On December 7, 2026, world leaders will gather in Jordan for the High-Level Conference on Humanity in War, the culmination of the Global Initiative launched in September 2024 to galvanize political commitment to the law of armed conflict (LOAC). Among the initiative's six co-founding States is the People's Republic of China (PRC). As of May 2026, more than 100 States have formally joined the initiative, and many more have participated in consultations to strengthen the implementation of the existing rules. This is a reassuring development: reaffirming respect for LOAC is vital for defending the rule of law in armed conflict. At the same time, it also suggests that LOAC is seen as an area of strategic importance by key powers.
Law, Legitimacy, and the Information Domain
Compliance with LOAC is not only a legal obligation, but also a matter of legitimacy. As British military doctrine recognizes (JDP 0-01, para. 2.51), legitimacy encompasses the legal, moral, political, and ethical propriety of military conduct. It is based on both subjective perceptions and demonstrable legality, and it varies across audiences and operations. Non-compliance with LOAC is incompatible with the rule of law and exposes an actor to moral censure, with cascading consequences for popular support, alliance cohesion, and freedom of manoeuvre.
This link between legal compliance and legitimacy creates an obvious instrument for those prepared to exploit it. Allegations of LOAC violations delegitimize opponents at low cost. They spread quickly in a saturated information environment, invite international condemnation before facts can be established, and are difficult to rebut once embedded in the public narrative. The allegation itself does the damage, regardless of whether it is ultimately sustained. Levelling war crimes charges against an adversary has thus become a routine feature of modern conflict.
The conflict in Gaza has sharpened these dynamics in ways that will reverberate across future conflicts, including in the Indo-Pacific. It is important to underline that Operation Iron Swords not only offers plenty of examples of what the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Challenges Report of 2024 describes as “overly permissive†interpretations of the rules, but also blatant and systematic violations of the law. That said, a substantial number of subject matter experts have publicly advanced restrictive interpretations of LOAC in relation to the hostilities in Gaza that depart from mainstream understandings. These positions have often been presented not as proposed reinterpretations, but as accurate statements of the existing law. Indeed, countless commentators, NGOs, and even representatives of States and international organizations have rushed to definite legal conclusions based on incomplete information, as the immediate response to the pager attack illustrates. This has widened the gap between the law as it is understood in public discourse and the law as it has been traditionally interpreted by the majority of States.
China's Three Warfares Doctrine and LOAC
Those planning for future conflict should expect the gap between public perception and traditional understandings of LOAC to be a key battleground. In any conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the PRC is likely to deploy LOAC narratives as an instrument of information warfare. The PRC's Three Warfares Doctrine, adopted in 2003, integrates psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare as mutually reinforcing instruments of statecraft. Legal warfare aims not only to achieve operational advantage on a battlefield, but to shape international perceptions, undermine the legitimacy of adversaries and justify Beijing's own conduct by reference to international legal norms.
China's engagement with LOAC has historically been marked by its adoption of centrist and conciliating positions. Official statements have typically confined themselves to generic calls for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law, without committing to specific interpretations or taking sides on contested questions. The PRC's 2021 position paper on the military use of artificial intelligence exemplifies this approach: it called on States to “ensure that new weapons and their methods or means of warfare comply with international humanitarian law†and to “strive to reduce collateral casualties,†while avoiding any substantive position on how those standards should be interpreted or applied in practice. The benefit of such formulations is that they allow Beijing to profess a commitment to humanitarian principles while preserving its room for diplomatic manoeuvre and military innovation. The bland wording of these statements may be contrasted with the strong language the PRC adopts on subjects it considers to fall within its core interests, such as Taiwan or the South China Sea.
