On Tuesday, July 23rd, a combined Sino-Russian air operation nearly sparked a four-way air battle over the Sea of Japan by coming provocatively close to the disputed Dokdo/Takeshima islands. Sometime in the middle of the day, the Republic of Korea scrambled fighters to intercept a large flight of Russian and Chinese bombers plus fighter escorts and a control aircraft that approached the sensitive airspace. The Korean jets fired warning shots, causing the intruders to change course. A few minutes later however, the package returned and was again intercepted by the Koreans. This time, Japanese fighters also responded, leading to a very dangerous situation and a formal protest from Tokyo.
Though the scramble of fighters is not uncommon in these waters — Japan did so 390 times in 2017 — the discharge of weapons is a very serious incident, especially over disputed airspace. What remains uncertain however is whether the intrusion was an accident or a deliberate act intended to cause discord between two US allies. Russia initially denied culpability, accusing the Koreans of “hooliganism in the air” and questioning the legitimacy of the Korean air defense identification zone (ADIZ). Later that day however, Moscow blamed it on a technical glitch and promised to launch an investigation. Statements from the Chinese defense ministry on the other hand, contradicted the Russian stance; claiming the flight was executed as planned and insisting their aircraft did not violate Korean air space. Deliberate or not, the incident exposed widening cracks in US-led security arrangements in Northeast Asia and exacerbated a growing trade dispute between Japan and the Republic of Korea.
The Dokdo/Takeshima Islands
The tiny islands called Dokdo by the Republic of Korea and Takeshima by Japan have been an irritant in Japanese-Korean relations since the Second World War. Occupied by Korea but claimed by Japan, the rising economic and military power of Korea in the past 20 years increased the islands’ importance as a symbol of national sovereignty and pride. As a result, the frequency and intensity of squabbles over them also increased. Depending which source one consults, the islands were officially recognized as Korean in the 17th century but annexed by Japan during their colonization of the Korean kingdom beginning in 1905. Though not specifically mentioned in the San Francisco Treaty that ended American occupation of Japan, the islands were mostly forgotten until Korean forces occupied them in 1952 where they remain to this day. Despite recognizing the islands as Japanese, the US-led occupation government (still operating at that time) in Tokyo muted Japanese protests in order to maintain a unified front in Northeast Asia against the rise of Communism there.
The islands became important again in 1994 when the UN convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS) came into force. UNCLOS drastically increased the economic importance of even the smallest of maritime terrain features as states all over the globe used them to delimit the boundaries of their exclusive economic zones (EEZ). Since then, Dokdo/Takeshima has become more than just a point of pride, it is the key to some of the world’s best fishing grounds and any other economic riches that may lie within the 200 nautical mile EEZ surrounding it.
The Sino-Russian air operation on Tuesday also touched on how Beijing and Moscow believe boundaries should be drawn and security administered in Northeast Asia. The Korean ADIZ, for example, is not completely recognized by China or Russia, though they have different reasons to dispute the boundaries of that airspace management tool. For its part, China also has territorial disputes with both Japan and Korea in the East China Sea. By ensuring their air patrol also came close to the Socotra Rocks in the East China Sea (disputed with Korea), China and Russia managed to irritate the allies on a number of touch points simultaneously.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense released this map depicting the routes flown by Russian and Chinese aircraft on 23 July. Note their proximity to disputed islands.
Connections
The incident over Dokdo/Takeshima took place at a time when Japan and Korea are involved in an escalating trade dispute. Faced with an upper house election last week and falling tech exports due to the ongoing US-China trade war, Japan tightened its approval process on tech-related chemicals critical to Korean manufacture of memory chips. The Koreans, whose semiconductor industry makes 2/3 of the world’s memory chips for smart phones, accused the Japanese of retaliating for a Korean court decision demanding compensation to victims of forced labor during the Second World War. Japan rejected this claim but took steps to prevent World Trade Organization (WTO) sanctions by invoking national security, citing cases of inappropriate export of the chemicals in question to North Korea. Tokyo then doubled-down on their position by threatening to remove South Korea from a “white list” of countries with whom Japanese companies can trade with minimal oversight. Korea argues, with some justification, such a move would have devastating impact on the global supply chain that supports smart phone manufacture.
