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Contributing Authors

Charles R. Burnett 

William J. Cain, Jr. 

Christopher D. Compton 

Sean M. Hankard 

Robert S. Hume

Gary R. Kramlich II

J. Matthew Lissner 

Tobin A. Magsig 

Daniel E. Mouton 

Michael S. Muztafago 

James M. Schultze 

John F. Troxell 

Dennis G. Wille

i

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OUTPLAYED:

REGAINING STRATEGIC INITIATIVE IN THE GRAY ZONE

A Report Sponsored by the Army Capabilities Integration Center 

in coordination with 

Joint Staff J-39/Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment Branch

Nathan Freier

Project Director

Charles R. Burnett

William J. Cain, Jr.

Christopher D. Compton

Sean M. Hankard

Robert S. Hume

Gary R. Kramlich II

J. Matthew Lissner

Tobin A. Magsig

Daniel E. Mouton

Michael S. Muztafago

James M. Schultze

John F. Troxell

Dennis G. Wille

Contributing Authors

June 2016

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ISBN 1-58487-732-4
vii

CONTENTS

Foreword .............................................................................................................................. ix

Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................. xi

Executive Summary ..............................................................................................................xiii

Foundational Understanding ..................................................................................................1

I. Introduction—No More Black or White, Only Gray..................................................... 3

II. Study Methodology ..........................................................................................................9

III. Framing the Challenge .................................................................................................11

IV. The Strategic Environment—Three Alternative Assumptions ................................17

V. Risk-Informed Approach to Assessing Gray Zone Challenges ................................25

Analysis of Gray Zone Archetypes .......................................................................................31

VI. Enter the Dragon—China as a High-End Gray Zone Revisionist ...........................33

VII. Re-Enter the Bear—The New Russian Hybrid Threat .............................................41

VIII. The Untamed Lion—Iran’s 40 Year Gray Zone Campaign ..................................49

IX. The Scorpion Unleashed—The “Beginning of History” 

in a Failing Middle East .....................................................................................................56

X. The Endangered Eagle—The United States as a Gray Zone Actor ...........................64

Study Outcomes ......................................................................................................................71

XI. Findings and Recommendations ................................................................................73

XII. Conclusion—Adaptation and Activism ....................................................................89 

Appendices and Endnotes ......................................................................................................91 

Appendix I – Working Group Participants ......................................................................93

Appendix II – About the Contributors ..............................................................................95

Endnotes .............................................................................................................................. 99

ix

FOREWORD

Sponsored by the Army Capabilities Integration Center and in collaboration with 

the Joint Staff’s Deputy Directorate for Global Operations (Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment Branch), this report examines the emergence of gray zone competition and 

conflict as important pacers for U.S. defense strategy. The authors argue that gray zone 

challenges are unique defense-relevant issues sharing three common characteristics—

hybridity, menace to defense and military convention, and profound and paralyzing 

risk-confusion. 

This report and its authors offer an important opening venture into a vexing strategic question for senior defense and military leadership on the subject of gray zone 

threats. Namely, how can the American defense enterprise adjust to an era of relentless 

revisionist and rejectionist opposition to U.S. power? On the one hand, purposeful U.S. 

competitors pursue meaningful revision of the U.S.-led status quo through campaignquality combinations of influence, intimidation, coercion, and aggression. At the same 

time, rejectionist forces exploit, free-ride on, or are propelled by the generalized erosion 

or outright failure of traditional political authority. Both manifest as wicked direct and 

indirect threats to core U.S. interests. In virtually every case, they also occur in the uncomfortable “gray” conceptual no man’s land between classical conceptions of war and 

peace.

In response to gray zone competition and conflict, this report suggests that it will be 

important for U.S. defense strategists to dispense with outdated strategic assumptions 

about the infallibility of U.S. global position and the rules governing the meaningful 

maintenance and exercise of power. The authors suggest that the Department of Defense (DoD) should instead recognize that the U.S.-dominated status quo will encounter 

persistent and unmitigated resistance. Further, the DoD should acknowledge that this 

broad resistance will often take the form of gray zone competition and conflict. Finally, 

the DoD should recognize that the gray zone will continue to confound the DoD until it 

is normalized and more fully accounted for in defense strategy and plans.

According to the authors, the strategic antidote for gray zone challenges is a more 

activist and adaptive U.S. approach in the areas of policy, strategy, plans, and capabilities. Absent innovation, in this regard, the authors suggest that the United States invites 

the prospect of irreversible strategic consequences.

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This report is the product of a combined U.S. Army War College (USAWC) facultystudent study team and was chartered in the summer of 2015 at the request of the U.S. 

Army Chief of Staff. The report is less an isolated reflection of the study team’s thoughts 

on the subject of gray zone challenges and instead more a synthesis of the collective 

wisdom and best insights of a wide cross-section of national security analysts and stakeholders. 

The study team has a number of organizations and individuals to thank for their contributions. First, however, this report would not have been possible without the tremendous support of Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army, Director, U.S. Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC); Dr. Hriar Cabayan, Chief, Strategic Multi-Layer 

Assessment Branch, Deputy Directorate for Global Operations, Joint Staff; and Major 

General William Rapp, U.S. Army, Commandant, USAWC. 

The following report features the expertise and experience of all the individuals with 

whom we met during round table visits, working groups, and engagements over the 

life of the study effort. The study team endeavored to take in the widest possible range 

of insights from defense professionals, military officers, and national security analysts 

engaged in the business of understanding and countering 21st-century threats. We are 

indebted to all who took the time to contribute.

Among the many important outside voices we heard from over the last 8 months, 

we would especially like to recognize the time and contributing efforts of the various 

military staffs, staff officers, and analysts we were fortunate enough to interact with on 

the road. We consider them the eventual consumers of this study’s findings and recommendations. In all cases, they were invaluable sources of constructive insight that made 

our research that much more relevant. 

In particular, we would single out the Joint Staff, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), 

U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR), U.S. 

Army Pacific (USARPAC), U.S. Army Cyber Command and Second Army (ARCYBER), 

ARCIC, North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Supreme Allied Commander—

Transformation (SAC-T), and the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence 

(SCCoE). 

Our expert working group was instrumental as well. It included representatives 

from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), RAND, the Department of the Navy and 

Navy Staff, the University of Pittsburgh’s Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International 

Security Studies, the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) Combat Development Command and Small Wars Office, the Joint 

Staff J7 (Joint Force Development), the Office of the Secretary of Defense—Capabilities 

Analysis and Program Evaluation (CAPE), NATO SAC-T, ARCIC, and the USAWC Departments of National Security Studies and Command, Leadership, and Management.

In addition to the military headquarters and staff organizations outlined previously, 

several organizations hosted substantive roundtable discussions with and for our team 

as well. These organizations included AEI, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, RAND, 

ARCYBER, and the UK Ministry of Defense Doctrine Concepts Development Centre. 
In addition to our external engagements, we were fortunate enough to collaborate 

with others involved in the deep study of the gray zone/hybrid challenge. The first was 

a team of cadets in the United States Military Academy’s Defense and Strategic Studies 

program under the direction of Major Nolan Lassiter, U.S. Army and the leadership of 

Cadet Matthew R. McCormack. Their report The Hybrid Dilemma: Implications for Ground 

Forces in Ukraine provided useful background insights for this study. Additionally, Captain (Promotable) John Chambers, U.S. Army was both a master’s degree candidate 

at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a study team expert, and a working 

group participant. The report by Captain Chambers, Posturing the U.S. Army for Hybrid Gray Zone Threats, was instrumental as well in assisting the study team frame gray 

zone issues. 

Finally, to ensure our work would resonate at the level necessary to effect the change 

sought, we invited and were honored to host a group of experienced senior leaders 

to “stress-test” the report’s findings and recommendations. Without the input of U.S. 

Marine Corps Lieutenant Generals (Retired) Wallace “Chip” Gregson, Jr. and George 

Flynn; and U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General (Retired) Christopher Miller; as well as 

Mr. David Lamm, Deputy Director of Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies; 

and Dr. Frank Hoffman, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, 

National Defense University, this report would not have been as fulsome and thorough 

as we would have hoped. We are indebted to them for their insights. 

The substance, findings, and recommendations delivered in this report are the 

responsibility of the study team alone. Any flaws or errors should be ascribed to the 

authors. The contributions of individuals and organizations listed earlier do not necessarily indicate their endorsement. We are eternally grateful for all who voluntarily 

participated in what we believe to be very important work. 

xii
xiii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

INTO THE NEW GRAY ZONE

U.S. competitors pursuing meaningful revision or rejection of the current U.S.-led 

status quo are employing a host of hybrid methods to advance and secure interests 

that are in many cases contrary to those of the United States. These challengers employ 

unique combinations of influence, intimidation, coercion, and aggression to incrementally crowd out effective resistance, establish local or regional advantages, and manipulate risk perceptions in their favor. 

So far, the United States has not come up with a coherent countervailing approach. 

It is in this “gray zone”—the awkward and uncomfortable space between traditional 

conceptions of war and peace—where the United States and its defense enterprise face 

systemic challenges to U.S. position and authority. As a result, gray zone competition 

and conflict should be pacers for defense strategy.

DESCRIBING THE GRAY ZONE

For defense and military strategists, the gray zone is a broad carrier concept for a 

universe of often-dissimilar strategic challenges. Defense-relevant gray zone threats lie 

between “classic” war and peace, legitimate and illegitimate motives and methods, universal and conditional norms, order and anarchy; and traditional, irregular, or unconventional means. All gray zone challenges are distinct or unique, yet nonetheless share 

three common characteristics: hybridity, menace to defense/military convention, and 

risk-confusion.

First, all gray zone challenges are some hybrid combination of adverse methods and 

strategic effects. Second, they menace American defense and military convention because 

they simply do not conform neatly to a linear spectrum of conflict or equally linear military campaign models. Finally, they are profoundly risk-confused; as such, they disrupt 

strategic risk calculations by presenting a paralyzing choice between action and inaction. 

The hazards associated with either choice appear to be equally high and unpalatable. 

For Department of Defense (DoD) strategists and planners, gray zone competition and 

conflict persistently complicate military decision-making, deployment models, and force 

calculations. They often fall outside the defense conceptions of war, yet they can rapidly 

and unexpectedly fall into them via miscalculation and unintended escalation. In the end, 

whether emerging via purpose or implication, gray zone challenges increasingly exact 

warlike consequences on the United States and its partners. 

AN IMPERATIVE TO ADAPT

U.S. defense strategists and planners must dispense with outdated strategic assumptions about the United States, its global position, and the rules that govern the exercise of 

contemporary power. In fact, the U.S. defense enterprise should rely on three new core 

assumptions. First, the United States and the U.S.-dominated status quo will encounter persistent, unmitigated resistance. Second, that resistance will take the form of gray 
xiv

zone competition and conflict. Finally, the gray zone will confound U.S. defense strategists and institutions until it is normalized and more fully accounted for by the DoD.

These assumptions, combined with the gray zone’s vexing action-inaction risk dilemma, indicate there is an urgent necessity for U.S. defense adaptation. Without it, the 

United States introduces itself to enormous strategic risk. The consequences associated 

with such failure to adapt range from inadvertent escalation to general war, ceding control of U.S. interests, or gradual erosion of meaningful redlines in the face of determined 

competitors. These risks or losses could occur absent a declared or perceived state of 

war. 

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Examining the gray zone challenge through the lens of five archetypes—three state 

competitors (China, Russia, and Iran), one volatile environment (Middle East and North 

Africa), and the United States—this study arrived at six core findings and four recommendations. The findings and recommendations are statements of principle. The study 

team suggests that these principles will provide senior defense leadership with touchstones for deeper examination. The findings and recommendations are broken into two 

major categories: policy and strategy, and operational plans and military capabilities. 

The former provide judgments affecting high-level DoD decision-making, while the latter informs how the U.S. military might consider employing forces and assets. 

POLICY AND STRATEGY

In the area of policy and strategy, this study found that there is no common perception of the nature, character, or hazard associated with the gray zone or its individual 

threats and challenges. Consequently, there are gaps in strategic design, deliberate 

plans, and defense capabilities as they apply to operating and succeeding in gray zone 

environments. This study further found that there is significant asymmetry in risk perceptions between the United States, its partners, and their principal gray zone adversaries and competitors. The results of this apparent asymmetry of risk-perception are 

predictable—loss of initiative, ceded control over interests or territory, and a position of 

general disadvantage in the face of aggressive gray zone competition. Finally, this study 

discovered that there is neither an animating grand strategy nor “campaign-like” charter guiding U.S. defense efforts against specific gray zone challenges. Because of this, 

U.S. gray zone responses are generally overly reactive, late, and ineffective.

In response to these findings, this study recommends that the DoD develop a common, compelling, and adaptive strategic picture of the range of gray zone threats and 

their associated hazards. This new perspective should adequately assess the current 

gray zone landscape, the likeliest future trajectory of its constituent threats, and finally, 

the prospects for sharp deviations from current trends that might trigger a fundamental defense reorientation. It further recommends that the DoD “lead up” and develop 

actionable, classified strategic approaches to discrete gray zone challenges and challengers. Without a coherent approach to reasserting U.S. leadership, the United States 

risks losing control over the security of its core interests and increasing constraints on 

its global freedom of action.
xv

OPERATIONAL PLANS AND MILITARY CAPABILITIES

In the area of operational plans and military capabilities, this study found that combatant commanders’ (CCDR) presumptive future gray zone responsibilities do not 

align with their current authorities. Combatant commands (CCMDs) need greater flexibility to adapt to their theater strategic conditions, and must act to gain and maintain 

the initiative within their areas of responsibility. It further found that the current U.S./

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) joint phasing model is inadequate to 

seize and maintain the initiative in the gray zone. Purposeful gray zone revisionist 

actors are successfully campaigning and achieving warlike objectives inside the steady 

state or deterrence phases of the U.S./NATO joint phasing model. Further, contextual 

forces of rejection are themselves accumulating warlike wins in the absence of a coherent 

non-linear U.S. approach. Finally, this study concluded that current U.S. concepts for 

campaign design, the employment of forces, and the use of force are not well-adapted 

to persistent gray zone competition and conflict.

To contend effectively with the implications of these findings, this study recommends 

the following initiatives. First, CCDRs should be empowered to “operate” against active gray zone competition and conflict with new capabilities and agile, adaptive 

models for campaigning. This implies that CCDRs should possess the requisite responsibility, authority, and tools essential to achieve favorable outcomes that are in their 

purview. In addition, this study found that the DoD and the Joint Force should develop 

and employ new and adaptable concepts, capabilities, and organizational solutions 

to confront U.S. gray zone challenges. It recommends a number of specific actions to 

improve U.S. military performance in the areas of ground and special operations forces 

(SOF), air and maritime capabilities, cyber capabilities, exercises, and power projection.

WAY AHEAD—ADAPTATION AND ACTIVISM

Normalizing and accounting for the DoD’s burgeoning gray zone challenge relies on 

the socialization of two important concepts—adaptation and activism. The defense enterprise needs to adapt to how it sees its gray zone challenges; how it charters strategic 

action against them; and, finally, how it designs, prioritizes, and undertakes that strategic action. All of these require a robust and activist DoD response. To date, the United 

States favors approaches that are more conservative. This study suggests that continuing 

such approaches invites substantial and potentially irreversible strategic consequences. 

1

Foundational 

Understanding

3

Strategic Insights—No More Black or White

•	 The gray zone is a broad carrier concept for a 

collection of sometimes dissimilar defense-relevant challenges—describe it, don’t define it. 

•	 Gray zone challenges lie between “classic” war 

and peace, legitimate and illegitimate motives 

and methods, universal and conditional norms, 

order and anarchy, and traditional and irregular 

(or unconventional) means.

•	 All gray zone challenges have three common 

characteristics:

o Hybridity

o Menace to defense/military 

convention

o Risk-confusion

•	 Each distinct gray zone challenge is a unique, 

context-dependent security hazard. 

I. INTRODUCTION—NO MORE BLACK OR WHITE, ONLY GRAY

“Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.”

 -Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 1

A NEW THEORY OF THE DEFENSE CASE

There is a tough reality confronting Department of Defense (DoD) leaders of late. 

The favorable post-Cold War status quo they and the broader national security community have largely defined, cultivated, nurtured, controlled, and come to rely on for 

the past 25 years faces a fresh set of strategic-level challenges that are neither war nor 

peace in their most classic definitions. They are not black or white but instead, decidedly 

gray because they lie in-between. They 

are between doctrinaire conceptions 

of war and peace, between legitimate 

and illegitimate motives and methods, 

between universal and conditional 

norms, between order and anarchy, 

and finally, between traditional and irregular or unconventional means. 

Many U.S. competitors have chosen to operate in this space by design. 

A favorable U.S.-led status quo has, to 

date, allowed the United States and its 

partners to dictate the terms and outcomes of both the “black”—open and 

unambiguous traditional military conflict—and the “white”—routine and 

peaceful diplomatic and economic relations—scenarios. In order to compete 

most effectively, many U.S. opponents 

choose to operate in between. In fact, 

today the most impactful defense-relevant competition and conflict most frequently occurs in the decidedly gray territory.

This gray zone competition and conflict—lying awkwardly in an uncomfortable conceptual no man’s land for strategists and military planners—will remain a key pacer for 

U.S. defense calculations well into the foreseeable future. Combating or contending with 

the gray zone relies on it remaining at the center of contemporary defense dialogue. 

Currently, there is no good playbook for operating effectively in the gray zone. Yet, 

trends in international security and deliberate adversary activity clearly compel urgent 

and sophisticated U.S. defense adaptation to its unique demands. Without adaptation, 

the United States introduces itself to strategic risk at the hands of its gray zone adversaries, competitors, and competitive contextual circumstances. The sources of risk could 

range from inadvertent escalation to general war, ceding control of U.S. interests, or 

gradual erosion of meaningful redlines in the face of determined competitors. These 

risks or losses could occur without the existence of a declared or perceived state of war. 
4

While the gray zone and its emerging threats are not always or even commonly defense-specific challenges, building capability for and campaigning effectively in the gray 

zone are clearly among the DoD’s most compelling near- to mid-term defense-relevant 

demands. As such, designing effective responses to key gray zone challenges should 

be a high-priority for U.S. strategists and decision-makers in the forthcoming defense 

review. That is the focus of this study.

DESCRIBE THE GRAY ZONE; DON’T DEFINE IT

The gray zone is admittedly a broad carrier concept for a collection of sometimes dissimilar defense-relevant challenges. In this regard, statically defining the gray zone may 

be far less useful to the defense strategy and policy community than simply describing 

it as it is now and as it likely will be for some time. Three characteristics are common to 

all gray zone challenges. 

The first and most obvious characteristic is their inherent hybridity. At their core, all 

gray zone challenges are a hybrid combination of adverse methods and strategic effects. 

Their complexity and ambiguity militate against effective and meaningful U.S./partner 

counteraction—especially those countervailing actions or responses that ruthlessly adhere to traditional U.S. conceptions of war and peace.2

The second common characteristic of all gray zone challenges is their direct, universal menace to American defense and military convention. In short, they simply do not 

conform neatly to the traditionally linear spectrum of conflict nor to the equally linear 

American joint military campaign model. Therefore, in a word, they are hard. For an 

inherently conservative U.S. defense establishment, they are hard to classify, hard to 

conceptualize, hard to plan against, and therefore, very hard to counter.

The third and final characteristic common to all gray zone challenges is their profound risk-confusion. In short, threats emerging from the gray zone have a decidedly 

disruptive effect on strategic risk calculations. Often, the risk associated with action and 

inaction appears to be equally high and unpalatable. 

Individually, each distinct gray zone challenge is a unique, context-dependent security hazard. They manifest differently depending on strategic circumstances, the means 

available to specific opponents, and the degree to which the same opponents control 

outcomes overall. In short, there is no single template for gray zone challenges or challengers and, therefore, no one silver bullet to combat or counter them effectively. In the 

end, it is best to describe the gray zone in terms of what it is not than what it is. It is neither the routine peaceful interactions of textbook international relations nor the equally 

doctrinal challenge of major great power war. Specific challenges in it manifest as tough, 

complex, and often ambiguous combinations of forces, actors, methods, and effects.

Today, for example, the gray zone includes aggressive high-stakes statecraft of the 

kind exhibited by revisionist powers like Russia, China, and Iran, where rival states marshal various instruments of influence and intimidation to achieve warlike ends through 

means and methods falling far short of unambiguous or open provocation and conflict.3

Rivals pursuing their interests in the gray zone in this manner do so via methods and 

means that limit their exposure, avoid direct military conflict with the United States, and 
5

exploit their own areas of relative strength or advantage. They generate asymmetries of 

decision, capability, and risk perception that can stymie effective American responses. 

The gray zone also includes the less purposeful and more incidental confluence of 

destabilizing, competitive forces (e.g., popular disaffection, disintegrating authority, 

hyper-connectivity, distributed resistance, and proliferating lethality or disruptive potential), and the organic rejectionist movements best positioned to exploit all or some 

of these forces to their decided advantage. This latter contextual combination of hostile 

forces in places like the Middle East exploits clear vulnerabilities in the prevailing status 

quo and presents effective hazards to core U.S. interests across a broad and seemingly 

indefensible front—all from sources operating well-outside the traditional state system.

THE “NEW GRAY NORMAL”

Thus, for the near future, broad-spectrum gray zone resistance to U.S. politico-military dominance will emerge from a shifting universe of state and nonstate actors. The 

“new normal” will witness anti-U.S. resistance unfolding outside the basic “rules” of 

American defense and foreign policy convention. Consequential antagonists will include but will not be limited to the usual suspects. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, 

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and al Qaeda, for example, have adapted 

and will complicate the defense of important American interests by maneuvering more 

often than not in the gray zone. Likewise, new—and perhaps even wholly unfamiliar—

security challengers are likely to ultimately avail themselves of the ways and means of 

effective gray zone resistance as well, and enter a crowded and competitive counter-U.S. 

market at a surprisingly low price point.

Purposeful resistance to the American-led status quo is not new. New, however, are 

the number of actors simultaneously empowered to resist U.S. influence effectively, the 

variety of routes and vectors from which they can threaten harm to core U.S. interests, 

and, finally, the volatility of an international system under persistent seismic pressure 

from the competing forces of integration and disintegration. In recent years, these three 

factors combined have coalesced into a new and novel set of national security challenges that, to date, defy the most traditional or conventional U.S./partner “challengeresponse” templates. 

ABOUT THE STUDY AND FINDINGS

This study endeavors to offer the DoD useful insights on all three counts described 

previously. It grew from acknowledged confusion within the defense strategy and analysis communities about what gray zone challenges are, what they are not, and what they 

mean for the DoD going forward. In spite of a great deal of DoD-chartered work on the 

subject, there is no common conceptual understanding of the gray zone, its theoretical 

boundaries, or its specific constituent challenges. Moreover, there is no common agreement on how the U.S. defense establishment might best posture and focus to contend 

with gray zone challenges and its various permutations. 
6

There are three foundational research assumptions underpinning this work. First, the 

United States and the U.S.-led status quo will remain under persistent assault through 

the near to mid-terms from a diverse array of actors, forces, and conditions. Second, gray 

zone competition and conflict will be the most common forms of counter-U.S. resistance 

for the foreseeable future and will pace U.S. defense strategy over the same period. Finally, the gray zone will increasingly create “wicked” strategic planning dilemmas for 

U.S. strategists until it is normalized and more fully accounted for in DoD strategy and 

plans. 

There are those in the defense strategy and analysis communities who consistently 

argue that there is nothing new to gray zone competition and conflict. This study finds 

that while there is some merit to that argument academically; practically, it is irrelevant. 

The cases provided demonstrate that U.S. policymakers and military leaders have repeatedly been unprepared to counter adversaries who operate effectively in the gray 

zone. This study’s intensive examination of known gray zone challenges has validated 

all three assumptions. 

Although the report acknowledges gray zone competition as whole-of-government 

business, this is a defense-specific study. Therefore, the work limits its recommendations to the DoD or issues directly affecting the defense enterprise: U.S. Joint Forces, 

and by implication, the defense and military institutions of U.S. foreign partners. This 

study first attempts to effectively describe or conceptualize the strategic environment 

and the trends contributing to the emergence of contemporary gray zone competition 

and conflict. Second, it identifies and classifies a finite set of pacing archetypes that defense and military leaders might consider hedging against in future strategy. Finally, 

in response to the aforementioned, it identifies specific findings and recommendations 

relevant to effective defense responses to gray zone challenges. It concludes that the 

gray zone’s inevitable persistence as an American military pacer will demand innovation across the DoD. This study examines the character of gray zone competition and 

conflict in four major archetypal categories. These categories are distinct in that each 

represents a unique set of gray zone conditions and circumstances that senior defense 

leadership must consider when assessing the relative value of U.S. strategic priorities. 

Three archetypes align with specific state actors—China, Russia, and Iran. All three have 

demonstrated a deftness and athleticism in their purposeful gray zone approaches that, 

to date, have outmaneuvered their seemingly less nimble U.S. competitor. 

The fourth archetype is less purposeful and driven more by environmental factors. 

It represents the colliding forces of revolution and reaction rending at the fabric of functioning order in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Where these forces collide 

most violently, novel threats to American interests emerge. Often these threats fall well 

outside the traditional frames by which the DoD establishes its future priorities. Thus, 

MENA is gray less by design and more by implication.

In each case, this study finds that while the nature of consequential competition and 

conflict remain largely unchanged (e.g., contest of wills between two or more sides), the 

character of these important struggles has evolved and will continue to do so in ways 

that presently outpace the United States’ ability to respond effectively.

In the end, this study arrived at six major findings falling in two general issue areas. 

The first set of findings was in the general issue area of policy and strategy, and the 
7

second in the area of operational plans and military capabilities. In the first general issue 

area, the study team found that there is no commonly shared defense or U.S. Government perspective on the nature, character, or hazard associated with gray zone threats. A 

second finding in this general issue area was that there is a significant asymmetry in risk 

perceptions between U.S. and partner decision-makers on the one hand, and adversaries 

on the other. In short, it appears U.S./partner strategic leaders are more risk averse or 

more risk-confused than are their gray zone competitors. A third and final finding in the 

area of policy and strategy was a realization that no deliberate grand strategy or actionable strategic charters exist to guide U.S. defense efforts against gray zone challenges.

In the second general issue area of operational plans and military capabilities, the 

study team made three additional findings. The first finding concerned combatant commander (CCDR) authorities. Assuming increased senior-level interest in counter-gray 

zone activity, the team found that presumptive CCDR authorities and responsibilities 

do not match. Additionally, a second finding identified significant weaknesses in the 

current U.S./North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) construct for joint campaigning. In short, the team discovered that the current construct was inadequate for seizing and maintaining gray zone initiative. Lastly, a third finding showed that the U.S. 

concepts for the design and employment of force and forces in gray zone environments 

were not well-adapted to actual real-world demand. 

From these findings, this study arrived at four broad recommendations for consideration by the DoD. First, the team concluded that the DoD should develop and promulgate a common, compelling, and adaptive picture of gray zone threats and their hazards. 

Second, in the absence of comprehensive high-level strategic guidance, the DoD should 

“lead up” and develop actionable and classified charters for specific defense and military actions to combat discrete gray zone challenges and challengers. Third, nationallevel leadership and the DoD should empower U.S. CCDRs to “operate” against active 

gray zone competition and conflict with new capabilities and with agile and adaptive 

campaign models. Finally, the defense enterprise should develop and employ new 

and adaptable concepts, capabilities, and organizational solutions against gray zone 

challenges. 

9

II. STUDY METHODOLOGY

In August 2015, the United States Army War College (USAWC) initiated this study 

under the charter of the previous Army Chief of Staff General Raymond T. Odierno. 

Subsequently, the USAWC study team received additional sponsorship and endorsement from the Commander, Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC), U.S. Army 

Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and the Chief, Joint Strategic Multi-layer 

Assessment Branch of the Joint Staff Deputy Directorate for Global Operations (J-39). An 

integrated team of four faculty and ten student investigators conducted the work over 

a period of 9 months, from September 2015 through May 2016. The project followed a 

three-phase approach.

In Phase I (September - October 2015), the USAWC study team conducted a broad 

literature review and a series of internal team deliberations aimed at organizing the 

research effort and developing a set of preliminary insights. Phase I ended with the first 

of two planned external working groups. The study’s external working group consisted 

of trusted experts and stakeholders from outside of USAWC’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). The study team selected a working group membership because they and/or 

their parent organizations represent important perspectives on the subject of gray zone 

challenges. 

