In its relentless quest for global hegemony, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows no bounds. Arguably the world’s most oppressive regime, the CCP has one overarching goal: to promote the interests of the Party, spreading its ideology and control to every corner of the globe. That said, the United States and its western allies stand firmly in their way.
The CCP works from a premise of “three warfares” (san zhan): public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.
The CCP is keenly aware that it is not yet able to destroy the West at a kinetic level of warfare. In a head-to-head confrontation with the U.S. and its allies, China would be outmatched—literally outgunned, militarily. However, there are devastating ways to wage asymmetrical warfare to undermine and weaken the U.S. while simultaneously bolstering the CCP’s military objectives and capacity to wage war in multiple theaters.
[Video] The People’s Republic of China (PRC) isn’t counting on its military to beat the U.S.
The Three Warfares
The CCP works from a premise of “three warfares” (san zhan): public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. These three interrelated and mutually reinforcing systems can hamstring the strategic and tactical capacities of the U.S. and its allies—even including their military capabilities.
The CCP has learned to use the robust U.S. legal system to weaken America’s standing as the world’s leading superpower. Tactics collectively known as “lawfare” exploit both the strengths and weaknesses of American law and litigation to tie up, obstruct, undermine, and divide the U.S. internally and on the global stage.
Lawfare is a major component of fifth-generation warfare, which uses information and data to exploit and redefine cognitive biases, manipulate worldviews, and destroy opponents from within.
“The CCP understood they needed the West to advance, and they are still taking advantage of that,” according to retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding. “Thus, the only option is for us to completely decouple and prevent our citizens from engaging with China.”
Lawfare is a means of achieving military objectives—while constraining the West’s ability to employ its martial advantages
It is critical that U.S. lawmakers, policymakers, and military leadership understand China’s three warfares strategy and meet their threat head-on. A merely defensive posture plays into the CCP’s intent to immobilize U.S. companies, governmental agencies, and military powers through endless litigation and the manipulation of public opinion.
Ultimately, lawfare is a means of achieving military objectives—while constraining the West’s ability to employ its martial advantages—making it a serious threat to U.S. national security.
The first step in defeating these tactics is to, as Sun Tzu wrote, understand the enemy. The second is to use that understanding to formulate offensive and preemptive strategies to beat the CCP at its own game.
Unrestricted Lawfare
It is important to understand that the CCP—and now the Biden syndicate—will hold its opponents to legal and ethical standards that it has no intention of following itself.
Lawfare, wrote Dean Cheng, a former senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, “involves ‘arguing that one’s own side is obeying the law, criticizing the other side for violating the law, and making arguments for one’s own side in cases where there are also violations of the law.’”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
“Like the Soviets, the CCP’s dictators are never shy of saying that law is the party’s instrument to destroy enemies,” wrote Bradley A. Thayer and Lianchao Han, and “the Communist Party always remains above the law.”
The ends sought by the CCP and their proxies in the Biden administration justify the means, even if the means include deceit, racism, and human rights abuses. As Cheng wrote, “current PRC behavior suggests that one should not necessarily expect the Chinese to refrain from engaging in activities they condemn in others.”
This approach is essentially “unrestricted lawfare,” the use and abuse of the U.S. legal system by the CCP and by the CCP-infiltrated DOJ to weaken America, break the will of the people, and exert its political influence beyond its own borders, weaponizing the American judicial system to persecute dissidents and punish whistleblowers.
Lawfare just one battle amid a war for hearts, minds, and, ultimately, global hegemony. Currently, the freedom-loving people of the United States are standing in the way, which is why presidential candidate Donald Trump—and now increasingly , Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who has been dubbed a “MAGA Democrat”—has been attacked so fiercely.
Lawfare is a brutal form of political persecution, and we must all oppose it. In my next article, I’m going to present tangible ways we can stand up for ourselves and the true rule of law, instead of rule by law.
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Kelly John Walker