All these complex escalations took place in the two weeks leading up to the incident at Dokdo/Takeshima. Whether or not Japanese trade sanctions and the Korean responses to them are actually connected to ongoing disputes over wartime labor or a tiny set of islands, the dangerous incident in the skies over the Sea of Japan puts the convergence of all this disruptive maneuvering into a very disturbing context. If nothing else, it highlights the connections between politics, trade, and security in Northeast Asia. To the extent this was the intent of Russia and China, it will be interesting to see whether the United States plays a constructive role in cooling the temperature amid its own contentious trade disputes in the region.
Lino Miani is a retired US Army Special Forces officer, author of The Sulu Arms Market, and CEO of Navisio Global LLC.
Hybrid Warfare is the stuff of nightmares for the military and political leadership of NATO. Ambiguous and hard to detect, it falls short of NATO definitions of armed conflict and therefore below thresholds on the decision to use force against it. Hybrid Warfare can be described as a plausibly deniable attack by a state using all its tools of national power to achieve a political result, as opposed to conventional warfare in which the state takes military action overtly and directly.
Allegedly employed by Russia against the Crimea in 2014, Hybrid War was intended to resemble a grassroots response by an ethnic Russian minority oppressed by the Ukrainian government. In reality, the Crimean campaign, like all Hybrid Warfare, required specific conditions for its success and great preparation to guarantee its effectiveness. It is not reactionary, it is revolutionary, and it is a foreign policy tool of the Russian state.
But Hybrid War as seen in Crimea — and later in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine — is not new nor is it unique to Russia. Other states and non-state actors have used similar tactics to overthrow governments in the past and they will do so again. What makes the Crimean case especially troubling is that it was used to carve off a piece of a state rather than overthrow its government entirely. This precedent opens a large number of sub-state trouble spots globally to new and tempting possibilities. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the South China Sea where many of the requisite conditions exist for Hybrid War to succeed in the hands of China, which has gone a long way towards developing the mindset and the tools required to wrest control of relevant pieces of territory from its neighbors.
Hybrid Muddle
Any responsible discussion about Hybrid Warfare should begin with a definition. Unfortunately the NATO heads of state and government began using the buzzword to describe policy responses to Hybrid War before the Alliance had time to define the term. The result is a broad spectrum of seemingly disparate Allied and national activities designed to counter Hybrid War. Everything from the American deployment of a tank brigade in the Baltic states to establishment of a Strategic Communications Center is described as a counter to the Hybrid threat.
Terrorists are said to use Hybrid tactics, and naval vessels and fighter planes are training against Hybrid War scenarios. It seems at times to be the embodiment of a “something must be done” defense policy — a damaging and self-defeating knee jerk. In some ways however, NATO’s broad response may actually be appropriate.
Canadian scholar Paul Taillon argues Hybrid War is simply a new manifestation of the Soviet concept of “political war” more commonly known as “active measures”:
‘a forceful expression of national policy that forces a nation state to submit by eroding its will and capability‘, active measures include a ‘spectrum of politico-military stratagems including, among other things, employment of overt and covert operations, agents of influence, subversion, special operations, propaganda, foreign-policy manipulation, deception, and psychological operations, as well as orchestrating the support of foreign elements to act as proxies‘. (Taillon 2014)
Though the force of choice for implementing these stratagems on foreign soil are Special Operations Forces (SOF), the stratagems themselves are mostly political tools supported by very carefully controlled military operations and not the other way around. Victory however is not assured. These stratagems depend on pre-existing conditions or weaknesses in the targeted society: “resistance potential.”
Though never specifically defined, the basic conditions of resistance potential are not difficult to deduce. First and foremost there must be a disaffected community with an identity distinctly different from the one in power. The disaffected must have a communal grievance and a geographic concentration that links their identity and grievances to the terrain. Critically, success in Hybrid Warfare requires weak governance in targeted areas, particularly in matters of security. In this way, corruption, lack of resources, and uneven wealth distribution become important aspects of resistance potential. Though these conditions are more or less easily identifiable, measuring them in order to effectively allocate and prioritize resources is a fine art that requires great experience and cultural understanding. In other words, Hybrid Warfare works best between neighbors.
