For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has been quietly waging an “over-the-top war” against the United States. Soldiers standing guard at the gate of the Bayi Building in Beijing
Political Warfare: Strategies for conflict China’s Plan to ‘Win Without Fighting,’ published in 2020. Kerry Gershaneck, author of ‘Win Without Fighting’, says propaganda, censorship, disinformation, espionage, extortion, bribery, sexual seduction, coercion, assassination, kidnapping, physical assault, gang violence, cyberattacks, malicious influence campaigns, are just a few of the things that can be done. malicious influence campaigns, are just some of the weapons used by the Chinese Communist Party in its all-out war against the free world.”
This type of warfare is called “political warfare” and is also known by other names such as “over-the-top warfare.” This type of warfare is modeled on the use of almost all means other than direct military attack operations. However, the authors note that this approach is equally deadly, considering that the ultimate goal is to defeat the enemy without firing a single shot.
For the past three years, Gershanek has been a visiting scholar at Taiwan‘s National Chengchi University (NCEU). In an interview, he said the Chinese Communist Party “tries to use everything to conduct war without any bottom line.”
It is a concept that the West cannot understand, he said.
Gershanek served as a senior strategic liaison and counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and has taught at universities in Southeast Asia. He describes in his book that when he asked about the topic, faculty members at the U.S. State Department and Pentagon staff training facilities, looked at him blankly.
In the book, he recalls an interaction with faculty teaching public affairs at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, several years ago. He said, “It was as if I was asking them to explain how they teach quantum mechanics or matter-antimatter asymmetry, because they had no idea what I was talking about.”
Institutional ignorance
This ignorance, which has pervaded successive U.S. administrations from the end of the Cold War until President Donald Trump (Trump) took office, is the result of the false sense of security the West fell into after defeating the Soviet Union, Gershanek said. This view holds that democracy completely triumphed over communism at the end of the Cold War.
He said, “We naively ignore another growing threat – and that is China (the Chinese Communist Party).”
The idea was that as China increased international trade and engagement with the international community, the Communist regime would eventually become more democratic.
As a result, the United States has shut down the political war machine it built during the Cold War.
We disbanded the U.S. Information Agency (USIA); we stopped teaching (political warfare) at military schools and high level schools; we stopped teaching the course at the Foreign Service Institute,” Gershanek said. …… We stopped teaching this course at feeder schools like Georgetown (Georgetown), which have produced a lot of our diplomatic talent.”
In addition to ignorance, those in Washington who have recognized the Chinese Communist threat have been willfully blind to it.
For officials, Gershanek said, many have put the issue in the “not my job” category. “They see it, but they think it’s too much trouble. So he would say, ‘It’s not my job to fight the intimidation, coercion, infiltration, subversion of the evil forces in Beijing.'”
For elected officials, Gershanek said, they would think, “I don’t want to learn that it exists because that might interfere with the funding of my next campaign.”
Beyond that, his book details Beijing’s masterful tactics in manipulating America’s political, business and cultural elites, which include economic coercion, bribery, threats and psychological manipulation.
The end result was a “death spiral” that kept the United States in a “death spiral” for years, only to see an upturn when President Donald Trump took office. He commented, “Key people throughout the (Trump Administration) …… are beginning to understand these very serious threats.”
Under the U.S. State Department, the Trump administration has pushed back against a series of Chinese Communist Party depredations, from crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang to the theft of U.S. technology.
“I think now, based on the foundation that the Trump administration has built, the new administration will have more of a backbone and more understanding of the threat,” Gershanek said. “They’re going to be more mature and smarter.”
A united front
Gershanek said the Communist regime’s “United Front” operations have been particularly successful. These operations are designed to influence U.S. elites to behave in ways approved by the Communist government.
The “united front work,” which Communist Party leaders have dubbed a “magic bullet,” involves thousands of overseas groups. They conduct political influence operations, suppress dissident movements, gather intelligence, and facilitate technology transfers to China. Many of the groups are coordinated by the United Front Department, a party agency. Last year, a Newsweek investigation found that there were about 600 such groups in the United States.
Gershanek said, “For years, United United Front organizations have operated with near impunity in the United States.”
During his tenure at U.S. think tanks and academia, Gershanek witnessed firsthand the Chinese Communist regime’s united front operations. He found that the CCP’s agents of influence were “very successful” in attracting analysts, academics and business leaders.
He stated, “I have seen CCP influence agents …… (and) executors of the united front, very popular in (U.S.) educational institutions and think tanks.”
After being targeted for exerting influence operations, these Americans will be invited to dinner parties or flown to China for tours. There, they will be received and cared for by Chinese Communist agents. These agents may also provide them with valuable insider information, such as the behind-the-scenes activities of top Communist Party leaders.
So they think they’re important,” Gershanek said. But they don’t know how deeply they are being psychologically manipulated.”
According to Gershanek, this psychological manipulation of American targets is evidence of the effectiveness of the CCP’s “united front-building” measures.
He said, “I often see that Americans who interact regularly with the CCP’s United Front staff are doing what the CCP wants them to do – acting on behalf of the CCP – and this has become a normal part of their thought process. part of their normal thought process.”
He said, “Although they are not told to do so, they have become accustomed, on almost any issue, to mirroring the Chinese [Communist Party] position.”
In response, Gershanek said, the United States needs to carefully identify and expose the CCP’s united front groups and agents, and then take legal action against them.
The Trump administration has begun this process by designating the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification as a foreign agent. “The National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification, an organization controlled by the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, has also taken similar steps against the Confucius Institute U.S. Center. The organization promotes Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes in U.S. universities and classrooms.
More broadly, Gershanek said, the United States needs to do more to begin to defend itself against the Communist Party’s political warfare offensive. The first step is to understand the nature of that threat; the second is to come up with a comprehensive counter strategy that includes building institutions and educational institutions to combat the Communist regime’s attacks.
If that can be done, he said, “then we still have a fighting chance.” “And if we don’t, they will be able to win without a shot being fired.”
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