Unrestricted warfare - Cain's condensed edit

[Cain]

I'm putting this in here because the main theme of this military paper is that of overcoming boundaries and creating an unrestricted form of warfare - which could be seen as a sort of sinister BIP variant.

Also, I condensed it from roughly 250 pages of badly translated Chinese text, so while the length is a little longer than some things on here, it is fairly reasonable, all considered.  The paper was published in 1999, if anyone was wondering, hence why it talks about the Gulf War more than the war on terror.

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Warfare has not decreased or left society.  Instead, it has become more pervasive, but at the same time, more complex and more concealed.  A relative reduction in military violence has only led to an increase in political, economic and social violence.  Regardless, all of these various types of violence should be considered forms of war and a change in external appearance does not mean a change in intention or principles

The new principle of war is to use every means at ones disposal to compel an enemy to accept one's own interests.

Our conception of what is considered a war must change, as must our understanding of the weapons of modern war.  Traditional non-war actions, such as hacking, currency speculation or media coverage can be considered part of the new war, which raises questions about where the battlefield is, and how one understands the new war.

Warfare now transcends all boundaries and limits, making everywhere a battlefield and everything used to compel the enemy a weapon.  The boundary between military and non-military action has been destroyed. 

Computerized warfare and information warfare should not be mixed up.  The former is traditional warfare that is enhanced by computers and other hi-tech solutions, whereas the latter is where information itself is suppressed or obtained by information technology.  People mistake the former for the latter, which may eventually prove to be fatal.  Information warfare will be a synthesis of other branches of technology and military thought, and unlike computerized warfare, no-one leads in this field, leaving it wide open for the taking.

Two different approaches to weaponry.  Make the fight fit the weapons one has, or make the weapons fit the fight one faces.  This is the demarcation line between present and future warfare.  The former is a passive and inflexible relation between humanity and technology.  Naturally constrains tactics and ideas.  Adding new technology to old may make old weapons technology relevant again.  Problem with creating weapons to fit the fight is the problem of foresight.  Also worth noting is that a technological gap makes defeating an enemy more difficult.  If the gap is too large, it may resolve into a battle where neither can wipe the other out.

New weapons will transcend the usual understanding of the word and incorporate elements weapons as anything which can harm the enemy.  Apart from more usual methods of inflicting material and psychological damage on troops, it will involve financial attacks on stock markets, computer virus invasions and exposing rumours or scandals in various manners.  Anything that can aid mankind can harm it as well.

Weapons will be created which most closely linked to the lives of common people, as an element of surprise as well as based on pragmatism. 

The trend to "kinder" weaponry is testament both to a cultural change in mankind and a change within warfare.  It is no longer necessary to kill, only to control.  However, this does not mean kinder weapons will be any less lethal.  Lasers may be used to permanently blind troops, for example.  Also, wounding creates more problems for a military force, as the dead require few resources be expended on them, whereas mass wounding will require much care for the troops, and cause panic and loss of morale.  Non-lethal weaponry should take into account the psychology of those they face as well, especially if they are devoutly religious.

The focus must be on paralyzation and undermining, not casualties.

However, war will not become a near bloodless game of electronic rivalry.  Powerful enemies will not be deterred without actual casualties as well, the path of destruction and survival, and we should have no romantic illusions about that.

Alliances will be temporary, since the only absolute is self-interest.  Everything else is in flux, and a friend today may be an enemy tomorrow, or vice-versa.

There will be a difference between overt and covert causes in modern war. 

The modern battlefield is virtually limitless.  From the physical geography of the seas and mountains and plains, to outer-space, to the inner-space of psychological warfare, everywhere is where the modern war is waged.  There is no escape, the modern battlefield, thanks to technology, is stretched to its ultimate limits.

Conventional and technological battle space will eventually converge to the point where they are co-dependent.  This will break down the military/non-military application of technology and so the entire military/non-military boundary.

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

The most likely protagonists of modern warfare are as follows:
The Hacker: no military training, yet able to impair national security.  Have too many varieties of motivation to name.  Mainly however, they do not feel bound to the rules of society at large and are willing to break them to get ahead. 
Terrorists: a certain military flavour, but non-state organizations with a fanatical ideology.  Virtually insane, very likely to be the cause of future wars, very hard for conventional militaries to beat due to their willingness not to be bound by conventional rules of warfare.
The non-professional ideologue: these are a variety of warrior, though many in the category differ from each other.  They may be international financiers, or media moguls, who have their own unshakeable beliefs and willing to use their resources to get their way.

