"Some Thoughts on Salami Tactics and Diplomatic “Offramps" " Topic

"My SSQ article on conventional deterrence last winter focused primarily on deterring relatively low likelihood but severe consequence ‘high-end' contingencies involving Chinese aggression in East Asia. One apt commenter noted that I did not say much regarding deterrence of an opponent's low-level ‘salami tactics' that do not cross the threshold into a traditional conventional military offensive. Unlike the theoretical scenarios covered in my article, China is presently and actively using People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces, coast guard forces, and ‘civilian' activists such as its state-sponsored (and likely coordinated) fishing fleet to probe its neighbors' maritime defenses, perform coercive psychological operations, and occasionally seize individual remote shoals. Even so, the extant body of conventional deterrence theory contains little that addresses this segment of the conflict spectrum.
As I mentioned in my article and in another piece here this fall, it would seem that forward-positioned constabulary forces such as coast guards, gendarmeries, or national law enforcement agencies with paramilitary capabilities are central to low-end conventional deterrence. Given China's use of its sizable fishing fleet as a paramilitary offset against its neighbors' uniformed maritime constabularies, it might also be reasonable if not necessary for those neighbors to cultivate similar state-controlled paramilitaries within their own respective fishing fleets. Doing so would expand East Asian maritime states' options for symmetrical responses to Chinese probes, as well as introduce risk variables that they could manipulate to deter further Chinese escalations. Indeed, a defender will seldom want to be the party that sets the intra-crisis precedent of having one of its military assets engage an opponent's constabulary asset or 'civilian' actors. It certainly seems that one objective of China's salami tactics is to maneuver East Asian states into choices between setting these kinds of provocative and diplomatically-exploitable precedents or otherwise conceding on their claims. This kind of gambit would be even more applicable should Chinese leaders manufacture a maritime crisis in order to induce a neighboring state's military into committing an act Beijing could cite as a casus belli…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Typical think tank gobbledygook or 'academic jargon.'

All that says is that other nations should counter China's 'salami slicing' strategy in its aggressive claims in the SCS and ECS with equal level police and paramilitary forces so as not to 'overreact' and give China an excuse to escalate with military forces. And people throw away grant money for this?

The only way to fight salami is with baloney like this, I mean bologna.