Publications

China’s ‘Liquid’ Warfighting Shift and Its Implications for Possible Future Conflict

Release Date

2024-06

Language

  • English

Topics

  • Agents and Patterns of Security and War

Some suggest that remote, precision strike warfare is a Western phenomenon motivated by aversion to high troop casualties among democratic leaders subject to re-election. Others contend that it is the result of a global transition in the way of modern war towards ‘liquid warfare’, centred around the disruption of adversary networks in the increasingly integrated and high-tech battlespace. This article advances the debate by applying the liquid warfare hypothesis to China’s post-1993 military reforms. It finds (a) that China’s development and embrace of its prevailing ‘systems destruction warfare’ concept constitutes a liquid shift in its warfighting approach, dispelling the contention that such transformations are necessarily linked with democratic political systems; and (b) that the liquidification of China’s warfighting approach has immediate implications for possible regional conflict scenarios, particularly those involving the United States, making them mutually costlier and susceptible to rapid escalation

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Cite as

https://doi.org/10.1177/23477970241250100
@article{SwanMutschler2024, author = "Ryan Swan and Max Mutschler", title = "China’s ‘Liquid’ Warfighting Shift and Its Implications for Possible Future Conflict", latexTitle = "China’s ‘Liquid’ Warfighting Shift and Its Implications for Possible Future Conflict", publisher = "Sage Publications, Ltd.", booktitle = "The Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs ", institution = "Sage Publications, Ltd.", type = "Journal article", pages = "169-189", year = "2024", doi = "10.1177/23477970241250100", address = "London", }

Document-Type

Journal article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/23477970241250100

Publisher

Sage Publications, Ltd.

Place

London

Is part of / In:

Title:
The Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs