China and U.S. At War

Andrew Browne leads off today's Wall Street Journal with an article having a provocative title:  What are the Odds of a U.S.-China War?  That will get a lot of people's attention.

Browne is looking at the notion that China is headed for war if the theory of Graham Allison, Harvard Professor of some note [Destined for War ] hold true.  His book is so popular that Xi mentioned it in one of his speeches, trying to discredit the idea.  That is not small praise.

I won't go into all  the details of the Allison book, which is well worth reading, but I would say the historical views of war do not hold up very well in today's kind of war.  We are mixing ideas of war that no longer exist.

Today's wars are more oriented to the Political Warfare that started, in the main, right after World War II.     The second edition of my first book on Chinese Information War will have some details on this kind of war, but not as much as I would like to have.  Most of the areas of Political Warfare are classified [state secrets] and are not going to show up in print anywhere.  Nearly every country denies being involved in this kind of activity.  

China and Russia are both playing this game.  Russia is meddling in almost everyones' political  business, including the United States.  China is too, without getting much of the credit for how and what they are doing.  They are smart about how they do it and follow the laws of the country they are in - until they get caught doing otherwise.  

Where I do disagree with the majority is in the definition of war.  We continue to hang onto the idea that war has to be what is described this way in Black's Law Dictionary "A contest by force between two or more nations, carried on for any purpose, or armed conflict of sovereign powers or declared and open hostilities, or the state of nations among whom there is an interruption of pacific relations, and a general contention by force, authorized by the sovereign….  War does not exist merely because of an armed attack by the military forces of another nation until it is a condition recognized or accepted by political authority of government which is attacked, either through an actual definition of war or other acts demonstrating such position.”  I tend to believe Information War has overtaken this kind of war and going back into history to describe what is happening today is not always the best way.