$15 billion each, is some three times more expensive than an equivalent weight of gold [15]. Expensive weapons like that abound in the U.S. arsenal, such as the F-117A bomber, the F-22 main combat aircraft, and the Comanche helicopter gunship. The cost of each of these weapons exceeds or approaches $100 million, and this massive amount of weapons with unreasonable cost-effectiveness has covered the U.S. military with increasingly heavy armor, pushing them step by step toward the high-tech weapons trap where the cost stakes continue to be raised.

Therefore, new-concept weapons have emerged to fill the bill. However, what seems unfair to people is that it is again the Americans who are in the lead in this trend. As early as the Vietnam war, the silver iodide powder released over the "Ho Chi Minh trail" that resulted in torrential rains and the defoliants scattered over the subtropical forests put the "American devils" in the sole lead with regard to both the methods and ruthlessness of new-concept weapons. Thirty years later, with the dual advantages of money and technology, others are unable to hold a candle to them in this area.

It cannot be denied that man-made earthquakes, tsunamis, weather disasters, or subsonic wave and new biological and chemical weapons all constitute new concept weapons [16], and that they have tremendous differences with what we normally speak of as weapons, but they are still all weapons whose immediate goal is to kill and destroy, and which are still related to military affairs, soldiers, and munitions. Speaking in this sense, they are nothing more than non-traditional weapons whose mechanisms have been altered and whose lethal power and destructive capabilities have been magnified several times over.

As we see it, a single man-made stock-market crash, a single computer virus invasion, or a single rumor or scandal that results in a fluctuation in the enemy country's exchange rates or exposes the leaders of an enemy country on the Internet, all can be included in the ranks of new-concept weapons.

The trend to "kinder" [18] weapons is nothing other than a reflection in the production and development of weapons of this great change in man's cultural background. At the same time, technological progress has given us the means to strike at the enemy's nerve center directly without harming other things, giving us numerous new options for achieving victory, and all these make people believe that the best way to achieve victory is to control, not to kill. There have been changes in the concept of war and the concept of weapons, and the approach of using uncontrolled slaughter to force the enemy into unconditional surrender has now become the relic of a bygone age. Warfare has now taken leave of the meat-grinder age of Verdun-like campaigns.

Precision-kill weapons can hit a target precisely, reducing collateral casualties, and like a gamma knife which can excise a tumor with hardly any bleeding, it has led to "surgical" strikes and other such new tactics, so that inconspicuous combat actions can achieve extremely notable strategic results. For example, by merely using one missile to track a mobile telephone signal, the Russians were able to still forever the tough mouth of Dudayev, who was a headache, and at the same time eased the enormous trouble that had been stirred up by tiny Chechnya. Non-lethal weapons can effectively eliminate the combat capabilities of personnel and equipment without loss of life [19]. The trend that is embodied in these weapons shows that mankind is in the process of overcoming its own extreme thinking, beginning to learn to control the lethal power that it already has but which is increasingly excessive. In the massive bombing that lasted more than a month during the Gulf War, the los! s of life among civilians in Iraq only numbered in the thousands [20], far less than in the massive bombing of Dresden during World War II.

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.

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.

The "network space" is now drawing widespread attention among modern soldiers. Network space is a technological space that is formed by a distinctive combination of electronics technology, information technology and the application of specific designs. If one maintains that a war prosecuted in this space is still a war in which people control the outcome, then the "nanometer space" which is emerging hard on the heals of the network space, bodes well for the realization of mankind's dream--a war without the direct involvement of people.

If that young lad setting out with his orders should ask today: "Where is the battlefield?" The answer would be: "Everywhere."

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.

When the war began, the A-10 was viewed by the Americans as an outmoded ground attack aircraft, but after forming what was dubbed a "lethal union" with the "Apache" helicopter, by eliminating Iraqi tanks on a large scale it staved off its own elimination, reaching the point where it became one of the myriad dazzling stars in the air over the Gulf. By matching a weapon that was far from advanced with other weapons, they actually achieved miraculous results like this, and the design and use of these weapons can be an inspiration that is hard to express in a few words.

Large-scale use of costly weapons in order to realize objectives and reduce casualties without counting costs -- this kind of warfare which can only be waged by men of wealth is a game that the American military is good at. "Desert Storm" manifested once again the Americans' unlimited extravagance in war and has already become an addiction. Airplanes which cost an average of US$25 million each carried out 11,000 wanton and indiscriminate bombings in a 42 day period, destroying the general headquarters of the renewed Socialist Party with each US$1.3 million Tomahawk guided missile, taking aim at foxholes with precision guided bombs worth tens of thousands of U.S. dollars... even if the American generals knew as soon as they began that they need not spend so much on this unrestrained battle banquet costing US$61 billion, using such an ostentatious battle style of "attacking birds with golden bullets", their over-extravagance would still not have been prevented. An American-mad! e bomber is like a flying mountain of gold, more costly than many of its targets. Shouldn't hitting a quite possibly insignificant target with tons of American dollars arouse people's suspicions?

The appearance of high technology weaponry can now satisfy these extravagant hopes of the American people. During the Gulf War, of 500,000 troops, there were only 148 fatalities and 458 wounded. Goals that they long since only dreamt were almost realized -- "no casualties." Ever since the Vietnam War, both the military and American society have been sensitized to human casualties during military operations, almost to the point of morbidity. Reducing casualties and achieving war objectives have become the two equal weights on the American military scale.

The creed of bin Laden is "If I die, then I will also not let others live," and therefore, he would then stop at nothing, so that in order to kill over ten Americans he would also drench several thousand innocent people in a pool of blood. Soros's logic is "I entered the room to steal money because your door was not locked." In this way, he does not have to be responsible for destroying the economies of other nations and throwing the political order of others into disarray. For bin Laden who hides under the hills of Islamic fundamentalism, Soros who conceals himself within the forests of free economics, and the computer hackers who hide themselves in the green curtains of networks, no national boundaries exist, and borders also are ineffective. What they want to do is carry out wanton destruction within a regulated sphere and act wildly and run amuck within an unregulated sphere. These new terrorist forces have formed an unprecedented serious challenge to the existing world order, and in turn they have made us doubt to a certain degree the logical production of a fixed order.

Lastly, but certainly not the most important point, is whether or not one has thought of combining the battlefield and non-battlefield, warfare and non-warfare, military and non-military which is more specifically combining stealth aircraft and cruise missiles with network killers, combining nuclear deterrence, financial wars and terrorist attacks, or simply combining Schwartzkopf + Soros + Xiaomolisi [transliteraton 1420 5459 6849 2448] + bin Laden.