The Chinese military of today is a completely different animal to the PLA of just ten years ago. Stealing advanced US blueprints for stealth fighters, bombers, hypersonic missies, ships, subs and ICBMs, the PLA has built a ‘knock-off’ conventional order of battle that may not be technologically perfect but has sufficient mass to check-mate the US military in the first island chain. Traditional third offset strategy thinking is all about technology as the solution to mass. After all, the second offset strategy used exactly this model to corral the soviets. This 1980s thinking completely misses the point. No one gains from a shooting war. Unlike the Cold War Soviet economy, the US and Chinese economies are deeply intertwined.
So what advantage does the US have to mitigate, if not defeat, the growing preponderance of Chinese power? Special Operations Forces. Over the past twenty years, US SOF has perfected human network centric warfare against non state actors. The brilliance of low profile, small footprint, high tech, clandestine forces, arrayed against vulnerable long term human networks that service Xi’s top priority, the Belt and Road Initiative, provides the US with a cost effective, long term, durable means with which to keep the PRC in check. Not to defeat them. That would create more problems than it would solve. We just want to disrupt them so that they focus inward and remain under the threshold of major conventional warfare. This book explains how to achieve this.
How did you arrive at this topic?
I have been working in this field for some time now. It presents an interesting challenge: How do you prevent war between two great powers, one a revisionist and the other, status quo, who have a symbiotic relationship that defines the central production-financial relationship in the world economy?
Xi Jinping has made a judgement that “Hide your strength, bide your time” has worked. He has become impatient to revise the world order so that China becomes the dominant power. Xi believes China offers the world a superior system of governance compared to American democracy. A number of Americans seem to agree if the drive toward authoritarianism is any indication.
The last of Deng’s four modernizations is now in full swing. China’s military capability is unrivaled in Asia. In global terms, US forces are superior. However, when comparing US forces deployed to the region, China has the edge in mass and is rapidly gaining in quality. China has built an impenetrable shield deep into the Pacific. The shift in the balance of military power is reflected in a much more nationalistic and increasingly belligerent Chinese foreign policy. The entire Indo-Pacific region is bandwagoning to counterbalance China’s new provocative policies. Conflict is not inevitable but its trajectory is bending towards war.
The only way to avoid a massive conventional war that will almost certainly escalate into a nuclear conflict, is not to fight. The only way to win without fighting is to use cloaked power. Thats the solution that I arrived at after years of studying all parties to the challenge and exploring all other options.
It is a controversial position and that is not helped by the natural antagonism between the Pentagon and special operating forces. The Pentagon desires large scale, set piece battles, where its technological superiority delivers decisive outcomes. The fact that has rarely happened is not relevant. The vast majority of America’s experience of war has been the kind it really does not like and rarely wins - small war. Indeed, it is an interesting cultural artifact that America has rejected the kind of war that founded the country. I still cant understand that!
Freedom Isn’t Free
Almost no one in media, academia, or the think‑tank world can write with the freedom I have. Many know what’s coming but silence themselves out of fear — fear of losing a job, fear of being labeled extreme, fear of calling the moment for what it is. But time is running out.
Every Substack I write is free. I do this because I believe in the Constitution, I see the path to war, and I feel a responsibility to warn.
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