Western Rifle Shooters Association

Do not give in to Evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Unrestricted Warfare


Worth your time are these excerpts from a ChiCom People's Liberation Army professional work from 1999, described in the CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) note below:

[FBIS Editor's Note: The following selections are taken from "Unrestricted Warfare," a book published in China in February 1999 which proposes tactics for developing countries, in particular China, to compensate for their military inferiority vis-à-vis the United States during a high-tech war. The selections include the table of contents, preface, afterword, and biographical information about the authors printed on the cover. The book was written by two PLA senior colonels from the younger generation of Chinese military officers and was published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing, suggesting that its release was endorsed by at least some elements of the PLA leadership. This impression was reinforced by an interview with Qiao and laudatory review of the book carried by the party youth league's official daily Zhongguo Qingnian Bao on 28 June.


Published prior to the bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, the book has recently drawn the attention of both the Chinese and Western press for its advocacy of a multitude of means, both military and particularly non-military, to strike at the United States during times of conflict. Hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, and conducting urban warfare are among the methods proposed. In the Zhongguo Qingnian Bao interview, Qiao was quoted as stating that "the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden." Elaborating on this idea, he asserted that strong countries would not use the same approach against weak countries because "strong countries make the rules while rising ones break them and exploit loopholes . . .The United States breaks [UN rules] and makes new ones when these rules don't suit [its purposes], but it has to observe its own rules or the whole world will not trust it." (see FBIS translation of the interview, OW2807114599).

Those interested in the full work can get it here.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

1999 was a long time ago, might as well have been written in 1899.

What the world thought about US military might in 1999 after the first Gulf War, is not true today.

What they have learned now, or relearn as the case may be, it that a determined insurgency in their own home land, is almost impossible to beat, and will just grind down the "invader".

--hollywood

November 3, 2010 at 12:30 PM  
Blogger Concerned American said...

HW:

Agreed re ebb of US power. The .mil of GW I doesn't exist anymore.

I still think there are nonetheless useful lessons re asymmetric conflict in the piece, starting first with mindset.

November 3, 2010 at 2:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This was the first publication to suggest the use of commercial airliners against symbolic targets.

The young colonels who wrote this work got heroes parade after 9-11.

Those same (no longer)colonels have a much greater role now in formulating an order of battle against "an un-named leviathon force"

November 3, 2010 at 6:29 PM  

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