The conflict in Gaza has eroded this neutrality. China's early response to the conflict broadly followed the familiar pattern of general calls for restraint, reiteration of support for a two-State solution and cautious expressions of concern for civilian casualties. By October 2023, however, Foreign Minister Wang Yi had characterized Israeli operations as “beyond the scope of self-defence,†and accused Israel of imposing “collective punishment.†From here, the trajectory has been one of escalating legal indictment. By June 2025, China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Fu Cong, declared before the Security Council that Israel's actions had “crossed every red line of international humanitarian law†and “seriously violated Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, as well as the provisional measures ordered by the [International Court of Justice].†This vivid language differs entirely from the formulaic invocations of LOAC that characterized Chinese diplomatic practice for decades, and it signals a new preparedness to deploy LOAC as an instrument of legal accusation against third parties when geopolitical interests so demand.
Against this backdrop, China's co-leadership of the Global Initiative deserves attention. By co-founding the Initiative, Beijing has positioned itself as a champion of LOAC at minimal cost, given that its multilateral association with the ICRC confers legitimacy without requiring any specific legal commitment or operational restraint. In any future Indo-Pacific conflict, this positioning may provide some of the narrative scaffolding for a more assertive LOAC information campaign than Beijing has hitherto mounted.
A Template Already in Operation
For those who doubt whether Beijing is willing to sustain coordinated lawfare operations against a democratic adversary, the South China Sea offers a concrete case study.
When the Philippines enacted the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act in November 2024 to incorporate the 2016 Arbitral Award on the South China Sea into domestic law, China's response combined all three elements of its Three Warfares Doctrine. Within 24 hours, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had published a seven-point statement characterizing the two acts as violations of international law, framing the Philippines as a State that seeks to “whitewash its illegal claims and actions in the South China Sea.†Within two days, China had declared territorial sea baselines around Scarborough Shoal in contravention of the Arbitral Tribunal's award and subsequently deposited them at the UN to create an air of formal legal validity. Simultaneously, State-affiliated media amplified the narrative that the Philippines was the regional “troublemaker.â€
These legal manoeuvres were complemented from the outset with coercive operations. China Coast Guard patrols around Scarborough Shoal intensified. Since January 2025, water cannon attacks, dangerous vessel manoeuvres, aerial harassment and physical ramming incidents have multiplied. After each incident, Chinese actors have disseminated disinformation characterizing Philippine forces as the aggressors.
The Philippines' transparency initiative, which includes releasing real-time video evidence of incidents, has been effective in galvanizing international support, including the G7 Foreign Ministers' Declaration on Maritime Security and Prosperity of March 14, 2025, which condemned China's “illicit, provocative, coercive and dangerous actions†and reaffirmed the 2016 Arbitral Award. But transparency has not deterred China from accelerating its operational tempo, suggesting that there are limits to a counter-lawfare strategy that relies on reputational exposure alone.
This pattern of the coordinated and complementary use of legal instruments, physical enforcement, narrative campaigns and cognitive operations sits at the heart of the Three Warfares Doctrine. It enables Beijing to engage in effective grey-zone confrontation against a key regional ally of the United States in times of peace. There should be no illusions about the intensity of any LOAC information campaign that would accompany armed conflict in the same theatre.
Conclusion: Preparing for the Narrative Battleground
The prospect of armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific has not diminished. China's military modernization continues. The Taiwan flashpoint remains unresolved. In this environment, States that may find themselves in conflict with China need to treat LOAC compliance not only as a legal obligation, but as a component of operational planning and strategic communication. This involves several lines of effort: maintaining genuine compliance as the indispensable foundation of any credible legal narrative; building rapid, authoritative legal assessment capacity to respond to allegations before they harden into accepted wisdom; investing in pre-conflict understanding of the legal environment, including which LOAC positions China is likely to advance and how to contest them; and studying both the successes and limitations of the Philippines' counter-lawfare experience and other relevant examples. States that are not yet thinking about LOAC as a domain of strategic competition are likely to fall behind.
***
Dr Aurel Sari is a Professor of Public International Law at the University of Exeter.
The views expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Articles of War is a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Articles of War does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Authorship does not indicate affiliation with Articles of War, the Lieber Institute, or the United States Military Academy West Point.
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard, Petty Officer 3rd Class William Kirk
