International conflicts today are hardly a matter between politicians, diplomats, or military staff. Given the wide variety of conflicts, the mass public actually has a say in identifying national security risks and sometimes becomes active participants in them. During this process, something might go slightly wrong and breed unnecessary uncertainties.
How should we identify national security risks? One of the most common ways is to find out whether there are any potential attacks and threats from other countries or non-state actors. That is, who can harm us? Identification and attribution could be a less difficult job in the past. Say, we can trace the missiles to see who launch them or investigate smoking guns. Yet the pattern of conflicts and wars has transformed tremendously because of the advances in technologies and statecraft. Accompanying this trend is the increasing ways to conduct conflicts and wars. For instance, it is extremely difficult to trace back to the origins of cyberattacks. Strategic or tactical, international conflicts’ complexities reach an all-time high. People then come up with various prefixes to describe different situations and conflicts. Nevertheless, perhaps, what makes it more complex is exactly the growing prefix.
Prefix and its Purpose
The purpose of prefixes is to provide a precise vantage point to observe certain actions. Information warfare, perception warfare, cyber warfare, conventional warfare, you name it. The warfare prefixes are aiming to highlight features that characterize those actions. For example, information warfare may refer to those planning for controlling information sources, denying information breaches, intercepting enemy information, or confusing enemies.
One instant problem is the all-encompassing nature of using such a simple prefix to cover a broad range of conflicts and operations. (DoD’s report actually did a good job reflecting this matter.) In this regard, we could almost immediately observe the negative impacts of inadequate prefixes. They betray what they suppose to do: to provide a precise vantage point. Instead, they lead us nowhere.
Those who are aware of this problem go on arguing for finer conceptualization. In other words, they look for the drawbacks of current concepts and definitions and attempt to offer better ones. Some might become extremely precise and generate substantial analytical power. This is not an easy job. It requires intense and extensive scholarly debates and empirical works to know whether we are describing and capturing the right stuff. Yet, they might still backfire when they fail to communicate their ideas with the wider public.
Let’s examine the recently hyped gray zone conflicts, which describe conflicts that do not cross the threshold between war and peace, yet sabotage peace or status quo. At very first sight, this definition almost provides nothing useful. While scholars and practitioners have provided supplement conditions to validate and legitimize the concept, it remains a poorly organized concept.
The “gray zone” is overly “ambiguous.” It’s not really a good choice. It intends to cover too much coercive and clandestine operations. To see this, we can briefly recall China’s behavior in the South China Sea. China mobilizes a wide variety of agencies in this realm, including militias, fishers, coast guards, and occasionally the navy. Given the absence of outright conflicts, some strategic thinkers term this kind of conflict and tensions as “gray zone conflicts.” That is, everything that causes physical (maybe?) tensions yet fail to escalate to interstate wars goes to “gray zone.”
Interestingly, if we recall information warfare just mentioned, it could surely be a part of gray zone schemes. Tensions? Check. No wars? Check. Status quo changed? Check. Now, we have an amalgam of prefixes!
Apparently, this ambiguous prefix-conglomerate does not really give a precise view regarding the essence of China’s wide mobilization in the South China Sea. More importantly, because of its ambiguous naming, people struggle to validate this handy prefix but ignoring its strategic context and mechanisms. To be honest, it sounds cool, and this is enough for some people to stand for its usage.
The Effects of Bad Prefix
The outcomes of inadequate prefixes are obvious. First, it could delay effective response given the wrong instruction of threat identification and attribution. Second, which is more of interest here, inadequate prefixes could mobilize the mass public, a new uncertainty in modern conflicts.
When focusing on categorizing but not analyzing, people could be biased by the available knowledge. When people face unprecedented challenges, they might use available shortcuts to accelerate information processing and policy response. This could be dangerous given the possibility of false responses. For example, it would be a disaster if strategists take nuclear warfare as conventional warfare. Nuclear warfare requires sophisticated calculations of deterrence and credibility. Conventional warfare requires, on the other hand, well-prepared defense and balance. While this analogy might not be 100% precise, this example entails the importance of getting the idea right.
It would be a mistake to see this analogy as implying the necessity of inventing new prefixes. The necessity lies in adequate prefix: getting the idea right. Let’s look at the same case. If strategists realize the essential differences between nuclear and conventional weapons, then there should be no problem. The problem arises when people refer to the wrong ideas and act according to them. This could be more common among those who are not familiar but highly engaged.
While it is crucial to get the idea right for a proper prefix, we should also pay close attention to its communicative function. Sometimes, an adequate prefix works pretty much like catchy slogans in ads. When professional languages are falsely communicated to the public but failed to correct the usage, it might incur unexpected problems. Recently in Taiwan, the so-called perception warfare has received considerable attention. While it is used to describe Chinese efforts to interfere with Taiwanese domestic society and public opinion, it occasionally evolves into a witch-hunt to cancel comments and speeches that could potentially resonate with China’s stances, although some of these comments might actually support Taiwan.
The problem, accordingly, is what constitutes an attack under perception warfare. The prefix becomes too ambiguous when people are attempting to make their own efforts to combat external threats. Unfortunately, this could actually serve China’s goal: dividing Taiwanese society. In this sense, the mobilization power of catchy prefixes creates additional uncertainties that could backfire during peace.
Conclusion
This commentary argues that getting the idea right and adequate communication is both important when creating new concepts. It is important to note that I am not arguing against new concepts. Yet, in light of the influence of mass media, people could be easily influenced by the contents and hypes on the Internet. Creating new concepts, therefore, becomes more than a work of nomenclature but a process of mobilization.
