War by Proxy, war by stealth
When Authoritarian regimes don’t have the military strength, they fight differently.
I’ve made no attempts to hide my distain for the US’ lack of (frankly) balls in opposing the efforts of both China and the USSR (and now Russia) in their past efforts at both disinformation and undercover operations. While we did make a lot of progress and success at fighting their spying efforts (and did a lot of that ourselves), my major complaint is really two fold.
First, we have over-estimated both the Chinese and Russian military capabilities, for decades, and still are, especially in the case of China. In the case of Russia, and in spite of the big reveal in Ukraine of the actually extremely poor performance of the Russian military, major media sources (and a lot of writers here on Medium) still act and write as though they’re still the #2 military on the planet. Which, demonstrably, they are not.
Both Russia and China have one thing in common. While they’ve got (or had in the case of Russia) a ton of people armed and in uniform, their actual militaries have had little actual, real experience with fighting a modern war — or for that matter in the case of China, ANY war. And the last actual war Russia fought, as the USSR in Afghanistan, resulted in the fall of the USSR after they retreated in defeat — against a disorganized and definitely non-professional opponent at that. (Not that we did much better, but there ya go!)
To be fair, there are a lot of differences between the two, but there are similarities too. Both are former monarchies, and neither have any past history of democratic governance — their societies have always been governed by authoritarian forms of leadership. Both had a history of empire building and threatening their neighbors with invasion. Both have borders with a large number of neighboring countries, some of whom also have such past histories. Hell, the history of the entire continent they both exist on has a fully violent past filled with all of that!
And that reality is part of why the more modern industrialized world is very bad at seeing and realizing what these two countries have been up to and what they both wish to achieve.
Which, of course, is to emulate their past masters to expand their empires and influence to enlarge the wealth and power of the leaders of those empires. Now that they know how big the world is, they surely want to just grab as much of it as they can and eventually fight it out between themselves.
What they’ve found in that effort is that the more modern and socially advanced industrialized world is going to oppose that because we have a completely different view of how societies should work.
Both also have similarities in their disadvantages, though. China obviously has a bigger GDP, but with a much larger population, that puts a much bigger burden on that GDP, so both have a poor population with a less than optimum lifestyle compared to the rest of the industrialized world. That reduces the military capabilities of both.
So their paired lack of military strength gives them the incentive to use other methodologies to weaken their opponents.
Disinformation, spying, undercover operations to subvert our citizens and politicians, and in the more modern era, hacking and other hidden electronic weapons and efforts.
If you can divide your intended target (or the ones standing in your way), and cripple him with internal issues that prevent him from effectively opposing you internationally, you can safely swallow those you want to directly invade or target. You can make that opponent think you’re better militarily than you are, you can intimidate him into paralysis so he thinks he can’t effectively oppose you — or risks war with you if he goes too far.
You can use disinformation to make the various countries within natural alliances think their allies are less than trustworthy, or maybe even plotting against one another.
And by corrupting their politicians, you can use those to prevent their governments from effectively making moves against you or to properly support those you wish to subsume into your empire.
All of these and more are very effective methods both China and the Russians have used against the West for decades, and only in the spying world have we managed to effectively oppose them.
Even today, the Russians have very effectively used these methods to divide us through using Trump and the Republicans against us — recently, we’ve realized that China has mastered a lot of this as well as the Russians, and are starting to attack us the same way Russia has been. It’s only a matter of time before China is also corrupting American officials.
I want to note here that this is only a very short list of what has been used against us, and is not a comprehensive list of what these two opponents of ours are up to.
So, now what?
So, now Imma gonna bitch about our government, and our politicians, who have to a large extent ignored this. The excuse is always some form of “But they ignore our laws! How can we fight that?”
You do that using two methods. First, you learn how to do what they are doing. The United States is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. As a result, one can find all manner of computer nerds and experts who are (if indications are accurate) perfectly willing to break into others’ computers and systems to create havoc and steal money. I’d even say we’ve got more than a lot of other countries! And, given that we are a multi-ethnically populated country, what makes you think we couldn’t find enough such IT nerds who speak perfectly the languages of those we should be opposing? (As opposed to those Rachel Maddow was talking about yesterday in China who were posting things literally in Chinese or very poorly translated English.)
Using that talent, you hack their systems. Steal their government’s money, delete their databases of internal opponents, or even worse salt them with the names of actual supporters. Destroy the systems they’re using to hack OURS.
If they’e going to use these systems so blatantly against us, then doing that in return is fair game. Do everything we can do take them down, as completely as we can.
And don’t hide who’s doing it.
Then, when they complain, take that to the UN and have those techniques and methods outlawed as war crimes, using our own methodology as proof of how that happens by exposing what our hacking exposed of their actions.
I‘m getting tired of the western world failing to effectively fight authoritarian governments who are targeting us themselves. By this failure, they expose their weaknesses and their almost literal cowardice to face these dictatorial madmen. A lack of will and a lack of willingness to fight fire with fire has exposed us to these weapons which are bringing us to the edge of the loss of our very democracy.
I wouldn’t disagree if you complained that these are less than “proper” methods to use against others. But when an opponent uses a knife to attack you, the least you can do is use one to fight back. If he uses a gun, then by damn, get out yer shotgun. Otherwise, you lose!
What both Russia and China are doing against us is no less than modern warfare. Just because nobody has declared an official state of war exists doesn’t mean they aren’t actually making war against us — they’re just using modern methods to attack us — methods that are EFFECTIVE, yet not yet recognized as weapons of war. They are dividing our nation and our society, and damaging our ability to defend ourselves and our allies.
What’s next — for the Republican Party to work to force the government to act as though Russia is an ally? Trump is already talking about continuing his wishes to remove us from NATO, and the GOP is refusing to join in with NATO to protect Ukraine.
This needs to change — both internationally and within our own society and government. We must force the government to act judiciously to fight back against both Russian and Chinese efforts to use both disinformation and hacking techniques to undermine our society. And that fight should be focused on actively destroying their abilities to attack us.
If they want an undeclared war, let’s give it to them.
In spades.
