Unrestricted Warfare

by Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui

Overview

More relevant than ever, this interesting handbook on modern all-enveloping warfare was first published in China in 1999. Re-digitized from the 2004 Filament Books edition, this new edition contains specific methods for American troops, government, academia, and business circles for dealing with unrestricted warfare.

Coauthored by Major General Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, the book has been required reading at West Point. The People's Liberation Army manual for asymmetric warfare details the waging of war, strategically and tactically, using weapons not limited to bullets, bombs, missiles, and artillery shells. The two PLA officers who advocated the strategy set forth in the following pages argue that modern warfare, in ways not too dissimilar from Sun Tzu's Art of War, is about impeding the enemy's ability to wage war and to defend itself against a barrage of attacks against its economy, its civil institutions, its governmental structures, and its actual belief system.

This is not a manual for achieving an overnight victory. Rather, it is a recipe for a slow but inexorable assault on an enemy's institutions, often without the enemy's knowledge that it is even being attacked. As Sun Tzu once wrote, "If one party is at war with another, and the other party does not realize it is at war, the party who knows it's at war almost always has the advantage and usually wins." And this is the strategy set forth in *Unrestricted Warfare,* waging a war on an adversary with methods so covert at first and seemingly so benign that the party being attacked does not realize it's being attacked.

In the age of the worldwide internet, what seems like the free flow of information is also an open door policy for one country to insert its propaganda into the thinking and belief systems of its enemy. Do we consider Vladimir Putin's Russia to be a friend to the United States? Are we really that naïve? Voting constituencies might have very legitimate reasons to support the politicians of their choice, but when those choices are based on the flow of absolutely false information inimical to the best interests of that population, it is an example of the success of asymmetric or unrestricted warfare, in essence, propaganda war. The Russians have been experts at this since the days of the czar, and since the experiments of Pavlov and his dogs have mastered the art of getting the responses they want from the stimuli they inject into their subjects' thought patterns. In this past election cycle, it worked.

As you read the following pages, a manual for the military humbling of the United States through nonmilitary means that most Americans will not even realize, you should understand that this is not just a "what if," but a reality. It is happening now even as North Korea's Kim blusters about sending missiles towards Guam and Donald Trump responds by rattling his own saber in its scabbard. China, meanwhile, watches while its enemy is engaged with a tiny country that has the means to send nuclear tipped ICBMs to American cities. If North Korea attacks Guam or Pearl Harbor and the United States responds, who benefits? Not North Korea, not South Korea, not the United States. China benefits when U.S. Naval facilities on Guam or at Pearl Harbor are damaged so that the American presence in the Pacific is diminished to the point of incapacity.

Readers, therefore, should take this little manual as a dire warning. Complacency cripples. Hubris kills. And blindness without guidance usually leads one into the nearest wall if not hurtling down a flight of stairs. Thus, although this book was written almost twenty years ago, it should be regarded as the playbook for the destruction of not only the United States, but of western democracies in general.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940158877384
Publisher:	Shadow Lawn Press
Publication date:	08/16/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	565,804
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Qiao Liang, whose ancestors came from Hunan Province, was born in Xin County, Shanxi Province, to a military family in 1955. He is a member of the Chinese Writers’ Union. Presently, he is assistant director of the production office of the Air Force’s political department and holds the rank of senior colonel in the Air Force, along with being a grade one writer.

His most important works include *Gate to the Final Epoch, Spiritual Banner,* and *Great Glacial River.* He has repeatedly won national and military awards. In addition to his literary creations, he has applied himself over a long period of time to the research of military theory and joined with other writers to pen *A Discussion of Military Officer Quality, Viewing the Global Military Big Powers,* and *A Listing of the Rankings of Global Military Powers.*

Wang Xiangsui was born in Guangzhou to a military family in 1954. He joined the army at the end of 1970. He successively assumed the positions of political instructor, group political commissar, section deputy head, regiment political commissar, and division deputy political commissar. Presently, he works in the Guangzhou Military Region Air Force Political Unit and holds the rank of senior colonel.

He has cooperated with other authors to write the books *A Discussion of Military Officer Quality; Viewing the Global Military Powers;* and *A Record of Previous Major Global Wars.*