II. The Grey Zone Is Defined by the Defender

The treatment of low-intensity conflict, as well as the use of other tools of statecraft within a state's grand strategy, has some pedigree and is a useful subject of enquiry. That said, the emphasis on ambiguity evinced by both analysts and policymakers' discussions of the grey-zone conce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Whitehall papers 2021-12, Vol.99 (1), p.24-33
Main Author: Kaushal, Sidharth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Boundaries
Competition
Nuclear war
Revisionism
Strategy
War
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The treatment of low-intensity conflict, as well as the use of other tools of statecraft within a state's grand strategy, has some pedigree and is a useful subject of enquiry. That said, the emphasis on ambiguity evinced by both analysts and policymakers' discussions of the grey-zone concept does more to obscure than clarify. First, the distinction between grey-zone actions short of war and warfighting is analytically unhelpful and obscures the role of kinetic action in many of the instances of revisionism grouped under the greyzone rubric. While it is useful and necessary to talk about the strategies that states can pursue in the context of long-term competition, describing competition in the grey zone as a 'strategy' adds little analytical value. Second, and finally, an overemphasis on ambiguity ignores the importance of Kahn's 'systemic competition' to define where the boundaries of the competitive space are, as well as the agency that the target state has in defining the contours of the grey zone. This has the effect of eliding the role of a state's conventional force posture and even its nuclear assets in the sub-threshold space, as it is the posturing of these assets that often delineates the boundaries.
ISSN:0268-1307
1754-5382
DOI:10.1080/02681307.2021.2005892