Resistance potential was high in the Crimea in 2014 where the ethnic-Russian community comprised 67% of the population. Though Russian speakers comprise only 17.3% of Ukraine’s total population,they had a distinct geographic concentration in the Crimea and the cities of the Donbass where they had latent but well-known grievances setting them apart from those in power in Kiev. They felt threatened by the transfer of political rights to the growing Muslim Tatar population, and had concerns about linguistic marginalization. Their general disconnectedness from the central government forced Kiev to rule through local structures. In addition to the Crimean Parliament, which implemented wide autonomy under the Ukrainian constitution, the Tatars also had their own governing council called the Mejlis. By comparison, Kievan governance seemed remote, filtered, and corrupt.
Distribution of Russian Speakers (in red) in Ukraine in 2001. Note the heavy concentration in Crimea and cities of the Donbass.
Even with such a seemingly clear-cut case of high resistance potential, Russia required most, if not all of the active measures stratagems to achieve its desired political result. Shortly after the Maidan Uprising that ousted then-President Yanukovych of Ukraine, masked, uniformed, and mysteriously well-armed troops began occupying government buildings across Crimea. The uniformity, professionalism, high-tech equipment, and coordination strongly suggested they were more than pro-Russian Crimean self-defense forces as they were described by Russian news sources. Supported by crowds of Russian-speaking thugs, these forces systematically dismantled the tools of Ukrainian state sovereignty in Crimea, blocked a Ukrainian military response, installed pro-Russian politicians (many with known links to Russian organized crime), and hastily arranged a Crimea-wide referendum on whether to declare independence or simply “rejoin” Russia. Emboldened by — or perhaps intimidated by — a Russian authorization to deploy troops to “Ukrainian territory” to protect vulnerable ethnic Russians, voters approved the referendum to rejoin Russia with a 97% majority before any international observers could arrive to verify the results. The true legality of the situation may never be known as Crimea is now effectively a part of Russia which claims, however implausibly, its actions were a defense of the self-determination of peoples.
To be certain, Russia has used more aggressive tactics in similar situations in the past. The 2008 invasion of Georgia is just one example, leading us to ponder why, if Ukrainian governance was so weak in Crimea, Moscow used Hybrid Warfare there instead of the more muscular actions applied in South Ossetia. The reason of course, is Ukraine’s physical and political proximity to NATO made any overwhelming use of conventional force by Moscow a potential threat to the Alliance. The imprecise calculations of deterrence politics so close to NATO’s Article 5 frontier meant the seizure of Crimea had to fall well below the Alliance’s decision thresholds for the use of military force lest Russia’s actions provoke an overwhelming defensive response by Brussels.
When so much of Hybrid War’s success or failure relies on the manipulation of perceived identity and grievance, it is nearly impossible for any government, let alone a large and diverse 28-nation alliance, to be completely certain of the legal appropriateness of using force. It is precisely this ambiguity and the incremental, arguably legal nature of Hybrid stratagems that makes them effective and attractive as a foreign policy option.
Divide and Confuse
Thoughtful observers of global security are naturally alert for signs Hybrid Warfare is proliferating from its home in Crimea to other parts of the world. There is certainly no shortage of resistance potential as stateless nations and disaffected minorities everywhere find their voices amplified by the internet. As long as there is potential for resistance, relevant actors — state and non-state — will maintain a capability to exploit it using Hybrid Warfare. Among these are the United States and China which both maintain organizations trained and equipped to use the stratagems of active measures. In China, Hybrid War is the domain of the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, the Coast Guard, and an organization called the Maritime Militia which has an ambiguous legal status linking it to both private industry and the military.
Having capability however, does not prove it is being used for Hybrid Warfare and even if it is, proving that its use is somehow connected to Russian success in Crimea is another matter entirely. Knowing this and scanning the world for Hybrid War, our eyes continually return to the area where the two Hybrid superpowers collide: the South China Sea.
The South China Sea is one of the world’s richest arenas for competition between the economic and cultural spheres of India, China, the United States, and to a lesser degree, the Islamic Middle East. Claimed by no fewer than five nations on its periphery — six counting Taiwan — two of which, Vietnam and Indonesia, are rising regional powers, and one, China, which aspires to global relevance, the South China Sea is a resource rich and geographically severe choke point. Its waters are managed on two levels: nationally by claimant states, and internationally by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Though ASEAN’s grip is divided and intentionally weak, it is one of the mechanisms by which the United States seeks to prevent China from turning the entirety of the South China Sea into its territorial waters, barred to the innocent passage of American warships of the 7th US Fleet which, for the moment, is the real power that polices the region.
