[Jim Sciutto, The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America. Hasper-Collins. New York, 2019. 308 p.]

review / Álvaro de Lecea

With the end of the Cold War, which pitted the former Soviet Union against the victorious United States of America, the international system went from being bipolar to a hegemony led by the latter. With the United States in the lead, the West focused on the spread of democracy and commercial globalization, and if there was one thing that concentrated its geostrategic concern, it was the Al-Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11, so the focus shifted and today's Russia was put on the back burner. However, Russia continued to slowly reconstitute itself, in the shadow of its former enemy, which no longer showed much interest in it. Russia was joined by China, which began to grow by leaps and bounds. At this point, the United States began to realize that it had two great powers nipping at its heels and that it was engaged in a war it did not even know existed, the Shadow War.

This is the term used by Jim Sciutto, CNN's chief national security correspondent, to designate what he describes in detail throughout his book and which has largely come to be known as hybrid or gray zone warfare. Sciutto prefers to speak of Shadow War, which could be translated as war in the shadows, because this better denotes its character of invisibility under the radar of open or conventional warfare.

This new war was started by Russia and China, not as allies, but as powers with a common enemy: the United States. It is a hybrid war subject , so it contains both military and non-military methods. On the other hand, it does not contemplate a direct military confrontation between the two blocs. In The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America, Sciutto explains seven situations in which one can clearly observe the strategies being followed by China and Russia to defeat the United States and thus become the major world powers and be able to impose their own international rules.

First of all, it is important to note that Russia and China, while pursuing similar strategies, are different types of adversaries: on the one hand, China is a rising power, while Russia is more of a declining power that is trying to return to what it was before. Nevertheless, both share a number of similarities. First, both seek to expand their influence in their own regions. Second, they are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy within their borders. Third, both seek to right the wrongs of history and restore what they perceive as their countries' rightful positions as world leaders. And finally, they possess great national unity, so the majority of their people would do whatever it takes for their nation.

In the shadow war, thanks to the rules established by Russia and China, any major player can win, regardless of the power it has or the influence it exerts on the other international players. Following the theories of international relations, one could consider that these rules follow a very realistic patron saint , since, in a way, anything goes to win. The power of lies and deception is the daily bread, and lines that were thought to be unthinkable are crossed. Examples of this, as the book explains and elaborates on, are the militarization of the artificial islands built by China in the South China Sea when Xi Jinping himself had promised not to do so, or the hacking of the Democratic Party's computer system in the 2016 US election campaign by Russian hackers, which could have helped Donald Trump to emerge victorious.

To all this must be added an essential part of what is happening in this context of non-traditional warfare: the particularly mistaken idea that the United States has about everything that is happening. To begin with, the first mistake made by the United States, as Sciutto explains, was to set aside Russia as a relevant focus in the international arena. It believed that, having defeated it in the Cold War, the country would no longer re-emerge as a power, and so it failed to see the clear clues that it was slowly growing, led by President Vladimir Putin. Similarly, it failed to understand the true intentions of the Chinese government in situations such as the South China Sea or in the degree program of submarines. All this can be summed up by the fact that the United States believed that all international actors would play by the rules established by Washington after the Cold War, without imagining that they would create a new scenario. In conclusion, the United States did not understand its opponents.

In his latest chapter, Sciutto makes it clear that the United States is currently losing the war. Its biggest mistake was not realizing the status until it was in front of it, and now it finds itself playing on a disadvantaged stage. It is true that the United States is still the world leader in many respects, but Russia and China are overtaking it in others, following the new rules they themselves have set. However, a change of attitude in U.S. policies could turn the tables completely. Thus, the author proposes a number of solutions that could help the United States get back in the lead.

The solutions he proposes focus, in the first place, on the total knowledge of the enemy and his strategy. This has always been his great disadvantage and would be the first step to begin to control the status. Similarly, he recommends greater unity within the allied bloc, as well as an improvement of their own defenses. He also recommends a better understanding of the new scenario in which the whole conflict is taking place, so that a series of international treaties regulating these new spaces, such as cyberspace, would be of great help financial aid. Further on, he proposes setting clear limits to enemy actions, raising the costs and consequences of such actions. And finally, he encourages the United States to exercise clear leadership.

In conclusion, Sciutto's thesis is that the United States finds itself fighting a war whose existence it has just discovered. It is a subject war to which it is not accustomed and with a set of rules that are alien to what it preaches. Even though it is still the leader of the current international system, it finds itself losing the game because China and Russia have been able to discover its rival's weaknesses and use them to their advantage. The biggest mistake of the United States was to ignore all the signs of this shadow war and to do nothing about it. New scenarios have been introduced and the rules of the game have been changed, so the United States, if it wants to turn the status around and once again emerge as the victor, the author argues, will have to unite more than ever internally as a nation and strengthen its alliances, and know its enemies and their intentions better than ever.

As for a evaluation of the book, it can be stated that it manages to convey clearly and concisely the most relevant points of this new contest. It manages to make clear the strengths and weaknesses of each actor and to make a general assessment of the current status . However, the author does not manage to be too much goal in his judgments. Although he admits the failures committed by the United States, he offers a negative image of his rivals, taking for granted who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. That objectivity is lacking in some cases, since neither the good guys are always so good nor the bad guys are always so bad. That said, Sciutto does a great analysis of the current international status in which the world's major powers find themselves.