There was also China’s maritime militia, deployed as a lead military element in Beijing’s South China Sea operations. The United States categorizes this as classic insurgency tactics, using civilians as soldiers, the difference being that this militia operates at sea and not on land in deserts or jungles. “It is irregular warfare at sea,” Tom Culora of the Naval War College told me. “You don’t have a very clear idea of who’s a combatant and who’s not a combatant and what role they’re playing. It’s hard to discern what people are doing, and that creates limitation on the norms of the Geneva
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