The working group included representatives from the military services, the Joint 

Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, prominent think tanks, USAWC teaching 

faculty, and academia. Appendix I lists working group participants. The first external 

working group assisted USAWC researchers refine their preliminary insights, shape 

and scope the project’s focus, and identify priorities for future inquiry.

In Phase II (November 2015 - March 2016), the USAWC team conducted a series of 

roundtable engagements and interviews with national security, defense, and foreign 

policy experts currently engaged in work related to gray zone threats. Among those consulted were prominent analysts from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Center 

for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), 

and RAND. In addition, USAWC researchers engaged U.S. and allied military leaders, 

diplomats, and intelligence professionals in a series of interviews and roundtables to 

gain their insights on gray zone challenges. 

Among those consulted were experts from the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), 

U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), U.S. 

Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the Joint Staff, NATO Allied Command 

Transformation (SAC-T), NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (SCCoE), U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR), U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC), U.S. Army Cyber 

Command and Second Army (ARCYBER), and ARCIC. 

In Phase II, the USAWC study team convened the second and final external working 

group. The Phase II working group focused on refining and testing this study’s preliminary conclusions and recommendations. Further, this working group was instrumental 

in identifying research gaps that this study needed to address prior to final publication.

In Phase III (March - April 2016), USAWC researchers continued with interviews and 

roundtable discussions while drafting their final report. Phase III involved significant external report vetting with important stakeholders as well. During Phase III, the USAWC 
10

study team also convened a senior review group in order to vet this study’s findings and 

recommendations prior to publication of the final report. The senior review group was 

comprised of five senior leaders with broad experience in defense and military strategy 

development. Senior review group members are listed in the acknowledgements. 

Participation in both the external working group and/or the senior review group 

does not connote endorsement of this report or its findings by either individuals or their 

organizations. 
11

Strategic Insights—Framing the Challenge

• U.S. decision-makers fail to recognize that the 

character of meaningful competition and conflict has changed fundamentally.

• This is the product of four failed assumptions:

o The United States is and will always be the 

“good guy.”

o Competitors will adopt, fight, and lose according to U.S. rules.

o Only conflict between large and capable 

states matters.

o The authority of states will remain uncontested.

III. FRAMING THE CHALLENGE

FIRST PRINCIPLES—THE NATURE VERSUS CHARACTER OF WAR

In Book I of his celebrated treatise On War, Clausewitz defined war as “nothing but 

a duel on a larger scale.”4 He also likened that duel to a wrestling match—a competition 

between two parties—each vying for the upper hand, and ultimately, through the application of force, compelling the other to accept defeat. 

This definition is useful in understanding how to frame gray zone challenges for 

U.S. policymakers, especially if one assumes that the successful application 

of force can include an assortment of 

actions, both military and non-military, 

that often remain beneath the threshold of open or unambiguous conflict 

or outside the preferred or classical 

definition of war. In applying Clausewitz’s parsimonious definition to gray 

zone competition and conflict, this 

study questions the notions that gray 

zone challenges are not simply acts of 

war by another name or a sanctuary for 

actions that are profoundly warlike in 

their consequences. 

If, for example, gray zone competition and conflict are actually forms of 

war or replacements for war, then the 

qualities that constitute war’s enduring nature apply with equal certainty to key exemplars of gray zone activity. While war’s nature may endure, its character changes 

persistently. Thus, this study argues that resort to gray zone activities by purposeful adversaries, as well as U.S. involvement in the contextual and amorphous gray challenge 

of collapsing authority, all represent evolutions in the character of at least some types of 

war—especially as they relate in practice to DoD strategy and planning. 

Viewing gray zone competition through this Clausewitzian lens could be a useful 

starting point for strategy development. Likewise, it helps security professionals and 

policymakers answer key questions that will undoubtedly shape future strategy. Among 

those questions are the following: What is the value of the interests or objectives in play? 

What are the broad strategic costs associated with pursuing or defending them? How 

certain is success? What are the consequences of failure? Finally, given competing calculations on success and failure, is there sufficient will to pursue objectives in light of their 

costs, and how long can that will be maintained? 

While it is not the intent of this study to characterize all competitive relationships 

with the United States as states of war, viewing gray zone activity within the warlike 

context described here forces acknowledgement of both the unchanging nature and 

changing character of consequential conflict. Failing to categorize it as such may lull 
12

leaders into a dangerous place where the aforementioned questions are never addressed 

or are addressed much too late for desirable outcomes to remain possible. 

Recognizing that the nature of war is unchanging, while persistently staying ahead 

of its changing character, is a critical step in the perpetual adaptation of the American 

defense enterprise to its most important future demands. Failure to comprehend the 

changing character of war and conflict as they relate to the gray zone, may in fact be 

what is confounding U.S. defense and security professionals so profoundly today. 

Many of them are quick to argue against the gray zone’s “newness.” There may be 

nothing new about it if one only considers it in the context of the unchanging nature of 

war—i.e., a contest of wills. New or not, the United States and its partners appear hamstrung in every attempt to act with purpose against the most compelling challenges the 

gray zone has in store. 

It is clear to the study team that the circumstances and methods under and by which 

modern competition and conflict occur are changing fundamentally. This trend includes 

an expansion and transformation of meaningful contestants operating in the system, the 

tools and methods they employ to compete, and the contexts within which they and others attack various positions and defend their own. For U.S. defense leaders, the character 

of meaningful competition and conflict has changed qualitatively and quantitatively. 

This change persistently catches the United States off guard and impairs its ability to 

respond to and compete effectively in the contemporary environment. 

There are clear reasons behind this. The study team concludes that four failed assumptions about the strategic environment are the root of the problem.

FIRST PRINCIPLES—FOUR FAILED ASSUMPTIONS

While the United States may remain first among equals in the contemporary environment, its ability to contend effectively with a number of increasingly capable competitors (state and nonstate) and contextual competitive forces is in question. Over the 

last 16 years, these challenges have compounded as U.S. strategy has increasingly run 

aground on the shoals of four failed strategic assumptions. All four assumptions are 

intrinsically interconnected and their collective failure has had cascading impacts on the 

U.S. defense outlook. 

Persistent adherence to these four basic but increasingly faulty assumptions has effectively masked the onset of a yawning gray zone gap in U.S. defense strategy and 

planning. As American strategists persisted in filtering strategic thinking through the 

conventional wisdom of 20th-century realism, new rules or no rules were fast emerging 

to define the DoD’s decision-making landscape. 

Assumption 1: The United States is and will always be the good guy.

The first failed assumption long held that the U.S.-led post-Cold War status quo 

would enjoy universal and perpetual approval worldwide. For three plus generations, 

post-World War II international norms, institutions, and economic arrangements, as 

well as the Cold War balance of power largely succeeded in regulating competition between the world’s most consequential state actors. Indeed, the latter bi-polar balance, in 
13

particular, dominated and moderated international security affairs for nearly 50 years. 

At a minimum, that same rules-based order helped avert the global catastrophe that 

would have been war between the United States and the Soviet Union. 

The system experienced a disruptive perturbation in 1991 when the U.S.-led “West” 

won a peaceful victory over its communist rival. Among U.S. strategists, the end of the 

Cold War was widely viewed as representative of a more profound shift in international security affairs. It marked a wider triumph of liberal democracy over the alternative illiberal exercise of political authority and the presumed bellicosity that would 

accompany it. 

This “end of history” logic held that U.S. leadership in both the victory against communism, as well as U.S. stewardship of the post-Soviet transition, would translate into 

a permanent and inviolable endorsement of an American-led post-Cold War order. It 

was further assumed that U.S. leadership would be widely recognized within that order 

as both a universal common good and an essential component of a stable, secure, and 

prosperous international system. 

The United States is now acutely aware that much of the world might have different 

ideas. New centers of power and influence are fast emerging. Consequently, the world is 

increasingly multi-polar and power itself is more context-dependent. Increasing multipolarity and greater access to exploitable influence and power have given rise to a new 

crop of opportunistic actors who actively agitate to revise or reject the U.S.-led status 

quo. In brief, the United States’ defense agenda has experienced significant horizontal 

and vertical expansion as it progressed through the post-Cold War period. Moreover, 

the expansion and layering of consequential competitors on that agenda has complicated DoD prioritization and planning immensely. 

Assumption 2: Competitors will adopt, fight, and lose according to U.S. rules.

Yet another failed assumption held that American military dominance vis-à-vis all 

possible competitors would persist indefinitely with prudent U.S. investment. This assumption relied on the U.S. brand of military superiority—with its ordered model for 

campaigning, global reach, power projection, precision lethality; and superior technology, organization, and training—holding its value and remaining an unassailable competitive edge regardless of where or under what circumstances it was applied. In short, 

there was a prevailing view that the “American way of war” or, more accurately, the 

American preference to prepare for a particular kind of war would endure as a meaningful hedge against the most important defense-relevant threats and challenges regardless 

of their origin. 

American strategists have seen this assumption shattered over the last 15 years. 

Exquisite organization, equipage, and training were enough to defeat a decaying Iraqi 

Army and drive the Taliban from power. However, the same perceived advantages had 

to undergo radical reorientation to combat shadowy insurgent armies effectively in both 

instances. Likewise, U.S. direct action and precision strikes have proven ruthlessly effective in culling the terrorist population from time to time. However, they have also been 

far less effective at either ending or even limiting the terrorist threat overall. 
14

At the higher end of the conflict spectrum, innovation on the part of China’s People’s 

Liberation Army (PLA) in the area of anti-access/area denial (A2AD) capabilities already 

limits U.S. freedom of action in the Pacific theater in the event of increased hostilities. 

PLA A2AD capabilities provide China with a potent defensive umbrella under which it 

pursues a comprehensive offensive irredentist agenda through means and methods that 

include but are not limited to military activity. The Russians also aggressively pursue 

regional interests in their near abroad, employing hybrid cut-outs as frontline forces 

while deterring or limiting American and allied military response options through the 

promise of unacceptable high-end military escalation. 

Both China and Russia maneuver nimbly through the gray zone with a mixture of 

capabilities and methods at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of decision and 

action. They both appear to have mastered the delicate balance and modulation of influence, intimidation, coercion, and aggression; adjusting all four across competitive 

domains to advance their objectives while keeping their own strategic costs and risks 

within an acceptable range. In both instances, their use of military force and forces is 

part of a broader “political-military-economic-information mosaic” of gray zone activities intended to generate synergy in strategic effects. To date, their approach has confounded U.S. and allied leadership. 

Assumption 3: Only conflict between large and capable states matters.

A third failed assumption applies equally to the United States, its partners, and its 

competitors. At work here is the lingering conceit of realist great powers unable to adapt 

to 21st-century realities. This assumption held too long that the only international competition and conflict that counted involved rival great powers or rival alliances. The 

international community presumed this to be an enduring and immutable foundation 

for defense planning. Prepare for the “big one” (a major interstate conflict) and the presumed result will be the reduction of all risk. 

According to this assumption, raw calculation of rival powers’ military, economic, 

and political potential and the active employment of that potential in defense of opposing core interests would persistently govern outcomes in international affairs. Among 

great powers, contesting one another’s physical, virtual, and ideological space would 

largely be rules-based and orderly. Most great powers assumed that it would remain so 

in perpetuity. 

To the extent there was anarchy, it manifested most importantly in the divergent 

interests of powerful states. Thus, weak states and nonstate movements were instruments or arenas of rival great power competition, not meaningful participants in it. In 

short, the world’s most important disputes would occur between great powers, never 

within or transcending them. This assumption further held that real advantages in the 

classical instruments of coarse or hard power always trumped any countervailing use of 

alternative, less classical, or “smarter” tools of statecraft. Finally, in this worldview, war 

itself was predictable, linear, and always an escalatory extension of state policy. In this 

regard, it was the last step of policy. It was neither an intermediate step nor a persistent 

state of being. 
15

This assumption also crashed violently into the reality of prolific discontent, profound rejection, and hyper-connectivity. Increasingly, where there was a will there 

would be a way for less overtly powerful states and nonstate movements and actors to 

be heard and felt. Thus, over the last decade and a half, more states have entered into 

meaningful competition with the United States. Additionally, an increasing number of 

consequential nonstate actors, movements, and proto-states have emerged in relatively 

rapid order to exercise state-like influence over the course of important international security issues. In some contexts, nonstate forces and movements replaced states or competed with states as peers. In others, they aligned with states as equals or acted as proxy 

instruments of states bent on advancing their interests without a sizeable commitment 

of their own human and material resources. 

The U.S. national security community has long recognized the rising impact of nonstate actors. What is new, however, is the ability of some of them to marshal sufficient 

capability—often over great distances in a highly distributed manner—to compete effectively with states and other state-like movements as a peer-, near-peer, or consequential 

spoiler. 

U.S. defense strategists ignore the rise of extra-state power at their peril. Unfortunately, the default Pentagon position addresses each new nonstate challenge as it arises—e.g., al Qaeda begets the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), etc. Instead, it 

would be useful for the DoD to recognize the real prospect of wholesale atomization and 

democratization of effective counter-U.S. resistance. 

Assumption 4: The authority of states will remain uncontested.

The fourth and final failed assumption is a corollary to Assumption 3. It too is not 

unique to the United States or its partners. It is also rooted in classical realism and is yet 

another example of a naïve conceit among ruling political elites worldwide. 

This assumption held that states would forever be perceived en masse as the only 

legitimate and effective instruments of identity formation, political authority, and arbitration, or meaningful collective action. According to this view, states were indivisible, 

rational, and unitary actors. If, as argued, the only meaningful international activity 

occurs between powerful states or groups of powerful states, then—within states—governments would logically be the only legitimate mechanism for maintaining a monopoly 

on violence, exercising political authority, and cultivating animating identity, political 

affiliation, and loyalty. Nonstates inclined to compete in this regard were perceived as 

pretenders.

The 21st-century reality is quite different. Today, all states are experiencing a precipitous decline in their authority, influence, reach, and common attraction. Increasingly, 

states compete across thick webs of hyper-connected discontent with myriad alternative 

sources of political alignment or allegiance. When states outwardly appear to be weak or 

failing, this trend is more pronounced. However, the fraying or disintegration of formal 

political authority is not solely the concern of weak or failing states. 

The increasing chasm between governments and their governed over the basic right 

to rule is likely to extend beyond the most vulnerable usual suspects. Fueled by prolific 

electronic connectivity and access to information, this general trend will continue to tear 
16

at the connective tissue holding more capable and powerful states intact as well. Even 

powerful states now all wrestle with one another over competing interests while standing on quicksand—threatened simultaneously by capable state and nonstate rivals, as 

well as the fragile and restive social order they themselves rest on. 

The devolution of traditional political authority has three profound defense-relevant 

impacts on gray zone challenges. First, purposeful gray zone challengers will encourage, foment, and exploit it in order to create favorable operating conditions for themselves. This will occur in spite of the fact that they too are vulnerable to the 21st century’s 

disintegrative forces. Second, states and regions in or on the brink of serious civil unrest 

or vulnerable to cross-border political contagion are likely ripe for proxy confrontations 

between gray zone opponents. Finally, abrupt loss of effective political authority in important regions and states, and the sub-national and transnational rivalries emerging 

from it, create complex contextual gray zone challenges that can inevitably pose unpredictable, often escalatory hazards to core U.S. interests.
17

Strategic Insights—Strategic Environment

•	 The current security environment is dominated 

by change.

•	 The United States no longer enjoys an exclusive 

hold on game-changing international influence.

•	 Three new assumptions should animate future 

U.S. defense policy:

o The United States will remain under persistent assault from a diverse array of actors, 

forces, and conditions (revisionist and rejectionist). 

o Gray zone competition and conflict will be 

the most common forms of counter-U.S. resistance and should pace defense strategy. 

o The gray zone will increasingly create wicked 

strategic planning dilemmas for U.S. strategists until it is normalized. 

IV. THE STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT – THREE ALTERNATIVE ASSUMPTIONS

A VOLATILE, UNCERTAIN, COMPLEX, AND AMBIGUOUS (VUCA) 

LANDSCAPE

A recent RAND report described the United States as tired of costly military intervention, politically polarized, and still recovering from a devastating years-long economic 

recession.5 In short, an activist U.S. foreign and security policy is seen as burdensome by 

many—including the political and military decision-making class—in light of a difficult 

decade and a half of persistent conflict. This is a common perception. Yet, the United 

States is Janus-faced in this regard. 

To be sure, there are explicit calls 

to look inward, reduce military spending, protect the U.S. economy, and secure the prosperity and well-being of 

American citizens at home first. At the 

same time, there are equally adamant 

calls for the United States to maintain 

its central and indispensable role in 

global leadership, preserve its military 

dominance across five critical joint domains, and secure an expansive and 

demanding set of national security 

and military objectives worldwide.6 To 

make this effort even more challenging, the U.S. military is called to meet 

these objectives in a globally connected 

and real-time responsive information 

environment that connects all five domains. In the end, senior DoD leadership will have to rationalize policies 

and prioritize efforts in the midst of these competing national demands. The essence 

of effective strategy is to make the best risk-based decisions in the face of choices that 

appear to be equally compelling.7

Regardless of the domestic political balance of power after 2016, the Pentagon can 

anticipate that: 

• It will be asked to secure U.S. interests against myriad sources of threat and 

hostility; 

• It will have to persistently balance risk between multiple competing and compelling military demands; 

• The means available to secure interests and buy down risk will be more finite; 

and finally, 

• It will never be wholly ready for its next major challenge.
18

All of these combined mean that the DoD now and into the future will need to 

find innovative ways to fulfill its mission and persistently adapt to changing security 

conditions. 

Most official defense-relevant strategic assessments characterize the current security 

environment as one dominated by change.8 Some change will be gradual. Some change 

will be rapid. However, if major trend lines are correct, virtually all change will be both 

fundamental and profoundly disruptive to the post-World War II/post-Cold War international order over time.9

Among the most impactful sources of change are major trends in globalization, the 

diffusion of technology, shifting demographics, and the near certainty that power and 

its meaningful exercise will no longer rest solely in the hands of either the United States 

or its partners or, for that matter, states and state-based institutions alone. All of these 

trends engender significant implications for the DoD and its leadership. In addition, the 

last one—the fungible and shifting nature of power—should have the most immediate effect on how the DoD thinks about its contingency and threat futures. As such, it 

should have profound effects on the shape and employment of the military.

Ultimately, the United States will need to make choices about shaping or reacting 

to the most threatening or disruptive among these major trends. Challengers to U.S. 

leadership, adherents to the U.S.-led international order, and the United States itself will 

at times exploit trends to their advantage. Indeed, there is already a conscious competition for the high ground in this regard. On the other hand, many of the most disruptive 

trends are simply part of the new and ever-evolving contextual mosaic within which all 

states and peoples live, operate, adapt, thrive, or wither. These are among the most difficult to shape; thriving against them hinges on resiliency and adaptability in the face of 

an environment that the U.S. defense establishment commonly characterizes as volatile, 

uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA).10

This study suggests all four VUCA characterizations are accurate reflections of the 

DoD’s decision-making landscape. Volatility will occur from the pace and scale of future 

change. Uncertainty will emerge from where, when, and how major change materializes and the level of disruption involved when it does. Complexity will spring from 

the myriad sources of change and their tangled, sometimes obscure, connection to one 

another. And, finally, opacity about the causality of specific important events, as well as 

the motives, intentions, and methods of an expanding universe of influential actors will 

fuel increased ambiguity. 

What is certain is perhaps equal or more important to U.S. strategic calculations than 

what is uncertain. What is clear is the simple fact that the United States no longer enjoys 

an exclusive hold on game-changing international influence. Its 25-year dominance of 

the global agenda, its unfettered political and military freedom of maneuver, and its unchallenged reliability as the principal guarantor of the most important security outcomes 

are persistently under siege from a new class of threats, competitors, and competitive 

forces. These conditions imply significant adjustment by the DoD is in the offing.
19

AN ESSENTIAL DEFENSE REORIENTATION: THREE ALTERNATIVE 

ASSUMPTIONS 

DoD leaders can make some clear alternative assumptions about their future decision-making and operating environments. These should replace any lingering adherence to the aforementioned failed assumptions. This study offers U.S. defense strategists 

three new ideas to animate future defense policy and strategy development. 

First, the United States and the U.S.-led status quo will remain under persistent assault for the foreseeable future from a diverse array of actors, forces, and conditions. Second, gray zone competition and conflict will be the most common forms of counter-U.S. 

resistance and will pace U.S. defense strategy over the same period. Finally, third, the 

gray zone will increasingly create wicked strategic planning dilemmas for U.S. strategists until it is normalized and more fully accounted for in DoD strategy and plans. 

The study team initiated its work with some form of these in mind and adjusted 

them throughout its research effort. In the team’s view, these three assumptions best 

capture the dynamics of the fluid, complex, conflict-ridden environment the DoD will 

increasingly be required to commit resources against. Further, they reflect the previous 

four failed assumptions to effectively guide U.S. defense strategy and policy. They also 

appropriately represent and account for new strategic conditions. Finally, they suggest 

a preliminary direction for near-term defense adaptation. Translation of these and their 

implications into concrete defense initiatives will be important for the DoD as it transitions into the next decade.

Alternative Assumption 1: The U.S.-led status quo will remain under persistent assault from a diverse array of actors, forces, and conditions.

As suggested, the United States and its defense establishment face a new class of 

meaningful competition. Far from a stable and uncontested U.S.-led international order, 

three competing types of actors vie for primacy in the contemporary security environment—status quo, revisionist, and rejectionist. Status quo actors are perceived to benefit 

from and are seen as actively defending the current international system’s extant distribution of influence and authority. In brief, status quo actors value the current order and 

actively work to secure it to their advantage. The United States and its major allies and 

partners largely constitute the contemporary status quo.11

Revisionists are similar in stature to status quo actors. They are states that value a 

rules-based order but not necessarily in its current form. Thus, the revisionists oppose 

or resist the U.S.-led status quo and possess the requisite influence and means necessary 

to threaten or compel a renegotiation of it on terms more favorable to them. Obviously, 

any forced renegotiation of the current international order that advantages the revisionists would occur at the expense of the United States and its closest partners. In short, 

revisionists advocate and agitate for a more favorable redistribution of influence and 

authority in the U.S.-led order and demonstrate a willingness to act with purpose and 

volition to achieve it. 

Opportunistic rivals like China, Russia, and Iran are exemplars of revisionist behavior. They all pursue systemic change on a local, regional, or global basis to their decided 
20

advantage. In so doing, they frequently conflict with and actively undermine core U.S. 

and partner interests. 

All open source military assessments acknowledge Russia and Iran as potential military threats.12 In most cases, official language associated with China is more guarded 

and political, with the term “competitor” being the most common characterization.13 In 

light of this, all three are acutely aware of the hazards and costs associated with inadvertent escalation. In this regard, the prospect of catastrophic miscalculation casts a persistent shadow over the relationship between them and the United States. Consequently, 

all three are keen and endeavor to achieve favorable outcomes through methods that 

remain well below the threshold of unambiguous provocation. They are more prone to 

gradually or progressively breach U.S. redlines via subtlety, ambiguity, or misdirection. 

This approach works precisely because of the existing U.S. framework for great power competition. Because revisionists are large and capable states, U.S. decision-makers 

commonly default to a comfortable form of rules-based 20th-century realism to guide 

American responses to them. Simply put, the United States is playing by a rulebook 

for the game it wants to play, while revisionist actors are playing a different game altogether. The game metaphor illustrates how failing to recognize and adapt to the everchanging character of war and consequential competition creates problems for strategists and policymakers. Fundamentally, the U.S. approach has proven faulty. Moreover, 

until U.S. decision-makers begin playing the right game, American responses are likely 

to continue to fall short. 

The term rejectionist speaks for itself. As the term implies, these actors reject the 

veracity and utility of the current U.S.-led international order, as well as its distribution 

of power and authority. They are largely destroyers, not builders. In short, rejectionists 

seek to discard the extant international order altogether. 

They self-identify as profoundly aggrieved, denied, or disenfranchised. Rejectionists 

are keen to confront what they perceive to be the unfair and illegitimate exercise of status quo political authority and they are loath to accept a new, revisionist-led status quo 

that might also profit at their expense. As such, they reside and operate predominantly 

beneath, adjacent to, in direct competition with, or beyond the reach of state actors. They 

persistently militate against state authority and create or thrive in generalized disorder.

In the current environment, where power is becoming more context-dependent, rejectionist actors are able to wield more influence than was previously possible. In the 

past, these actors could not afford to compete with or significantly alter the status quo. 

The price of entry associated with sparring with state competitors on equal or somewhat 

advantaged terms was simply too high. Now, the confluence of hyper-connectivity, 

fraying state authority, widespread popular disaffection, organic resistance to the status 

quo, distributed activism, and a real proliferation of lethal and disruptive potential provide unprecedented opportunities for rejectionists to pursue their objectives.14

Today, the most fragile quarters of the state system may be most vulnerable to rejectionist actors and movements. Yet, no one is immune from their destructive discontent. The very forces that enable rejectionists to thrive are also, by definition, those that 

are progressively eroding traditional state authority, expanding vulnerabilities in the 

contemporary environment, and exposing even more space that might be ripe for their 

exploitation.15
21

Cyberspace, for example, provides rejectionists (and revisionists) unprecedented 

opportunities for mischief. The cyber domain allows rejectionists to recruit or connect 

like-minded communities, indoctrinate adherents, mobilize distributed resistance and 

activism, and fight untethered from the limitations of geography and distance.16 The 

apparent devolution of the greater Middle East and the proliferation of a wide universe 

of violent extremist organizations (VEO) are clear harbingers of rejectionist trends. The 

formless, multi-sided civil conflict in the northern Persian Gulf and Levant, as well as 

ISIL’s out of area agitation, are prominent artifacts of the rejectionist strain. 

Since 9/11 and the post-invasion collapse of the Iraqi state and society, the disruptive potential of stateless rejectionists has been obvious to U.S. decision-makers. More 

troubling, the most recent strain of VEO activity (e.g., Paris, Santa Monica, Sinai, Istanbul, Brussels, etc.) has demonstrated the effortless portability of rejectionism from a 

regional to a global threat.17 Ultimately, rejectionist forces will not remain confined to 

or only emerge from the Middle East as long as the thick webs of network connectivity 

that both unite and divide traditional social constructions (e.g., community, region, and 

nation-state) continue to metastasize.

Alternative Assumption 2: Gray zone competition and conflict will be the most common forms of counter-U.S. resistance and will pace U.S. defense strategy, 

concepts, and capabilities.

Revisionists and rejectionists operating inside the gray zone will have profound implications for the DoD. Some will operate with specific counter-U.S. intent. Others will 

threaten core U.S. interests and counter U.S. position by implication. 

All purposeful gray zone challengers recognize U.S. strength but perceive the comprehensive or universal applicability of that strength to be eroding.18 Thus, they attempt 

to pursue interests and objectives in a manner that is virtually always provocative on 

some level but avoids direct military confrontation or conflict whenever possible. Most 

often these actors employ means and methods that exploit their own areas of relative 

strength or advantage (e.g., proximity, political ambiguity, ethno-sectarian dominance, 

etc.), while purposefully targeting a known or emerging U.S. or partner weakness. 

At the state level, for example, gray zone revisionists are prone to engage in aggressive competition that occurs neither wholly in the benign, often mutually beneficial, 

realm of routine international relations nor in that of open warfare by any classic definition. Further, regardless of whether or not gray zone competition is viewed as war 

by either side, it will inevitably have a strong military component and will have major 

warlike implications and outcomes for all parties involved. 

The military implications of gray zone competition are hybrid in nature. It can take 

on a dangerously high-end form, especially in the case of large, capable revisionist gray 

zone state actors. For example, the development and positioning of ballistic missiles, 

sophisticated A2AD capabilities, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and emerging 

threats to space assets and cyber infrastructure have the potential to drive significant 

defense initiatives to counter these sophisticated and highly technical capabilities.

Likewise, it can occur in the muddier terrain of unconventional or irregular conflict 

through cultivation and employment by adversaries of terrorism, insurgency, covert 
22

activities, and subversion. Both revisionists and rejectionists will likely create symbiotic 

combinations of hostile or violent methods with alternative softer tools of influence, 

intimidation, and coercion. Each one of these threat capabilities alone poses a significant 

challenge to American freedom of action. The possibility of their combined employment 

as part of a hybrid campaign creates strategic and operational dilemmas that are difficult 

to ignore. Indeed, their combined employment in active campaign-quality competition 

or conflict presents U.S. decision-makers with complex and multi-layered risk choices. 

