This is a useful book to read. The principles of warfare advocated by Sun Tzu say that you must know both yourself and your enemy. This book shows that modern American society is known by the Chinese military. As an exercise in cultural self-understanding alone, reading it pays dividends.
However, the topic is strategy. The words used can be relatively confusing at times, not quite embodying the meaning given to them by the authors. Unlimited...but within limits. Unrestricted...but following rules. It can be a bit of a struggle to follow their train of thought and understand their meaning (especially with the writing style, which lacks clarity or organization). Despite this I think it is worth struggling with, and especially with a broad overview of some of the argument to assist. Such a board overview follows.
The main point: the United States is prone to think in a manner which intrinsically restricts the conduct of warfare to only a formal military domain; thus it abstracts military action from its location in social domains (politics, economy, information, etc). This fits rather well. We like things to be formulas or mechanistic. We also like to abstract them away into separate ("rigidly distinct") boxes which have no interaction. And so, the military is responsible for military problems and better stay far from anything approaching politics! However, as the authors reveal, this leads to an inability to conduct grander strategy in warfare.
So instead: "unrestricted" warfare is to have strategy incorporate considerations (and interactions) within various domains, not only the military domain. Basically it is a rejection of the post-Westphalian concept of the nation-state as the supreme (and exclusive) kind of agent in strategy. This is good. The post-Westphalian idea of the nation-state may be useful in certain contexts and for certain purposes, but it is NOT the comprehensive reality of the universe. To treat it as such is to be blind to much of reality, and to live in a fantasy world. Does North Korea really care that it is "unrecognized" as a nation by us? Nope. Because the nation-state idea simply doesn't describe the order in which NK exists, so much as it describes the order in which Germany exists.
This is all well and good. But is it truly revolutionary or new? I don't think so. Clausewitz himself writes that there is no military situation abstracted from the political situation, and politics (in this sense) involves much more than just inter-governmental relations. Rather, I think that we can treat this as a corrective against modern American oversimplifications and reductions, and thus as a "return" to older concepts of strategy and statesmanship. Indeed, they even imitate and follow Clausewitz's guidance on method for determining a theory of warfare which is inductive/a posteriori, rather than deductive/a priori. Unfortunately, the one "modern" example of a war they have to analyze is the Gulf War, and so they relentlessly analyze it alone, perhaps leading to imbalance.
And here is where the rhetoric is overblown. This is no "master plan" to destroy America (false advertising). It's not even really new concepts. Rather, it is a (very) forceful reminder against the false (and harmful) modernist sentiments that prevail in America's mode of conducting warfare. In reference to false understandings, the authors actually accuse Americans of "touching the elephant" - an allusion to the tale of "blind men and the elephant" (although this allusion is not made clear in the text, and so is confusing if you have not heard of the tale). It is a parable about believing one has the absolute truth, while only having a limited perspective. Perhaps the authors also touch the elephant in a few ways (bias for helicopters without empirical evidence, a near-religious adoration of the golden ratio, etc.).
There's a final point of balance that is perhaps needed. It is easy to either dismiss the Chinese critiques of American society ("we don't worship tech") or take them too seriously ("tech is evil"). Either reaction is problematic. Instead we need to understand that just as in some other areas, there is a rhetorical/political purpose at play. America is being made fun of (which means that the critiques are both based in reality, but also somewhat biased for the sake of local humor). Technology is not evil, and technology is not God. So we need to learn to avoid seeing technological advancement as a replacement for people (this is the error the authors would like to point out). This doesn't mean avoiding technological advancement.
There are many lessons to be learned from this book. I'd advise it for all military officers to read. However, I also would advise to temper the expectations and reframe the reader's conception of what the book is: it is an exercise in recovery of some older strategic concepts, not a revolutionary approach to destroying the United States. Get past and ignore the rhetoric and advertising, and take the lessons where they make valid points about where we can be short-sighted in our mindset. But don't discount those lessons because of the wild rhetoric and advertising which surround them. Doing this, you will profit.
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