{"id":42541,"date":"2018-10-09T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T19:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=42541"},"modified":"2018-10-09T13:37:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T02:37:22","slug":"operating-left-of-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/operating-left-of-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Operating left of launch"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Three weeks before Christmas 2001, the energy company Enron went bust. It was the largest bankruptcy in American history. In 2002, Malcolm Gladwell told the story<\/a> of what went wrong: on the advice of bright McKinsey consultants, Enron\u2019s management dived headfirst into corporate America\u2019s \u2018talent culture\u2019, recruiting only the top performers who could think outside the box.<\/p>\n

Strategists commonly imagine conflict in boxes. We divide it into distinct domains contested by armed services wearing distinct uniforms. We adapt to change by creating more boxes\u2014new domains (cyber), new uniforms (the new US space force) and new theatres (the Indo-Pacific).<\/p>\n

In the boxes of war\u2014everything \u2018right of launch\u2019\u2014the US is dominant and likely to remain so for some time. Faced with this reality, other states are achieving strategic objectives by all means <\/a>short of war\u2014everything \u2018left of launch\u2019. This pattern of adaptation to the modern strategic environment is leaving the US and allies struggling to think outside the box of conventional solutions.<\/p>\n

So what exactly does \u2018operating left of launch\u2019 look like? In short, it means bringing multiple arms of state power to bear on a localised objective while avoiding a reaction threshold that might cause the opponent to declare war. Take Beijing\u2019s goal to \u2018reunify\u2019 Taiwan. If the PLA were to invade the island tomorrow, it would risk bringing the US into a war that China would likely lose<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To stay below Washington\u2019s reaction threshold, China has used fishermen and oil rigs<\/a> in radio contact with domestic law enforcement<\/a> to gradually occupy surrounding maritime spaces, eventually followed by permanent military installations.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Chinese state-owned media<\/a> have cooperated with the PLA to shape foreign news coverage<\/a> of specific events. Targeted economic sanctions have caused<\/a> other states to withdraw military forces<\/a> from specific positions, and diplomatic \u2018lawfare\u2019<\/a> has contested the regional jurisdiction of international bodies. This strategy is steadily isolating<\/a> Taiwan from US naval assets, particularly aircraft carriers, and eroding the credibility of US deterrence. It is shaping the terrain to suit Beijing.<\/p>\n

Russia is also adept at using its left-of-launch toolbox to shape the battlefield in its favour. Moscow used fake news to politically agitate<\/a> Russian-speaking minorities in Crimea prior to occupying the peninsula using motorcycle gangs, unmarked soldiers, hackers, Cossack nationalists, and criminals. The effect was to facilitate a swift tactical victory, deter NATO intervention, and present Ukraine with a strategic fait accompli<\/em>: attempt to retake lost territory at extreme cost, or accept the conquest. Some argue that Iran<\/a> has employed similar tools to shape the battlefield in Syria while avoiding a significant US response (although Israel has been targeting <\/a>Iranian positions).<\/p>\n

Operating left of launch, to be clear, is not a new idea. It might come with many new names\u2014hybrid warfare<\/a>, diathetical warfare<\/a>, memetic warfare<\/a>, political warfare<\/a>, non-linear warfare\u2014but the principles underneath are timeless (see Sun Tzu<\/a>). Repeated use of the word \u2018warfare\u2019 is misleading; if all we see is another nail, we\u2019ll still reach for the hammer. Yet this is also not foreign policy. It is the art of blurring the line between war and peace in a geographic space. It is thinking on a spectrum while opponents think in boxes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth emphasising that operating left of launch doesn\u2019t equate to winning. The absurdity of Russia\u2019s narrative following the MH17 tragedy, for example, arguably strengthened Western unity, lengthened sanctions, and may have even distracted<\/a> separatists from defending entrenched positions. Other states are not defenceless: Australia has brought in sweeping new powers<\/a> targeting foreign political interference. And, importantly, not all Chinese fishermen, Russian-speaking minorities, or Cossack nationalists are pawns on a chessboard.<\/p>\n

Overall, however, Washington and allied states like Australia have shown a limited capacity to respond. A NATO report<\/a> found that Russian media began preparing the battlefield in Crimea at least a year in advance with no measurable resistance. The US regularly sends warships in response to Chinese maritime expansion, yet a senior American military officer recently told Congress<\/a> that China now has de facto control of the South China Sea. This is Sun Tzu for the modern age: \u2018Subdue the enemy\u2019s troops without fighting; capture their cities without laying siege; overthrow their kingdom without a war.\u2019<\/p>\n

The question raised for the Australian security community is certainly not whether conventional capabilities are necessary. The question is whether they are sufficient. While the US remains dominant on the right, rivals will naturally operate on the left. Their general success so far suggests that thinking in right-of-launch boxes isn\u2019t enough for solving left-of-launch problems. Hence the parallel with Enron: in Gladwell\u2019s words, if everyone Enron hired had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three weeks before Christmas 2001, the energy company Enron went bust. It was the largest bankruptcy in American history. 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