ASEAN and its member states all exhibit resistance potential which China attempts to exploit by isolating Vietnam and the Philippines, and weakening rival-nation control of areas adjacent to the Spratly, Paracel, and Pratas Island chains. To the extent that we can consider ASEAN a unified political entity, it is a fractured one at best. Its member states feature extreme cultural differences and long histories of conflict with one another. There are numerous examples of ongoing territorial disputes between them, many of which affect the waters of the South China Sea itself. In this way, each claimant state resembles an identifiable minority group with a geographic concentration and grievances against its neighbors if not against its capital in Jakarta. ASEAN’s governance is weak. Its decision-making processes are not rule based and are subject to the corruption of horse-trading. It has no police, no intelligence service, no Army or Navy. Its raison d’être is in keeping its members from interfering in each other’s internal politics and thus it is vulnerable to having parts of its territory carved away by active measures.
The confusing mosaic of occupied features in the South China Sea. Geography, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and national law conspire to make sovereignty there a very murky legal environment. Source: http://maritimeawarenessproject.org/
The situation is far less certain at the national level. Resistance potential within Southeast Asian nations resides largely in a very visible Chinese minority –- the Straits Chinese -– that has throughout history been the target of violent mass grievance inflamed for cynical domestic political reasons. China largely ignored the plight of the Straits Chinese for centuries except for a historically brief period between 1949 and 1972 when Beijing supported Communist movements throughout Southeast Asia.
Despite its historical ambivalence, China’s claim to the South China Sea is based in part on the exploratory voyages that brought the Straits Chinese to Southeast Asia to begin with. It is not a stretch therefore, to imagine that the Straits Chinese may represent a conduit for Hybrid Warfare. To be certain, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines all harbor this concern about their Chinese minorities though there is no evidence China is even considering agitating the Straits Chinese for political purposes.
Beijing is cautious for good reason. Resistance potential of the Straits Chinese is not as high as it may seem. The peninsular and archipelagic states of Southeast Asia do not provide useful areas of sanctuary where insurgents can thrive. Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia all successfully defeated ethnic Chinese-led insurgencies since the Second World War and if anything, the potential for resistance has decreased since then. Ethnic Chinese citizens of Southeast Asian nations (other than Singapore) do not dominate any geographic regions nor do they control any of the institutions of state. Perhaps surprisingly, their cultural connection to China is not to Beijing, but to Fujian and Guangdong provinces, from which their ancestors fled privation or persecution, in some cases at the hands of the government in Beijing. Furthermore, the Straits Chinese have enjoyed a relatively high standard of living when compared with their fellow countrymen from majority groups.
Though Southeast Asia is home to a number of other disaffected, even insurgent groups, these are all ideologically or culturally opaque for Chinese Hybrid Warfare actors. None of these groups reside in the uninhabited seascape under contention. Unlike in Crimea where Russia was able to weaken and replace Ukrainian governance with ethnic Russians as a prelude to a political maneuver, Chinese Hybrid Warfare can at best weaken rival-nation control over the South China Sea. The situation simply lacks the finality offered by a follow-on political ploy.
Not Crimea
Though the situation in the South China Sea differs from that in Crimea primarily because the area under contention is an uninhabited seascape, there is no doubt China uses Hybrid Warfare to enable its increasing control. Whether these techniques and the motivation to use them are inspired by the Crimean case is a much harder question to answer. Indeed the 2014 drama between China and Vietnam over a drilling rig played itself out at a grassroots level with fishermen deployed from both sides to either harass or defend the rig. To what extent this can be considered government-sponsored Hybrid Warfare is debatable but it gives an indication that disputes in the area will be fought by actors of ambiguous legal status and authority. As in Crimea, where Hybrid War is used to advance Russian territorial ambitions without sparking a response by NATO, China calibrates it use of similar tactics to ensure its adversaries in the region do not draw the United States too actively into the contest.
