Exemplary of this category were Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert Kaplan, which underscored how little attention was being paid to southeast Asia by the mainstream American news media; The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America by Jim Sciutto, which pointed to the coordination of seemingly unrelated events; The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, which encompassses a longer view of China’s global ambitions; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger, which highlights the relentless, constant, and hidden cyberwar unfolding across the globe.
Although two of these works contain the word ‘America’ in their subtitles, none of them are parochial in perspective. The systemic patterns which they reveal will interest readers in Zambia and Chad, in Paraguay and Bolivia, in Cambodia and Thailand.
Neither are these books overly sensationalistic, although their publishers may have titled and marketed them with passion.
The picture which emerges from these books is that any and every nation around the globe is under constant cyberattacks. Every country must therefore be engaged in cybersecurity and countermeasures.
This ceaseless cyberwarfare is no mere harassment, but can be quite deadly, and is also coordinated with economic pressure and occasionally with direct military action. This ongoing conflict is invisible and largely ignored by the news media.
While huge amounts of media coverage were and are devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, actions undertaken by the much larger aggressors - Russia and China - go unreported by newspapers and unchallenged by world governments, as Robert Maginnis writes:
A major factor in the new great power competition is the leadership at the helm of these countries. Both China and Russia are headed by autocrats who test international order just as the United States seems to be losing its way.
China and Russia carefully watch any response to their espionage and weaponized cyber activity. When they see little or none, the increase such efforts. Robert Maginnis continues:
In the fact of this confrontation, the West seems feckless at stopping Putin’s and Xi’s great power ambitions, efforts driven by their authoritarian personalities and evidently accepted and cheered by their domestic power bases.
The nations of the world need a greater degree of awareness, both about China’s and Russia’s plans and goals, and about the consequences which the world would endure, should those goals be realized.
China’s “Belt and Road” strategy includes selling technology and construction projects to ‘emerging’ third-world nations. When those nations can’t pay the debts incurred by those purchases, China offers to ‘forgive’ the obligations in return for permanently stationing Chinese military in those nations, and in return for trade and transportation rights being given to China in, around, and through those countries.
The global community of nations also needs to form a steady resolve to resist, and to engage in countermeasures against, cyber aggression and economic extortion by Russia and China.
