There are some 70,000 US special operators worldwide, compared to fewer than 10,000 Foreign Service Officers. In essence, special operations forces function in a dimension that shadows traditional diplomacy. This is highly controversial, and many of these partnerships remain classified. The United States acknowledges that its forces are involved in these missions, sometimes with foreign partner special operations forces, in an undeclared conflict zone. Consider the US deployment of special forces in more than 100 countries around the world. In contrast, the problem for democracies is the shift to kinetic diplomacy. Furthermore, the relatively unregulated international environment enables authoritarian states to “normalize” and “internalize” new practices for engagement against opponents. Internationally, states such as Russia and China can use propaganda, domestic legal structures, economic pressure, and covert support for nonstate entities more readily compared to their democratic counterparts. 5 It has been argued that nondemocracies are more readily disposed to gray-zone conflict because they are less constrained and have more centralized, procedurally flexible decision-making structures than their more democratic, consensus-building counterparts. One of the most important debates regarding gray-zone conflict has focused on how nondemocratic states conduct hybrid operations using nonstate actors against their democratic adversaries and what democracies can do to respond to these tactics. This increased complexity is exacerbated by the fact that the ultimate goals of belligerents are frequently, and often deliberately, unknown to prevent the deployment of deterrence measures by opponents. Hybrid warfare today is societal in scope in terms of intended targets and those states that engage in it. 4 Hybrid warfare is distinct from regular warfare to the extent that nonmilitary actors and stakeholders are explicitly involved in the political, informational, and economic components of war. However, contemporary multimodal hybrid threats have little in common with past examples of interstate aggression, which relied on conventional hard- and soft-power tactics to undermine opponents. 3 All three approaches assume adversaries will rely on unconventional tools and tactics-such as propaganda campaigns, economic pressure, and use of nonstate entities-that do not cross the threshold of formalized state-level aggression. 2 The overt use of recent violence by state-backed proxies in Syria and Ukraine is driven by such “hybrid threats.” For America’s adversaries, Cold War-era concepts became embedded in Russia’s contemporary Gerasimov Doctrine and China’s concept of unrestricted warfare. Thus, the concept of hybrid warfare largely emerged from American military-strategic studies, influenced by the realization that since 9/11 and following the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War conflicts in which the United States and its allies are involved have become increasingly complex with regard to the number and kind of belligerents and the tools available to them. 1 This meant more special forces on the ground and fewer diplomats. Bush after 11 September 2001, when the president declared a “war on terror.” US strategy moved from containing threats to US security to engaging them abroad preemptively. The shift to kinetic diplomacy occurred during the presidency of George W. The Theoretical Underpinnings of Gray-zone Conflict
#Retrospect sebastopol upgrade
Finally, it will be necessary to reform and upgrade contemporary international institutions to address gray-zone conflict.
#Retrospect sebastopol update
It is also essential to update international laws of war to account for low-intensity armed and unarmed hybrid tactics. We argue that it is important to disentangle and individually address the challenges posed by gray-zone conflict in all three security, economic, and sociopolitical domains. Building on these insights, we identify several key steps for conflict resolution in Eastern Ukraine. In the concluding part, we consider implications for conflict management and directions for future research. In the second section, we outline evidence from the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine with respect to how gray-zone conflict impacts both state behavior and conflict management strategies.
In the first part, we examine the concept of gray-zone conflict and how it relates to hybrid warfare and conventional interpretations and theories of conflict and war. In this article, we examine the involvement of state and nonstate actors in gray-zone conflict and their relationship to hybrid warfare and the implications for conflict management. Journal of European, Middle Eastern, & African Affairs.
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