Again, use of Hybrid Warfare tactics in the South China Sea does not prove a connection to events in Crimea. Indeed, publication of “Unrestricted Warfare” by the Chinese War College demonstrated a willingness to use Hybrid Warfare techniques as far back as 1999. However, the substantive difference with today’s efforts is that while Unrestricted Warfare was aimed at countering another state, today’s efforts in the South China Sea have sub-state territorial goals. If there is an observable connection between Russia’s success and China’s efforts, it is only in the mindset required to apply active measures for limited territorial gains. Though reassuring in the sense that Hybrid Warfare minimizes violence, herein lies the real danger to international security; that use of the techniques may proliferate to other states with similar territorial ambitions, exacerbating existing tensions or turning competition into conflict.
Lino Miani is a retired US Army Special Forces officer, author of The Sulu Arms Market, and CEO of Navisio Global LLC
China has become a sensation in Western discourse, representing fears of economic displacement, military rivalry, and social upheaval. In many English language social media discussions about China, commentary can quickly escalate to the point that it is alarmist, ignorant, condescending, or racist. China is a vast country, with the largest population in the world, and they have experienced as much social, demographic, and environmental change in just the last generation as the West has in the last 100 years.
Despite what you may read in social media, analysis of China does not easily boil down to 140 characters or less. The “Middle Kingdom” is a vast land of contradictions, and much of what is said about the People’s Republic contain various levels of truth. An example of China’s extreme contrasts: although there is extreme poverty in many rural areas, Beijing just surpassed New York City in number of billionaires. Too often, commentators on social media try to dilute the facts into neat clichés and virtual soundbites rather than accept the complexities of the subject.
In an ever more globalized and interconnected world, words matter. Words and ideas compete for consideration and propagation on the internet. Opinions are shared, mimicked, and replicated quickly, often reaching unintended audiences, which is why so much commentary about China on social media is alarming. An opinion (educated or not) that is true to some extent in limited context can then be extrapolated and applied to other unrelated situations. The explosion of memes as acceptable political discourse on topics from the U.S. presidential primaries to the Refugee Crisis is a visible example of the problem of relying on social media for political information.
Where English language opinions are more informed, they are often limited in scope and origin to the expat enclaves of Beijing, Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta, where Westerners can experience China without the polarizing filter of the media. Popular opinion is therefore a reflection of the shallow observations often repeated by our major media organizations, whose footprints in China are, at best, a field office in Beijing or Shanghai, and at worst, simply echo the opinions of the major papers.
The problem is, the Chinese people are listening very closely. Many Chinese leaders and thinkers view America as an example of a successful great power, and they seek to imitate that success while still preserving their socialist system. The U.S. is observed by many with near obsession, curiosity, and often with some degree of apprehension. Clearly unaware of the impact of their statements in social media, the last thing Westerners, and Americans in particular, should be doing is disparaging or dismissing arguably rational Chinese actions in the media.
Imagine two brothers, where the younger brother imitates the behavior of the elder. If the elder brother rejects and mocks him, how will the younger brother then act in the future? If the Chinese political and economic leadership do not feel like Americans respect them, they may change course and find another less palatable model for future development. The Sino-American geopolitical relationship is the most important one in the 21st Century, and the U.S. should not neglect its leadership role in the region through ignorance and careless internal public dialogue.
Provinces of the People’s Republic of China. Photo Credit : http://www.nationsproject.org
The Loud Voices in the Room
Here are some examples from social media to demonstrate the problems with careless internal dialogue:
Opinion 1: The Chinese cheat (at business).
Commentary below a January 1st People’s Daily post about China’s new aircraft carrier. Photo Credit: www.facebook.com
This type of message invokes a value of fairness, and claims that China is not playing fair: in business, military technology, etc… Allegations of cheating aside, consider that China has leapfrogged the industrial revolution right into the information revolution. While some would argue the fairness of China’s approach to modernization, it is nothing new. The idea of appropriating methods and technologies from more advanced nations has occurred over and over again throughout history as many now-developed nations also stood on the shoulders of the trailblazers who went before.
Sharing of intellectual property in jointly owned enterprises has been a condition of investment in China since Deng Xiaoping’s open door policy of 1980. Western companies have willingly entered into such agreements, making significant profits while American consumers benefited by being able to buy cheaper goods. Furthermore, a large number of Chinese businesses do not cheat and steal, so their reaction to such insults on social media is predictably and understandably defensive. Dismissive and disrespectful behavior on social media has serious potential to have a negative effect on the economic relationship between the U.S and China.