The Americans have summed up the four main forms that warfighting will take in the future as: 1)Information warfare;  2) Precision warfare;  3) Joint operations; and 4) Military operations other than war (MOOTW)

Information warfare will be the basis of future wars.  It will typically involve information processing and stealthy, long range attacks.

Precision warfare allows soldiers to do away with the nightmare of attrition warfare by use of concealment, speed, accuracy, high effectiveness and few collateral damages. 

Joint operations are those that combine various strategic approaches, such as the join Air-force and Special Forces attacks in Afghanistan. 

MOOTW is the most interesting, since the variety of measures needed in the next century will come under this heading.  This will deal with war in its broader conception, including peace keeping, border controls, dealing with riots, military aid, arms control and counter-terrorism, among others.

Types of modern war:
Trade war.  The use of domestic laws on the international stage, arbitrary use of tariffs, embargoes on technology exports etc etc...The UN embargo on Iraq is the text-book case of this.
Financial war.  Carried out by international financiers, for a profit.  The destruction of national economies can collapse governments and bring social chaos as nasty as any war could.  The textbook example is the Asian financial crisis of 1998.  Another would be the German strategy in ending the Cold War, through loans and a strong currency. 
New Terror War.  Unlike traditional terror, this relies on highly unconventional attacks, using high technology and extremely unexpected weaponry.  9/11 and the Tokyo Sarin attack are two examples of this.  Classic terrorist models may also be employed in information warfare along with this. 
Ecological warfare.  This is the use of technology to effect the natural state of rivers, the earth's crust, polar ice sheeting, the ozone layer etc in war.  Man-made El Nino's or earthquakes may become new weapons within a few generations.  Most likely to be employed by terrorists, given their disregard for rules and life, especially when one considers the dangers of an ecological holocaust. 
Other methods.  Could 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

Methods not involving military force seem just as likely to facilitate the goals of the war, if not being more successful.  There is a fundamental mistake in seeing war as politics with bloodshed, instead, war IS politics.  Confining yourself to only military models with make it very difficult to regain a foothold, and will make one vulnerable to a cocktail method of mixed military and non-military attacks.

Overnight temporary and tacit alliances will be the method of future alliance building. 

Because news has become real-time reporting from the battlefield, the media has itself become a tool or part of warfare.  It no longer merely provides information coming from the battlefield, but has become a tool for waging conflict.

The western media and US military were allies in the Gulf War, joining hands to tie a noose around Saddam's neck.  The media denied Iraq a right to defend itself, the military the ability.  The lopsided media force morally undermined Saddam's perceived right to defence and, along with military one-sidedness, sealed his fate.

Psychological warfare is not new, but creative psychological warfare is.  In the Iraq war, the psychological campaign was the second most effective weapon after the bombs themselves. 

Consider the cost of modern war.  Should we not consider building weapons that are less costly than their targets, instead of more expensive?

If you have no way of defeating an enemy force, engage in mass killing of its rank and file soldiers. 

Warfare reliant on high technology, high investment, high expenditure and high payback is pointless and restrictive in the extreme.  Technological performance is rated above military and strategic application and creates stagnant forces unable to seize new opportunities. 

Small scale expeditionary forces able to carry out non-war combat have become 'institutional mace', making the chances of violent confrontation more likely.  The lower the barriers to using force, the more likely the chance of it happening becomes.

Only through the addition of non-military combat operations alongside traditional military ones can the true nature of unrestricted warfare be understood.

Observing, considering and solving problems from a technological viewpoint has both very obvious advantages and many disadvantages as well.

The revolution in military thought will at last be a revolution in forms and methods of conflict.  Only the completion of changes bought on by technology can be sufficient for this.

Old reasons for waging war are territorial disputes, nationality conflicts, religious violence and control of spheres of power, and while these still exist, it must be understood that there are modern reasons for waging war as well, which include grabbing resources, contending markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions and other economic factors, which are quickly becoming primary factors in going to war.  The new reasons are social, political and economic, not just purely military.

The diffuse nature of modern warfare makes it impossible to rely purely on military power to secure oneself.  Composite forces are necessary to national security and the means for such forces to launch operations as well.

