A Battle for Influence: United States and Japanese Responses to Chinese Information Operations
Abstract
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has used information and influence operations as an instrument of national power to effectively undermine the United States-Japan defensive alliance. That the United States and Japan must develop a coordinated information warfare strategy to preserve the alliances ability to deter PRC aggression and manage Chinese engagement, and compete and win in the information domain. The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the United States are in the midst of multi-domain competition. The U.S., in cooperation with its staunchest pacific ally Japan, seeks to maintain the rules-based order that has governed international relations since the end of World War 2. The PRC increasingly seeks to undermine and revise the status quo through a variety of means in order to achieve regional dominance and displace the U.S. from the Indo-Pacific. China has used gray-zone operations (coercive actions designed to operate below the threshold of an armed response) to pressure Japan over energy development rights in the East China Sea and sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diayou islands. PRC gray-zone activities, backed by a rapidly modernizing Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), have in turn driven the U.S. and Japan towards increasing strategic alignment. This has resulted in a number of tangible benefits to the conventional military aspects of the U.S.-Japan alliance. However, while the alliance has thus far effectively managed the PRCs conventional threat, the U.S. and Japan are failing to compete in the cognitive domains of information and influence. The PRC is employing influence operations as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda operations and as part of the PLAs Three Warfares concept. This has allowed the PRC to undermine the U.S.-Japan alliance by isolating it from a geo-politically ideal trilateral partner in the Republic of Korea, and by instigating local tensions over the presence of U.S. forces in Okinawa.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 02, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1177295
Entities
People
- John C. Ii Huenefeld
Organizations
- Marine Corps University