Opinion 2: Chinese products are terrible quality.
There is a lot of evidence to support the fact that some Chinese goods are low quality. There have been instances of fake milk powder tainted with hazardous chemicals, contractors reducing the quality of construction in schools, and “gutter oil” used for cooking, issues that have instigated mass social movements in China in response.
Additional commentary following the January 1st People’s Daily post deriding the quality of China’s new domestically produced aircraft carrier. Photo credit: www.facebook.com
However, China as a nation is also capable of producing at high quality. The passenger rail system is not without flaws, but it has come an impressively long way. Most notably, the P.R.C. maintains a manned space program and in September 2013 sent an unmanned rover to the moon, which set the record in October 2015 as the longest operational lunar rover. When Westerners apply this opinion categorically, it becomes insulting and arrogant, asserting that the Chinese cannot do anything of quality, and the reaction is naturally negative with potential repercussions both in diplomacy and in business.
Opinion 3: China is a global threat.
The following comments came from a Facebook page on the People’s Daily discussing the ongoing fielding of the Liaoning, China’s new Ukrainian-made aircraft carrier:
Commentary below a December 31st China Daily post about the refurbished aircraft carrier that China recently purchased from Russia, the Liaoning. Photo Credit: www.facebook.com
This is an extreme instance of this opinion, where the commenter uses the anxiety around China’s rise to compare the P.R.C. to the Imperial Japanese, a comparison sure to promote defensiveness and hostility from Chinese readers. The memory of the brutal Japanese occupation is immortalized in film, monuments, and memorials throughout China, just as the communist resistance to the Japanese is celebrated as a legitimacy narrative. Tensions continue to run high between the two countries as was evidenced by the response to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in 2014. Arguable racist undertones aside, the commentary on China’s rise seems to swing to both extremes: Either China is a terrifying dragon, or China is a bumbling panda bear.
Rival or Partner?
If China is really a threat, then it could be a very serious one. When analyzing potential threats, analysis should be broken down into two components: capability of doing harm, and intent to do harm in the pursuit of a specific goal. Despite a large military, China has limited capability to threaten others in its immediate vicinity; the benefits of aggressive action are low and international connectivity makes the costs are still too high to make such policies palatable to the Chinese leadership.
The second component of threat analysis is often lacking in most Western discourse about China. Namely, do they even want to cause us harm? If/when they have the capability, would they want to use it? What would they achieve by doing so? Hostile and anxious comments about China shape and promote the kind of defensive hostility in China that the West does not desire. We should expect fear-mongering about China in the West to be mirrored, leading to further aggressive posturing and the increasing possibility of confrontation, perhaps leading to a fostering of the intent to do harm which does not currently exist.
China is quickly modernizing. Will it integrate further into the world’s political and economic systems? Or will the world’s largest economy and most populous nation be turned away by hostility from the system it so desperately wants to become a part of? Original Photo, Pudong, Shanghai
An Avoidable Collision
Fear-mongering can be counteracted through education. The more accurate information is spread about China, the more we Westerners will realize the limitations of our knowledge. The Chinese people are awakening to the outside world thanks to the influence of the internet, but they remain rooted in their customs, history, and have their own unique challenges. Other countries need not consent to China’s strategic positions or praise their business practices. Understanding the Chinese in context, and cooperating or challenging as appropriate is the key. The current hostile and dismissive discourse is one avoidable factor unnecessarily escalating tensions between two civilizations which are leading towards an aggressive rivalry, rather than a rewarding partnership.
MAJ Mike Kendall is a U.S. Army Engineer Officer with combat experience and extensive training in forcible entry and humanitarian relief operations. He graduated from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou China, and is currently attending the German Armed Forces General Staff College and Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany. He holds a B.S. in International Relations, an M.S. in Engineering Management, and an MPA in Non-Traditional Security Management. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
MAJ Mike Kendall is a U.S. Army Engineer Officer with combat experience and extensive training in forcible entry and humanitarian relief operations. He graduated from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou China, and is currently attending the German Armed Forces General Staff College and Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany. He holds a B.S. in International Relations, an M.S. in Engineering Management, and an MPA in Non-Traditional Security Management. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.