Magic weapons, political influence and resistance

The National Defence Strategy (NDS) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP) recognised urgency and Australia’s challenging strategic circumstances”[1]. Those circumstances, described in the Defence Strategic Review (DSR)[2] and NDS explicitly call out Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as destabilising and “examples of how revisionist states can undermine peace and security”[3]. The NDS also notes that “grey zone activities have also expended in the Indo-Pacific. In addition to conventional military forces, some countries are employing para-military forces more frequently, including China’s actions in the South China Sea. The threats posed by state and non-state actors in the cyber domain are also multiplying”[4]. Mandiant called out such behaviour as PLA unit 61398 as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)1 in 2021[5]. This year the Australian Signals Directorate issued an advisory of a malicious hacking group that “repeatedly targeted Australian networks as well as government and private sector networks in the region”[6]. These acts were linked to APT40, an entity linked to the PRC’s ministry for State Security. These are the obvious and visible artefacts of foreign influence, but there are other more subtle activities.

Political warfare is not a new phenomenon, it has been practised for thousands of years. While it is not unique to the PRC, they have learnt to become quite good practitioners[7]. They seem to be intent on dividing and disintegrating the US and their Allies. In doing so their aim seems to be to “win friends to their side, influence governments and eliminate dissent inside China and in other countries”[8]. In a nutshell the PRC is seeking widespread adoption of its worldview via narratives. This narrative includes five key messages. 1) Chinese dominance is the historical norm and is inevitable; 2) the objectives of the CCP are permanent and unchanging; 3) a CCP-led China is fundamentally un-deterrable; 4) the party is prepared to pay any price to achieve it’s core objectives; and 5) the US is an increasingly weak and unreliable ally. Their aim is for the rest of the world to accept this narrative as a given, and therefore compromise positions in deference to those of China.

These threats and political influence activities have been labelled as one the the CCP’s ‘magic weapons’ during a September 2014 speech by PRC President Xi Jinping[9].  In doing so the PRC attempts to curb and shape debates on China beyond its own borders[10]. Additionally, the PRC seeks to ensure control over ethnic Chinese globally, regardless of their nationality or citizenship[11]. The key capability that carries out these actions is known as the “United Front Work Department”[12]. These actors take the low road insomuch as they seek to bypass formal structures and erode the strength, will and resolve of institutions and disintegrate them from their allies and partners. Professor Anne-Marie Brady provided a compelling analysis of how the CCP have interfered in politics and institutions within Australia[13]. She concludes that the CCP’s approach indicates that it believes it is in a position of relative strength over it’s neighbours. It believes that it can push and that others are neither capable nor willing to push back.

The Australian Army’s opportunity for magic weapons

The NDS spells out Australia’s security strategy as one of denial. Simply put, this entails “altering any potential adversary’s belief that it could achieve its ambitions with military force at an acceptable cost”[14]. Australia shares these strategic interests with like-minded partners and Allies including: “the US, … New Zealand, Japan, our partners in Southeast Asia and the Pacific family, the Republic of Korea, India as well as the UK and other European nations”[15].

Whilst the strategy is clear (as are strategic interests, objectives and tasks), the bridge between the strategic and tactical levels is yet being realised. This deficit raises a key question concerning the implications for the Australian Army. Developing understanding so as to solve these problems are essential functions of military leaders[16]. As practitioners in the profession of arms, we must engage with these topics to better understand and succeed in our assigned missions[17].

In a talk hosted by 2(AS) Division and streamed by The Cove on Tuesday 24 September, Professor Anne-Marie Brady will discuss implications for the Australian Army in response to the PRC’s use of ‘magic weapons’. In doing so this discussion will support our understanding of Army’s role in defence of the nation, a role with significant importance for 2(AS) Division, the Army and the ADF and a whole.

About the Speaker

Professor Anne-Marie Brady's ground-breaking, policy-relevant, research demonstrates the important role of the academic as "critic and conscience" in a modern democracy.

Professor Brady is a specialist of Chinese politics (domestic politics and foreign policy), polar politics, China-Pacific politics, and New Zealand foreign policy. She is a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker. She is founding and executive editor of The Polar Journal (Taylor and Francis Publishers). She has published ten books and over fifty scholarly papers. She has written op eds for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Financial Times, among others.

In addition to her duties at the University of Canterbury, Professor Brady holds a number of honorary positions. She is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC and a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In 2014 she was appointed to a two-year term on the World Economic Forum's Global Action Council on the Arctic. She is an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).

Professor Brady's recent books include Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), China's Thought Management (Routledge, 2012), The Emerging Politics of Antarctica (Routledge, 2013), China as a Polar Great Power (Cambridge University Press and Wilson Press, 2017), and Small States and the Changing Global Order: New Zealand Faces the Future (Springer, 2019).

Footnotes