The term “wolf warrior” seems to have become a popular reference to Chinese diplomats and diplomacy over the last decade.
“Wolf warrior diplomacy is confrontational and combative,” says Wikipedia, which may understate the case. Consider:
● China announcing that ex-Soviet states “don’t have an effective status in international law.”
● China sanctioning trade with Lithuania and any EU company using Lithuanian components.
● Chinese ships firing water cannons at Philippine ships in a border dispute.
● Chinese troops fighting Indian troops in another border dispute.
At what point does “combative” diplomacy stop being diplomacy?
Stories like this one from Voice of America News limit the scope of what’s going on to a few ministry officials: “Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gathered together his country’s envoys for a pep talk, telling them they needed to be more assertive in representing Beijing’s interests overseas and vocal in defending the Chinese Communist government from criticism.”
Actually, as border battles and use of water cannon show us, “wolf warrior diplomacy” goes far beyond the ministry and the rhetoric of its employees.
A compelling word
Here is a good start on a better definition of wolf warrior diplomacy: “a form of public diplomacy involving compellence…”
“Compellence”? According to Britannica, that would be “the ability of one state to coerce another state into action, usually by threatening punishment.” Author Thomas C. Schelling invented the term in his 1966 book Arms and Influence. It’s about “the diplomacy of violence.”
The diplomacy of violence obviously has two parts: the diplomacy and the violence, warnings and force. We used to simply call this coercion. Coercion is not diplomacy even if “diplomats” are involved. Blackmailers are not diplomats.
“Compellence” has been around for a while and transcends China. There is the international relations school of realism, in which some propose, erroneously, that “most diplomacy is underwritten by the unspoken possibility of military action.” (Most diplomacy actually addresses trade, taxes, travel, and other mundane topics.)
Replacing diplomacy with compulsion is not an exclusively Chinese practice. When former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was asked about the terms of debt negotiations between the European Union and Greece he answered bluntly, “There are no negotiations. There is a pretense of negotiations.” He said he was asked to “sign a surrender document.”
And in January 2024, we learned that the EU “will sabotage [EU member] Hungary’s economy if Budapest blocks fresh aid to Ukraine…. Brussels has outlined a strategy to explicitly target Hungary’s economic weaknesses, imperil its currency and drive a collapse in investor confidence in a bid to hurt ‘jobs and growth’ if Budapest refuses to lift its veto against the aid to Kyiv.”
Well that’s some EU wolf warrior diplomacy!
The first shall be last
But the EU’s treatment of Greece and Hungary seem to be exceptions, an abandonment of the norm. With China, compulsion seems to be the norm.
Thus, China’s Defense Ministry recently announced that Zangnan (a part of India) “has been China’s territory since ancient times. This is an undeniable fact” and that the U.S. government’s backing of Indian claims is “provoking disputes.”
Now, often, this kind of statement could be just a strong opening gambit in negotiations. But China is likely to advance such a claim as both the opening and the closing argument. Look at the South China Sea.
The harsh language of China’s diplomats by itself is not wolf warrior diplomacy; but it is labeled as such, and it is harsh. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was “catapulted into global attention by labelling the US as racist and in a Twitter spat telling former National Security Advisor Susan Rice she was ‘a disgrace’ and ‘shockingly ignorant.’ ” He also tweeted that maybe it was the U.S. Army “who brought the [COVID-19] epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data. US owe us an explanation!”
In 2020, Brookings noticed that more than 170 Chinese diplomats were now active on Twitter and making it a priority to “bicker with Western powers, promote conspiracies about the coronavirus, and troll Americans on issues of race. The quadrupling in the past year and a half of China’s diplomatic presence on a site blocked within China suggests that turning to Western platforms to influence the information environment beyond China’s borders is no longer an afterthought but a priority.”
This is propaganda, not diplomacy. Compellence = coercion; insults = propaganda.
Blame yourself
This year, Zhao Lijian has been reassigned to the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs. This may be one of those occasional stories about wolf warrior methods “backfiring.” We should be skeptical about “backfire” stories.
“So why does the party show no intention of reorienting its foreign policy despite being aware of its underwhelming performance?” asks Foreign Policy. “The answer is that Xiplomacy is more about Xi than anything else.” With Xi in charge, policy and tactics will remain the same. We need to remind ourselves that wolfishness is a feature, not a bug.
“What we are doing is merely justified defense to protect our rights and interests,” says Ambassador Lu Shaye.
Translation: our attempts to coerce you are your own fault. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
