{"id":1729477,"date":"2022-11-08T07:35:58","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T12:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1729477"},"modified":"2022-11-08T09:32:53","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:32:53","slug":"how-the-u-s-navy-can-compete-with-china-in-the-gray-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-the-u-s-navy-can-compete-with-china-in-the-gray-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"How the U.S. Navy Can Compete with China in the Gray-Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-the-u-s-navy-can-compete-with-china-in-the-gray-zone%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1729477&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/China-South-China-Sea-Gray-Zone.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usni.org\/magazines\/proceedings\/2022\/november\/prevailing-without-gunsmoke-south-china-sea\">entry<\/a> in the U.S. Naval Institute\u2019s Maritime Counterinsurgency Project, titled \u201cWinning without Gunsmoke in the South China Sea,\u201d comes from Wendell Leimbach and Eric Duckworth of the Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office, a directorate overseen by the U.S. Marine Corps commandant. The office is doing crucial work. Gaming and analysis have revealed that the United States and its allies and partners have no palatable way to defeat China\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.csis.org\/programs\/gray-zone-project\">gray-zone<\/a>\u201d strategy in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/05\/force-design-2030-is-not-all-about-the-south-china-sea\/\">China seas<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<\/p>\n<p>They can either stand idle, and let China make good its claim to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/chinas-sovereignty-over-south-china-sea-indisputable-beijing-claims-1623219\">state ownership<\/a> of the South China Sea in defiance of the law of the sea. Or they can open fire, and bear the blame for aggression. Friends of maritime law need some recourse short of blazing away with guns or missiles. Hence the search for \u201cintermediate force capabilities\u201d between passive acquiescence and hot war.\n<\/p>\n<p>Leimbach and Duckworth report on a seemingly minor yet essential shift in the lingo U.S. military folk apply to gray-zone operations. Until fairly recently, efforts to find ways to operate effectively in this murky realm went under the guise of \u201cnonlethal weapons.\u201d But a weapon is an implement\u2014not a capability. The Pentagon <a href=\"https:\/\/apps.dtic.mil\/sti\/pdfs\/AD1029823.pdf\">defines<\/a> a capability as \u201cthe ability to complete a task or execute a course of action under specified conditions and level of performance.\u201d In other words, it\u2019s the ability to do something or another.<\/p>\n<p>Shifting the focus from widgets to tactics, operations, and strategy was a wise move.\n<\/p>\n<p>In this case, the necessary capability is the ability to meet and deflate China\u2019s abuses of Southeast Asian fishermen, coast guards, and navies without resort to violent force. China\u2019s fishing fleet, maritime militia, and coast guard routinely prevent Southeast Asian neighbors from harvesting natural resources from their \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/oceanservice.noaa.gov\/facts\/eez.html\">exclusive economic zones<\/a>\u201d (EEZs). An exclusive economic zone is an offshore preserve, generally reaching 200 nautical miles out to sea, that\u2019s guaranteed to a coastal state for its sole use.<\/p>\n<p>China deploys ships to neighbors\u2019 EEZs to deprive fellow Asians of their rights under international law. And yet it gets away with lawlessness by using nonmilitary sea services to anchor its claims. That doesn\u2019t mean China refrains from using force in regional quarrels. Chinese mariners use force all the time, but they refrain from the overt use of armed force. From gunfire, in other words. Fishing craft flood the zone in large numbers, for instance, defying efforts to police regional waters. The China Coast Guard outnumbers and outmuscles Southeast Asian coast guards and even navies\u2014opening up sweeping operational vistas before Beijing.\n<\/p>\n<p>Once deployed, intermediate force capabilities will give the United States and its regional parties the ability to escalate a confrontation while remaining beneath the threshold of open warfare. They can match China\u2019s gray-zone capabilities with their own. In effect, they can dare China to pull the trigger first\u2014and expose itself for the predator it is\u2014or they can induce Xi &#038; Co. to deescalate to noncoercive nautical diplomacy.<\/p>\n<p>Now, weapons and sensors remain indispensable tools of the trade despite the shift in parlance from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2020\/11\/chinas-df-21d-and-df-26b-anti-ship-missiles-hit-target-vessel-in-august\/\">weaponry<\/a> to capability. The coauthors list such novel and sometimes madcap technologies as \u201csynthetic slime\u201d that clings to small-boat propellers and expands to hinder propulsion; microwave directed-energy systems that impede electronics or shut down a vessel\u2019s engines; and dazzling lasers that cast a glare that obscures eyesight or interferes with optics.\n<\/p>\n<p>Such innovations are all to the good, but someone does have to be on the scene of gray-zone competition to wield them. The finest capability in the world makes no difference unless you use it. U.S. political and military magnates must make the conscious strategic choice to compete with China in the gray zone. That means mounting a standing presence in the South China Sea in the form of U.S. Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard seafarers, ships, and planes. In other words, it means setting aside the past practice of showing up once in a while and then steaming away. That practice cedes the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.19fortyfive.com\/2022\/07\/why-the-u-s-navy-needs-to-be-in-the-south-china-sea\/\">contested ground<\/a> to China, which is always there.\n<\/p>\n<p>You have to compete to win, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usni.org\/magazines\/proceedings\/2022\/july\/you-have-be-there\">you have to be there<\/a> to compete. Let\u2019s go\u2014and stay.\n<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/usnwc.edu\/Faculty-and-Departments\/Directory\/James-R-Holmes\">James Holmes<\/a> is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Nonresident Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest entry in the U.S. Naval Institute\u2019s Maritime Counterinsurgency Project, titled \u201cWinning without Gunsmoke in the South China Sea,\u201d comes from Wendell Leimbach and Eric Duckworth of the Joint<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1729480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1729477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1729480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}