One of our primary missions at The Cognitive Warrior Project is “to promote discussions that will better prepare entry-level Special Operations Forces for the challenges they face while ‘growing up SOF.’” In support of that mission, we feel that special operations forces require an understanding of the battlefield that goes beyond bullets and tactics. To that end, we try to promote articles and podcasts that can aid in a more complete understanding of the challenges that we face. And, in the interest of toilet time, we try to do it in about 500 words.
Today, we will highlight some key passages from the latest School of War Podcast where Aaron MacLean interviews:
“Randall Schriver, Chairman of the Board at The Project 2049 Institute, and Dan Blumenthal, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute [to discuss] the China Economic and Strategy Initiative – Defeating the CCP: A Running Start… and a road map for economic competition—and warfare—between the U.S. and China.”
Needless to say, we recommend listening to the whole episode.
Here are some Quotes:
“…the Chinese have been engaging in economic warfare for some time against the United States actively trying to de-industrialize the United States using their leverage in the global supply chain in critical sectors to try to influence things at a diplomatic political level…”
How difficult will this be?
“In a way, this is more difficult than the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union because of the deep economic integration, and globalization of trade… so we’re at a starting point or a leading edge point where we really have to optimize that trade economic relationship for our broader strategic interests.”
On decoupling…
“…when it comes to the United States being reliant and dependent on China in certain key sectors like critical minerals is something we identify where China is just dominating the processing of…so many of the US goods, the electric vehicle supply chain, other supply chains are dependent now on China for the processing of critical minerals, that cannot continue… We have to starve the Chinese military-industrial economy from US capital.”
How did we get here? Well, they didn’t use the exact words but I think they could be summarized by greed and hubris…or perhaps a more charitable description of naivete. They continue:
“…I don’t see a future where we have alignment with China peace and stability in the region and beyond as long as the CCP remains in power… I just think part of our strategy should not only be to weaken the economy… but also put pressure on the CCP and hold things at risk that they see as tied to their continued grip on power… getting into the game of political warfare ourselves, getting into the game of supporting dissidents more outwardly…
… it might in fact be the case that the most important geography in a Taiwan contingency is the Malacca Strait, not the Taiwan Strait itself. And so broadening our approach to deterrence and actual conduct of the conflict to include these economic pieces I think is essential.”
Which brings us to our featured image above, the South China Sea Shipping Lanes, an image obtained from: http://www.shippipedia.com/shippers-maintain-tokyo-route-as-u-s-says-radiation-is-easily-cleaned-off/ Which was found in this article: Losing Taiwan Means Losing Japan that probably deserves its own post!