UNDER traditional international law and the UN Charter, the threshold for a formal "act of war" (or an "armed attack" under Article 51) has historically been tied to kinetic force or the actual firing of weapons resulting in physical destruction.
However, seizing or cordoning off another nation's sovereign territory or Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) such as Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal respectively, violates international law, specifically, UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (1974). When such means to achieve the strategic goals of war, i.e., subverting sovereignty, seizing territory, or crippling an adversary without triggering an open military conflict, it’s executing Gray Zone warfare.
For situational awareness purposes, here’s a breakdown of non-kinetic "acts of war" that severely compromise national sovereignty and necessitate prompt, decisive counter-measures.
1. Non-Kinetic Coercion to alter facts on the ground (or water) without pulling the trigger.
– Deploying warships, coast guard vessels, or maritime militias to encircle an island, seize a reef, or patrol a coastline to cut off access, prevent resupply, or dictate who enters.
– Utilizing successive layers of maritime militia, law enforcement, and naval vessels (aka “cabbage strategy”) to block the rightful claimant and establish de facto control.
– Using hull-to-hull contact, high-pressure water cannons, or military-grade dazzling lasers to damage vessels and blind crews.
– Arbitrarily declaring "no-sail" or "no-fly" zones in another state’s EEZ under the guise of domestic laws or military drills, that disrupt commercial and military navigation.
2. Information and Cognitive Warfare targeting the collective mind of a nation to break its political will, erode public trust, and paralyze decision-making before a crisis even begins.
– Flooding the information space with coordinated, artificial narratives designed to divide society, discredit national institutions, and reversing reality making the victim state look like the aggressor, and vice-versa.
– Weaponizing domestic legislation to claim jurisdiction over international spaces or another state's territory, creating a false veneer of legality for aggressive actions.
– Utilizing front organizations, covert funding, and intelligence networks to co-opt political, business, media figures, that advocate for appeasement.
3. Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Subversion targeting a nation's digital nervous system to cripple a country's ability to function.
– Planting "logic bombs," malware, or persistent access vectors inside a nation's power grids, water systems, air traffic control, or telecommunications network. This is the digital equivalent of mining a harbor.
– Disrupting government operations or stealing massive quantities of national security data, biometric records, and intellectual property to compromise the state's structural integrity.
4. Economic and Supply Chain Weaponization to bleed a nation financially, forcing submission through economic pain.
– Abruptly cutting off imports or choking the supply of critical goods (like semiconductors or minerals) under fabricated technical or regulatory pretexts.
– Disrupting or threatening maritime trade routes, submarine cables, or energy pipelines to cause systemic inflation or energy crises.
5. Surreptitious Industrial and Material Sabotage to degrade a target nation’s physical resilience over years or decades so that during a future crisis or natural disaster, critical systems fail catastrophically.
The Sanjia case in Phividec, which was linked to foreign syndicates produced substandard, steel bars, and contaminated with heavy radioactive materials like Uranium-238 and Thorium, is a textbook example of this threat. Since 2018, compromised steel bars flooded the local market undetected, effectively compromising the structural integrity of critical infrastructure, buildings, and bridges, while simultaneously poisoning the local workforce and environment.
When a hostile actor uses corporate fronts, faked citizenships, and "local protection" (elite capture) to systematically weaken a nation's physical and human foundations from the inside, it transitions from mere corporate crime to Critical Infrastructure Sabotage.
6. Deep State Subversion and Institutional Capture or the Insider Threat is about the systematic buying of local officials to look the other way or covertly protect are acts of institutional warfare.
– Hostile foreign actors obtaining authentic legal identities, land titles, and corporate registrations through corrupt local networks to buy up land near strategic locations. In the Sanjia case, the facility was placed directly inside the government-owned Phividec Industrial Estate, alarmingly close to a naval dry dock under construction.
– Deliberately bribing, blackmailing, or placing compromised individuals inside key regulatory bodies (like customs, environmental bureaus, and quality standard agencies) to ensure illegal or dangerous activities evade detection.
– Cultivating networks of media defenders, legal cut-outs, and local politicians who frame legitimate state enforcement actions as "discrimination" or "anti-business" to stall national security crackdowns.
Strategic countermeasures
The entire point of these non-kinetic acts is to place the burden of escalation on the victim to allow the aggressor to claim the moral high ground and launch a "retaliatory" kinetic strike. To counter this without falling into the trap, modern defense doctrines rely on Asymmetric and Integrated Deterrence. When the threat is already inside the house, traditional border defense is useless.
Countering structural and industrial sabotage requires a Total Governance and Counter-Intelligence Defense.
These threats coordinated operations designed to hollow out the nation from within. To counter this multilayered assault on national sovereignty where the battle lines are drawn not just on the high seas, but in local regulatory offices, supply chains, and community information ecosystems requires a posture of Total National Resilience. Building resilience against both maritime coercion and deep structural subversion demands immediate, synchronized action from four distinct pillars of society.
– National Pillar: The national government must serve as the primary shield, closing the legal, regulatory, and intelligence gaps that hostile actors exploit.
– Local Pillar: Eliminate their vulnerabilities and integrate them into the National Defense Framework.
– Business Pillar: Corporate Integrity and Supply Chain Defense must be viewed as a core component of business continuity and national survival.
– Community Pillar: Civil Defense and Cognitive Resilience where a nation's ultimate line of defense is a vigilant, unified, and well-prepared population that refuses to be subverted.
In conclusion, the objective of non-kinetic warfare is to defeat a nation without triggering a conventional military response. By building a "Porcupine Defense" that extends from the national command down to the local supply chain and neighborhood volunteer corps, the nation raises the cost of subversion to a level that no adversary can afford.
Rafael M. Alunan III is a former Secretary of Interior and Local Government during the term of President Fidel V. Ramos, and currently serves on the board of the Management Association of the Philippines.
