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President Trump’s landmark executive order designating major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) marks a watershed moment in America’s approach to national security and strategic competition against China. This reclassification acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: the fentanyl crisis is not merely a law enforcement challenge but a sophisticated form of irregular warfare targeting American society, with cartels serving as proxies in a broader strategic campaign orchestrated by China against U.S. interests.
Since Russia’s ambiguous intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the concept of hybrid warfare has gained attention in Western academic, defense policy, military practitioner, and media circles. Despite its rising popularity, the concept hybrid warfare is analytically problematic.
Unbeknownst to many, before the United States held such a tenuous relationship with China, the US military closely worked with Mao Zedong and the founding Communist leaders during World War II, particularly through the shared approach of guerrilla warfare. During that period, the Chinese Communists implemented guerrilla warfare as their primary form of fighting, enabling the Communists to withstand superior weapons and military might by the Japanese and the Nationalist government since 1927.
This push to revitalize our defense industrial base is crucial for conventional military strength. It enhances our nation’s capacity to engage in irregular warfare (IW). The ability to rapidly produce and supply resources ensures that special operations forces and other units engaged in irregular warfare have the tools necessary to maintain a strategic advantage. This includes capabilities in artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and advanced surveillance systems, among others.
The American military has an asymmetrical advantage over any possible adversary with its special operations community, and the processes are in place to keep that advantage going well into the future, said Chris Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.
In an era of rising geopolitical tensions, terms like ‘hybrid threats,’ ‘grey zones,’ and ‘proxy warfare’ are frequently used to describe covert and ambiguous operations, suggesting they blur the lines between peace and armed conflict.
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