II. The Grey Zone Is Defined by the Defender

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Notes

1 See, for example, Michael J Mazarr, Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict (Carlisle, PA: US Army War Studies Press, 2015).

2 Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘Joint Operating Environment 2035: The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World’, 14 July 2016, <https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/concepts/joe_2035_july16.pdf?ver=2017-12-28-162059-917#:~:text=The%20Joint%20Operating%20Environment%202035,and%20its%20allies%20in%202035>, accessed 27 October 2021.

3 Ministry of Defence (MoD), ‘Integrated Operating Concept’, August 2021, p. 8.

4 Republic of France, ‘Defence and National Security Strategic Review 2017’, 2017, p. 47.

5 Mazarr, Mastering the Gray Zone, pp. 10–20.

6 Colin Clark, ‘CJCS Dunford Calls for Strategic Shifts; “At Peace or at War Is Insufficient”’, Breaking Defense, 21 September 2016.

7 Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (London: Routledge, 1965), pp. 236–50.

8 Thomas Trask, Jonathan Ruhe and Ariel Cicurel, ‘Countering Iran’s Gray Zone Strategy’, RealClearDefense, 18 October 2019, <https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/10/18/contesting_irans_gray_zone_strategy_114798.html>, accessed 1 March 2021; Andrew S Erickson and Ryan D Martinson (eds), China’s Maritime Gray Zone Operations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019); David Carment and Dani Belo, ‘Gray-Zone Conflict Management: Theory, Evidence, and Challenges’, Journal of European, Middle Eastern and African Affairs (Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 2020), pp. 21–41.

9 Elisabeth Braw, ‘Modern Deterrence: Preparing for the Age of Grey-Zone Warfare’, RUSI Newsbrief (Vol. 38, No. 10, 5 November 2018).

10 For more on the issue of conceptual clarity and the criteria by which it can be determined, see John Gerring, Social Science Methodology: A Critical Framework (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 339–50.

11 For example, the study of economic coercion has a long history as a field of coercion distinct from warfare. See David A Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, 4^th edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

12 Reuters, ‘Taiwan Says Has Spent Almost $900 Million Scrambling Against Chinese Jets This Year’, 7 October 2020.

13 Austin Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

14 David Holloway, ‘Military Power and Political Purpose in Soviet Policy’, Daedalus (Vol. 109, No. 4, 1980), pp. 13–30; Michael MccGwire, ‘The Evolution of Soviet Naval Policy: 1960–1974’, in Michael MccGwire, Ken Booth and John McDonnell (eds), Soviet Naval Policy: Objectives and Constraints (New York, NY: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1975), p. 537.

15 On the basic typology of strategy, see Robert J Art, ‘To What Ends Military Power?’, International Security (Vol. 4, No. 4, Spring 1980), pp. 3–35.

16 Turkey threatened to invade Syria in 1998 unless the latter expelled Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party leadership. See Nick Danforth, ‘A Short History of Turkish Threats to Invade Syria’, Foreign Policy, 31 July 2015. On Israel’s responses to proxy subversion, see Wendy Perlman and Boaz Atzili, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019).

17 J Michael Cole, ‘The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Forgotten Showdown Between China and America’, National Interest, 10 March 2017.

18 For a discussion of Russian actions, see Michael Kofman et al., Lessons from Russia’s Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2017). On Chinese activities, see Sidharth Kaushal and Magdalena Markiewicz, ‘Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones: The Trajectory of China’s Maritime Transformation’, RUSI Occasional Papers (October 2019).

19 Carson, Secret Wars.

20 Harry G Summers Jr, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (New York, NY: Random House, 1995).

21 On the Easter Offensive, see Phil Haun and Colin Jackson, ‘Breaker of Armies: Air Power in the Easter Offensive and the Myth of Linebacker I and II in the Vietnam War’, International Security (Vol. 40, No. 3, 2016), pp. 139–78.

22 On the historical parallels between the emphasis of the Kennedy and Johnson eras on new tools of strategy and the current grey-zone discourse, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Strategy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chapters 7 and 8.

23 See for example, M Taylor Fravel, ‘China’s New Military Strategy: “Winning Informationized Local Wars”’, China Brief (Vol. 15, No. 13, 2 July 2015).

24 For further information, see Sidharth Kaushal and Peter Roberts, ‘Competitive Advantage and Rules in Persistent Competitions’, RUSI Occasional Papers (April 2020).