Since completing its terraforming and island reclamation projects in the Spratly Islands in 2016, the People’s Republic of China has shifted its emphasis to asserting dominance over the South China Sea. A key component of this pivot has been the expansion of China’s maritime militia—a force of vessels ostensibly engaged in commercial activity, but which in fact conducts operations in concert with Chinese law enforcement and military institutions to help the party-state achieve its military and political aims in the South China Sea’s disputed waters. Gregory B. Poling and Colonel Sean Berg join this episode to discuss China’s gray zone strategy in littoral Asia, and the role that the maritime militia plays in advancing China’s illegal sovereignty claims.
Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa
Russia, China, and Iran have all been learning how to conduct irregular warfare from the United States, modeling their approaches to IW on observations...
Subscribe to the IWI monthly newsletter by going to www.irregularwarfare.org! Is peace the natural order of things for the human race and war an...
From dynamite in the early twentieth century to drones, bioweapons, and private-sector satellite constellations today, lethal technologies are increasingly available to nonstate actors and...