Gray zone challenges always create fundamental asymmetries in risk perceptions. 

For American strategists, each counter-option—whether or not it occurs below the 

threshold of active hostilities or in the course of open warfare—is perceived at the highest levels of decision-making to engender high risks. The threatened employment of a 

sophisticated opponent’s A2AD capabilities, for example, hazards human and material 

costs that are difficult to either comprehend or accept—not to mention their effectiveness in disrupting American power projection into critical regions of the world. The 

perception of irrevocable costs in high-end military interventions against a capable but 

still objectively weaker state adversary are likely to dissuade even the most hawkish 

senior decision-makers from taking justifiable but also provocative action well prior to 

open hostilities. That widely recognized hesitation opens broad avenues for maneuver 

in the coercive space short of war.

Gray zone opponents can perceive inaction or ineffective action in response to them 

as an open door for stronger and more assertive follow-on actions. For example, a sophisticated gray zone actor may be prone to pursue its interests via proxies and cutouts—all under the shadow of its own significant military capabilities—in order to drive 

up U.S./allied risk calculations.19 In other instances, where sovereignty is disputed, the 

gray zone actor can first employ policy and non-military instruments of coercion to stake 

claims and crowd out weaker competition.20 When these actions go unanswered with 

firm countervailing responses, the gray zone actor solidifies and fortifies their position 

with military capability. 

Ambiguity about causality, motives, and intentions leave room for risk-conscious 

policymakers to demur in the face of gray zone provocation. This combined with hypersensitivity toward the hazards of escalation and the secondary or tertiary effects that 

may come from response to gray zone activism can retard effective counteraction and, 

by implication, greenlight greater assertiveness by purposeful competitors.

In the event that open and violent conflict becomes unavoidable with either revisionists or rejectionists, it is more likely than not to unfold in ways that are inconsistent 

with the traditional rules and biases favored by the Pentagon. Instead, as suggested 

previously, it will manifest in post-modern and hybrid combinations of methods and 

capabilities, borrowing liberally from those of the conventional, unconventional, political, and criminal.21

These future hybrid wars promise cocktail-like effects as U.S. adversaries limit their 

exposure; impose costs across dimensions, domains, and functions; and create wicked 

challenges for the United States.22 Without significant military adaptation in response, 

American forces may find themselves conceptually outmaneuvered by innovative hybrid opponents. Thus, like the carrier category of gray zone competition and conflict, 

hybrid warfare will persistently evolve and stretch the conceptual boundaries of war 

and peace as Washington currently understands them.
23

Alternative Assumption 3: The gray zone will increasingly create wicked strategic 

planning dilemmas for U.S. strategists until it is normalized and more fully 

accounted for in DoD strategy and plans.

The new class of high priority gray zone problems are all wicked by definition.23 They 

will increasingly manifest in less traditional, more hybrid versions of war and violent 

conflict, as well as in forms of aggressive statecraft. These forms will feature comprehensive employment by adversaries of compounding methods and means that are short on 

violence while long on hostility, hostile intent, and the long shadow of prohibitive cost. 

In this environment, one thing is clear: the U.S.-led status quo is under attack by purpose 

and happenstance from a complex array of forces. Moreover, without careful consideration and deliberate counteraction, the resulting torque on the American-led status quo 

may fatally jeopardize the U.S. position.

Collectively, gray zone challenges and challengers have no common origin, locus, 

antagonist, or solutions against which a parsimonious set of priorities might guide DoDlevel strategic concepts, doctrine, plans, and capabilities in response. Further, both action and inaction to counter any specific manifestation of new-age gray zone competition and conflict appear to engender significant risk. 

As discussed in the opening, the gray zone is gray because it lies between what are 

increasingly artificial but nonetheless widely acknowledged poles in American strategic 

culture. On the one hand, there is the artificial state of peace and its associated benign 

interactions between state actors. Peace in this regard is the idyllic routine of (international) community life. As each actor in the community (in particular, the United States) 

seeks to advantage itself, its behavior neither occurs nor is perceived to be occurring at 

the expense of others. 

On the other hand, the equally artificial state of war is the unambiguous opposite of 

peace. Hostility is open and explicit. There are clearly differentiated sides with equally 

differentiated positions. Right and wrong are apparent as well, and therefore, there are 

obvious offenders that prey on those that are undeniably offended. According to its collective self-image, there is no doubt where the United States believes it lies in any aspect 

of this construction. In addition, it is difficult for the United States to believe that others—especially those it perceives to be responsible nation-states—hold a different view. 

In reality, neither condition should exist as exclusive pacers for American strategists. The DoD responsibility to prevail in a high-end military confrontation remains 

unchanged. Today, however, the United States is rarely at either war or peace by their 

classical definitions. Instead, adversaries and competitors purposefully and persistently 

campaign against it in the conceptual area lying between them. This occurs at the hands 

of an identifiable set of important revisionist actors bent on either supplanting or limiting American influence in critical regions of the world. Likewise, the United States is 

actively combatting violent rejectionist forces whose object is often less immediately the 

United States, but instead, the order that allows the United States to both exercise and 

extend its reach with impunity and to buttress the traditional authority structures that 

rejectionists find illegitimate and unacceptable.

What these challenges share is the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that U.S. policymakers are quick to acknowledge in the abstract but loath to account 
24

for meaningfully in strategy and policy. While the separate struggles against revisionist 

and rejectionist forces may have a common home in-between, they are confounding to 

the defense enterprise because they are so profoundly different in practice. To contemporary decision-makers, risk assessment, strategy, and risk mitigation in the gray zone 

appear at first to lie on a veritable “parade of horribles”—where the results of U.S. activism in the face of gray zone threats can only land along a spectrum of adverse outcomes. 

Acting against purposeful gray zone actors with the military instrument—with force 

and forces, for example—hazards escalation to general war. In at least two cases of realworld gray zone revisionist threats, this equates to general war with a nuclear power,—

a prospect U.S. strategists have spent very little time contemplating since 1991. Against 

rejectionist actors finding sanctuary in disorder, the abject indeterminacy of the utility and projected outcomes associated with intervention are enough to trigger inaction 

or half-measures instead of well-conceived commitment. In virtually every instance of 

meaningful gray zone threat, profound uncertainty about what deliberate counteraction might mean for the nature, scale, and complexity of the problem over time deters 

meaningful action.

Failure to respond effectively to gray zone provocations is itself a high-risk proposition. Inaction or half-measures likely embolden revisionists and rejectionists while 

weakening the U.S. grip on status quo norms. This enables gray zone actors to pursue 

and achieve their aims without obstacles or tangible repercussions. In addition, it likely 

encourages new actors to enter the counter-U.S. market at persistently lower costs. With 

the barriers to entry collapsing and more diverse and empowered actors entering the 

counter-U.S. market, the DoD’s decision-making landscape will become fundamentally 

more challenging. 

As the DoD contemplates its expanding gray zone problem, it should view its choices 

through a risk-based prism. That risk structure should balance the security of core interests against the cost associated with willfully compromising them to avoid uncertain 

hazards. This study explores this idea in the following section. 
25

Strategic Insights—Risk

•	 Gray zone competition and conflict are inherently high-risk propositions for the United States 

and its partners. 

•	 Gray zone risk is the likelihood that the DoD 

has inadequately anticipated demands and as 

a result, hazards failure or drastic underperformance.

•	 Gray zone challenges put the United States on 

the “horns of dilemma”—risks associated with 

action and inaction appear to be equally high 

and unpalatable.

V. RISK-INFORMED APPROACH TO ASSESSING GRAY ZONE CHALLENGES

A WAY TO THINK ABOUT RISK

Strategy development identifies core objectives and the principal obstacles that exist to securing them. It charters an approach to meeting and safeguarding those objectives over time. Strategy then prioritizes the allocation and distribution of resources to 

achieve these objectives. Finally, all strategy requires stress testing. After all, even the 

most exquisite plans engender hazards. Therefore, identification of the vulnerabilities 

exposed by a chosen strategy’s interactions with prospective rivals and rival circumstances requires thorough and deliberate risk assessment. Thus, a final essential component of strategy development always involves calculated risk mitigation.

All risk assessment involves informed judgments on the likelihood and consequences of failure that are associated with a strategy or some component of it. Risk arrives 

via manifest vectors. There is, for example, ample room to misjudge the character of 

principal threats, the extent of one’s own limitations, or the scope and scale of the environment’s most challenging obstacles to mission accomplishment. 

Further, objectives may be unrealistic and therefore unachievable. The 

strategic approach adopted to secure 

objectives may be wrong, and the resources available to execute the strategy may be insufficient, inappropriate, or poorly focused. Each by itself 

constitutes a potential single point of 

failure and, therefore, a decisive point 

for thorough risk assessment by senior 

leadership. Thus, there is no substitute 

or shortcut for risk assessment in strategy development and implementation. 

This report proceeds from that 

foundational belief. Therefore, the 

findings and recommendations outlined herein are risk-informed. This study begins 

from the hypothesis that gray zone competition and conflict are inherently high-risk 

propositions for the United States and its partners. The research ultimately validated 

that assumption. 

By and large, the character and extent of the strategic-level risks associated with gray 

zone competition and conflict spring from the complex interaction between core U.S. 

interests, the VUCA environment within which those interests are in play, and the hostile actors and adverse forces most likely to thrive and compete with the United States 

for primacy. Therefore, an explicit goal of this report is to aid senior DoD leadership in 

effectively navigating through the inherently high-risk gray operating space to arrive at 

the best strategic courses of action. 
26

GRAY ZONE RISK DEFINED 

Risk enjoys various interpretations. Common to all, however, is the symbiotic relationship between the likelihood of some adverse outcome and the consequences of its 

possible emergence. From there, alternative perspectives on risk emerge from differences in context, discipline, and issue or function. In mathematics, risk is the likelihood 

of an undesirable event—often a quantitative expression between 0 and 100 percent.24 In 

engineering, risk is the “mean time between failure.”25 Engineers acknowledge inherent 

imperfection in their designs and they strive to delay failure while persistently identifying and incorporating alerts that might signal the onset of catastrophe. 

No one can predict perfectly how the vagaries of economics will affect business outcomes. However, those responsible for gauging financial risk for corporations, shareholders, and customers do believe they can sift through an infinite number of important 

variables and identify an accurate confidence interval of possible economic results. Understanding this bounded range of outcomes—with their upper and lower limits—is 

invaluable to the process of allocating finite resources in pursuit of desired outcomes. In 

the process of prioritizing investments and allocating resources against them, the likelihood that investments will underperform and, thus, push real outcomes downward is a 

significant component of financial risk assessment.

These various interpretations inform this study’s approach to risk. However, it does 

not dwell on nor draw principal inspiration from the quantitative aspects of risk assessment. For its risk lens, the study team adopted a leaner and more qualitative approach 

to assess U.S./partner strategy vis-à-vis the various gray zone actors and archetypes 

considered. The study team concluded that risk was the likelihood that existing U.S. 

strategy, strategic approaches, and military concepts and capabilities have inadequately 

anticipated future gray zone demands and, therefore, have increased prospects for either drastic underperformance or outright failure. 

For example, purposeful actors who oppose U.S./partner objectives may seek to challenge elements of the American strategy employed to secure them. They may judge key 

elements of the strategy to be under-defined, under-resourced, under-considered, unrehearsed, or untested and, therefore, vulnerable to exploitation. Even limited adversary 

success might embolden them to future escalation. Further, success by one purposeful 

actor may lead to more frequent testing by others who seek to mimic or replicate success 

within their own spheres of influence and interest. 

If U.S./partner strategy exhibits exploitable weaknesses or if resolve to act on them 

proves vulnerable in practice, visible setbacks are likely to accrue. The frequency and 

intensity of probing by adversaries and competitors, for example, may accelerate with 

subsequent U.S. failures against them. In short, once a strategic course of action or its 

implementation fail or are demonstrably failing, adversaries will exploit their weakest 

elements. Consequently, the likelihood of future failure will rise dramatically. The study 

team perceives this to be the case with respect to the United States and its current approach to gray zone competition and conflict.

This report looks at the U.S./partner gray zone risk challenge holistically, acknowledging that this potential for failure is seeded into each stage of strategy development 

and implementation. As argued previously, the team’s interpretation of risk focuses on 
27

two key lines of inquiry and the prospect for misjudging the risks associated with them. 

Again, adverse outcomes can emerge from actions undertaken and actions deferred. 

Each risk vector—action and inaction—is anchored in the accepted conceptions of risk 

described earlier. 

THE HORNS OF A STRATEGIC DILEMMA: RISK OF INACTION VERSUS RISK 

OF ACTION

Gray zone challenges grip U.S. and partner decision-making and persistently put 

strategy development and implementation squarely on the horns of a seemingly intractable dilemma. In some instances, senior U.S. and allied leaders perceive that active and 

assertive responses to gray zone competition and conflict hazard undesirable escalation, 

excessive cost; and uncertain, indeterminate, or unfavorable outcomes. Thus, they perceive an inherent “risk of action.”

On the other hand, marginal, ineffectual, or non-existent responses to gray zone challenges can engender the opposite—some significant “risk of inaction.” Here choosing 

not to act—likely because of the perceived risks engendered—leads to equally unpalatable outcomes. The United States, for example, potentially vacates or leaves vulnerable 

core interests to the predations of hostile forces; U.S. decision-makers hoping but not 

knowing for sure whether opponents will seize on the opportunities inaction presents. 

In this regard, gray zone competition and conflict may represent the most uncomfortable and vexing decision space possible for U.S. leadership. Senior defense leaders 

cannot determine which course of action holds greater advantage and, in the process, 

they surrender initiative to competitors and adversaries. In the gray zone, the risks associated with action and those of inaction appear to be or are in fact, equally high. 

Paralysis results and the space for adversary maneuver opens. This study concludes 

that this idea is a principal distinguishing characteristic of virtually all gray zone challenges. Thus, at face value, senior defense leaders are often left with a “damned if you 

do, damned if you don’t” proposition where no obvious advantages appear to exist for 

any single response course of action. 

Of the two vectors, risk of action is the most poignant, operative, and scrutinized. 

It is the principal hazard that might accompany classic errors of commission. The costbenefit calculation associated with risk of action may generally be clearer and the potential costs of miscalculation are often immediately higher. 

In short, calculation of the risk of action involves some judgment on the likelihood 

that a chosen strategic course is in fact a misstep or mistake that will make matters 

worse, weaken or disadvantage U.S. position, or dramatically increase risk to U.S. interests. Risk of action includes the prospect for errors of analysis or judgment that trigger 

costly strategic-level action against a security challenge that is profoundly misunderstood, mischaracterized, or—in reality—non-existent. Further, it includes both risk considerations of taking any action at all, as well as those associated with taking particular 

types of action. 

In addition to the immediate political, human, material, and financial costs, a prominent hazard stemming from failed or marginally effective action is the very open demonstration of U.S. limitations and vulnerabilities. Somalia (1992), Iraq (2003), and Libya 
28

(2012), are often cited as examples of military action that did not achieve desired results, 

incurred unanticipated strategic costs, and arguably worsened the existing security situation.26

Risk of inaction also involves fundamental miscalculation. It is the mirror image of, 

and has a symbiotic relationship with, the former. It is the family of hazards that would 

emerge from classic errors of omission, where overt and veiled but quite real challenges 

are incorrectly identified as low or no threat. Like risk of action, those of inaction emerge 

from a misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the environment and its challenges. 

In the case of risks of inaction, however, senior leaders miss the immediacy, significance, 

or impact of purposeful or contextual defense-relevant conditions. Creeping, indirect, 

peripheral, or ambiguous threats fail to animate action in time to avoid disruptive or 

destabilizing events. 

In addition to a desire to avoid the menu of hazards associated with the risk of action, two prominent motivations for inaction are important in risk calculations. First, 

inaction may stem from a desire to wait things out. This is principally a combined judgment about time, resources, and objectives—i.e., there is no immediate hazard, we have 

time before it becomes one, and it’s likely we will have everything we need if the need 

for a response becomes unavoidable. In the meantime, the logic holds that it is more 

likely than not that the conditions of concern will subside, remain tolerable, or resolve 

themselves well prior to intervention becoming necessary. 

The second motive concerns escalation and the desire to avoid it. This logic holds 

that all disputes short of overt attack can be resolved without taking more aggressive or 

assertive action. A common argument against more assertive action against revisionist 

powers like China and Russia, for example, is avoiding undesirable or dangerous escalation.27 Ultimately, this argument proceeds from the belief that status quo norms will 

prevail if given a chance. Moreover, that a more aggressive attempt to moderate gray 

zone activism will end in unwanted and costly escalation that cannot possibly benefit 

the United States or its partners. The study team perceives both motives to be dominant 

considerations in contemporary U.S. gray zone risk calculations. 

Ultimately, effective calculation of the risks of inaction requires new sensitivity to the 

significance of seemingly unconnected or benign events, the risk- and pain-tolerance of 

adversaries, as well as a new appreciation for the speed, scale, and scope of change in 

the international system and its distribution of power and influence. Further, persistent 

appraisal of the real prospects for escalation vis-à-vis purposeful revisionist state actors 

is in order as well. In reality, the U.S. threshold for defining threats—particularly those 

in the gray zone—will need to be recalibrated, as our protocols for identifying hazards 

and hazardous trends are handicapped by decades of conventional defense bias and 

adherence to the four failed assumptions.

On balance, the study team perceives that the risks associated with inaction are, in 

reality, potentially higher and more permanent than those typically associated with action. Inaction or ineffective action hazards gradual but nonetheless fundamental loss 

of position vis-à-vis competitors. Holding out for the evolution of favorable outcomes 

comes with it the prospect for their never coming to pass. In the process, strategic losses 

accrue to such an extent that delayed action to recoup them engenders unacceptable 

costs.
29

Action will always engender significant risk as well. This is especially true for action 

that involves threatened use of military force. However, in most cases, action offers advantages to those committed to thorough horizon scanning and planning. That commitment buys some insurance against the worst strategic hazards and gives policymakers 

and strategists all the benefits of initiative.

FIVE GRAY ZONE ARCHETYPES

In light of the environmental trends outlined previously in this report, as well as the 

appreciation of risk, the study team identified a set of contemporary archetypal gray 

zone challenges against which it gauges U.S. defense strategy, plans, and capabilities. 

Each archetype offers a brief description of the specific challenge and its character, an 

analysis of recent U.S. actions in response to it, and finally, key risk judgments. The five 

archetypes considered are: 

• “The Dragon.” China is a revisionist actor. It demonstrates an artful ability to 

challenge U.S. spheres of influence while skillfully remaining below the threshold of perceived U.S. redlines.

• “The Bear.” Russia too is a revisionist actor. It demonstrates an ability to adapt to 

the 21st century, innovatively reasserting its influence by combining traditional 

and non-traditional methods and capabilities.

• “The Lion.” Iran is a hybrid revisionist/rejectionist actor seeking to expand its 

regional influence by asserting itself into a fragile—sometimes disordered—environment that favors bold, purposeful action.

• “The Scorpion.” A disordered and devolving MENA environment characterized 

by vulnerable, failed, or fractured states is fertile ground for the hybrid combination of malevolent state and nonstate actors. 

• “The Eagle.” Although currently a status quo power, the United States has at 

times been an effective gray zone actor itself. It can learn a great deal from its 

experiences. In addition, competitors will pace themselves according to the past 

American example.

31

Analysis of Gray Zone Archetypes

33

Strategic Insights—Enter the Dragon

•	 China is a revisionist actor. It demonstrates an 

artful ability to challenge U.S. spheres of influence while skillfully avoiding perceived U.S. 

redlines.

•	 China is building A2AD capabilities to picket its 

disputed territorial interests in the first island 

chain and the South China Sea; employing influence, intimidation, and coercion to achieve warlike ends and contest U.S. regional dominance. 

•	 Beijing’s campaign-like gray zone competition 

integrates all elements of national power. The 

U.S. response to it is still evolving. 

•	 “Risk of inaction” appears to be a principal 

source of defense-relevant hazard with respect 

to China. 

VI. ENTER THE DRAGON – CHINA AS A HIGH-END 

GRAY ZONE REVISIONIST

“The supreme art of war is to subdue your enemies without fighting.”

 -Sun Tzu28

ASIA’S LOOMING GRAY ZONE CHALLENGE

Emboldened by more than 2 decades of significant economic growth, expanding 

political influence, increasing military capability, and rising nationalism, the People’s 

Republic of China (PRC) has become a capable rival to dominant U.S. influence in the 

Asia-Pacific region. China is currently without peer in its ability to present American 

decision-makers with complex strategic-level dilemmas underwritten by the resources 

and guile of a capable and driven revisionist power. 

China’s rapid multi-dimensional growth as a rising great power, as well as its deliberate, artful, and modulated employment 

of the tangible fruits of that growth, 

have enabled it to effectively challenge 

U.S. position in the region. To date, the 

PRC has practiced its brand of revisionist counter-U.S. resistance entirely 

in the gray zone. It employs different 

combinations of influence, intimidation, coercion, and veiled aggression to 

approach, probe, and, at times, violate 

perceived U.S./partner redlines while 

skillfully remaining below the threshold of outright military provocation.29

China’s campaign-like approach 

to gray zone competition and conflict liberally mixes political, military, 

and commercial instruments. China 

employs its military and paramilitary forces, government agencies, and 

state-owned enterprises as weapons. 

Its methods include aggressive commercial expansion, non-violent coercive military 

force, the intimidating use of law enforcement and maritime paramilitary capabilities, 

as well as extensive exploitation of cyber and information operations.30

So far, these actions have enabled China to contest and sometimes dominate competitive spaces and thereby achieve warlike aims without resorting to warlike violence.31 As 

China appears to gain ground vis-à-vis the United States via these methods, American 

strategists and decision-makers hazard the appearance of paralysis, decline, and unreliability as the region’s security partner of choice. Failure, in this regard, would overturn 

70-plus years of alliance confidence and create new and worrisome vulnerabilities for 

U.S. security and commercial interests in the region. 
34

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT: A PROFOUNDLY INSECURE ASIA

U.S. economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, 

creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly...we will of necessity 

rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. 

 —2012 Defense Strategic Guidance32

In the 2012 “Defense Strategic Guidance,” the President outlined an American strategic rebalance or “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region.33 A stable, peaceful, and thriving AsiaPacific region is widely acknowledged as critical to American security and prosperity. 

Four of seven operative mutual defense treaties, for example, involve U.S. relationships 

with Asia-Pacific nations (Japan, South Korea, Australia-New Zealand, and the Philippines).34 Further, seven of the United States’ top 15 trading partners are members of the 

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum (Canada, Mexico, PRC, Japan, South 

Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan) and approximately 60 percent of all U.S. export goods are 

sold in the Asia-Pacific region. 35 The latter two factors, in particular, are likely to experience material increases as regional economies are on track to grow faster than the world 

average for some time.36 In light of these factors, the region as a whole is certain to grow 

even more important in U.S. security calculations. 

Evidenced by the rebalance, Asia looms large as the most dominant strategic issue 

on the DoD’s near-term agenda. The renewed inertia behind securing U.S. Asia-Pacific 

interests stems in large measure from a perceived growth in the number, scale, and 

intensity of threats to a stable, peaceful, and thriving Asia-Pacific region. The vectors of 

potential hazard are manifest, and senior U.S. leaders perceive the interests at stake in 

the region to be among the most vital. 

For example, the combustible combination of contested sovereignty over disputed 

territory and waters, lingering cross-border animus on mainland Asia, and increasing 

region-wide militarization (including nuclear proliferation) are creating or exacerbating 

flash points between regional powers. The most dangerous or immediate among these 

fault lines (e.g., the East and South China Seas, Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula) not 

only undermine the general American interest in regional stability, peace, and prosperity; but also often directly involve the security of U.S. treaty allies. Complicating an 

already tense environment, the region is not immune from falling victim to or exporting 

the same violent extremist activity plaguing the Middle East. 

In addition to the aforementioned traditional security challenges, there are more fundamental, less purposeful threats to human security emerging from the region as well. 

Asia has 57 percent of the world’s population and eight of the world’s top 10 megacities.37 These facts, combined with the Asia-Pacific region’s history as the world’s most 

disaster-prone, create a recipe for serial future catastrophe.38 Asia’s concentrated human 

vulnerability and the persistent prospect for natural, man-made, or man–enabled disaster co-exist in the region, often to devastating effect. 

This is particularly true for vulnerable populations living along the littorals, near 

or astride dangerous seismic fault lines, in the path of unpredictable and often deadly 

weather patterns; or in general, where the worst effects of underdevelopment and climate change are likeliest to collide. These combined effects increase the likelihood the 
35

Asia-Pacific region will not only be gripped by persistent high-end military tensions 

in places like the Korean Peninsula, the East Asian Littoral, and the South China Sea 

(SCS) but also that Asia and the wider Pacific region will remain uniquely vulnerable 

to unanticipated strategic-level disaster as well. Each has the potential to be profoundly 

destabilizing and disruptive. 

A RISING CHINA AS A DEFENSE PACER

While all the factors previously described figure into U.S. defense calculations in the 

Asia-Pacific region, China’s emergence as a capable great power rival dominates U.S. 

defense strategy. In short, there would be no rebalance required without the PRC moving as dramatically as it has into a prominent position vis-à-vis the United States. 

China’s rise is explained as much by its long and deep historical and cultural experience as it is from deliberate actions taken by those recent and current leaders most 

identified with its ascendance to great power status. Sino-centrism has framed Chinese 

thinking for centuries. It is embodied in the belief that China is a superior civilization 

with a legitimate claim as the cultural center of the world. In Mandarin, China’s name 

literally translates to “Middle Kingdom.”39 Thus, China’s renewed activist strategy to 

ascend to great power is rooted in the idea of assuming its rightful place in world affairs. 

China is clearly also driven by a desire to redress wrongs it has incurred at the hands 

of foreign powers. The “Century of Humiliation,” for example, was the period extending from the first Opium War in the mid-19th century to the post-World War II era. 

During that time, China suffered defeat in major wars, unraveled politically, and serially 

succumbed to the demands of outside powers.40 While both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao 

Tse-Tung declared an end to the Century of Humiliation in 1945 and 1949 respectively, 

the effect of this disastrous period on the psychology of the Chinese people and leadership continues to serve as a unifying reference for nationalist sentiment.41

These cultural and historical factors underpin more recent developments in China’s 

pursuit of great power status. The most significant of these is the dramatic growth of the 

Chinese economy. Beginning in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China instituted a series of economic reforms known as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” 

following the death of Mao Tse-Tung. These reforms included the de-collectivization of 

agriculture, an opening up to foreign investments, privatization of state-owned industries, and the establishment of a market economy.42

The reforms launched China on a path that catapulted it from an economy of less 

than $200 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) in 1978 to an economy boasting over 

$10 trillion in GDP today.43 China is currently the second largest economy in the world 

and remains one of the fastest growing. It is projected to overtake the United States by 

2026.44

Enabled by robust economic growth, China has taken significant steps to transform 

its military into a modern, capable force. Its focus and pacers are clearly U.S. joint forces. 

Chinese military forces have evolved and are approaching peer-like status to even the 

most advanced U.S. forces operating in the Asia-Pacific region. 

As in the case of China’s economic reforms, Deng initiated Chinese military reform as well. Under Deng, China began sweeping military reforms that have included 
36

transforming organizational structure, education, doctrine, training, and force modernization.45 For example, China’s modern ballistic missile arsenal poses one of the most 

dangerous threats to U.S. and allied security in the region. Capabilities like the DF-21 

anti-ship ballistic missile—nicknamed the “Carrier Killer”—have increased anxiety inside the Pentagon over the ability of the U.S. military to project power in the region. 

Additionally, China recently began construction of the first domestically built aircraft 

carrier in December 2015 and plans to build at least one more over the next 15 years.46

In all cases, Chinese military modernization is paced by threats it perceives from U.S./

partner defense policy and capabilities. Virtually all of China’s most significant military 

reforms focus on matching or countering U.S. military operations and assets.

