Slaying Dragons with One Thousand Cuts - Gray Zone Competition is the South China Sea

South China Sea (SCS) islands, reefs, and shoals have been a point of regional contention for over seven decades, and the sovereignty claims over the entirety of the SCS by the People's Republic of China (PRC) comes at the expense of the sovereignty of other nations. This paper argues the US should build partner capacity, strengthen alliances and demonstrate an enduring commitment to support regional solutions by establishing an ASEAN member-led Combined Task Force Maritime Domain Awareness (CTF-MDA) tasked to employ information operations and "lawfare" to challenge the PRC in the SCS. This paper first proposes a framework for CTF-MDA. Next, the paper suggests CTF-MDA employ information operations to document and report on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, the negative environmental impacts from IUU fishing, and the environmental impacts of the PRC's militarization of the SCS. Finally, the paper recommends CTF-MDA develop a "lawfare" strategy that leverages the accepted authority and legitimacy of the United Nations (UN), bringing international attention to those (PRC) identified as violating the Law of the Sea. This paper concludes that CTF-MDA would provide a means to leverage competition mechanisms (ways) to challenge and compete with the PRC in the gray zone.