There may be no bloodshed or dead bodies, but you will be able to tell what is a war by this definition: it is any action undertaken to force the enemy to satisfy one's own interests.

Rules are only followed when beneficial to oneself.  Small nations follow rules to protect them from larger ones, who make rules in order to control others.  Large states also break rules when it is in their interest to ignore them, which form an interesting contrast to non-state organizations, terrorists and hackers, who equally disregard the rules when they see fit.

The destruction of rules results in the breaking down of international norms.  All agents who employ non-military warfare actions to declare war against the international community use all means possible to go beyond nations, laws and measures.  Visible boundaries, or invisible ones, international law, internet space, ethical principals and behavioural norms have no limiting effect.  Being responsible to no-one, nor limited by rules, there is no disgrace in the selection of targets or the methods employed. 

Terrorists are not dangerous because of their numbers, but because of their unwillingness to be bound by the rules.  A terrorist group with a nuclear weapon is far more dangerous than a nation with one.

In times when the old order is about to be torn down, those who first destroy the rules are the first to adapt to the new situation.  Hence the rise of terrorism.

[Cain]

Mixing cocktails will bring victory.  A cocktail is the combination of two or more battlefield factors to obtain the defeat of an enemy.

Only by breaking with convention, ignoring limitations and consciously applying all methods available can one hope to win in modern warfare.

Addition is the method of combination.  A boxer who is adept at jabs, hooks, swings and straight blows is able to defeat one who only uses hooks.  Synergistic principle: one plus one equals more than one.  This is obvious, but rarely understood even by intelligent people.

Only with the addition of blood and violence will this spectacle become shocking enough for others to realize the change.  The outcome is not the destruction of the old ways of war, but the expansion of war to include a whole new host of methods and means.  However, from many perspectives, it will look like a collapse.

Military | Trans-military | Non-military
Atomic warfare | Diplomatic warfare | Financial warfare
Conventional warfare | Network warfare | Trade warfare
Bio-chemical warfare | Intelligence warfare | Resources warfare
Ecological warfare | Psychological warfare | Economic aid warfare
Space warfare | Tactical warfare | Regulatory warfare
Electronic warfare | Smuggling warfare | Sanction warfare
Guerrilla warfare | Drug warfare | Media warfare
Terrorist warfare | Virtual warfare (deterrence) | Ideological warfare

Any of the above types of methods of operation can be combined with another of the above
methods of operation to form a completely new method of operation.  Regardless of whether
it is intentional or unintentional, the carrying out of combined methods of operation using
different methods of operation that go beyond domains and categories has already been applied by many nations in the practice of warfare.

"I usually make surprising moves; the enemy expects surprising moves; but I move in an
unsurprising manner this time to attack the enemy. I usually make unsurprising moves; the
enemy expects unsurprising moves; but I move in a surprising manner this time to attack the
enemy." --Li Shimin

There is no formula of war, no perfect method for victory.  But this does not mean there are no rules or principals one should follow.  Rules are like sheets of paper, what is important is if you can poke a hole through it if necessary.  One should also avoid frontal collisions, if one wants their sword to cut things apart without suffering damage.

The existence of boundaries is a prerequisite for differentiating objects one from another. In a
world where all things are interdependent, the significance of boundaries is merely relative. The
expression "to exceed limits" means to go beyond things which are called or understood to be
boundaries.

As a method of warfare with "beyond - limits" as its major feature, its principle is to assemble
and blend together more means to resolve a problem in a range wider than the problem itself. For
example, when national security is threatened, the answer is not simply a matter of selecting the
means to confront the other nation militarily, but rather a matter of dispelling the crisis through
the employment of "supra-national combinations."

Is this the best way to achieve the desired objective?  If so, then this is the best means for victory.  Although, one must not totally disregard other factors.

The issue is that what we are thinking about is precisely how to evade or break such rules. We do
not believe that all wars must gradually progress in level-by-level sequence, accumulating until a
fateful moment of destiny is reached. We believe that moment is something which can be
created. Finding a way by which we can continuously create that moment and not wait for the
accumulation, and then fixing that method as a kind of strategy, that is the thing which we should
do.

Level one is grand strategy.  Military and non-military means of warfare with the supra-national as its upper limit.  Often known as war policy.
Level 2 is war strategy.  The function of this is strategy, a countries military plans or strategems for war.
Level 3 is Campaign level, or operational art.  This refers to combat operations lower than war, but higher than battles. 
The fourth level is battle tactics, most often referred to merely as tactics.