CHINA’S LENS

From China’s perspective, it sees seven main sources of potential threat:47

• Hostile foreign influence in its domestic and economic affairs; 48

• Bordering countries;49

• The United States and its perceived strategy of “containment;”50

• U.S. regional allies challenging highly valued resources in the South and East 

China Seas;51

• A potential Korean conflict that could include WMD use;52

• Internationally sponsored violent extremist terrorism;53 and finally,

• Internal, domestic challenges to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

Among these, the last is the most worrisome for China. The steadily worsening impacts of smog and wastewater are manifest in healthcare costs, domestic dissatisfaction, 

and loss of international legitimacy. Additionally, the loss of near coast fisheries and 

organic ocean resources are mounting problems plaguing the CCP.54

Other challenges include domestic unrest driven by high unemployment, blowback 

from China’s expanding state control of property, and forceful eviction of former landowners.55 Another challenge is the ever-present CCP obligation of providing adequate 

sources of nutrition and reasonable quality of life for over a billion Chinese citizens.56

Finally, there is internal pressure on China’s ruling elite to fulfill their binding promise 

to a long-suffering population—a world-leading economic rise and realization of superpower ambitions.57

In the face of these internal and external challenges, China’s overall strategy appears 

focused on three principal goals: 

• Maintain communist party rule; 

• Gain, secure, and sustain the resources essential to a steady, peaceful rise; 

and finally,

• Revise the current world order in its favor and achieve global superpower 

status.58

To pursue these goals, China has to gain access to vast raw materials from within 

China, as well as in Southeast Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Further, it 

needs to be able to access the best commercial and technological advantages to create 
37

and exploit new opportunities. This likely will entail illicit cyber activity that enables 

access to and exploitation of privileged foreign government and business data. 

In spite of enormous demographic, resource, and environmental challenges, China 

will also need to find innovative ways to increase its economic capacity as well. Finally, 

to underwrite its emergence to great power, China will need to continue to modernize 

its large military that is increasingly competitive regionally but still qualitatively behind 

its principal U.S. rival in many important respects.59

CHINA’S GRAY ZONE APPROACH

To avoid open conflict, China pursues its objectives almost entirely in the gray zone. 

One such prominent gray zone approach is its reliance on military and paramilitary 

intimidation and the non-violent use of military force. 

China boasts the world’s second highest defense budget and the world’s largest military, making its forces extremely effective instruments of intimidation, coercion, and 

veiled aggression. China’s employment of military and paramilitary force and forces can 

effectively deter rivals attempting to counter gray zone activity. By hinting or implying 

that armed escalation may be its next course of action, China effectively boxes in less 

powerful or more risk averse opponents.60 For instance, the PLA has acquired and arrayed complex A2AD capabilities to counter U.S. and allied military interference. They 

have built up islands in the SCS as bases. They are deploying larger numbers of stealthy 

diesel submarines, advanced air defenses and sea-mines, and sophisticated ballistic and 

cruise missiles.61

China is increasing its A2AD capabilities through the construction of aircraft and 

submarine bases extending out from its coastline (e.g. Hainan Island and the Spratly Islands).62 This longer reach enables China to conduct anti-access operations from forward 

land-based locations without overextending the PLA Navy. It also allows the PLA Navy 

to focus more on blue-water operations with limited numbers of aircraft carriers.63 Additionally, China’s development of exo-atmospheric missiles and counter-satellite lasers 

threaten to deny critical U.S. abilities.64 These anti-access threats are reminders of the 

high cost that might be associated with active U.S. military interference with Chinese 

pursuits.65

While China’s military activities are concerning by themselves, its gray zone approach involves significant blending of the military and softer non-military instruments 

of power. Recent examples are China’s pledge to provide several thousand designated United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces along with UN development funds for 

worldwide employment and deliberate moves to promote China’s international image. 

China’s establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank to diminish the power 

of established Western institutions like the World Bank in favor of Chinese-controlled 

interests is also a deliberate step.66

Additionally, the subsidizing of its SCS civilian fishing fleets provides satellite-based 

marine radios that help China to surveil and picket the SCS and harass “trespassing” 

fishing boats, commercial vessels, and ships employed in resource exploration.67 Finally, 

the Chinese-owned Offshore Oil Corporation (COOC) has now procured the most capable oil-drilling platform in the SCS (guarded by China’s military and law enforcement 
38

fleets).68 Due to China’s successful intimidation and interdiction of rival SCS resource 

claimants, the COOC now conducts drilling operations across the SCS at depths beyond 

the capability of any regional competitor.69

In the information sphere, China has moved away from using terms like “peaceful 

rise” and “peaceful development,” in favor of the tougher terms President Xi uses to 

communicate China’s intent to redress historical Western bullying.70 Moreover, China 

made a detailed claim in front of the UN describing its “9-Dashed Line” interpretation 

of SCS boundaries.71 China also claims this boundary on all internal maps and Chinese 

passports as a definitive statement of Chinese sovereignty.72 In an attempt to drive a 

wedge between the United States and its regional allies, China also frequently cites U.S. 

reluctance to intervene in Syria and Ukraine as proof that the United States is an unreliable partner, thus setting up China as the natural alternative security partner of choice.73

China is also waging a form of “lawfare” by employing law enforcement assets to 

warn off and bully competitor oil companies and fishing fleets in the SCS.74 China has 

used its law enforcement ships—the region’s largest and most capable—to physically 

interdict, collide with, and coerce its neighbors’ smaller vessels; thereby leaving the dilemma of acquiescence or escalation in the hands of its opponents.75 Moreover, by demonstrating quasi-legal control over significant portions of the South and East China Seas, 

China hopes to establish irreversible facts on the ground.76

Finally, the United States has observed considerable Chinese activity in the cyber 

and espionage realms.77 U.S. organizations and networks appear to suffer significant 

cyber penetration, which allows China to stay ahead of U.S. Government and commercial decision-makers, reduces its strategic uncertainty, and mitigates risk.78 For example, 

non-attributable cyber intrusion and espionage greatly lower the costs of Chinese research and development by reaping the classified and/or proprietary knowledge of U.S. 

defense laboratories and businesses. This eliminates the normal attendant investment 

and operating costs associated with research and development.79 The Chinese cyber capability also allows them to influence adversaries by showing China’s cyber reach and 

disruptive and destructive cyber capability.80

China’s comprehensive gray zone approach uses indirect methods and ambiguous 

international legal frameworks to pursue revisionist ambitions. These activities have 

set China on a trajectory toward effectively contesting U.S. regional dominance and an 

active renegotiation of the U.S.-led international order.81 As such, it constitutes the most 

sophisticated and classically dangerous of this study’s four competitor archetypes.82

CURRENT U.S. AND PARTNER APPROACH: 

WALK SOFTLY AND HOPE FOR THE BEST

While the United States has taken some assertive actions in the region, it has generally been cautious in dealing with Beijing. This cautious U.S. approach includes a host 

of actions spanning the instruments of power. Diplomatically, the United States has attempted to strengthen alliances and partnerships in the region, successfully enlisting the 

Association of Southeast Asian Nations in promoting freedom of navigation. The United 

States has publicly sided with Japan and their claims to administer governance over 

the Senkaku Islands, clearing up what has been ambiguity in its position on the mat-
39

ter. However, the United States remains silent and mostly ambiguous in its position on 

territorial claims in the SCS. Failing to take sides when those claims meet the standards 

of international law seems only to embolden China to continue its regional irredentist 

activities. 

Economically, the United States has championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) 

as a solid trade agreement to help counter China’s economic influence in the region, 

but the sluggish process of passing TPP in the U.S. Senate threatens to undermine what 

could be a critical economic lever.83 Militarily, the United States has been a persistent 

presence in the region. However, while it maintains numerous strategic bases in and 

around Northeast Asia and the East Asian Littoral, it has less consistently used these 

bases to operate with purpose in and around Chinese interests and claims. In a word, 

U.S. forces have not normalized or routinized operations with respect to China in ways 

that send clear messages about the limits of China’s claims. Given the option of operating and assuming risk, U.S. leadership has instead consistently opted to avoid escalation 

at virtually any cost.

Information may be China’s least effective lever. This may offer opportunities for 

U.S. gray zone exploitation. The Chinese have exposed weaknesses in three areas. All 

three-exhibit potential as focus points for information campaigns targeting PRC legitimacy as a reliable and responsible power. First, China fails to recognize long-standing 

and widely accepted standards for international maritime law.84 Second, China’s poor 

human rights record exposes it to severe criticism on major issues involving political 

leadership.85 Finally, recent environmental problems involving air quality in Chinese 

cities, along with depleted fishing reserves and damaged coral reefs in the SCS present 

dilemmas for a Beijing Government intent on being recognized as a responsible great 

power.86 In all three areas, the United States has opportunities to demonstrate its commitment to the extant global order in a way that undermines Chinese leverage. 

RISK—GIVE AN INCH, TAKE AN OCEAN

Risks with respect to U.S.-PRC military relations are manifest. There are significant 

risks of inaction due to missed opportunities to clarify U.S./partner redlines.87 For example, in areas where the United States has sent clear signals like the Japanese Senkaku 

Islands, the Chinese have not proceeded with the same island building approaches they 

undertook in the SCS.88 However, when the United States does not clearly stand firm on 

its interest in freedom of navigation elsewhere, it abdicates at least some of the legitimacy narrative to China and reduces allied and partner confidence in U.S. commitment.89

In addition, there is abundant risk of action due to potential errors in military operations 

and the attendant potential for unwanted escalation.90

A great number of the aforementioned hazards are in fact emerging, eroding U.S. 

and partner confidence, and contributing to a regional arms race.91 This has increased 

the overall prospect for escalation to open hostilities in the South or East China Seas.92

This is less likely to emerge from purposeful and open Chinese military aggression and 

more because U.S. treaty allies and regional partners, facing a daily gray zone agitation 

by China, will lose patience or discipline at the tactical or operational level—triggering 

an uncontrolled and unwanted military escalation.93
40

If the United States fails to compete effectively in the gray zone, it hazards ceding 

power, initiative, and influence in the Asia-Pacific region, putting vital national security 

interests in jeopardy. Though China is pursuing a calculated strategy using all instruments of national power, the United States is more than capable of producing immediate 

and non-escalatory options to counter China’s gray zone activities and maintain a position of gray zone advantage.
41

Strategic Insights—Re-Enter the Bear

•	 Russia is a driven and capable revisionist challenger. It asserts influence by identifying and 

exploiting opportunities through innovative 

combinations of traditional and non-traditional 

methods and capabilities.

•	 Russia integrates multiple non-military instruments with the hybrid application of sanctioned 

violence and military power to exploit U.S./European vulnerabilities in a graduated gray zone 

approach. 

•	 The U.S. and allied responses to Russian gray 

zone activism are more reactive than proactive.

•	 Risk of action/inaction appear equally unpalatable. However, failure to act assertively to shore 

up alliance strength and durability hazards seeing NATO fail decisively. 

VII. RE-ENTER THE BEAR – THE NEW RUSSIAN HYBRID THREAT

“A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.” 94

—Catherine the Great

TRUMPED BY A HYBRID SPOILER 

Like China, Russia is a driven and capable revisionist challenger. Of late, it has routinely demonstrated an ability to effectively assert significant influence by identifying 

and exploiting opportunities. Most often, these opportunities emerge in the failure (e.g., 

Syria) or vulnerability (e.g., Georgia and Ukraine) of others. Russia adapts to these conditions and seizes on their attendant opportunities by innovatively combining traditional and non-traditional coercive methods and capabilities with an often-masterful 

manipulation of conditions in the 

political, economic, and information 

domains. 

Renewed Russian influence has 

come about largely with Vladimir Putin’s rise and consolidation of power. 

Putin has officially or unofficially ruled 

Russia since 1999, serving as both President and Prime Minister. In Putin’s 

17-years in power, Russia has moved 

decisively from the depths of Cold War 

failure to the increasing heights of resurgent and influential trans-regional 

power. 

Indeed, renewed Russian assertiveness is the hallmark of Putin’s leadership tenure. That assertiveness has 

manifested in myriad forms of aggressive and competitive behavior along 

Russia’s periphery and beyond. These 

behaviors range from hybrid military action in the Russian near abroad (Georgia and 

Ukraine) through manipulation of European energy supplies and coercive information 

campaigns against neighboring states.95

While much of Russia’s recent adventurism has triggered adverse U.S./Western responses, the responses have largely been limited to rhetorical protests, symbolic military 

gestures, and economic sanctions.96 Moreover, in all cases, Russia’s activities have both 

remained well below the West’s vague threshold of unambiguous provocation and have 

also occurred in the shadow of Russia’s latent destructive and disruptive military potential. Therefore, all of its actions have yet to trigger more aggressive and, by implication, 

more risk-laden responses. 

To date, Russia holds too many powerful trump cards for risk-conscious Western 

policymakers. Russia’s lurking nuclear and conventional military capability, as well as 
42

its control over important high-demand commodities and lines of communication afford 

it significant latitude in pursuing interests without fear of meaningful consequences. To 

date, it has run right up against key U.S. and allied redlines but has not yet decisively 

breached them. This will no doubt incentivize continued probing by the Putin regime. 

Without question, Russian adventurism challenges U.S. standing in Europe. To the 

extent its aggressive behavior continues absent what it perceives to be meaningful and 

effective U.S. and European responses, it is likely to undermine NATO’s long-term 

credibility as well. 

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT—LONG GRAY ROAD TO REVIVAL

The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, 

and the rise of the power and influence of the European Union (EU)—all byproducts of 

Soviet Cold War failure—have defined Russia’s contemporary decision-making environment. Recent Russian history had a profound impact on Vladimir Putin. So much so 

that in 2005, he called the Soviet Union’s collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe 

of the [20th] century.”97

In light of this perspective, Putin’s strategy appears aimed at reversing Russia’s decline, establishing it as Eastern Europe’s dominant power, and returning Russia to a 

global standing on par or competing with the world’s other great powers. Toward that 

end, and 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has moved decisively 

to advance all three goals. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has restored a functioning 

(if somewhat fragile) economy and it has rebuilt its military into a more modern and 

capable force. On both counts, the Russians themselves recognize there is much more to 

accomplish.98

The steps so far are consistent with Russia’s ultimately realizing what Leon Aron 

calls “the Putin Doctrine.”99 According to Aron, the Putin Doctrine consists of three primary foreign policy goals. The first is maintaining Russia as a nuclear superpower. The 

second sees Russia attaining and being recognized as a great power in all facets of its 

international activity. Finally, the third sees Russia achieving and maintaining political, 

military, and economic hegemony over its near abroad.100

The third and final component creates the greatest uncertainty and instability; Russia 

appears to be seeking revival of former Soviet aspirations under new leadership. One 

aspect of this Soviet revivalism is traceable to the early 1990s. 

Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s nascent post-Soviet military 

strategy Provisions of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation (November 1993) set 

the stage for Russian adventurism in its near abroad. It explicitly called for “the introduction of Russian forces into newly sovereign states if perceived ‘suppression’ of Russian 

minorities occurs.”101 Even today, this theme is a consistent cover for Russian gray zone 

activity along its periphery.102 In addition, as it ostensibly protects the minority rights of 

at-risk Russian expatriates through influence, intimidation, coercion, and aggression, it 

also progressively extends the reach of the Russian state well beyond its frontiers.
43

Like China, Russia has largely pursued its more ambitious objectives through gray 

zone competition and conflict. It employs some combination of premeditation and opportunism in all of its endeavors, at times seeming to deliberately move step-by-step and 

at other times, seizing opportunities afforded by target states and populations. What is 

clear, however, is that Russia intentionally adapts its approach over time to accommodate changing conditions and maintain advantage. 

Andrei Tsygankov argues that Putin pursued a course of pragmatic cooperation 

with the West early in his tenure as President.103 Toward that end, Russia entered into 

mutually beneficial bilateral partnerships with the United States and many of its European partners. This ultimately provided the oxygen for Russia’s eventual post-Cold War 

economic and military revival.

Tsygankov concludes that the more cooperative Russian tone and approach toward 

the United States changed around 2005 as it embarked on a much more aggressive and 

assertive path.104 Russia’s growing economy, built on high oil prices and European petrochemical demand, provided the means for even more rapid economic growth and a 

transformation of Russia’s hobbled military forces.105

Along the way, Russia devised new ways to counter Western conventional military 

power. In particular, it learned from U.S. successes in the various American post-Cold 

War conflicts; from the Persian Gulf War (1991) to the early, purely military, successes 

of U.S. forces in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).106 Russia’s new approaches have at 

times even extended into the taboo territory of nuclear weapons as well. For example, 

Putin recently issued threats of nuclear attack against states that dared interfere with 

pursuit of Russian objectives.107 This new assertive approach ultimately set the stage for 

Russian hybrid intimidation and aggression in Georgia, Estonia, and Ukraine. 

Russia’s Gray Zone Approach—The Gerasimov Model.

In recent years, Russia has demonstrated a willingness to integrate multiple nonmilitary instruments with the hybrid application of sanctioned violence and military 

power to achieve its most important policy objectives. Contemporary theorists characterize Russia’s military strategy as hybrid warfare. According to Frank Hoffman, hybrid 

warfare “incorporate[s] a range of different modes of warfare including conventional 

capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.”108 It is hybrid because it is the cocktail-like 

application of a variety of coercive methods. It is gray because it lies in the space between 

the various classical American categorizations of armed conflict. It is neither traditional, 

unconventional, nor irregular by itself, but instead, all three in combination.

Beginning in 2013, General Valery Gerasimov—another key figure in Russia’s strategic evolution and Chief of the Russian General Staff—began to comment publicly on his 

concept for 21st-century Russian hybrid warfare. The now commonly cited “Gerasimov 

Model” is a veritable playbook for purposeful gray zone competition and conflict. Gerasimov argues that the lines between war and peace are now blurred.109

In written work, the General cites the events of the Arab Spring as emblematic of a 

21st-century evolution in the course and conduct of warfare.110
44

Gerasimov asserts that “the role of non-military means of achieving political and 

strategic goals...have exceeded the power of [the] force of weapons in their effectiveness.”111 Gerasimov pays particular attention to the role of information conflict and special operations forces (SOF) that afford new levels of deniability to purposeful combatants.112 Overall, Gerasimov recognizes a shift in the character of warfare away from the 

traditional application of conventional military forces toward non-traditional and more 

hybrid forms of conflict. In Gerasimov’s design, conventional forces are reserved “primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.”113

Two recent conflicts demonstrate how Russia has become comfortable as an assertive 

gray zone competitor, employing hybrid war as its instrument of choice. In 2008, well 

before Gerasimov described his understanding of modern warfare, Russia and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia engaged in armed conflict for 5 days. Russia’s strategic 

objectives in Georgia focused on protecting pro-Russian separatist populations and the 

dissuasion of Georgian entry into the NATO alliance. 

During the short conflict, Russia combined traditional military formations with local 

separatist guerrillas and an aggressive information line of effort.114 In advance of actual 

hostilities and consistent with Gerasimov’s description, Russia set conditions in Georgia 

by maintaining forces there for years under the guise of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. For example, 1 week before hostilities commenced, Russia completed 

repairs to 54 kilometers of railway in Georgia allegedly in support of humanitarian assistance.115 Other evidence references the surge of Russian journalists that arrived in the 

South Ossetian capital in order to “cover something big.”116 The apparent sophistication 

in preliminary coordination makes it clear that the Russians employed a combination of 

military and non-military means without tripping over one or more Western redlines.

Starting in 2014, Russia showed even more sophistication in combining “economic, 

informational, humanitarian, and other non-military measures” in its annexation of 

Crimea and its hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine.117 In both cases, Russia bolstered ethnic Russian resistance forces with the targeted introduction of its own special forces.118

Further, in Ukraine it has selectively employed Russian conventional forces as combat 

multipliers both from over the horizon, as well as within Ukrainian territory itself.119

The war in Ukraine continues today. It pits Russia and pro-Russian separatists on 

one side against the Ukrainian Government on the other.120 In line with Gerasimov’s 

model, Russia applies a clever combination of military and non-military capabilities “in 

coordination with the protest potential of the population” creating game-changing coercive capabilities under a thin but plausible veneer of deniability.121 Until December 2015, 

Putin persistently denied a Russian military presence of any stripe in either Crimea or 

Ukraine. He finally did acknowledge a modest Russian military presence in both cases 

but only after it was both impossible to deny and improbable that anyone outside the 

theater would act to dislodge them.122

Current U.S. and Partner Approach—Steady and Slow Wins the Race?

To date, the U.S. and allied responses to Russia’s assertive hybrid form of gray zone 

conflict are more reactive than proactive. Since the beginning of the conflict in Crimea 

and Ukraine, the United States has demonstrated its support to Ukraine and to its NATO 
45

allies through Operation ATLANTIC RESOLVE (OAR). OAR is certainly a response. 

However, it largely leverages many existing regional military engagement and security 

cooperation programs while also demonstrating the need to understand better the risk 

of action versus inaction.123

The broad objectives of OAR include “demonstration of [the United States’] continued commitment to the collective security of NATO and dedication to the enduring 

peace and stability in the region.”124 OAR recently caused the United States to shift more 

emphasis to the Atlantic Alliance and wider European security cooperation. This includes increased interaction with Ukraine, largely in the form of training and general security assistance.125 However, “security cooperation” as a concept is routinely perceived 

as a peacetime activity, and is not generally done in the shadow of an active and urgent 

contingency threat, like that emerging in Eastern Europe.

A key objective of OAR is demonstrating U.S. commitment to its partners. Specifically, the United States is “conducting military exercises and training...while sustaining a rotational presence across Europe.”126 To accomplish this goal, the U.S. European 

Command (EUCOM) is bolstering the infrastructure and logistics that enable NATO 

military operations across Eastern Europe.

The United States has dedicated specific assets to accomplish its OAR objectives. In 

2015, Congress and the President created the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), 

funded by a $985 million appropriation. The President’s budget request for fiscal year 

2017 included an increase of $3.4 billion in ERI funds. Additionally, the United States 

has committed military support to several NATO allies in the region. 

One form of support includes placing 250-pieces of armored military equipment between Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.127 A variety 

of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Special Forces units are supporting the exercise and 

training activities specific to OAR as well. Further, the United States announced that it 

would begin maintaining a deployed armored brigade combat team in Eastern Europe 

on 9-month rotations beginning in fiscal year 2017.128 While OAR appears to be a solid 

first step at promoting peace, stability, and cooperation across NATO, an armored brigade spread across thousands of kilometers of Eastern Europe is more of a symbol than 

a credible military deterrent.

While OAR is primarily a military response, the United States is implementing other 

measures across the U.S. Government. For example, it is actively reinforcing existing 

diplomatic partnerships in Europe, first with very public commitments to all 28 NATO 

members. In addition, the United States supported the Minsk II Protocol, the second 

ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatists. Russia, 

Ukraine, France, and Germany co-authored the agreement in February 2015.129

In the economic domain, the United States, in partnership with the EU, initiated a series of economic sanctions against Russia in March 2014 to send a strong message to the 

Russian Government of the consequences associated with threatening the sovereignty 

and territorial integrity of Ukraine.130 While the effects of sanctions take time, the swift 

action by the President reinforced the message that Russian aggression against Ukraine 

violates the rules-based international order that the United States and its allies fought 

hard to establish and seek to maintain. 
46

The United States is engaging more forcefully in the information realm as well. U.S. 

national leadership placed Russia’s aggression into Ukraine at the top of their talking 

points for some time after the crisis began. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter conducted a press conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on October 8, 2015, during which he stated that Russia “must stop its aggression in eastern Ukraine, end its 

occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, and live up to its commitments under 

the Minsk agreements.”131 However, Russia’s entry into Syria in 2015 shifted the conversation away from Ukraine, highlighting the challenge that the United States has in 

dominating a particular narrative in the information environment. 

While conservative in scope so far, the United States is attempting to pursue an integrated strategy. For now, it favors diplomatic and economic levers, as well as limited 

security assistance over a more assertive demonstration of military capability. However, 

it is attempting to weave actions and prospective options into a consistent and credible 

information narrative. Russia’s assertive approach rests squarely in the uncertain space 

between traditional definitions of war and peace and continues to challenge the U.S. 

ability to adapt. The more the United States adheres to a traditional playbook, the more 

likely Russia will continue to experience significant success.

Risk—Divided and Conquered?

Given the recent aggressive nature of Russian behavior in Eastern Europe coupled 

with Russia’s latent threat to the physical security and integrity of the NATO alliance 

and its member states, the stakes involved in actively meeting and turning back Russian 

gray zone competition are inherently high. Risk of U.S. action in this environment is 

defined mostly by the potential for significant, rapid escalation, with the most obvious 

and dangerous threat being nuclear war. Short of nuclear war, the United States and 

NATO risk entering into a costly conventional conflict with Russia under conditions of 

potential local advantage for Russian forces. 

For example, Russia can make entry and effective operations in its border and coastal 

regions very problematic. Once in theater, U.S. and allied forces would confront a complex and challenging operating environment. Russia boasts enough sophisticated capabilities in the area of air and missile defense, ballistic and cruise missiles, SOF, and broad 

conventional land, air, and sea assets to make effective operations perilous for U.S. and 

allied forces. 

Risk of U.S. inaction is equally high. The U.S.-NATO alliance has served to protect 

most of Europe from Soviet or Russian aggression effectively since World War II. Russia is effectively challenging alliance integrity for the first time through corrosive hybrid resistance to its reach and influence. Failure to act assertively to shore up alliances, 

strengths, and durability, hazards seeing NATO fail decisively. Operation ATLANTIC 

RESOLVE has obvious limitations in this regard. 

Russia has effectively identified and is currently exploiting U.S. and allied vulnerabilities in Eastern Europe to achieve many of its most important strategic objectives. 

The “Gerasimov Model” provides key insights into the Russian gray zone playbook, 

and Russia’s recent conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine provide evidence of that playbook in action. U.S. decision-makers can find effective counters to Russian hybrid 
47

approaches; however, doing so will require significant adaptation of the lenses through 

which we assess the Russian challenge and the tools and concepts we develop and 

employ to counter it. 

49

Strategic Insights—The Untamed Lion

•	 Iran is a consummate revisionist actor seeking 

advantage where forces of rejection cripple local 

authority; it shields its vulnerability by cultivating or advantaging itself in the weakness of others. Efforts to create an Iraqi client are illustrative.

•	 Iran seeks to undermine its regional competitors 

by supporting partners, e.g. Hezbollah, that create instability. Concurrently, Iran seeks to create a physical buffer between it and the United 

States with a strong A2AD network and unconventional approaches to territorial defense.

•	 As Iran does not seek direct confrontation with 

the United States, defense choices lie with a U.S.-

Iranian proxy war or with permanently removing the threat of a nuclear Iran.

•	 The U.S.-Iran dilemma embodies the uncertain 

risk-reward trade-off involved in gray zone 

challenges. Action-cooperative or coercive and 

inaction create near equal prospects for favorable and unfavorable outcomes.

VIII. THE UNTAMED LION—IRAN’S 40 YEAR GRAY ZONE CAMPAIGN

“The arrow shot by the archer may or may not kill a single person. . . . But stratagems 

devised by wise men can kill even babes in the womb.”

 —Kautilya132

THE GRAY ZONE PROBLEM

The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is 

a consummate revisionist actor seeking 

advantage where the forces of rejection 

are crippling local authority. It both creates and exploits vulnerabilities in its 

regional and extra-regional adversaries. 

By doing so, it seeks to expand its reach 

and influence.133 The IRI thrives by asserting itself into fragile—sometimes 

disordered—environments. This is nogo territory for most state powers, yet 

these environments can also favor bold 

and purposeful action. Iran has proven 

adept at advantaging itself through 

these circumstances.

In many respects, Iran is a classic 

revolutionary state in that it shields 

its own vulnerability by cultivating or 

advantaging itself in the weakness of 

others. At its core, survival is the IRI’s 

dominant motivation. In an assessment 

reminiscent of today, a 1979 Department of State report explained Iran in 

the following way:

It is clear that we are dealing with an outlook that differs from our own... Our [U.S.] character, our society, are based on optimism... Iran, on the other hand, has a long and painful 

history of foreign invasions, occupations, and dominations. Their outlook is a function of this 

history and the solace most Iranians have found in Shi’a Islam. They place a premium on 

survival.134

A TRANSFORMATIONAL REBIRTH

The IRI was born in its current form nearly 40 years ago. Due to an inability to implement sweeping political, social, and economic reform, Shah Reza Pahlavi unwittingly 

set conditions for 1979’s game-changing Islamic revolution.135

Leading up to 1979, Iran served as one of the United States’ closest regional partners. 

