Rather than trying to emulate China’s hostile and aggressive communications strategy during disputes in the Indo-Pacific, US Navy leaders should poke fun at it.

The United States Navy needs to get its swagger back—particularly in the realm of public diplomacy. The sea service missed a major opportunity to wage cognitive warfare against China on August 11, when a China Coast Guard cutter accidentally collided with a frontline People’s Liberation Army Navy destroyer while the two vessels were pursuing a Philippine Coast Guard cutter near Scarborough Shoal. More than a decade ago, China purloined the shoal, which lies deep within the Philippine exclusive economic zone, on the specious pretext that the vast majority of South China Sea landmasses and waters are sovereign Chinese territory.

Why “Freedom-of-Navigation Operations” Really Matter

Now, the destroyer USS Higgins did execute a freedom-of-navigation pass near Scarborough Shoal two days after the collision. Navy spokesmen issued the usual boilerplate statement about navigational freedoms to explain the venture’s purposes. (Philippine aviators spotted the littoral combat ship USS Cincinnati in the neighborhood around the same time.) The Pentagon and the US Navy leadership have long entertained a somewhat outsized view of what freedom-of-navigation operations can accomplish, believing they somehow deter Chinese misadventures in important seaways. In reality, they are an important legal statement, announcing that the United States rejects national territorial claims proscribed by the law of the sea. These operations must continue, lest the United States and fellow seafaring states surrender the South China Sea—and potentially other contested expanses around Asia and the globe—to musclebound coastal states by default.

But are freedom-of-navigation operations really a deterrent? All a ship does during such an operation is show up, briefly flout unlawful maritime claims, and sail away. Washington issues a diplomatic démarche to accompany the operation. How could such a come-and-go endeavor deter aggression? After all, as soon as the operation is over, it effectively cedes the disputed waters back to the unlawful claimant.

A standing US Navy and Coast Guard presence in regional waterways might act as a more lasting deterrent, while lending comfort to allies and partners. But however desirable, that is something entirely different from an episodic freedom-of-navigation operation. If dispatching Higgins and Cincinnati to Scarborough Shoal was the US naval command’s response to the Chinese collision, it was a nondescript and uninspiring one.

Fighting Communism with Comedy

Rather than content themselves with low-key public communications, Navy chieftains and public-affairs officers should be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to shape opinion in favor of the United States and against antagonists like China. They should be aggressive about framing a narrative of US maritime mastery. That’s what cognitive warfare is all about. China wages what it calls “three warfares” on a 24/7/365 basis, harnessing lawfare, psychological operations, and media of all kinds to overawe opponents while firing popular sentiment at home. 

But Beijing is vulnerable to warlike naval diplomacy, too. Its three-warfares strategy is invariably dour, humorless stuff. Therein lies an opportunity.

Some years back, the US Navy set off a minor diplomatic incident by posting a photo in which a destroyer skipper appeared to be dissing the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning. That was PR gold. Nationalistic Chinese media promptly threw a tantrum—a sure indication that the photo had scored. To the rest of the world, the contrast was stark: a relaxed, confident global superpower juxtaposed against an insecure authoritarian state. Advantage: America. Humor is a potent weapon for the US Navy and the Pentagon, if they would just heft it.

And why not make sport of China’s misfortune? If sea-service leaders are genuinely confident that America’s navy remains the world’s foremost seaborne fighting force, they should act like it. A little mockery of rivals like China—or Russia, or Iran, or North Korea—would go a long way.

Bear in mind that peacetime strategic competition is virtual war. It’s a war for perceptions among influential audiences. As Edward Luttwak pointed out many years ago, how a fleet conducts peacetime operations—maneuvers, exercises, even routine port calls—molds opinion among adversaries, allies and friends, and bystanders able to influence the outcome of the competition. Whoever most observers believe would have won a sea battle, had one occurred, tends to “win” a peacetime showdown. It positions itself as the victor in the minds of influential people and societies.

That’s how strategic competition works.

Naval Diplomacy Is About Action, Too

Bottom line: there is real strategic and political value to telling the US Navy’s story well—and with a measure of bravado and cheek—while throwing shade at China and other antagonists. But a cognitive-warfare offensive can’t be solely about trolling the Chinese Communist Party. There must be a sober component to it as well. For instance, the standing US Army deployment of a Typhon anti-ship missile battery to the Philippine island of Luzon left Beijing sputtering over the prospect that the US military and its allies were mustering the wherewithal to defeat its gray-zone aggression and block its access to the Western Pacific. Nor, for similar reasons, are Chinese statesmen and commanders fond of US Marine Corps deployments along the first island chain.

These are models for naval diplomacy. I have always hated the phrase “information warfare.” It is an anodyne term that implies that American spokesmen can sway key audiences by peppering them with myriad facts. This idea takes the notion of rationality to excess. As Aristotle wrote more than two millennia ago, rhetoric involves far more than intellect. It demands that an orator or writer stir passions among listeners or readers. There is no substitute for acquainting yourself with the red team and trying to divine what peacetime moves will strike an emotional chord. A move is a success if it triggers a thunderous overreaction out of Beijing.

Study the prospective foe, naval diplomats. And go on offense.