Soldiers of the next century should not only understand the differences between these levels, but also how to disrupt and disconnect them from each other.

It is not the case that problems caused at one level can be solved at that level.

Principles of unrestricted warfare:

Omnidirectionality
Synchrony
Limited objectives
Unlimited measures
Asymmetry
Minimal consumption
Multidimensional coordination
Adjustment and control of the entire process

Omnidirectionality

Our starting point.  Recognition of the fact there is no longer anywhere that is not a battlefield, and that warfare need not be militarily inclined.  While it is not necessary that a war touch all possible domains, it should be considered as a possibility.

Synchrony

The completion of multiple objectives across multiple domains of war.  In other words, multiple actions should be undertaken within the same time frame.  Americans excel at this, consider multiple attacks on Iraqi air-defence, or multiple raids on Taliban and Al-Qaeda positions in Afghanistan.

Limited Objectives

Objectives must always be smaller than the methods used to obtain them.  Only with limits can explicit and practical goals be pursued.  Allows for achievable victory based on what is within one's abilities.  Consider a company with limited resources who takes on unlimited responsibilities to see why this is necessary.

Unlimited measures

The trend towards no limits is the trend towards continual enlargement of selected targets and methods employed against them.  Unlimited measures to accomplish limited goals is the ultimate boundary.  Measures are inseparable from objectives. For a measure to be unlimited means that to accomplish some designated objective, one can break through restrictions and select among various measures. This is not to say that a measure can be separated from objectives and used however one likes. Atomic weapons, which can annihilate mankind, have been viewed as absolute measures precisely because they violated the principle that a measure must serve to accomplish an objective. Finally people laid them aside. The employment of unrestricted measures can only be, as Confucius put it, "as one pleases, but not beyond the rules." Here, "rules" means objectives. Beyond-limits ideology expands "as one pleases" the range of selection and the methods of use of measures, but this certainly does not mean expansion of objectives "as one pleases." It only means to employ measures beyond restrictions, beyond boundaries, to accomplish limited objectives.

Asymmetry

This means understanding and exploiting the enemies weaknesses.  The main fighting elements of many poorer countries all have elements of asymmetry in order to deter or fight against far more powerful adversaries.  Such examples include Chechnya, Iraq and Somalia.  The weaker side should select an axis of combat where the enemy does not expect to be hit.  The centre mass of such an assault will always result in huge psychological shock to the enemy.  This is often hugely effective in shaping and controlling a campaign.  Often humiliates conventional forces who rely on conventional measures as well.

Minimal consumption.

The use of the least amount of resources necessary to win.  Also known as the Path of Least Resistance.  A part of rationality, the proportionate use of resources.  One should search for a combat method which makes the most rational and effective use of force with the resources available.  High consumption and low effectiveness is a key sign of a mismatch between methods and intended goals. 

Multidimensional coordination

This refers to cooperation and coordination among various domains and spheres in order to accomplish an objective.  The only difference between this definition and past, well known ones, is the acknowledgement of non-military spheres as requiring coordination as well.  The concept can only be realized once there is a concrete objective. 

Adjustment and control of the entire processing

Warfare is a dynamic process full of randomness and creativity. Any attempt to tie a war to a set of ideas within a predetermined plan is little short of absurdity or naïveté. Therefore, it is necessary to have feedback and revisions throughout the entire course of a war while it is actually happening, in order to keep the initiative within one's grasp. This is what is meant by "adjustment and control of the entire process."  What is needed to grasp the ever-changing battlefield situation is greater use of intuition, rather than mathematical deduction. More important than constant changes in force dispositions and continual updating of weapons is the whole set of combat rules which are the result of the shift of the battlefield to non-military spheres.


Victory is certainly not in the bag just because a side adheres to the above principles, but violating them no doubt leads to defeat. Principles are always essential conditions for victory in war, but they are not the only conditions. In the absence of a principle that victory is certain, there are only essential principles. We should always remember this point.

[LMNO]

Fuck.  I need more time to read all this stuff.

[Bharlion]

That is it. I am going back to my bunker. Wake me up when the war is over.

[Jasper]

This is going on my eReader along with Black Mass for Bloody Crusaders and Seven signs of impending revolution.  Looking for more.