U.S. decision-makers saw Iran as a moderate Muslim nation with enormous natural 
50

wealth. They considered Iran as a linchpin for security in the Persian Gulf, as it was 

avowedly anti-communist. Iran had maintained cordial economic and security relations 

with Israel. Moreover, it demonstrated both the capability and will to employ its military forces against perceived communist threats in the region consistent with U.S. interests.136 The Iranian revolution, the fall of the Shah, the rise of the Islamic Republic, and 

a long standoff with the United States over the fate of 52-U.S. diplomats during the Iran 

hostage crisis destroyed the U.S.-Iranian relationship virtually overnight. Since the crisis 

year of 1979, the United States and Iran have been locked in perpetual gray zone conflict.

Iran’s successor theocratic regime has since discovered a modern animating interpretation of the “Persian Empire,” and it pursues expansive and—from the United States 

perspective—destabilizing interests according to it. Because Iran’s revolutionary leadership perceive the United States to be responsible for both installing and sustaining the 

former Pahlavi regime in power, they also persistently view the United States as the 

IRI’s principal threat to survival.137 Consequently, and in order to secure the IRI against 

perceived U.S. interference, Iranian leadership has prosecuted a nearly 40-year gray 

zone campaign to keep the United States and U.S. regional partners at bay.138

As a principal goal toward that end, the IRI has aggressively sought to prevent outside powers from again intruding in and attempting to dictate terms regarding both 

Iran’s internal and external affairs.139 However, hampered by decades of U.S./West isolation, the IRI faces significant obstacles in this regard. Principal among them are serious 

military limitations. 

Iran cannot yet project conventional military power much beyond its frontiers.140

While it may possess enough advanced military capability now (e.g. ballistic and cruise 

missiles and advanced air defenses) to impose real costs on an intervening external 

power, it cannot yet either secure itself totally against effective military intervention or 

employ its military at some range in a sustained campaign beyond its borders.141 This 

situation may not necessarily endure. To the extent that Iran finds ways to increase its 

conventional power projection capability, its hybrid military potential will only increase.

IRAN’S BEST DEFENSE—CREATE MULTIPLE DILEMMAS

Currently, Iran pursues its highly gray hybrid strategy along three supporting lines 

of effort (LOEs). First, the IRI engages in just enough high political engagement to complicate unified international opposition to it. It actively pursues mutually beneficial political and security arrangements with other broadly sympathetic revisionist actors like 

Russia and China in order to balance against U.S. strength in its backyard.142 At the same 

time, the IRI engages directly with the United States and other Western opponents to 

gain some relief from isolation and sanction and, at the same time, splinters the unity 

among those inclined toward a more aggressive counter-Iranian position.143

Second, Iran actively supports regional rejectionist forces that are fast emerging from 

deteriorating order in the volatile Middle East and are at war with status quo Arab powers. Further, it bolsters a handful of state allies that are succumbing to the same increasing disorder. Iranian support for Shi’a militias in Iraq since 2003, Houthi Shi’a rebels in 

Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon represent the former. Iran’s support for the Iraqi and 

Syrian Governments is an example of the latter. 
51

Iranian support for terrorists, proxy paramilitaries, and political opposition movements actively resisting the authority of avowed Iranian adversaries like Israel and 

the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) Sunni monarchies creates one set of problems; 

whereas, IRI intervention against emergent Sunni-dominated extremist groups in places 

like Iraq and Syria creates wholly different challenges. In one case, the United States 

defends the status quo against Iranian predations, and in another, Iranian and American 

interests align and require rationalization. Iran’s principal weapon in its secret wars is 

the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force (IRGC)-(QF). The QF is Iran’s most 

powerful, force multiplying, hybrid warfare instrument. 

For a relatively small investment, Iran’s terrorist and paramilitary clients and proxies—often underwritten by QF—effectively represent IRI interests while limiting Iran’s 

direct exposure and liability. At times, these groups undermine and weaken other 

states.144 At other times, Iran’s unconventional allies serve as foils against the regime’s 

strongest state opponents. For example, they discourage Iran’s principal adversaries 

from costly intervention, promising excessive costs and indeterminate or uncertain outcomes as a price for interference.145

It does not appear that Iran seeks to establish client states. Instead, Iran seeks to undermine its regional competitors by supporting partners that create instability. Further, 

because these groups are cutouts for direct Iranian commitment, the IRI can plausibly 

deny direct involvement and mask their specific volition and intent. 

A third line of effort involves the employment or threatened employment of Iran’s 

significant unconventional and hybrid military and paramilitary capability. As highlighted previously, significant challenges exist for Iran in the area of conventional military capabilities and operations. Yet, the Iranians have found ways to offset their conventional military limitations with more unconventional and hybrid solutions. Iran has 

pursued a multi-track effort based on improving its conventional, unconventional, and 

strategic capabilities. Further, Iran has cultivated security relationships and is engaged 

in new levels of military cooperation with U.S. rivals Russia and China.146

In the purely military sphere, Iran has found ways to employ the inherent advantages of its geography to threaten U.S./partner power projection calculations, as well as 

the transit of global commerce through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. Iranian 

military strategy is predicated on three key pillars: “deterrence, asymmetrical escalation, and attrition warfare.”147 Over the last 2 decades, it has pursued military doctrine 

and capabilities focused less on defeating stronger adversaries and more on driving up 

their cost calculations. 

Toward that end, Iran has dramatically increased important A2AD and counter-maritime capabilities to impose costs and limit U.S./partner freedom of action.148 It boasts 

what former USCENTCOM Commander General Lloyd Austin called “the largest and 

most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East.”149 In addition, its doctrine and 

capabilities for the defense of Iranian territory, waters, and airspace hinge on complex 

hybrid approaches that complicate U.S./partner military planning and drive up risk.150

For example, Iran is likely to leverage a combination of swarming small boats, sophisticated air defense, cruise missiles, drones, and matrixed irregular forces to create 

dilemmas for intervening forces.151 The mix of Iranian military capabilities and the doctrine for employing them imply a focus on holding U.S./partner targets in the region 
52

at risk via strikes from over the horizon or hybrid assaults while maintaining the capability to exact severe penalties on attempts to penetrate Iranian borders, airspace, and 

territorial waters.

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT—U.S.-IRANIAN DYNAMICS

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s pervasive sense of grievance and vulnerability dominate both its exercise of political authority and its national security risk calculations. IRI decision-makers are acutely conscious of Iran’s past and still see the IRI 

as a perpetual victim of Western exploitation. According to Ambassador Ryan Crocker, 

“For Iran, there is no such thing as history; it is still the present.”152 Mindful of Iran’s 

former status, Iran’s leadership seeks to enhance Iranian regional and global standing 

and guarantee Iran’s security from the perceived predations of those it believes are most 

committed to standing in the way. 

There is a zero-sum relationship between Iran, the United States, and the U.S.’s closest partners and allies. Iran acts aggressively to shield the revolution and expand its 

reach and influence—often well-outside of the norms of the U.S.-led status quo. In response, the United States and its allies/partners push back against what they perceive to 

be illegitimate Iranian activism and, in the process, increase Iranian insecurity, perpetuate mutual hostility, and hazard vertical or horizontal escalation. The fundamentals for 

anything other than persistent mutual enmity and competition are simply not present 

nor are they anticipated to be present any time soon.153 Thus, Iran’s gray zone campaign 

is likely to persist and evolve for the foreseeable future. The deep-seeded hostility and 

mistrust on both sides of the U.S.-Iran equation are the products of important threads in 

Iranian history, Iran’s unique post-revolution worldview, and the American intersection 

with both. 

NO PEACE, NO WAR—PERSISTENT U.S.-IRANIAN GRAY ZONE CONFLICT

A persistently high level of mutual insecurity is the best way to characterize U.S.-Iranian relations since 1979. For example, eager to counter what U.S. officials perceived to 

be a toxic (and potentially contagious) Iranian revolution, the United States chose sides 

in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. In the course of that conflict when the so-called “Tanker 

War” threatened unimpeded passage of petroleum supplies through the Persian Gulf, 

the United States re-flagged and escorted Kuwaiti tankers to safeguard them against 

Iranian attack. This at times resulted in hostile action between U.S. and Iranian forces. 

The Iran-Iraq War’s unimaginable brutality and human toll—an estimated one million 

Iranian dead—only strengthened the new Iranian regime and intensified the enmity 

between Iran and the United States. 

Americans have died at the hands of presumed Iranian-sponsored violence as well. 

In Lebanon (1983) and Saudi Arabia (1996), Iranian-sponsored terrorist surrogates in 

the Middle East attacked U.S. forces causing a devastating effect.154 However, by and 

large, direct violent confrontation between U.S. and Iranian military forces has been the 

exception and not the rule since the late 1980s. Instead, the United States and Iran have 

engaged in “a kind of Cold War” over the last quarter century.155
53

For example, following the first American Gulf War, the U.S. pursued a very traditional politico-military “dual containment” strategy focused on limiting the freedom of 

maneuver of both Iran and Iraq simultaneously.156 With the onset of Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM, U.S.-Iranian tensions increased as Iran acted 

through proxies to complicate American military operations and manipulate political 

outcomes in its favor. Since the emergence of the IRI, Iranian leadership has employed 

similar forms of surrogate terrorist, paramilitary violence, and political agitation around 

the region (and world) as its principal instruments of power projection. Targets have included and continue to include the GCC states, Israel, and Yemen among many others.157

Further, in addition to an obvious interest in counter-extremism, much of the American security cooperation program with the GCC remains focused on countering Iranian 

conventional (and potentially nuclear) military capability. For their part, the Iranians 

have opted for a cost imposing defense strategy that leverages ballistic and cruise missiles, sophisticated air defenses, and niche maritime capabilities (e.g., small boats, mines, 

and attack submarines). Iran also, until recently, maintained an opaque nuclear program 

that at a minimum threatened rapid breakout to full nuclear capability as an instrument of regional intimidation.158 The United States has developed strategies to counterbalance Iran’s strategies by maintaining a robust U.S. military presence in the region, 

as well as arming U.S. regional partners with the necessary tools to minimize Iranian 

options. 

CURRENT U.S. AND PARTNER APPROACH—INCOMPATIBLE WORLDVIEWS

Contemporary Iran’s persistent search for security is the glue that binds and motivates all Iranian actions.159 Since the revolution, every subsequent Iranian regime 

pursued two parallel LOEs toward a secure and prosperous IRI. The first concerns the 

perpetuation of the Iranian Revolution and focuses on security and active resistance to 

foreign interference. 160 The second concerns the future of Iran as an Islamic Republic and 

the long-term success of Iran’s Persian-Shi’a civil development model.161

The first of these has been the principal rub between Iran and the United States for 

nearly 40 years. In spite of U.S. unease about Iranian motives and intentions, there is 

remarkable consistency in IRI behavior on important aspects of international security: 

there is a cold rationality to many of its choices. U.S. and Western decision-makers often 

dismiss this point. 

Iranian logic proceeds this way. The IRI will persistently act to counter U.S. regional 

influence and reach—principally to create more freedom of action for itself.162 It will 

actively seek to threaten the physical security, authority, and legitimacy of its most potent regional rivals in order to enhance the prospects of it being recognized as the most 

influential arbiter of regional outcomes. It will also aggressively cultivate new or enhanced relationships with neighbors and regional partners as a deterrent against foreign 

(largely U.S.) interference. Finally, it seems to be actively seeking to expand its network 

of meaningful relationships worldwide in order to broaden its network of security and 

economic outlets.163 On this latter point, it likely perceives that its future is secure to the 

extent it is indispensable to others.
54

All of these in either purpose or practice bring Iran and the United States into a condition of perpetual competition and conflict. Of particular concern to the United States 

and its partners is Iran’s pursuit of regional dominance over the most important outcomes and the methods it employs toward that end. 

Iran is obviously engaged in aggressive power projection by proxy around the 

Persian Gulf and wider Middle East region (e.g., GCC, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, 

etc.). This includes support for terrorists and paramilitaries threatening U.S. allies and 

partners, and commitment to regimes whose behaviors have proven fundamentally destabilizing. Further, its cost imposing hybrid military doctrine and capability present 

persistent challenges to the security of regional partners, unfettered access to and use 

of the commons, and U.S./partner military freedom of action. Finally, the profoundly 

destabilizing proposition of Iran as an aspiring hot or warm nuclear power challenges 

foundational tenets of the American-led status quo. 

In response, the United States and its partners have employed decades of countermeasures ranging from diplomacy to military preparations and operations. The first 

involves economic sanctions against the Iranian Government and key Iranian individuals. The second path has been persistent positioning of U.S. military resources in and 

around the region. Finally, the third track has been marked by the effort to build partner 

military capacity in the region as a counterbalance to growing Iranian influence.164

To date, the U.S./partner record against Iran is mixed. Iran continues to threaten 

Middle Eastern stability almost whenever and wherever it chooses. The Iranian Threat 

Network (ITN)—consisting of the QF, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and 

Iranian foreign surrogates—is invested region-wide. Syria remains propped up by Iranian assistance.165 Iraq has fallen under Iran’s sway after a considerable Iranian investment 

in its security.166 In Yemen, Iran is free-riding on and fomenting disorder along Saudi 

Arabia’s southern border. Moreover, in Lebanon, Iranian-client Hezbollah continues to 

handicap effective central governance in order to retain freedom of action. This last issue 

is most immediately threatening to Israel.

The recent conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s 

nuclear program clearly changes some of the U.S. calculus with respect to Iran. Many 

analysts presumed that Iranian pursuit of a warm nuclear weapons capability, at a minimum, was an insurance policy against U.S. interference and an instrument for regional 

intimidation. The JCPOA has presumably cooled Iranian pursuit for the time being and 

has effectively extended Iran’s nuclear breakout time.167

In return, Iran will receive $60 billion in unfrozen assets.168 Iran will also gain access 

to the global economy for petroleum sales and weapons purchases. Of course, the devil 

is in the implementation details. For the United States and its Western allies, Iran is further away from nuclearization. However, Iran also is in the strongest position it has been 

in since 1979. The degree to which expanded engagement opens the door for Iranian 

moderation is an open question.

Understanding Iran and its unwavering quest for security is key. Recognizing how 

Iran pursues its security is useful as well. Linking Iran’s blend of conventional and unconventional actions across the region presents U.S. decision-makers with an opportunity to see its gray zone problem more clearly. U.S. decision-making on Iran will remain 

challenging well into the foreseeable future. 
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RISK: MANY CHOICES—EQUALLY HIGH RISKS

The U.S.-Iran dilemma is a classic demonstration of the uncertain risk-reward tradeoffs involved in gray zone challenges. Action to counter adverse Iranian behavior—either positive or negative—opens the door to significant success in limiting the nature 

and magnitude of the perceived threat from Iran. On the other hand, most actions—diplomatic engagement, military action, economic sanctions, etc.—also have the potential 

to worsen or complicate American calculations. 

The wager that is the JCPOA is a perfect example in this regard. Recognizing the 

unlikelihood that broad international sanctions would return once lifted in accordance 

with JCPOA, Iran might follow the North Korean model and serially violate the agreement terms on the margins to acquire a nuclear weapon or a near-nuclear breakout 

capability. Should that occur, U.S. decision-makers would face the unpalatable prospect 

of military confrontation with a nuclear-armed Iran or an uncontrolled regional nuclear 

arms race. The associated security dilemma and inherent instability would make the 

current standoff appear tame. 

Opting against a diplomatic agreement, the United States may have attempted to 

maintain a sanctions regime. However, international participation and discipline with 

respect to sanctions would have been suspect. Continued Iranian pursuit of some nuclear capability likely would have engendered increased U.S. coercive military actions 

and economic measures against Iran. This time, however, with a more limited number 

of outside participants. 

At a minimum, accepting this course would put the United States, a more limited 

number of partners, and Iran on a collision course toward hazardous escalation. While 

American conventional military capability would likely prevail tactically and operationally, U.S. coercive military operations would not be cost-free strategically. They may occur absent the consent of the international community, and there is a significant chance 

the region would end up with similar outcomes and risks as those outlined earlier.

Additionally, any more aggressive moves toward limiting Iranian freedom of action 

region-wide hazards horizontal escalation in areas where Iran activates its network of 

proxies against U.S. interests. Another concern is asymmetric escalation in theater where 

the Iranians engage in hybrid, cost-imposing military action inside the narrow confines 

of the Persian Gulf. Both courses of action rapidly begin to raise costs and increase risks 

for the United States. Thus, in many cases, the hazards associated with both a specific 

action or a level of inaction appear to be equally high and unpalatable. Enter the next 

phase of U.S.-Iranian gray zone competition.
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IX. THE SCORPION UNLEASHED – THE “BEGINNING OF HISTORY”

 IN A FAILING MIDDLE EAST

“I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation, it is possible to 

accomplish any task whatsoever.”

 -Mao Tse-Tung169

THE CONTEXTUAL GRAY ZONE CHALLENGE

The MENA region is chronically unstable and characterized by the increasing failure of state institutions. The authority of the region’s status quo governments is under 

relentless assault by motivated rejectionist forces. Arab governments in particular that 

had remained reliant on traditional tools of social control have found their control fundamentally weakened. 

Furthermore, the coalescing stresses of persistent conflict, political revolution, demographic change, and globalization make those tools increasingly less effective at either 

inspiring or controlling populations predisposed to rejection.170 In short, MENA has entered an uncertain period of radical transformation where governments and the governed are increasingly at odds and regional disputes will have worldwide implications. 

Many MENA states are important U.S. partners in maintaining a stable and secure 

regional order.171 That order relies on durable political authority—a concept that is an increasingly perilous position region-wide. Given the turbulent years since the beginning 

of the Arab Spring—with revolutions, near-revolutions, or contagious civil conflict in 

Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Yemen, and Bahrain—all of the region’s conservatively governed states are at risk of sudden disruptive change. As important regional states 

weaken, fail, or fracture, malevolent state and nonstate actors fill the void created by 

disintegrating authority.172 The state weakness, ungoverned or under-governed areas, 

and fraying social cohesion that follow are both crucibles for the emergence of violent 

extremism, as well as vectors for its viral expansion. 

MENA is archetypal of a “contextual” gray zone challenge in that its profound complexity derives from the incidental and not purposeful confluence of actors and forces. It 

is neither traditional war where a clean and neat duality of opposing interests plays out 

in armed conflict nor is it an acceptable peace ripe for routine maintenance via engagement. Instead, it presents defense and military strategists with complex multi-sided conflicts rooted in myriad origins and between actors operating at radically diverse levels of 

sophistication, organization, and capability. 

As suggested earlier, MENA’s menace largely originates from underlying forces that 

are for the most part beyond even the most powerful states’ influence and reach. Thus, 

MENA presents an even sharper break from defense convention than that suggested by 

the aforementioned purposeful state-based threats. If some gray zone competition and 

conflict is akin to war (as was argued at the outset), then it is accurate to say that the 

United States, its allies, and its regional partners are in fact at war with MENA’s environment itself, not simply one or more of the disruptive actors operating in and from it. 

For example, while malign nonstate actors (e.g., ISIL, al Qaeda, al Nusra, Hezbollah, 

etc.) are manifest across the MENA region, they are not in reality the core problems. 
57

Strategic Insights—The Scorpion Unleashed

•	 A disordered and devolving MENA environment is fertile ground for the hybrid combination of malevolent state and nonstate actors. 

•	 MENA is archetypal of a “contextual” gray zone 

challenge in that its profound hybridity derives 

from the incidental confluence of actors and 

forces. 

•	 The MENA region is a complex adaptive system 

for which the United States will struggle for holistic and wholly rational responses. Unintended 

consequences and uncontrollable forces militate 

against U.S. strategic coherence. U.S. decisionmakers face unsatisfying choices, such as endless counterterrorism, questionable partnerships 

and expedient damage control.

•	 Risks associated with future U.S. action or inaction are unclear but still daunting; both have already proven unsatisfying. 

Instead, they are symptoms of a more fundamental regional malady. Effectively addressing one challenge—even the most prominent—will likely not change the region’s 

overall security trajectory. In the end, effectively weathering and containing the most 

dangerous implications of MENA’s disruptive transformation is a more accurate characterization of the art of the possible. 

Each gray zone challenge represents a unique and context-dependent contest for 

which U.S. Government processes and tools must adapt. To date in MENA, they appear 

wholly unsuited for the task. In most cases, the DoD is at the center of this challenge.

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT – ONE BIG REGION, ONE BIG PROBLEM

In response to MENA’s dangerous volatility, the United States pursues a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach 

to protect and advance core U.S. interests.173 To date, however, the adopted 

course of action appears not to be keeping pace with the region’s gray zone 

challenge. In short and not unlike the 

profound unpreparedness American 

decision-makers and operators experienced post-9/11, the centralized and 

traditional approach to synchronizing 

U.S. Government efforts in MENA today is exhibiting significant limitations 

as well. 

U.S. efforts have taken different 

forms in different countries. However, 

the U.S. Government has synchronized its efforts consistently across the 

region. Consistency, however, does 

not necessarily connote effectiveness. 

Broadly, the United States has sought 

capable partners to support its efforts. 

Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Iraq provide 

examples of how the United States has 

acted through partners. Where legally 

able, the United States supplemented its partner capacity building efforts with standoff 

precision strikes against Islamist threats in the region. 

A survey of some U.S. efforts in the following example countries illustrates the 

strengths and limitations of the American approach to date. The limitations draw attention to how the U.S. Government has struggled to adapt its policies, plans, and operations to MENA’s unique gray zone challenges.
58

Yemen.

In Yemen, the United States partnered with the Government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh as part of a counterterrorism strategy against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. When Arab Spring protests began in 2011, the United States changed its position. 

After supporting a government transition, the United States backed Yemen’s Vice President, Abd Rabduh Mansour Hadi, a replacement for Saleh. 

Although the Yemeni President changed, U.S. counterterrorism policy did not.174 After Houthi rebels from northern Yemen caused President Hadi to flee Yemen, the United 

States shifted its support to the Saudi-led coalition conducting combat operations in the 

eastern part of the country. The central theme of the U.S. support to the Saudi coalition 

was, and remains, counterterrorism.175 In addition, while the coalition persists in conducting traditional military operations, within the chaos of current day Yemen, Islamic 

militants have multiplied and a central Yemeni government is far from re-establishing 

its authority. 

Libya.

In Libya, the United States began Operation ODYSSEY DAWN in March of 2011. The 

operation focused on “protecting innocent civilians in Libya and holding the Qaddafi 

regime accountable.”176 Following ODYSSEY DAWN and NATO’s Operation UNIFIED 

PROTECTOR, the Qaddafi regime collapsed. 

In the aftermath, the United States re-established its embassy and supported Libya’s 

Transitional National Council in its efforts to create a post-Qaddafi government.177 With 

the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on September 

11, 2012, U.S. efforts waned. Largely confined to the embassy, U.S. activities in Libya 

have concentrated on assisting Libya’s General National Congress (GNC) Government. 

Following a breakdown of the Libyan GNC Government and a collapse of security, 

the United States evacuated its embassy in 2014.178 Following the evacuation, the United 

States has supported conflict resolution between Libya’s two competing governments—

the GNC and the House of Representatives (HoR). In the interim, Libya’s security situation has worsened and allowed Libya to become a haven for Islamic fighters, including 

a North African branch of ISIL.179

Syria.

Syria presents another complex gray zone challenge. Syria still possesses a central 

government and has the overt support of both Russia and Iran. However, Bashar alAssad’s regime has lost control of large sections of the country to Islamist opposition 

forces of various stripes, and its defense of regime territory has created entrenched and 

metastasizing resistance to its rule. Assad’s methods and allies have mobilized an uncoordinated, multi-nodal, and conflicted universe of Islamic opposition forces.180 These 

capable groups—representing myriad points on the Islamist spectrum—are all actively 

vying with the Syrian Government and each other for a stake in the post-Assad era. 
59

Through much of the course of the Syrian civil war, President Obama has maintained 

the position that Syria’s future stability requires al-Assad’s removal.181 Unfortunately, 

the resiliency of the Syrian regime has prevented the realization of an acceptable political solution to the crisis. Meanwhile, large portions of Syria (and Iraq) are now under the 

control of the regime’s most capable opponent—ISIL. Islamic State territory between the 

two countries represents the world’s largest sanctuary for Islamic militants. Moreover, 

the United States finds itself tacitly operating against and on behalf of the Syrian regime 

as it conducts air and special operations actions against ISIL in both Syria and Iraq. 

Iraq.

Finally, U.S. policymakers did not anticipate Iraq’s current dysfunction.182 As both 

the deliberate instrument of Iraq’s 2003 collapse and with many post-collapse options 

and tools at its disposal, the United States can arguably claim some of the credit for 

Iraq’s emergent gray zone threat. 

After withdrawing combat forces from Iraq in 2011, the United States remained somewhat passive while Iraq’s Government became increasingly sectarian. Former Prime 

Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s actions created the conditions for the rapid re-mobilization of 

sectarian forces in Iraq.183 Sunni militants used grievances against Iraq’s Shi’a dominated 

government as an ISIL recruitment tool. As in the case of Syria, Iraq ultimately lost significant territory to ISIL and has yet to demonstrate both consistent and self-sustaining 

means to recapture it.184 Consequently, as a function of its wider counter-ISIL campaign, 

the United States deployed several thousand U.S. forces in and around Iraq to train and 

support Iraqi forces, conduct precision military strikes, and conduct a limited number of 

discrete ground-based military operations. 

Thus, both Iraq and Syria are now active fronts in the U.S. counter-ISIL campaign. 

Of the military instruments employed, U.S. air operations are the most robust. To date, 

counter-ISIL actions in Iraq are of a higher priority than those in Syria. The United 

States has conducted over half of its counter-ISIL airstrikes against over 16,000 targets 

inside Iraq’s borders.185 Despite stepped up U.S. efforts against ISIL, the United States 

remains wholly dependent on others—Iraq, moderate Sunni opposition groups, regional allies, etc.—to eliminate ISIL sanctuaries. To date, this approach has fallen short of 

expectations.

The MENA region will remain a challenge for the United States. The region represents a kaleidoscope of context-dependent challenges. Each MENA country and challenge can shift from manageable to unmanageable in relative short order. U.S. partners 

in one country or against one specific challenge may be adversaries in other instances. 

Escalation from stability to violence can occur rapidly. Due to shifting interests and 

power relationships in the region, the United States will experience uncertain partnerships and even more uncertain outcomes in MENA for some time. 

CURRENT U.S. APPROACH—“WHACK-A-MOLE” 2.0?

This report concludes that U.S. defense challenges in the MENA region are products 

of perspective and approach. The former stems from an inadequate or unsophisticated 

frame for understanding the more fundamental regional challenges and their impact on 
60

DoD decision-making. In addition, the latter relates to the near-exclusive U.S. reliance 

on standoff and proxy action for durable results. In both cases, it is clear U.S. Government decision-making on the issues at hand can and must improve.

In each case outlined previously, U.S. policy has been non-predictive and inadequately prescriptive. The United States has yet to diagnose appropriately the scope and 

nature of its expanding MENA challenge outside of the simplistic counter-terror model 

that has driven U.S. policy since 9/11. MENA represents a malignant pan-regional crisis of authority. It presents U.S. decision-makers with a level of volatility, uncertainty, 

complexity, and ambiguity that far surpass that of the other archetypes covered in this 

report. 

MENA will not conform neatly to the threat and response frames that have informed 

U.S. defense strategy to date. It is a violent, indeterminate, and potentially intractable 

social science problem with military dimensions. It is not a neat military science problem 

with an easily definable beginning and end. 

To date, failures of imagination, anticipation, and remediation plague the U.S.-

MENA strategy; U.S. decision-makers have failed to imagine the worst possible outcomes of disintegrating political authority. They have failed to anticipate the virulence 

of the darkest forces at work in the region, let loose by disintegrating authority. Finally, 

they have failed to act under a region-wide strategic design that recognizes the transformational character of the environment.

Consequently, purposeful MENA rejectionists have exploited the region’s strategic 

context, the U.S. approach to that context, and the U.S. tools applied in that approach to 

pursue their ends. The results are predictable: circumstances in Yemen, Libya, Iraq, and 

Syria are worse and, thus far, stable states like those of the GCC and Jordan are more 

at risk. 

