It is Political Warfare Out There

For John, BLUF:  This is the view from a month ago.  It loos like the President is currently trying to make up for lost time.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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China is winning the coronavirus propaganda war

Here is the sub-headline:

Beijing deploys soft power as Europe and US fall short on solidarity.

From Politico, by Mr Matthew Karnitschnig, 18 March 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

Judging by the propaganda, this really is war.

And China is winning.

As Europe struggles to slow the spread of coronavirus and China begins to show signs that it has put the worst of the outbreak behind it, Beijing is engaging in a not-so-subtle PR campaign.

China’s main strategy is to show that the country that gave birth to the virus (and then covered it up for weeks, allowing it to spread across the globe unhindered) is on the front lines trying to save humanity, while the EU can’t get its act together and the world’s other superpower is busy pointing fingers.

Over the past few days, China has sent planeloads of masks, teams of doctors and even ventilators around the world to help battle the crisis.  Chinese billionaire Jack Ma donated one million masks and hundreds of thousands of testing kits to the U.S., with the first load arriving in Seattle on Monday.

China is engaged in political warfare.  There should be no doubt about it.  Here is an observation by an unknown commentator:

For Clausewitz, war is politics by other means.  For Sun-Tzu, politics is war by other means.

Clausewitz is, of course, Prussian War College Commandant Carl von Clausewitz, whose two hundred year old tome On War, based on his experiences fighting the French under Napoleon Bonaparte, has been studied for quite some time.  And, Sun-Tzu is the several thousand year old Chinese equivalent, but with a much shorter and more pithy book, The Art of War.

As someone said, there is a great deal to consider in this formulation, not least of which is the fundamentally divergent contexts that China and the West bring to this international competition.

We will survive the Coronavirus, but will we survive a Chinese effort against us.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff