Column: U.S.-China: Political warfare calls for major role by Indo-Pacific Command

As China flexes its strategic muscles, Hawaii is just as rich of a target to China as it was to Imperial Japan during the 1940s. After all, Hawaii houses the Indo-Pacific Command headquarters, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, U.S. Pacific Air Forces, U.S. Army Pacific, U.S. Pacific Marine Corps Forces Pacific, the 14th U.S. Coast Guard District, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, strategic weapons — and holds a key American geostrategic position in the central Pacific.

Seeking to regain its imperial glory for a perceived hundred years of humiliation, China aims to push America out of Asia and the Western Pacific. It already has made great headway in establishing control in the “first island chain,” which largely consists of the South China Sea, and strategizes to annex Taiwan, the keystone of the first island chain.

It wishes to extend control into the “second island chain,” which constitutes southern Japan and reaches out to Guam. Control of the second island chair would give China a route of ingress to the U.S.-aligned “Compact States” of the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

The “third island chain” extends into the mid-Pacific. Successfully challenging such would put China at Hawaii’s doorstep.

China seeks to achieve these territorial advances by “political warfare,” without having to fight a kinetic war. According to Hawaii- based Professor Kerry K. Gershaneck, author of “Political Warfare — Strategies for Combatting China’s Plan to Win without Fighting,” political warfare is all-encompassing, unrestricted warfare and as such, is a critical component of China’s security strategy and foreign policy.

From another perspective, political warfare is an alternative to armed conflict that seeks to influence emotions, motives, objective reasoning and behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals in a manner favorable to China’s own political objectives.

From the time of the Warring States Period (475 BCE to 221 BCE), political warfare has played a role in Chinese history. More recently, China used political warfare to weaken the Republic of China government and its military in the late 1940s. As a result, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was able to take control of China on Oct. 1, 1949.

The modus operandi of political warfare are varied. Here I will focus on three methods: 1) Three warfares; 2) Espionage; and 3) United Front tactics.

Three warfares focuses on molding public opinion through all forms of media and the psychological operations and legal warfare (aka, lawfare). Espionage is classical “spying,” or the use of informants to provide information about the intentions and vulnerabilities of a person or organization. United Front operations emphasize inducing or coercing non-CCP organizations to cooperate with the CCP to defeat an enemy such as America.

Targets of political warfare can be summed up as: anyone within a society or an organization that can exert influence on political or organizational leaders. For example, elites in every segment of society; business leaders, especially those doing business with China; all levels of schools and universities; all forms of media; religious organizations, especially those that have a connection to China; a wide variety of community organizations; and creating tension among different ethnic groups.

To effectively combat political warfare takes a total-of-society approach. Federal, state and local leaders must be involved and must communicate with the public. To ensure that everyone understands political warfare, classes in political warfare for community leaders, government officials, military personnel, etc., must be created.

China is a determined opponent that poses an existential threat to Hawaii — America’s Gibraltar of the Pacific — and America. To counter its political warfare, we must start addressing the problem now.

Bill Sharp wrote a column, “Look East,” for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from 2005 to 2009.