U.S. preferences for standoff or over-the-horizon strike have yet to demonstrate a 

significant decrease in the extremist threat within or outside the region. For example, the 

target lists and target summaries associated with air operations to counter ISIL—dubbed 

Operation INHERENT RESOLVE (OIR)—provide an easily quantifiable reference for 

the number of key leaders, vehicles, buildings, and infrastructure attacked.186 However, 

they do not provide meaningful insights to the overall effectiveness of the campaign 

against a somewhat formless idea-based threat. They provide output vice outcome measures of performance—providing potentially meaningless context-free metrics and the 

potential for limitless interpretations. In reality, the effectiveness of OIR airstrikes will 

be determined when Islamic militants experience measurable setbacks.

A second and wholly understandable U.S. preference for others to do the heavy lifting to secure the region is laudable but inadequate. In Iraq, for example, the United 

States has expedited weapons sales and deliveries bound for the Iraqi Security Forces 

(ISF). U.S. forces in Iraq have the primary mission of training Iraqi forces so that the ISF 

can defeat ISIL. Unfortunately, the ISF has yet to begin a major operation against ISIL, although there is some indication that operations to retake Mosul will conclude in 2016.187

In Syria, the United States tried to train moderate opposition groups but failed to 

produce a force capable of having any effect inside the country.188 After helping to overthrow Qaddafi in Libya, the United States tried to build a capable partner security force 

but failed.189 In Yemen, the United States had supported the Yemeni security forces with 
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hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance.190 When Yemen collapsed, the United States 

shifted to expedited support for the Saudi-led GCC coalition. In all four cases, partner 

security forces were unable to establish or extend control consistent with U.S. interests. 

Predictably, in all cases, U.S. efforts foundered. 

U.S. GOVERNMENT IN ACTION—THE ISIL EXAMPLE

Since neither airstrikes nor security force assistance seems to be the antidote for MENA’s complex security challenges, the United States has bolstered its security efforts 

with a renewed whole-of-government approach. The Islamic State, representing one of 

the most serious threats to security in the region, provides a good example of the current 

U.S. approach. 

ISIL grew from the vacuum created by ineffective governance, institutional failure, 

and sectarian violence in Iraq and Syria. ISIL is first a rejectionist movement that liberally employs violence as currency to create a 21st-century caliphate out of the ashes of 

a failed Syria and Iraq. To date, ISIL has secured thousands of square miles of territory, 

terrorized populations, and created an oppressive and intolerant Islamic proto-state in 

the strategic heart of the Middle East.191

Until mid-2014, ISIL’s violent expansion seemed to be a peripheral threat to U.S. 

allies and interests in the region. By 2015, ISIL’s demonstrated reach, influence, and endurance saw it rise in prominence within policymaking circles as an urgent threat to U.S. 

national security.192 The U.S. Government has since sought ISIL’s defeat by “harnessing 

all elements of American power, across our government—military, intelligence, diplomatic, economic, development, and... [U.S.] values.”193 Toward that end, the United 

States leads a 60-plus nation coalition and follows a strategy based on nine LOEs:194

• Supporting effective governance in Iraq

• Denying ISIL safe haven through airstrikes195

• Building partner capacity for partner militaries to defeat ISIL196

• Enhancing intelligence collection to better target ISIL

• Disrupting ISIL’s finances

• Exposing ISIL’s true nature to undermine its message

• Disrupting the flow of foreign fighters

• Protecting the U.S. homeland

• Humanitarian support to displaced populations in Iraq and Syria

The counter-ISIL campaign and its LOEs are naturally long-term propositions. Unfortunately, ISIL’s demonstrated ability to defy geographical limitations to inspire recent high-profile attacks indicates that the U.S. strategy will not necessarily limit ISIL’s 

capability for strategic-level harm in the near-term. 

As patience may expire well-before the strategy bears fruit, strategic innovation with 

respect to ISIL, and all of the various symptomatic challenges of MENA devolution is 

in order. Innovation may emerge from a more sophisticated U.S. diagnosis of the underlying MENA-wide crisis of governance and the yawning gaps in the secure exercise 

of political authority across the region. First raised in the wake of 9/11, the challenge 

of un-governance and under-governance remains fertile soil for endemic insecurity. To 
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the extent that this issue grows worse, more complex and virulent rejectionist forces are 

likely to emerge. 

Further, innovation may also come from better integration of all the tools at the disposal of U.S. and partner leaders. Gray zone threats in the 21st century are first hybrid 

challenges, liberally mixing hazards across functions and domains. Responses to them 

should also be hybrid in character. In the case of the United States, this implies new approaches that seamlessly blend effects from the various instruments of national power.

RISK—HIGH, TRENDING MUCH HIGHER

The United States has lost its decision-space-advantage in the MENA region. U.S. 

defense decision-making frames and processes are simply no match for MENA’s diverse 

security challenges and their profound complexity. The two features combined create an 

uncertain strategic planning environment that highlights in sharp relief the risk dilemmas presented by both action and inaction as they relate to the region. MENA is gray 

precisely because it is impossible to identify, focus on, and pace against a well-defined 

and manageable set of defense-relevant challenges. In MENA, the environment and the 

trends driving it are in fact the principal adversaries.

Complexity in the MENA region means that any U.S. action has the potential to 

create even greater challenges for the United States and its partners. Further, the wide 

diversity of threat types makes first order prioritization challenging for senior decisionmakers. MENA boasts a potential nuclear power with a penchant for destabilizing regional proxy wars; a series of state-killing civil conflicts; myriad extremist groups that 

emerge from and thrive on endemic regional instability; and generalized rejectionist 

trends that fast undermine the authority and reach of even the region’s most capable 

states. Action against one or more of these will inevitably affect the nature and magnitude of risk associated with others. 

The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is the first of many clear examples in this regard. 

In large measure, there is an expert consensus that the United States is where it is in Iraq 

and Syria precisely because of the deliberate collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.197 On 

a smaller scale, Libya and Yemen also demonstrate the risk of U.S. action. In a desire to 

improve its position, U.S. actions contributed to a collapse of both Libya and Yemen. 

This collapse led to a security vacuum followed by rampant instability. 

A newfound U.S. Government appreciation of the risks of action have led it at times 

to embrace inaction or limited action in the region. In Syria, many perceive that U.S. 

inaction allowed the situation to worsen.198 Further, it opened new unhelpful operating 

space for U.S. adversaries. Russia and Iran, for example, are perceived to have seized 

on U.S. hesitation to more actively aid the Assad regime.199 Similarly, many argue that 

American passivity in the face of increasing violence and instability in Iraq between 

2010-2014 highlight the hazards of inaction as well. During that period, a more assertive U.S. commitment may have limited ISIL operating space and prevented its de facto 

control over large areas of Iraqi territory.200

MENA’s complexity combined with the perception of low returns on heavy U.S. regional investment since 2001 have seen American policy purposefully limit U.S. regional 

commitment. Consequently, risk has likely increased in some respects; how much and 
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to what end is actually uncertain. What is clear—absent unifying U.S. leadership—is 

that the region’s nations and competing interest groups will act according to naked selfinterest. For example, in Libya, different Gulf States fund opposing militias. Syria, Saudi 

Arabia, Iran, Russia, and Turkey act independently to advance a narrow and immediate 

security-based agenda—often in conflict with one another and counter to U.S. interests. 

As in the case of action, inaction has its own unique set of costs. U.S. Government 

inaction hazards sending conflicting signals to friends, neutrals, and adversaries alike. 

It flirts with unacceptable and irreparable loss occurring in the absence of U.S. efforts to 

prevent it. Finally, it cedes initiative to purposeful adversaries and contextual circumstances, both of which by choice or happenstance are unwilling to account for American 

preferences and thus, create greater risk for U.S. leaders to consider. 
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X. THE ENDANGERED EAGLE—THE UNITED STATES 

AS A GRAY ZONE ACTOR

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

 -Theodore Roosevelt201

INNOVATION IN THE GRAY ZONE: 20TH CENTURY 

COMPETITION AND CONFLICT

Theodore Roosevelt is credited with saying, “In any moment of decision, the best 

thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst 

thing you can do is nothing.”202 Roosevelt’s perspective sheds some light on two important aspects of this report. 

The first is the report’s emphatic opening claim that the United States was once the 

world’s consummate gray zone competitor. Roosevelt was after all the first champion 

of U.S. global activism and that activism occurred before the United States possessed 

the comprehensive cross-domain advantages vis-à-vis other advantages it later enjoyed. 

Thus, to succeed, it had to rely on alternative gray zone approaches to realize its early aspirations for global power. The second is a reminder to current day decision-makers that 

paralysis in the face of gray zone competition is likely fatal from a strategic perspective.

In context, Roosevelt’s quote reflects a time when the United States began its hard 

won transformation from an isolationist and continental power to an expanding global 

power. Roosevelt is the first U.S. President credited with recognizing American potential as a great power and acting with purpose to achieve significant gains toward that 

end. The key quality that enabled Roosevelt’s effective stewardship of rising U.S. influence was his decisiveness. His decisive nature aggressively set the tone for a new era of 

exploding U.S. global competitiveness at the very time that opportunities existed for it 

to thrive. 

Since the time of Roosevelt and until the end of the Cold War, history is rife with 

examples of significant U.S. offensive and defensive action in the gray zone. Indeed, the 

current U.S. global position is largely a product of past American gray zone success. 

Today, however, the predator is the prey in this regard. Though American history is 

replete with examples of bold U.S. action in the face of imperfect strategic choices, there 

is a palpable reluctance to act boldly or otherwise in the face of gray zone challenges 

because of the presence of imperfection. An examination of the events of the last century—specifically, the actions of the United States as a gray zone competitor—may be 

instructive for current policymakers and defense professionals. Fighting or campaigning 

effectively in the gray zone may require some significant re-appreciation of the United 

States’ significant gray zone roots. 

The Great White Fleet, the Panama Canal, and Dollar Diplomacy.

Much like today, the world at the turn of the 20th century was a marketplace for 

interstate competition between rising and declining powers, each vying for a degree of 

control over major outcomes in support of their national interests. Great Britain stood 

as the sole global superpower, its empire comprised approximately one-quarter of the 
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Strategic Insights—The Endangered Eagle

•	 The United States has a long history as the 

premier global gray zone competitor.

•	 Cold War policies provided the framework 

for and enabled persistent gray zone competition to secure vital U.S. interests. 

•	 The United States is now in competition 

with actors who are using methods it previously mastered and employed to achieve 

great power status.

•	 The DoD is in a unique position to “lead up” 

and help restore a U.S. competitive edge 

against gray zone threats and challenges.

Earth’s land area and nearly one-fifth of its population.203 Other great European powers 

included Germany, Russia, France, and Spain. It was during this time that Japan and the 

United States began holding larger, global aspirations as well. 

This study is defense-focused. However, as this study acknowledges early on, gray 

zone threats are not confined to the military sphere alone. The same was true for early 

20thcentury great powers. They faced their own unique blend of threats that combined 

military, diplomatic, economic, and informational pressures. Therefore, it is within this 

strategic context that the United States first learned to compete effectively in the gray 

zone against its most capable opponents.

Terms like “gunboat diplomacy” and “dollar diplomacy” accurately capture the gray 

zone approach toward expanding American influence in the early 1900s. It was—as it 

is now with purposeful U.S. gray zone competitors—all about skillfully integrating and 

applying all of the tools at its disposal effectively to generate meaningful advantage visà-vis opponents.

One example includes the “Great 

White Fleet,” the significant naval 

build-up during the Roosevelt Administration that enabled the United States 

to employ naval power to secure its 

interests with newfound global reach. 

Additionally, Roosevelt’s decision to 

sail a fleet of 16 battleships around the 

world between December 1907 and 

February 1909 sent a strong message 

to potential adversaries regarding U.S. 

naval expeditionary capability.204

The construction of the Panama Canal provides another example of U.S. 

skill in pursuing its interests via gray 

zone activity. In 1901 when Colombia 

balked at U.S. plans for a canal through 

Colombian-controlled Panama, the 

United States privately encouraged a 

revolution then openly backed it financially and militarily—principally via naval blockade. The Panamanian revolt succeeded largely because Colombia was unwilling to challenge the U.S. blockade and risk open war with the United States. Ultimately, the new 

Panamanian Government negotiated with the United States, extending to it control of 

what would become the Panama Canal Zone.205 The opening of the canal in 1914 instantly changed the global economy and vastly increased U.S. ability to project economic and 

military power worldwide.

In the wake of Roosevelt’s military expansion and as the U.S. economy grew, the Taft 

Administration (1909-1913) exploited both military and economic power to continue 

securing U.S. interests abroad. The United States invested heavily in Latin America and 

East Asia and backed up its investments with military might. This not only increased 

the economic reach of the United States, it also prevented other world powers from 
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encroaching on important U.S.-dominated markets. This brand of “dollar diplomacy”

was yet another intentional approach by the U.S. Government to expand influence and 

gain advantages over competitors in world markets.206 Moreover, this approach largely 

occurred in the gray space that is the subject of this report. 

World Wars and the Great Depression.

The period between 1917 and 1945 included two world wars and the Great Depression. There was not a great deal of gray associated with the world wars. There was, 

however, a great deal of gray in U.S. activity before, after, and between the wars. 

Indeed, it was through sophisticated gray zone methods that the United States was 

able to consolidate and capitalize on its wartime gains and expand U.S. influence through 

effective competition well below the threshold of major war. For example, Woodrow 

Wilson’s effort to establish the League of Nations in 1920 was an early attempt at establishing an American-led global status quo. Wilson was ahead of his time, as the idea of 

a U.S.-led, global order dominated successive presidential administrations since 1945. 

It was only after the Allied victory in World War II that the world fully recognized 

the United States as a global superpower. Immediately after the War, the United States 

began constructing the very world order ultimately credited with countering and defeating aggressive Soviet expansion. The Soviet Union was, of course, a rival superpower. It 

also sought to capitalize on its post-war gains through skillful gray zone maneuvering. 

At the onset of the post-war, bi-polar rivalry between the two nuclear superpowers triggered perhaps the most dangerous period of gray zone competition in modern history.

The Cold War—The United States on the Cutting Edge of the Gray Zone.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States took a leading role in establishing 

the UN and the Bretton Woods economic system. This defined the rules of international 

relations, competition, trade, and commerce for 70 years. Within this framework, two 

key internal American policy initiatives helped set up long-term U.S. Cold War success. 

The 1947 National Security Act and the policy of containment combined to provide 

the framework under which the United States pursued, advanced, and secured its most 

vital interests for the duration of the Cold War. The containment strategy and the institutions and tools that emerged from the National Security Act enabled a consistency of 

U.S. purpose and action over the course of nine presidential administrations. Although 

the United States applied this consistency of purpose and action against a single dominant threat during the Cold War, the circumstances under which American leaders employed it varied significantly over time. 

The National Security Act, signed into law by President Harry Truman, amounted 

to a complete overhaul of the U.S. national security apparatus. It established the President’s National Security Council (NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It 

established the U.S. Air Force (USAF) as a separate military service and merged the Department of War (renamed Department of the Army) with the Department of the Navy 

into an overarching National Military Establishment (NME). 
67

An amendment to the act in 1949 renamed the NME to the DoD, further unifying the 

military services. In addition to creating better unity among the American armed forces, 

the act centralized national security policy development and decision-making under the 

NSC and integrated the nation’s intelligence gathering capability under the CIA. 

The policy and authorities established through the National Security Act empowered 

U.S. leaders to better understand and address contemporary challenges. Further, the act 

allowed U.S. leaders to make timely policy decisions and take action in a unified manner 

against a broadly acknowledged, commonly defined, and widely understood threat to 

the United States and its partners within the most appropriate decision-making context.

Containment of Soviet ambition as a concept began with George Kennan’s now 

famous 1946 cable from Moscow.207 Kennan’s “long telegram,” later published anonymously in Foreign Affairs, outlined a policy of containing inevitable Soviet expansion 

with Western political, military, and economic instruments. At the time, Kennan’s policy 

received criticism for being both too defensive in nature and for failing to differentiate 

between vital and peripheral U.S. interests.208

By 1950, Paul Nitze revised Kennan’s containment policy and turned it into a national counter-Soviet strategy with National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68). NSC-68 

provided the American President with a comprehensive look at the threat posed by 

the Soviet Union and offered various containment options for his ultimate approval. 

NSC-68 became a charter for significant increases in military spending, economic and 

industrial investment, and diplomatic engagement and alliances.209

The key decisions associated with NSC-68 shaped the global landscape for the next 

40 years. Importantly, pursuit of containment forced the United States to navigate the 

gray zone by skillfully choosing when, where, and how to act in a manner that contained 

the most dangerous or destabilizing Soviet activities while still remaining short of Soviet 

redlines that could trigger open war.

U.S. Cold War strategy included a wide range of actions. These included elaborate 

information campaigns designed to expose the Soviet Union’s worst intentions and 

abuses; economic warfare using embargos and sanctions to deny Soviet Bloc nations 

from Western technology, goods, and services; and a relentless military build-up of conventional and nuclear capabilities. Even large-scale wars on the periphery in Korea and 

Vietnam were key components of U.S. containment policy. All of these actions demonstrated a deep U.S. commitment to protect, at great cost, the post-war order it had 

established. 

Unsurprisingly, the National Security Act further allowed for the legal conduct of 

covert action under the CIA’s control. Congress passed a number of subsequent statutory actions to provide even greater explicit legal support and funding for covert activities. They provided the President with the authority to authorize covert action that was 

“necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives . . . and is important to the 

national security of the United States.”210 Through these and other related authorities, 

the U.S. Government continued to conduct warlike operations outside the normal scope 

of conventional warfare throughout the Cold War. 

It is also notable that U.S. SOF began during the Cold War. SOF gave the United 

States a capability for low visibility and covert military operations that could, if necessary, avoid attribution to the U.S. Government or supported nations. The unconven-
68

tional warfare competency in particular focused on the preparation and employment 

of proxy forces to achieve discrete U.S. national policy objectives. Today, SOF’s original 

function endures, as it is still required to “maintain and advance...capabilities for extending U.S. reach into denied areas and uncertain environments...by conducting lowvisibility operations.”211

As the Cold War progressed, the cyber domain emerged as an important theater of 

competition and conflict. Indeed, the United States was the first to define both the cyber 

playing field and the scope of potential gray zone competition and conflict within it. 

U.S. gray zone cyber activities date to at least 1982 with the mysterious explosion of a 

Soviet oil pipeline. The CIA was later identified as the culprit. Many analysts presume 

that the agency planted a “logic bomb” in the pipeline’s control system.212 That was 25 

years before the “Stuxnet” operation that successfully slowed Iran’s nuclear weapons 

development program.213

RISK—GET BACK IN THE GAME OR GET ON THE SIDELINES

Great power competition in the 21st century—like that of the 19th and 20th centuries—is a contact sport. The rules and conventions change but effectively competing is 

the only way to thrive and win. The Cold War, in particular, is a useful reminder of the 

need to compete. 

There was a consistency of purpose at the highest levels of U.S. decision-making 

through nine presidential administrations. That consistency of purpose flowed from the 

foundation laid in NSC-68. Containment was the U.S. gray zone vessel for responding to 

the Soviet threat and it endured as an animating concept for more than 40 years. 

Throughout the Cold War—operating according to the conventions of containment—

the United States creatively employed all of its resources in a gray zone campaign to 

limit Soviet freedom of maneuver, force Soviet decision-makers into unfavorable asymmetric competitions, and, ultimately, defeat Soviet power more by endurance, guile, 

and cost imposition than brute force.214 Victory in the Cold War was a singular U.S. 

achievement. 

There were dangerous redlines and trip wires along the way. Nuclear and conventional miscalculations, for example, were ever-present prospects. However, U.S. decision-makers skillfully avoided both. The United States and Soviet Union fought wars 

within the Cold War context, but never against one another directly. Instead, wars in 

Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan became proxy battlefields for one or the other to 

bloody their competitor without engendering the very high cost of direct confrontation. 

The United States is now a victim of many of the very tools that enabled its own past 

success. The U.S.-led post-Cold War order is under persistent assault from revisionist 

and rejectionist forces that are fast redefining the terms, character, and scope of consequential competition and conflict. 

Purposeful revisionist actors are manipulating and maneuvering in the information 

sphere.215 They are using political agitation and commercial activity as weapons. They 

often act through proxies. When they act directly, they innovatively employ civilian or 

law enforcement assets, intelligence, special operations, cyber, and space capabilities 

to change circumstances in their favor under the long the shadow of their more traditional military reach. They skirt redlines and sometimes cross them. However, they do 
69

so conscious that the United States has a very low tolerance for the uncertainty of risk. 

In outline, this sounds remarkably similar to the American approach to the Cold War.

Other actors exploit the unrestricted maneuver space afforded by prolific rejection of 

traditional authority in key regions of the world. They often operate in the margins or alternate between legitimate and illegitimate motives and methods. They benefit from the 

incidental confluence of often-unconnected environmental trends. Consequently, they 

do not necessarily gray individually but instead blend into an indistinguishable gray 

whole when they combine with others and their environment. 

In response to these broad trends in international security, the choices confronting 

U.S. decision-makers are imperfect at best. Faced with wicked strategic planning dilemmas and imperfect responses to them, U.S. decision-makers have recently erred on the 

side of caution. 216 This study finds that excessive caution appears at best to be a flawed 

strategic design. The past is prologue in this regard.

U.S. strategic leaders generally, and DoD leadership specifically, should take three 

cues from the United States’ gray zone past. First, identify and define the principal character of the most urgent defense-relevant threats to core U.S. interests. There are many 

threats to American interests; those emerging from the gray zone do not always appear 

defense-centric at first. However, any response to them will all have important defense 

components. 

Second, design a viable and adaptive strategic approach to confront, defeat, or manage those threats at acceptable levels of risk. Here, the DoD will be one of many important players in wider U.S. Government responses. The DoD can, however, assume that 

it will be responsible for leading, following, or underwriting all U.S. counter-gray zone 

responses. In addition, its planning culture may push it ahead of its counterparts in 

other U.S. Government agencies in taking on the gray zone challenge. 

Finally, create a corporate culture that supports mechanisms and operational tools 

that will allow for effective campaigning against gray zone challenges. This requirement 

spans responsibilities for strategy development, military planning, and operational execution. If there is one overarching lesson from past experience, it is that understanding the competitive landscape, designing adaptable courses through that terrain toward 

strategic objectives, and persistently operating with purpose in pursuit of those ends are 

essential components of success. 

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Study Outcomes

73

Policy and Strategy

Findings- 

•	 There is no common perception of the nature, character, or hazard associated with 

the gray zone or its individual threats and 

challenges.

•	 There is significant asymmetry in risk perceptions between the United States, its partners, and their principal gray zone adversaries and competitors.

•	 There is neither an animating grand strategy nor “campaign-like” charter to guide 

U.S. defense efforts against specific gray 

zone challenges. 

Recommendations-

•	 The DoD should develop a common, compelling, and adaptive strategic picture of the 

range of gray zone threats and their associated hazards.

•	 The DoD should “lead up” and develop actionable and classified strategic approaches to discrete gray zone challenges and 

challengers.

XI. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The U.S. Army War College study team arrived at a finite set of key findings and 

recommendations. These represent the team’s most salient insights on how the DoD 

might consider adapting to its newly recognized gray zone challenge set. In many cases, 

both the findings and recommendations are statements of principle. The study team 

suggests that these principles will provide senior defense leadership with touchstones 

for deeper examination over the forthcoming year.

The findings and recommendations are broken into two major categories. The first set covers national- and 

department-level policy and strategy. 

It represents the study team’s judgments on issues that guide key DoD 

decisions vis-à-vis gray zone competition and conflict at the highest levels 

of the department. The second set concerns insights on operational plans and 

military capabilities. These provide the 

study team’s best judgments on issues 

affecting the employment of U.S. military capabilities in gray zone environments and against specific gray zone 

challenges. 

This report does not attempt to 

offer a specific strategic approach to 

any of the four competitor archetypes. 

Rather, the upcoming findings and recommendations represent generalizable 

response principles that the team believes capture the nature of gray zone 

demand regardless of origin and the 

tools and boundaries associated with 

the broad waterfront of available gray 

zone responses. 

POLICY AND STRATEGY

The following findings and recommendations provide ways for the DoD and national security policymakers to formulate strategic-level direction as it applies to gray 

zone competition and conflict. These findings should guide high-level U.S. Government 

deliberations on leadership and coordination of future U.S. gray zone campaigning.
74

Finding 1: There is no common perception of the nature, character, or hazard 

associated with the gray zone or its individual threats and challenges.

To date, the DoD has adhered to assumptions and planning perspectives that do not 

fully account for the gray zone as the study team perceives it to be now and for some 

time to come. When corporate U.S. Government convention aligns poorly with reality, 

strategy development and military planning will suffer. This is currently true for the 

U.S. response to gray zone competition and conflict. Consequently, there are real gaps 

in strategic design, deliberate plans, and defense capabilities as they apply to operating and succeeding in gray zone environments. In short, the United States has ceded 

initiative and advantage to gray zone competitors and competitive forces because of a 

corporate failure to grasp the totality of the challenges at hand. 

The gray zone is not a specific defense and military challenge with well-defined parameters and boundaries. Instead, it is clear recognition of a universe of challenges lying in what amounts to conceptual dead space in strategy development and strategic 

planning. This dead space exists from the highest levels of the U.S. national security 

community to deep into the Pentagon’s strategy and planning processes. Thus, what 

specifically gray zone challenges are is less important than where they are conceptually 

in the Pentagon’s hierarchy of planning priorities. 

In reality, the gray zone and its constituent challenges exist in parallel to the DoD’s 

preferred “threatscape” and, thus, are never fully accounted for in defense strategy and 

planning. For example, three of four competitor archetypes covered in this report are 

represented in the “4 plus 1” threat construct outlined in the The National Military Strategy.

217 They made that particular 4 plus 1 list primarily because of their perceived hostility or potential hostility to U.S. interests and their assumed ability to threaten those 

interests with military action. In the study team’s view, this is a prudent but insufficient 

and overly conventional perspective on the actual hazards of Chinese, Russian, and Iranian revisionist activities. 

Further, according to the Pentagon, the “plus 1” includes VEOs like ISIL and al Qaeda.218 From the study team’s perspective, that is an excessively narrow interpretation 

of the defense and military implications of what is likely a more generalized trend toward rejectionism and its attendant threat to responsible political authority and security 

worldwide. 

From a conventional U.S. defense perspective, the aforementioned revisionists represent contingency pacers and the latter rejectionists, near-term targets for elimination. 

This study suggests the reality is quite different. Revisionist China, Russia, and Iran, for 

example, are actively operating now against U.S. interests in deliberate campaign-like 

ways. The absence of a similar campaign-like U.S. approach in response opens even 

greater operating space for them to pursue and advance their interests. As a consequence, the United States hazards suffering warlike losses in the face of on-going gray 

zone competition. 

Likewise, the recognizable manifestations of gray zone rejectionism are symptoms 

of a much broader systemic condition. In all likelihood, that condition will persistently 

spawn additional—more complex—challenges as grievance and hostile activism become increasingly net-centric. The implications of this for the DoD are significant and 
75

will not be confined to counterterrorism. To be sure, the United States will no doubt 

face a persistent terrorist challenge. However, other forms of organized violence within 

and between important states and rival populations are an obvious prospect as well. It 

would be irresponsible not to recognize, understand, and account for the widest possible number of pacing conditions that might emerge as a result. 

Finding 2: There is significant asymmetry in risk perceptions between the United 

States, its partners, and their principal gray zone adversaries and competitors. 

The study team found a broad consensus on the subject of U.S.-competitor risk perceptions.219 In brief, U.S. decision-makers are widely perceived as hypersensitive to the 

hazards associated with potential escalation and as a result are more conservative in 

response to gray zone competition and conflict. An inadequate understanding of countervailing competitor redlines generates paralysis because U.S. decision-makers automatically perceive the risk of both inaction and action to be very high. As a result, they 

have been more likely to choose not to act and thereby defer the associated risk to either 

a more politically agreeable or a strategically unambiguous time. There is an operative 

presumption in this also that the situation may resolve itself before American intervention is unavoidable. 

U.S. competitors, on the other hand, are perceived to be much more effective at calculated risk-taking. They persistently exploit U.S. risk sensitivity to probe for and seize 

opportunities. They engage in both gradualism and bold action.220 Moreover, in both 

instances, their perception of U.S. risk-aversion, often confirmed by U.S. inaction, appears to encourage them to pursue bolder and more aggressive gray zone activities. The 

results of this apparent asymmetry of risk-perception are predictable—loss of initiative, 

ceded control over interests or territory, and a position of general disadvantage in the 

face of aggressive gray zone competition.221

Recommendation: The DoD should develop a common, compelling, and adaptive 

strategic picture of the range of gray zone threats and their associated hazards. 

Because gray zone competition and conflict sit uncomfortably between traditional 

conceptions of war and peace, policymakers and military strategists need new or newly 

calibrated lenses to assess demand, design strategy, and ultimately implement meaningful actions in response. The process of doing so will require challenging the very 

conventions that guided defense and national security professionals for decades. 

As a start, rational strategic approaches to the broad front of gray zone challenges 

require a common, compelling, and adaptive operating picture.222 This new perspective 

should adequately assess the current gray zone landscape, the likeliest future trajectory 

of its constituent threats, and the prospects for sharp deviations from current trends that 

might trigger a fundamental defense reorientation. This perspective cannot be insular 

and must account for the widest possible view points from the U.S. intelligence community and wider interagency, allies, and partners, etc.

The Cold War provides a helpful but binary example in this regard. While there 

were frequent disagreements among the study team about specific methods, there was 
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clear understanding of the nature of the challenge and the general strategic approach 

to confront it. It is reasonable to conclude that this was a result of a commitment on the 

part of the U.S. national security community and the DoD to maintain a deep and adaptive understanding of Soviet strengths and vulnerabilities. Today, the same is required 

against a much more complex and transformational set of challenges.

This report’s archetypal revisionist and rejectionist actors live, exploit, and succeed 

in both the dead space between artificial extremes of war and peace, as well as the extant 

gaps in U.S./partner defense and military planning, concepts, and authorities. These 

gaps are now significant enough that the United States has opened itself up to substantial strategic-level risk. 

Thus, it is extremely important that the U.S. Government and the DoD specifically acknowledge and persistently assess the implications of the new assumptions introduced 

in Section IV. Revisionist state actors are currently involved in deliberate counter-U.S. 

campaigns. The archetypes outlined in this report are illustrative in this regard. Their 

methods skirt and sometimes violate perceived U.S. redlines by skillfully avoiding overt 

provocation and manipulating risk perceptions to create cognitive asymmetries. 

These revisionists often advantage themselves in the muddy water between traditional views of war and peace to obscure their designs, methods, and intentions. Further, they modulate innovative combinations of influence, intimidation, coercion, and 

aggression to exploit the prevailing interests and risk-tolerance of their opponents. They 

do all of this both according to sophisticated designs, as well as through opportunism 

and hostile improvisation. 

Likewise, nonstate rejectionists operating in the ungoverned and inhospitable terrain 

of networked hostility and failing authority are increasingly at odds with important but 

often vulnerable pillars of the U.S.-led status quo. They are mostly untethered from the 

traditional state system and draw strength from the corrosive effect of hyper-connectivity on traditional political authority and its mobilizing potential as a platform for physical and virtual resistance. They are gray in large measure because of how they coalesce 

in time and space to present U.S. decision-makers with complex security challenges. In 

addition, they ultimately present major warlike hazards and costs in the absence of a 

single unifying adversary or adversarial purpose. 

The contemporary environment may be a more challenging puzzle than was the 

decidedly realist standoff during the Cold War. However, profound difficulty cannot 

be an excuse for abdicating responsibility or ignoring requirements. The United States’ 

strategic approach to a multi-polar, hyper-connected environment—flush with strategically consequential actors and forces—has proven to be exceedingly vulnerable. New 

approaches to that environment are in order but cannot proceed from insufficient understanding.

Finding 3: There is neither an animating grand strategy nor “campaign-like” charter 

to guide U.S. defense efforts against specific gray zone challenges.

There is no grand strategy or operating charter for U.S. counter-gray zone activity. 

Purposeful gray zone actors are persistently operating according to specific intent and 

design against U.S. interests. Further, the contextual confluence of forces in disordered 
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gray zone environments also exact costs in ways that are consistent with a powerful and 

purposeful design. In both cases, U.S. responses are overly reactive. 

The United States responds to each new provocation or incident as if it were either 

the first or the last, whereas persistent resistance is in fact an endemic quality of all gray 

zone challenges regardless of origin.223 Additionally, and consistent with Findings 1 and 

2, most meaningful counter-gray zone activities occur late if at all in part because of the 

absence of a thoughtful strategic-level charter.224

The United States is reactive by virtue of both recent tradition and dogged adherence to its baseline post-Cold War assumptions. In this instance, the operative tradition 

is that of open and transparent national security doctrines. Meanwhile, the operative 

assumption at issue is specifically concerning U.S. competitors adopting, fighting, and 

losing according to American rules. Hanging onto both has placed significant limitations on U.S. readiness for gray zone competition and conflict. The first, however, has 

been a particularly unhelpful obstacle to chartering a meaningful counter-gray zone 

strategy. The challenge starts with the provisions of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act. 

Goldwater-Nichols requires the President to routinely develop and publish a National 

Security Strategy (NSS).225 Over time and especially in the post-Cold War era, the NSS 

and documents like it were increasingly divorced from meaningful strategic planning as 

they became more public. Now, these documents are largely equal parts boastful recordings of administration accomplishments and aspirational statements of U.S. principle. 

They are certainly not deliberate and thoughtful articulations of strategy. They do not, 

for example, set tangible priorities; balance the tension between ends, ways, and means; 

or assess risk in a meaningful way.

In the Reagan-era and earlier, NSSs were generally classified and contained specific 

strategic objectives, concepts, and priority efforts for achieving those objectives.226 However, since Goldwater-Nichols, successive administrations produced unclassified strategies. Further, most definitive statements of defense and military policy and strategy 

(e.g., National Military and Defense Strategies and Quadrennial Defense Reviews) are produced for public consumption as well. 

Much of this trend is attributable to the fall of the Soviet Union. Suddenly alone as 

the world’s only superpower, the United States enjoyed an immense freedom of action. 

The single-minded and narrowly focused Cold War strategy was now obsolete and a 

new era of strategic ambiguity ensued. There was ambiguity about interests, objectives, 

and threats. To be sure, there were a number of compelling threats on the defense agenda after 1991 (e.g., Iraq, North Korea, Iran, etc.) but they were naturally considered less 

dangerous than the Soviet Union. 

Benefiting from overwhelming military advantage, the United States could live with 

this ambiguity for a time. Indeed, senior U.S. policymakers likely still prefer some ambiguity as it preserves freedom of action and leaves open the widest possible range of 

options. In the face of real threats, however, too much ambiguity can be detrimental to 

effective strategy development. The more ambiguous or amorphous the objectives, the 

harder it is to settle on the most appropriate strategy to secure them. 

In light of the environment’s complexity, the increasing polarity of U.S. domestic 

politics, and the uncertainty of U.S./partner political will, U.S. decision-makers will 

likely continue to value the flexibility offered by public, aspirational, and decidedly 
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ambiguous policy statements. However, the types of hazards presented by the gray zone 

challenges articulated herein may be changing some of that calculus. 

The environment remains abundantly ambiguous in many important respects. What 

is no longer ambiguous, however, are the increasingly grave threats emerging from 

multiple sources of competition and conflict. Some national-level remediation is likely 

at hand.

Recommendation: The DoD should “lead up” and develop actionable and classified 

strategic approaches to discrete gray zone challenges and challengers. 

Global leadership is no longer an assumed U.S. entitlement. If the United States does 

not reassert its leadership—especially against purposeful gray zone competitors—it 

hazards loss of control over the security of core interests and increasing constraints on 

its global freedom of action. Therefore, it is incumbent on senior U.S. leaders to deliberately plan in a campaign-like fashion to compete for primacy and defend core interests 

in the space where U.S. dominance is most at risk. 

A coherent whole-of-government concept for combatting gray zone challenges would 

be ideal. However, it is likely not forthcoming. Thus, the DoD should not wait for definitive national-level guidance on countering gray zone competition before thoughtfully 

considering its own options. 

Of course, it cannot act alone. However, with presidential approval, it can leverage 

its substantial strategy development and strategic planning capacity to design coherent 

and proactive strategic responses to revisionist gray zone competitors. Further, anticipating an increase in demands emerging from disintegrating authority, it would benefit 

from the same level of deliberation as it relates to countering rejectionist forces as well. 

In the process, the DoD should also anticipate that discrimination and ruthless prioritization will become core operating principles across the U.S. Government as resources 

hold steady or become more constrained over time. Unfortunately, this will coincide 

with an expansion of strategic-level hazards and attendant defense requirements. Much 

of this expansion will occur in the gray zone. Thus, at a minimum, the DoD should endeavor to anticipate the tempo, demands, resources, and risks associated with the most 

dangerous and disruptive manifestations of persistent gray zone competition. 

Gray zone competition and conflict involve a diverse array of distinctive challenges. 

Thus, any new defense strategic guidance addressing them cannot be one size fits all. 

The DoD should not aspire to one plan or concept for the gray zone as a whole but, 

instead, a playbook of plans and concepts tailored to the specific conditions that are 

unique to each prospective threat. Those plans should be readily adaptable to changing 

strategic conditions. 

There are a handful of important characteristics for virtually any defense-based 

approach to gray zone threats. These include adaptable deterrence, U.S. presence and 

posture, mission-tailored U.S. forces, routine and targeted demonstrations of U.S. capability and will, enhanced partner resilience, cooperative security relationships, and 

U.S./partner inter-operability. Where U.S. interests are most acutely threatened, DoD 

strategy should focus on methods conducive to deterrence by denial, leading adversaries to conclude that no prospective concept of operation—no matter how irregular or 
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innovative—will succeed in the face of U.S.-supported opposition. Toward that end and 

in advance of adversary provocation, the United States should enhance partner selfreliance as a first line buffer against adversary opportunism. 

Virtually all U.S. responses to gray zone threats will rely on assured regional access. 

Toward this end, U.S. force posture should underwrite cold-start military operations 

from within theater, as well as the contingency expansion of U.S. presence in extremis. 

Loss of access that isolates partners or allies is an unacceptable outcome. Further, as U.S. 

forces are globally employable assets, all posture must support both regional and extraregional requirements, including key support contracts and en route infrastructure.

In the end, DoD decision-makers should recognize that asserting U.S. leadership in 

the face of persistent gray zone competition will not occur in a risk-free vacuum. Adversaries will resist and escalation will remain a persistent danger. As the DoD proceeds, 

all of its proposed strategic designs should cover the latent hazards of horizontal and 

vertical escalation. As it works through and arrives at insights on its gray zone challenge 

set, it must also factor its major findings back into the department’s existing strategiclevel guidance.

Development of classified defense-specific charters against gray zone threats will 

inevitably identify non-military concept and capability gaps. This may motivate broader 

U.S. Government involvement. At a minimum, however, it will identify key vulnerabilities that require high-level U.S. Government risk mitigation. In the end, success cannot 

rely on defense contributions alone. However, the DoD should be prepared to lead the 

national security community to that conclusion through detailed planning. Visionary 

planning symposiums like Eisenhower’s Solarium Project are one route toward designing innovative new strategies to confront the most dangerous and disruptive gray zone 

threats while bringing essential non-military talent into the process.227

OPERATIONAL PLANS AND MILITARY CAPABILITIES

The following recommendations highlight some ways for the U.S. military to transform concepts, capabilities, and operations to compete better in gray zone environments. 

While not the focus of this report, U.S. interagency processes may need similar enhancements to become a more viable supported and supporting arm in counter-gray zone 

campaigns.

Finding 4: CCDR’s presumptive future gray zone responsibilities do not align with 

their current authorities.

The geographic combatant command (GCC) CCDRs are accountable for the conditions they can touch in their area of responsibility (AOR). As such, they are on the leading edge of prospective U.S. defense responses to purposeful and contextual gray zone 

competition and conflict. This study concludes that gray zone competitors are in fact 

deliberately campaigning against the United States in and from the various combatant 

command (CCMD) AORs. Where threats are gray by implication, the environment is 

exacting campaign-like effects and threatening U.S. interests in and from those AORs 

as well. 
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Operational Plans and Military Capabilities

Findings-

•	 CCDR’s presumptive future gray zone responsibilities do not align with their current authorities.

•	 The current U.S./NATO joint phasing 

model is inadequate to seize and maintain 

initiative in the gray zone.

•	 U.S. concepts for the design and operational employment of force and forces is 

not well-adapted to persistent gray zone 

competition and conflict

Recommendations-

•	 Empower CCDRs to “operate” against active gray zone competition and conflict 

with new capabilities and agile, adaptive 

models for campaigning.

•	 Develop and employ new and adaptable 

concepts, capabilities, and organizational 

solutions to confront U.S. gray zone challenges. 

This study also concludes that the 

United States is not coherently “campaigning back” in response. Additionally, high-level operational micromanagement is possibly creating late, 

excessively constrained, and ineffective gray zone responses. 228 Competitors, adversaries, and competitive forces are operating against U.S. interests 

now. Effectively securing them will demand that the United States “operate” 

against them as well. A first step in this 

direction is affording greater latitude 

to the CCDRs/GCCs.

The Unified Command Plan outlines CCDR authorities.229 On the surface, it appears that CCDRs have the 

requisite authority to operate effectively in the gray zone. The reality is quite 

different. 

High-level U.S. Government discomfort with deliberate operations in 

the gray zone are byproducts of both 

insufficient senior-level appreciation 

of the nature of gray zone challenges, 

as well as the asymmetry of risk perceptions outlined previously. This 

study concludes that conservative risk tolerance results in excessive caution. It further 

concludes that risk aversion and excessive caution are the fruit of inadequate strategic 

assessments, insufficient strategic planning, and limited meaningful strategic guidance. 

All of these combined are the products of the artificial peace-war dichotomy operative 

within the defense enterprise. Together, these ultimately constrain CCMD freedom of 

action. 

In much of the gray zone, momentum matters. Thus, CCMDs need greater flexibility to adapt to their theater strategic conditions and act to gain and maintain the initiative within their AORs. The team concluded that the CCDRs’ limited ability to act 

with due speed and purpose to respond to compelling gray zone threats and shape regional outcomes proactively against them was endemic to the current decision-making 

environment.230
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Finding 5: The current U.S./NATO joint phasing model is inadequate to seize and 

maintain the initiative in the gray zone. 

Purposeful gray zone revisionist actors are successfully campaigning and achieving 

warlike objectives inside the steady state or deterrence phases of the U.S./NATO joint 

phasing model. These actors define success as operating and gaining physical and political advantage with actions falling just under thresholds that might trigger effective U.S. 

and partner responses. Their approach to competition and conflict allow them to make 

substantial gains at surprisingly low strategic cost. Likewise, there are transformational 

forces afoot in the environment that are breeding complex organic rejectionist threats to 

political authority and security. Often these too run counter to core U.S. interests. 

The traditional conceptions of peace and war have muddied the waters when it comes 

to recognizing emergent threats like these and neatly aligning them with doctrinal joint 

planning constructs. None of them, for example, conform to prevailing U.S. defense convention. Embedded in each is the prospect of warlike adversary success in the absence 

of what that same convention describes as war, as well as open hostilities arriving via 

cold-start and absent traditional indications, warnings, or military preparations. The 

latter circumstances might as easily arrive via miscalculation as they could from some 

deliberate choice on the part of one or the other of the opposing sides. 

The U.S./NATO joint phasing model was designed to confront state militaries employing strictly conventional methods. In each of its manifestations, the study team 

found contemporary gray zone challenges to be anything but that. There is no beginning 

and end as suggested by the joint phasing construct. Further, purposeful adversaries are 

likely “dominating” while the United States and its partners are still “shaping.”231

Instead, the gray zone represents a persistent band of resistance to the U.S.-led status 

quo by specific opponents or opposing environmental forces. Action within that band 

fluctuates above and below a mean point of constant hostility. The band’s upper limit 

is open unambiguous conflict and the lower limit benign competition. Thus, it is reasonable that U.S. military forces operating within it must be prepared to adapt to and 

campaign against the unique demands associated with fluctuations above and below the 

mean. 

The operative U.S. approach to joint campaigning is not consistent with this reality. 

The consequences are predictable—slow, disjointed, cautious, often episodic, and largely ineffective reactions versus deliberate, assertive, initiative-gaining campaigns. However, the Joint Staff has correctly identified this as a problem and is currently assessing 

existing doctrine—including the campaign plan-phasing construct—with the intent of 

updating it to better reflect current reality.232 The extent to which they are able to break 

through DoD preferences and achieve real innovation are open questions. 

Recommendation: Empower CCDRs to “operate” against active gray zone 

competition and conflict with new capabilities and agile and adaptive models for 

campaigning.

To effectively buffer at-risk U.S. interests against the unique hazards presented by 

gray zone threats, CCDRs should possess the requisite responsibility, authority, and 

tools essential to achieve favorable outcomes that are in their purview. This includes 
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gaining and maintaining regional initiative against purposeful gray zone competitors, 

shaping regional security dynamics to limit those competitors’ freedom of action, and 

containing those hazards that prove less immediately controllable. 233

While remaining accountable to senior U.S. decision-makers, CCDRs therefore need 

greater freedom of action in contending with the gray zone challenges in their AORs. 

This would benefit first from the top-level gray zone playbooks suggested previously. 

After all, shared understanding of challenge and response is the natural byproduct of 

detailed strategic planning. To the extent the DoD thinks through and designs unique 

response options to the various gray zone archetypes, it will be closer to narrowing 

the yawning initiative gap that currently separates the United States and its gray zone 

competitors. Ultimately, a pre-approved menu of response options for CCDRs would 

be ideal. 

Currently, the CCDRs’ Theater Campaign Plans describe their vision for achieving 

missions assigned in the Unified Command Plan.234 CCMD Theater Security Cooperation Plans outline supporting military-to-military engagements and exercises.235 Finally, 

CCMD contingency plans allocate regional military responsibilities in the event of open 

crisis or conflict.236 None of these plans address the kind of gray zone campaigning described herein. There are components to all of these in a coherent and focused countergray zone design. Further, as suggested earlier, transition between the activities chartered by each of these might be much more fluid than current systems anticipate. 

This study finds the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning (JCIC) to be a meaningful first step toward a more nimble concept of counter-gray zone operational planning.237 The current approach to campaigning when combined with insufficient understanding of the character of gray zone challenges, significant high-level risk-sensitivity, 

and extant CCMD constraints (e.g., authorities, resources, etc.) limit both national-level 

and CCMD freedom of action in the gray zone. Fortunately, the JCIC adjusts the DoD’s 

current binary peace-war approach to a more fluid model, allowing for more effective 

responses to the variance associated with gray zone competition and conflict. 

Specific threat-focused gray zone plans of action—coordinated and, to the extent possible, integrated with the interagency—would provide civilian decision-makers a higher 

degree of clarity on proposed joint force actions and contingency reactions to competitor 

moves or changes in the environment. They could also create more CCDR decision and 

operating space to the extent that they include predetermined and approved CCMD 

actions vis-à-vis specific gray zone activities. In the case of the latter, the Secretary of 

Defense and President would have to accept a higher degree of risk. It would, however, 

be known risk with the upside being retention of the initiative and greater control over 

strategic outcomes. 

This is certainly tricky business for CCMDs. However, persistent competition in this 

gray zone band of resistance demands reasonable increases in CCMD latitude. 

Enhanced GCC freedom of action is likeliest to emerge from well-coordinated, 

risk-informed military plans inextricably linked to a widely socialized set of specific 

U.S. objectives. That cannot occur without persistent civil-military interaction and 

coordination. 

Use of the concept of “global synchronizer” would also allow either the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or more commonly CCDRs, greater freedom to call on 
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and target non-military instruments in response to gray zone challenges.238 Developing a strategy or plan to counter or succeed against a specific trans-regional gray zone 

challenges (like all of those outlined in the archetypes) would benefit from assigning a 

GCC as the global synchronizer and providing them with increased authorities to call on 

military and non-military assets outside their direct control. 

In short, if the United States chooses to begin operating with military forces against 

gray zone threats, it will require greater authority for commanders to act at the operational and theater strategic levels of decision and action. Moreover, it will need new 

mechanisms that expedite the process of evaluating options and approving military operations that do not fall neatly on one or the other side of the peace-war divide. Finally, it 

will also require high-level interagency agility to assist CCMDs to reinforce and exploit 

success, mitigate risk, and contend effectively with strategic surprise and shock. 

In the end, military leaders ultimately need to be able to act with greater speed and 

purpose and their civilian leadership needs more confidence in their ability to do so 

without unnecessarily increasing risk. There will certainly be some increased risk of action; however, to the extent that increased CCMD activity against gray zone challenges 

is the product of a strategic design benefiting from extensive advanced civil-military deliberation, the risk incurred will be well-understood and accounted for well in advance.

Finding 6: U.S. concepts for the design and operational employment of force and 

forces are not well-adapted to persistent gray zone competition and conflict.

DoD leaders and service chiefs have a responsibility to provide ready forces in the 

shape and size required by CCMDs. CCMDs want agile forces that can respond to challenges across the spectrum of military conflict but are also persistently ready to prevail 

against purposeful high-end military adversaries. As resources dwindle, the DoD is 

challenged to set priorities, build and specify missions for forces, and conduct deliberate operations against any demands other than high-end warfighting and classical 

counterterrorism. Suggesting otherwise to the Pentagon is tantamount to advocating for 

unacceptably high strategic risk.

Senior defense leaders and strategists have discovered safe harbor in the comfort of 

planning for a rising China, a resurgent Russia, a complex Iran, and the most obvious 

terrorist elements spinning off Middle Eastern devolution. The first three present prospective military challenges that, under ideal circumstances, conform well to prevailing U.S. defense convention. The latter also falls neatly into the Pentagon’s post-9/11 

worldview. 

Unfortunately, none of the challenges outlined in this report are operating against 

the United States and its interests inside the self-limiting confines of that same Pentagon 

convention. The most consequential opponents and opposing environmental forces are 

threading military and non-military hybrid approaches and effects together well inside 

the United States’ decision-making cycle, crowding out meaningful U.S. responses that 

appear always to be a day late and dollar short. The United States has yet to “operate” 

against gray zone challenges with purpose, intent, and resolve. Until it does, it cedes a 

great deal of ground to capable gray zone actors and important gray zone forces. 
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Recommendation: Develop and employ new and adaptable concepts, capabilities, 

and organizational solutions to confront U.S. gray zone challenges. 

There will be a persistent demand for a variety of operational capabilities and concepts to demonstrate resolve, gain momentum, and create dilemmas for U.S. gray zone 

adversaries. At the operational level, this study suggests consideration of a handful of 

actions to improve U.S. military performance in this regard. These recommendations 

span operational domains, military functions, and service components. Naturally, as 

this study originally received its charter from within the U.S. Army, there are several 

specific recommendations on U.S. conventional and special operations ground forces. 

The DoD could implement all of the aforementioned recommendations, and the United States might still find itself without the tools required to effectively contest gray zone 

actors. Therefore, in general, this study finds that joint conventional, special operations, 

and functional (e.g., intelligence, cyber, space, etc.) capabilities and enablers will need to 

provide greater persistent gray zone utility to policymakers and military leaders. In the 

end, CCDRs need credible capabilities (e.g., land, sea, air, space, and cyber), a variety of 

innovative posture and employment options, recurring purpose-driven exercises, and 

substantial coordinated interagency support to undertake meaningful proactive gray 

zone campaigns.

Specific changes in the structure, composition, or equipping of the joint force go beyond the scope of this report. However, in almost every case, the types of forces necessary to prevail in gray zone environments are already in abundant supply. Innovative 

organization, better or different preparation, more authorities, new employment concepts, and increased networking and autonomy will make all joint forces better instruments for effective gray zone competition.

GROUND AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES (SOF)

U.S. ground forces are the linchpins in the DoD’s gray zone response. Operations 

and operational effects on and from land or projected ashore onto land from the sea 

provide a persistent demonstration of U.S. commitment. All U.S. ground forces can 

tangibly contribute to contesting gray zone competition with forward-deployed forces 

and surge expeditionary capability. In some cases, this may require structural adaptation. However, in most cases, ground force contributions will be most effective when all 

forces—Army, Marine, and Special Operations—are more comfortable and demonstrate 

the capability to aggregate, disaggregate, and re-aggregate into the most appropriate 

and creative mission-tailored force packages. 

The Army may consider experimenting with less fixed force structure solutions. For 

example, modular brigade combat teams (BCTs) may not be modular enough for the 

gray zone. Two common characteristics of gray zone challenges imply new organizational approaches. For example, if all gray zone challenges are hybrids that by definition 

menace defense and military convention, they may require equally disruptive hybrid 

organizational solutions to compete with them. 
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The gray zone may require much different and sometimes much smaller modular 

combinations of unique military capabilities. These organizations may have to be more 

autonomous, self-sustaining, agile, and multi-functional than current structures imply. 

They should be mission-tailored, purpose-built, and certified on a cyclical basis during 

each successive readiness cycle. 

The U.S. Marine Corps provides one useful model of an agile force structure—the 

Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF). Often constrained by strategic lift, the Marine 

Corps employs adaptable, mission-tailored force packages with inherent ground, air, 

and logistical capability to meet GCC requirements. The exact composition and size of 

individual units are tailorable, based on mission demands and environmental considerations. 

This study found that Army forces would be essential future gray zone contenders. 

However, they will need greater flexibility in organizational approaches to do so. Put 

directly into the context of this report, one can see how each gray zone archetype may 

demand employment of units with very different combinations of combat, combat support, and combat service support capabilities. Thus, all U.S. ground forces—but Army 

forces in particular—should ruthlessly pursue new levels of modularity, autonomy, and 

self-sufficiency at increasingly lower echelons to make them effective tools for precision 

competition in gray zone environments. 

This will require ground force leaders to commit to different and sometimes smaller 

formations that are more flexible and adaptive. These formations need the ability to 

rapidly reconfigure and operate—accepting, integrating, and employing functionally 

distinct capabilities without sacrificing readiness or warfighting capability. Finally, as a 

principle, ground force leaders should be prepared to lead joint deployable headquarters from brigade to corps level that seamlessly integrate multi-component, combined, 

and interagency capabilities to achieve a unique menu of contingency-specific missions.

SOF too will remain important fixtures in U.S. military gray zone responses. Uniquely postured for small footprint, autonomous, and distributed operations in austere 

environments, SOF are critical force multipliers under virtually all gray zone conditions. These very characteristics have contributed to SOF being the force of choice under 

myriad contingency circumstances.

However, SOF are not panaceas for all strategic problems. Their finite numbers imply new levels of cooperation and integration with general-purpose ground capabilities 

in order to maximize their impact. Most SOF-type missions require significant general 

purpose force (GPF) assistance. Further, every operation involving the employment of 

significant numbers of ground-based GPF involve varying degrees of SOF involvement. 

This study suggests that SOF will always feature prominently in U.S. gray zone responses. However, those responses will not succeed without new-levels of SOF-GPF 

integration and cooperation, consistent with the concept of modularity discussed earlier. This study argues that GPF will need to become accustomed to conducting SOFlike missions—at times under SOF command and control. Likewise, SOF too will need 

increasingly to adapt to routinely operating in direct support and under the command 

and control of GPF formations and commanders.

A third area of ground force gray zone emphasis is power projection and entry. As 

a general principle, with increasing numbers of U.S. ground forces stationed in and 
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around the continental United States (CONUS), power projection and entry will be critical for credible counter gray zone concepts of operation. 

Developing and refining capable joint land forces with inherent early and forcible 

entry capabilities that allow for rapid, distributed deployment, and employment under 

a variety of circumstances, afford great flexibility to U.S. commanders attempting to design coherent counter-gray campaigns. Uncertainty calls for a greater degree of flexibility than what currently exists. The joint force has begun developing or already possesses 

crisis response capabilities in the form of Marine Expeditionary Units, Special Purpose 

MAGTFs, and the U.S. Army’s Global Response Force. Building on the modularity discussion, these are necessary but not sufficient for potential future demand. 

Joint ground force commanders—but especially the U.S. Army—will benefit from a 

thorough reimagining of the potential of expeditionary forces and operations. As it applies to the gray zone, U.S. ground forces need the capability to deploy in large numbers 

to perform a wide range of missions: enable and support allies, partners, and sister U.S. 

joint forces; build foreign partner capacity; counter adversary unconventional warfare 

(UW) campaigns; and perform more traditional offensive and defensive operations (often against hybrid opponents). This requires examining and developing capabilities to 

defeat A2AD and rapidly delivering ground capabilities on short notice and limited 

advanced planning. 

This study found UW to be a final area of unique ground force vulnerability for the 

United States and its partners as they assess and contend with gray zone challenges. As 

currently defined by American Joint military doctrine, UW is the collection of activities that enable the overthrow of a government through proxy actors in overtly denied 

areas.239 U.S. UW vulnerability emerges in both an offensive and defense context. Offensively, UW provides U.S. decision-makers with a baseline capability for covert degradation of an adversary’s control over contested territory. Defensively, Russian and Iranian 

UW efforts are currently presenting U.S./partners thorny challenges in Europe and the 

Middle East. In both instances, U.S. forces are increasingly unfamiliar with the associated ground force demands that might result.

For example, SOF UW competency has atrophied with the substantial counterinsurgency and counterterrorism demands of the last decade and a half. For their part, GPF 

have never been required to understand UW as a concept. Improvement is essential on 

both counts. 

A sharper offensive UW instrument will be an important tool for pressuring active 

gray zone revisionist powers who themselves employ UW to aggressively undermine 

U.S. partners. Likewise, deep understanding of UW on the part of GPF forces will enable them to engage in defensive UW activities to generate greater resilience among 

the same at risk partners.240 Finally, a more robust ground force UW capability that can 

understand, prosecute, and defend against it, employing the widest set of military and 

non-military tools, may require a new military competency in “political warfare.”241 This 

specific focus would enable both conventional and SOF to grasp the underpinnings and 

requirements necessary for prosecuting offensive and defensive UW activities against 

sophisticated gray zone actors. 
87

AIR AND MARITIME CAPABILITIES

To make air and naval forces more capable of responding to gray zone threats, DoD 

leaders would be well advised to: improve U.S. overseas basing options, develop more 

distributed logistics support, become more joint integrated and self-sustaining, and create a more persistent and capable regional presence. The latter—persistence and presence—does not mean predictable, permanent, or fixed. 

Indeed, it is the opposite. All future counter gray zone actions—especially those focused on sophisticated, high-end revisionist threats—should focus on deliberate dislocation of adversary and competitor concepts of operation or courses of action. U.S. 

and partner forces should present adversaries with a constantly changing operational 

picture against which to pace their forces and plan campaigns. This will allow U.S. and 

partner forces to regain the initiative, while forcing competitors to revisit assumptions, 

plans, and risk calculations. Doing so ultimately contributes to slowing adversary decision-making and perhaps even lowering risks of escalation or miscalculation.

There is a host of material capabilities that will improve air and naval contributions 

to counter gray zone activity. They are largely beyond the scope of this report. However, 

the study team does believe in general that any concepts or capabilities that complicate 

adversary decision-making and hold at persistent risk high-value competitor assets will 

inevitably improve the U.S. position. 

CYBER

National-level leadership and CCMDs need to have the ability to influence the cyber 

domain in the face of gray zone actors committed to exploiting it. This is especially true 

from an A2AD perspective. The United States needs to retain freedom of maneuver in 

cyberspace. It must be able to secure U.S. cyber activity while also limiting hostile exploitation of the cyber domain. 

The study team believes recent initiatives have the DoD moving in the right direction. 

These include the recent recommendation by the Goldwater-Nichols Working Group to 

elevate U.S. Cyber Command to a unified CCMD with Title 10/Section 164 authorities. 

This includes force provision, advocacy for cyber capabilities, and theater security cooperation.242 Additional authorities and doctrine, organizational adaptation, training, and 

leader development/education changes should emerge as the threat landscape becomes 

clearer. Any implemented changes should allow for increased U.S. military agility and 

tempo in the information environment. 

Of particular note in the gray zone is pursuit of “jus extra bellum”—“states’ rights 

outside of war”—at the CCMD level. Jus extra bellum is a newly proposed legal paradigm.243 Its adoption may allow for greater U.S. flexibility in operating in the cyber domain against gray zone actors. Patterned after just war theory’s jus ad bellum and jus in 

bello, as well as the League of Nation’s Lotus principle, jus extra bellum may provide a 

construct for quantifying legal gray zone activity that is essential to the 21st-century 

defense of U.S. interests.244 CCDRs should consider building in jus extra bellum authorities into their planning now, based on legal precedence set vis-à-vis cyberspace activities 

over the past decade. 
88

PRECISION EXERCISING AND POWER PROJECTION

The joint force needs to operationalize exercises to support U.S. efforts in the gray 

zone. All exercises need to support a deliberate U.S./partner commitment to operate 

with purpose against specific gray zone threats. U.S. planners need to place greater emphasis on exercises as tools for affecting competitor decision-making. To date and as 

discussed earlier in the report, current U.S. counter-moves in the gray zone appear to 

be reactive, episodic, and ineffective (e.g., USS Lassen, USAF B-52 in SCS, and U.S. Navy 

Patrol Craft in the Straits of Hormuz).245 This is in large measure attributable to the 

asymmetry in U.S.-competitor risk perceptions referenced earlier.246

However, U.S. forces do have a history of conducting adversary-focused exercises 

in close proximity to them (e.g., Return of Forces to Germany [REFORGER]). As was 

true in the past, routine and recurring military operations today can demonstrate U.S. 

resolve in the face of gray zone competitors and competitive forces.247 Further, they can 

effectively orient U.S. forces to and prepare them for employment in potential theaters 

of active military conflict. They can also increase regional partner interoperability and 

capability. 

The reality is that flat or decreasing defense resources and expanding challenges 

imply new levels of precision in prioritizing and targeting the effects of joint exercises 

around the world. If exercises and their effects are recast as operations within a deliberate counter-gray zone campaign, it will become easier for senior defense leaders to 

calibrate their purpose and message. 
89

XII. CONCLUSION—ADAPTATION AND ACTIVISM

As it relates to contemporary gray zone challenges, the United States and its defense enterprise are victims of their own success. The persistent military advantage that 

largely secured U.S. global position against all consequential competition since the end 

of the Cold War is no longer as secure or relevant as it was over the previous 2 decades. 

U.S. interests and global position are materially suffering as a consequence. Without a 

more activist and adaptive approach to gray zone challenges, the United States hazards 

forfeiture of important interests.

The templates according to which American defense strategists pegged active maintenance of U.S. military dominance since 1991 are fast succumbing to the vagaries of a 

turbulent and transformational strategic environment. That environment persistently 

favors those who are less beholden to convention. In light of that, an increasingly conservative American superpower finds itself routinely outmaneuvered by those willing 

to exploit this trend. 

Indeed, purposeful U.S. competitors pursuing meaningful revision of the extant, 

American-led international order are employing a host of hybrid methods to advance 

and secure interests that are, in many cases, contrary to those of the United States. They 

employ unique combinations of influence, intimidation, coercion, and aggression to incrementally crowd out effective resistance, establish local or regional advantage, and 

manipulate risk perceptions in their favor. So far, the United States has not come up with 

a coherent countervailing approach. 

As this is occurring, the exercise of responsible or effective political authority by all 

states is increasingly eroding. Rejectionist forces and actors exploit, free-ride on, or are 

propelled by this trend to resist any status quo regardless of who leads it. This creates 

yet another wicked hybrid security challenge where different combinations of forces 

coalesce by chance and spin off violent threats to the United States and its partners. 

To date, U.S. strategists fixate on this trend’s indicators—e.g., individual terrorist or 

insurgent groups—without recognizing the more important and strategic underlying 

condition.

It is important that U.S. defense strategist dispense with an outdated set of strategic 

assumptions about the United States, its global position, and the rules that govern the 

exercise of contemporary great power. In reality, the U.S. defense enterprise should rely 

on three new core assumptions. First, the United States and the U.S.-led status quo will 

encounter persistent, unmitigated resistance. Second, resistance will take the form of 

gray zone competition and conflict; as a consequence, the gray zone should pace defense strategy, concepts, and capabilities. Finally, the gray zone will confound U.S. defense strategists and institutions until it is normalized and more fully accounted for by 

the DoD.

Normalizing and accounting for the DoD’s burgeoning gray zone challenge relies on 

it socializing two important concepts—adaptation and activism. The defense enterprise 

needs to adapt how it sees its gray zone challenges; how it charters strategic action 

against them; and how it designs, prioritizes, and undertakes that strategic action. All 

of these require a robust and activist response. Until now, however, the United States 

has favored more conservative than progressive approaches to gray zone provocations.
90

In short, the forces of revision and rejection are operating effectively by both design 

and chance against U.S. interests. Currently, the U.S. defense enterprise is not well positioned conceptually to counter it. U.S. risk in this regard cuts two ways. Action brings 

with it prospects of escalation and deeper engagement. Similarly, inaction harbors the 

potential for gradual but nonetheless disastrous loss. There are upsides to both as well. 

The former benefits from retention of initiative and the latter from husbanding resources 

and latitude. This report suggests initiative wins. 

Activist U.S. defense responses to gray zone challenges will not be without cost or 

complication. Thus, prudence and pragmatism should guide future risk-based choices. 

However, Theodore Roosevelt’s counsel—cited earlier in this report—is indispensable 

here: “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next 

best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” 
91

Appendices and Endnotes

93

APPENDIX I - WORKING GROUP PARTICIPANTS

The following experts participated in one or both expert working groups. The 

study team is grateful for their participation. Their working group contributions do not 

indicate endorsement of the final report or its findings.

Office of the Chief of Staff

Lieutenant Colonel Adam Ake, U.S. Army

Marine Corps Combat Development Command 

Colonel James Brennan, U.S. Marine Corps

Harvard University 

Captain John Chambers, U.S. Army

Navy Staff, N-513 

Captain Robert Hein, U.S. Navy

RAND 

Dr. David Johnson, Ph.D.

Army Capabilities Integration Center 

Colonel Scott Kendrick

American Enterprise Institute 

Mr. Phillip Lohaus

Marine Corps Combat Development Command 

Mr. Mike Raimondo

Office of the Secretary of Defense

Mr. Russell Rumbaugh

University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Phil Williams, Ph.D.

Headquarters, North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization’s Supreme Allied Commander—

Transformation (HQ NATO-SACT) 

Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Bazin, U.S. Army

Office of the Chief of Staff 

Colonel Susan Bryant, U.S. Army

Office of the Chief of Staff

Major Arnel David, U.S. Army

U.S. Army War College (USAWC)

Dr. Andrew Hill, Ph.D.

USAWC

Dr. Paul Kan, Ph.D.

RAND 

Mr. Burgess Laird

RAND 

Dr. Michael Mazarr, Ph.D.

Marine Corps Combat Development Command 

Mr. Cole Reyes

U.S. Department of the Navy

Dr. Maura Sullivan, Ph.D.

Joint Staff, J-7 Future Force Development

Mr. Mike Winstead

95

APPENDIX II - ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

PROJECT DIRECTOR

NATHAN FREIER is an Associate Professor of National Security Studies with the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). He came to SSI in August 2013 after 5 years with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) where he was a senior fellow in the 

International Security Program. Mr. Freier joined CSIS in April 2008 after completing 

a 20-year career in the U.S. Army. His last military assignment was as Director of National Security Affairs at SSI. From August 2008 to July 2012, Mr. Freier also served as a 

visiting research professor in strategy, policy, and risk assessment at the U.S. Army War 

College’s (USAWC) Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) under the 

provisions of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. Mr. Freier is a veteran of numerous 

strategy development and strategic planning efforts at Headquarters (HQ), Department 

of the Army; the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and two senior-level military staffs 

in Iraq. Mr. Freier has been published widely on a range of national security issues and 

continues to provide expert advice to the national security and defense communities. 

His areas of expertise are defense strategy, military strategy and policy development, 

as well as strategic net and risk assessment. Mr. Freier holds master’s degrees in both 

international relations and politics, and is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and 

General Staff College.

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (LTC) CHARLES R. BURNETT has a bachelor’s degree in 

criminal justice studies from Norwich University and a master’s degree in strategic 

studies from the U.S. Naval War College. Over his 23 years of service, he has served in 

command positions at the company and battalion levels with multiple deployments to 

Afghanistan and Iraq. LTC Burnett has also deployed in support of military operations 

in Central and South America as both a U.S. Army infantry officer and a civil affairs 

officer.

COLONEL (COL) WILLIAM J. CAIN JR. graduated from the University of Arkansas 

with a bachelor’s degree in transportation, and was commissioned as a Transportation 

Corps officer in 1992. He received a master’s degree in management from Webster University in 2002, and a master’s degree in logistics management from Florida Institute of 

Technology in 2004. COL Cain Jr. has commanded at the company and battalion level 

in Fort Campbell, Iraq, and Kuwait. He also deployed in support of Operation NEW 

DAWN. He has served in several key staff positions to include the Assistant Chief of 

Staff Operations, 595th Transportation Brigade, Surface Deployment and Distribution 

Command (SDDC), where he supported the Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) 

surge; and as a Defense Logistics Agency distribution strategic planner supporting U.S. 

European Command (USEUCOM) and U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM).
96

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (LTC) CHRIS COMPTON is a graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He also holds a master’s degree 

in public administration from the University of Oklahoma as well as a master’s degree 

in strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College. LTC Compton has served over 20 

years on active duty as a U.S. Army field artillery officer, holding a variety of command 

and staff positions. LTC Compton is a veteran of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF).

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (Lt. Col.) SEAN HANKARD holds a bachelor’s degree in 

sociology from Trinity College and a master’s degree in military studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. He has served 20 years in the U.S. Marine 

Corps (USMC) as an infantry officer and has led Marines at every level from platoon 

through battalion. His operational experience includes deployments in support of OIF, 

OEF, and most recently Operation INHERENT RESOLVE. His last assignment was as 

the Commanding Officer, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines and the Commander, Ground 

Combat Element, Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Crisis Response 

(SPMAGTF-CR), USCENTCOM.

PROFESSOR ROBERT S. HUME (Colonel (COL), U.S. Army, Ret.) serves as the Professor of Leadership in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management 

and currently teaches resident students at the USAWC. He received his commission 

as an aviation officer from the U.S. Military Academy in 1985 and holds master’s degrees in operations research from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1996 and in strategic studies from the USAWC in 2007. As an aviation officer, Professor Hume served 

in multiple operational command and staff assignments before serving as a functional 

operations research systems analyst. Professor Hume has served at senior HQ including 

the Combined Forces Command in Korea, U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), 

USEUCOM, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and the Army 

staff in the Pentagon. His operational deployments include tours during Operation 

JOINT FORGE and JOINT GUARD in support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

(NATO) Stabilization Force in Bosnia, and more recently during OEF where he served 

as the Director for Assessments NATO International Security Assistance Force HQ in 

Afghanistan. Professor Hume’s areas of interest are strategic leadership, defense management, capability development, campaign assessment, and experiential education.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (LTC) GARY KRAMLICH is a U.S. Army infantry and operations research/systems analysis officer with a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the U.S. Military Academy in 1996, and a master’s degree in operations 

research from Naval Postgraduate School in 2005. LTC Kramlich commanded a light 

infantry company in the 25th Infantry Division before serving two tours as the Chief of 

Assessments in the 82nd Airborne Division. He completed three combat tours, once to 

Kuwait and twice to Afghanistan.
97

COLONEL (COL) J. MATTHEW LISSNER has served in all three components of the 

Army—Active, National Guard, and Army Reserve—for over 28 years. Currently he 

serves as the senior Army Reserve research advisor, SSI, USAWC, at Carlisle Barracks, 

PA. He has held a wide variety of infantry assignments through battalion level with the 

7th Infantry Division (Light), 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment-Opposing Force (OPFOR), and the 39th Separate Infantry Brigade (Enhanced), and has held staff positions 

at the 77th Regional Readiness Command, TRADOC, Third U.S. Army, U.S. Joint Forces 

Command, I Corps, and the 99th Regional Support Command. COL Lissner’s combat 

deployments include Operation JUST CAUSE in Panama, OIF/OEF in Kuwait, and OIF 

in Iraq.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (LTC) TOBY MAGSIG is a graduate of the U.S. Military 

Academy and Columbia University. A U.S. Army infantry officer, LTC Magsig has over 

20 years of experience in light, heavy, airborne, air assault, and ranger formations. His 

deployments include Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

COLONEL (COL) DANIEL MOUTON is a U.S. Army foreign area officer. He received 

a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy in 1995 and a master’s degree from 

Princeton University in 2008. His staff assignments include a variety of positions with 

the 25th Infantry Division (ID), USCENTCOM, and U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM). COL Mouton’s leadership assignments include platoon through battalion level 

with the 25th ID and 82nd Airborne Division. His deployments include Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya.

MR. MICHAEL MUZTAFAGO holds a bachelor’s degree from Excelsior College. Mr. 

Muztafago served on active duty for 20 years with the U.S. Army Special Forces and 

in special operations assignments. Subsequent to retiring from the Army in 1999, he 

entered directly into civil service. His civilian assignments include Chief, USEUCOM 

Regional Support Team with the Army’s 1st Information Operations Command (Land); 

and Chief, Information Operations and Special Technical Operations Branch with the 

U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command. He 

also served for 5 years as the Chief, Information Operations and Special Technical Operations Division for the U.S. Army Cyber Command and Second Army.

COLONEL (COL) JAMES “BROOKS” SCHULTZE is a U.S. Army engineer officer with 

21 years of experience on active duty. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University with 

a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He also holds two master’s degrees and is a 

licensed professional engineer. COL Schultze has commanded at the engineer company 

level at Fort Stewart and the battalion level in Germany with staff experience at battalion through Army service component levels, including service in the U.S. Army Corps 

of Engineers. He has deployed to Korea, Kosovo, and Afghanistan and twice to both 

Kuwait and Iraq.
98

PROFESSOR JOHN F. TROXELL is a 1974 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy; he 

received a master’s degree in public administration from the Woodrow Wilson School, 

Princeton University in 1982, and is a 1997 graduate of the USAWC. He currently serves 

as the research professor of national security and military strategy, SSI, USAWC. Professor Troxell has published several book chapters and articles on national security, defense, 

and military affairs. In a 30-year career as a U.S. Army engineer officer, he commanded 

the 3rd Engineer Battalion, 24th ID at Ft. Stewart, Georgia, and served in HQ Department of the Army War Plans Division and as a force planner for the assistant secretary 

of defense for strategy and requirements, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (LTC) DENNIS WILLE is a 1995 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy with a bachelor’s degree in physical geography. Additionally, he earned 

a master’s degree in space systems operations in 2006 from the Naval Postgraduate 

School. He also earned a master’s degree in theater operations in 2012 from the School 

of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth. LTC Wille served as a cavalry troop 

commander in the 3rd ID at Fort Stewart, GA and as a recruiting company commander 

located in Central Texas. LTC Wille has most recently served as a staff officer with the 

U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command and 

has participated in operational deployments to Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
99

ENDNOTES

1. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Boston, MA: Phillips, Sampson, Co., 1858, 

c. XI.

2. GEN Martin Dempsey, The National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015, Washington, 

DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2015, p. 4.

3. William G. Pierce, Douglas G. Douds, and Michael A. Marra, “Countering Gray Zone Wars: 

Understanding Coercive Gradualism,” Parameters, Vol. 45, No. 3, Autumn 2015, p. 52. 

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5. James Dobbins et al., Choices for America in a Turbulent World, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 

2015, p. V.

6. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review 2014, Washington, DC: United States 

Department of Defense, March 2014, p. 59.

7. Dobbins et al., p.17.

8. Barack Obama, 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS),Washington, DC: The White House, 2015, and 

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2015 National Military Strategy (NMS), Washington, DC: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 

2015, and reinforced by the National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, Washington, DC: National Intelligence Agency, December 2012, available from www.dni.gov/index.php/about/

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9. National Intelligence Council, pp. i-xiv.

10. Thomas O. Jacobs, Strategic Leadership: The Competitive Edge, Washington, DC: Industrial College of 

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Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, December 2, 2015, pp. 9-12.

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14. National Intelligence Council, pp. i-xiv.

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16. Ibid., pp. 5-6.
100

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29. Mazarr, Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict. 

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101

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36. Ibid.

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31, 2016.

38. Asian Development Bank, Infographics, “Recent Significant Disasters in the Asia and Pacific Region,” April 27, 2015, available from www.adb.org/news/infographics/recent-significant-disasters-asia-and-pacific-region, accessed March 31, 2016.

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41. Ibid, p. 202.

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48. Ibid, p. 3.

49. Ibid, p. 4. China has 20 border neighbors, more than any other nation besides Russia.

50. Ibid, p. 5.

51. Christopher Woody, “The South China Sea is now a ‘core interest’ of Beijing—and that’s a problem 

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56. Jacques, p. 168; Mason, p. 225.

57. French.

58. Ibid. 

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62. Ibid., pp. 51, 153; Wendell Minnick, “China Expands Presence With Fighters on Woody Island,” DefenseNews, November 8, 2015, available from www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/strike/2015/11/08/

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63. James Holmes, “When China Rules the Sea: the United States is no longer the world’s only global 

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64. Heginbotham et al., pp. 247-248.

65. French.

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67. Ruwitch, “Timeline: 1955 to Present,” Center for a New American Security website, Flashpoints: 

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68. Thayer, pp. 3-4; French.

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70. French.

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72. French.

73. Ibid.

74. Thayer, pp. 3-4; French.

75. Chang, FitzGerald, and Van Jackson, pp. 3, 5; “Timeline: 1955 to Present.”

76. Sean Mirski, “Dispute in the South China Sea: A Legal Primer,” June 9, 2015, available from https://

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77. Magnus Hjortdal, “China’s use of Cyber Warfare: Espionage Meets Strategic Deterrence,” Journal of 

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78. Ibid, p. 12.

79. Ibid, pp. 4, 12.
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80. Ibid, p. 5.

81. Holmes, “When China Rules the Sea.”

82. Mazarr, “Struggle in the Gray Zone and World Order,” War on the Rocks website, December 22, 

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88. Holmes, “When China Rules the Sea.”

89. Keck.

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93. Ibid.

94. Elaine Partnow, ed., The New Quotable Woman, “Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796),” Letter dated 

April 29, 1775, New York: Facts On File, 1992, p. 97.

95. Maria Snegovaya, Putin’s Information Warfare in Ukraine: Soviet Origins of Russia’s Hybrid Warfare, 

Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of War, September 2015, p. 7. The authors met with staff from the 

Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on December 8, 2015.

96. Naftali Bendavid, “NATO Ramps Up Response to Russia,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2015, 

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97. Vladimir Putin, Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, April 25, 2005, 

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98. Craig Wright, “The Russian financial rally: Unfair,” The Economist, April 15, 2015, available from

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99. Leon Aron, “The Putin Doctrine: Russia’s Quest to Rebuild the Soviet State,” March 8, 2013, Foreign 

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100. Ibid. 

101. James F. Holcomb, Jr. and Michael M. Boll, Russia’s New Doctrine: Two Views, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

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102. Michael Kofman, “Russian Hybrid Warfare and Other Dark Arts,” March 11, 2016, War On the 

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103. Andrei P. Tsygankov, Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity, 3rd ed., 

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104. Ibid., p. 236.

105. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentary Assembly, Science, and Technology 

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106. Valery Gerasimov, “The Gerasimov Model,” February 27, 2013, Military-Industrial Kurier, 

trans. by Robert Coalson, June 21, 2014, link to original is available from vpk-news.ru/sites/default/files/pdf/

VPK_08_476.pdf. A copy of the translation was provided to this study team by members of the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) staff on January 12, 2016.

107. Paul Sonne, “As Tensions with West Rise, Russia Increasingly Rattles Nuclear Saber,” The Wall 

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108. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, Arlington, VA: Potomac 

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109. Gerasimov, p. 1.

110. For an alternative interpretation of Gerasimov’s intent, see also Charles K. Bartels, “Getting Gerasimov Right,” Military Review, January-February 2016, available from usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/

Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20160228_art009.pdf, accessed May 6, 2016. Bartels argues Gerasimov was 

not identifying a new Russian way of war but instead describing salient strategic conditions impacting 

Russian security. The most prominent of which was what this report would call U.S./Western gray zone 

approaches.

111. Ibid.
106

112. Unattributed Interview, The phrase, “operate from a principle of deniability” came from an interview by the authors with members of the U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) staff, Wiesbaden, GE, January 

19, 2016.

113. Gerasimov, p. 1. 

114. Johanna Popjanevski, “From Sukhumi to Tskhinvali: The Path to War in Georgia,” pp. 143-161, 

Pavel Felgenhauer, “After August 7: The Escalation of the Russia–Georgia War,” pp. 162-180 and Paul A. 

Goble, “Defining Victory and Defeat: The Information War Between Russia and Georgia,” pp. 181-195, [all 

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116. Brian Whitmore, “Scene At Russia-Georgia Border Hinted At Scripted Affair,” Radio Free Europe—Radio Liberty website, August 23, 2008, available from www.rferl.org/content/Russia_Georgian_Scripted_Affair/1193319.html, accessed April 2, 2016.

117. Gerasimov, p. 1.

118. Vitaly Shevchenko, “Little Green Men or Russian Invaders?” BBC Monitoring, March 11, 2014, 

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119. “The Russian Military Forum: Russia’s Hybrid War Campaign: Implications for Ukraine and Beyond,” March 10, 2015, Center for Strategic and International Studies YouTube Channel video file, available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WA1rP5WGfY, accessed September 23, 2015.

120. Ibid.

121. Gerasimov, p. 1.

122. Shaun Walker, “Putin Admits Russian Military Presence in Ukraine for First Time,” The Guardian, 

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123. The Potomac Foundation Staff, “Eastern Europe Needs ‘Deterrence’ not ‘Assurance’,” The Potomac Foundation, June 16, 2015, available from www.thepotomacfoundation.org/eastern-europe-needs-deterrence-not-assurance/, accessed April 15, 2016. Since 1993, The Potomac Foundation has sought to influence 

U.S. foreign policy in order to maintain a strong military deterrent in Europe and strongly endorses the 

Obama Administration’s decision to return military forces to Europe.

124. U.S. European Command, Communication and Engagement Directorate, Media Operations Division, “OPERATION ATLANTIC RESOLVE (SEPTEMBER 2015),” U.S. European Command Fact Sheet on 

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125. Ibid., p. 13.

126. Ibid., p. 1.

127. Ibid.
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128. U.S. European Command News Release, “Eucom Announces European Reassurance Initiative 

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129. “Full text of the Minsk agreement,” Financial Times, February 12, 2015, available from www.ft.com/

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133. For a thorough assessment of the defense implications of IRI strategy and capabilities, see Michael 

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134. David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty Year Conflict with Iran, New 

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135. Ibid., pp. 12-13.

136. Stephen A. Cheney, “The Insurgency in Oman, 1962-1976,” Marine Corps Command and Staff 

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137. David E. Thaler et al., Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics, 

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138. Crist, pp. 5-6.

139. Mohammad Javad Zarif, “What Iran Really Wants: Iranian Foreign Policy in the Rouhani Era,” 

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140. Kenneth Katzman, Iran: Politics, Gulf Security, and U.S. Policy, Washington, DC: U.S. Library of 

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141. Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran,” Department of Defense (DoD) Iranian Military Power Report, Washington, DC: United States Department of Defense, April 

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144. David Daoud, “Meet the Proxies: How Iran Spreads Its Empire through Terrorist Militias,” The 

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146. South Front.

147. Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran,” p. 2. 

148. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, “Iran’s Quiet Military Build Up,” Front Page Magazine, September 8, 2014, 

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150. Francis G. Hoffman, p. 10.

151. Richard L. Russell, “Future Gulf War: Weighing Arab and American Forces against Iranian Capabilities,” Joint Force Quarterly, Iss. 55, 4th Qtr. 2009, p. 39, available from www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jfq/jfq-55.pdf, 

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152. Crist, p. 6.

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154. Matthew Levitt, “30 Years Later: The Marines Barracks Bombing and the Birth of Hezbollah,” 

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160. Thaler et al., p. xv.

161. Ibid, p. xv.

162. Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran,” p. 2.

163. Ibid.

164. Katzman, Iran Sanctions, Washington, DC: U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, August 4, 2015, pp. 30-39.

165. Eli Lake, “Iran Spends Billions to Prop Up Assad,” Bloomberg View, June 9, 2015, available from

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167. Thomas C. Moore, “Iran: Non-Proliferation Overshadowed,” Survival, Vol. 57, No. 5, OctoberNovember 2015, pp. 53-58.

168. Katzman, Iran Sanctions, pp. 1-8.

169. Mao Tse-Tung, quoted in Fox Butterfield, “Mao Tse-Tung Father of a Revolution,” The New York 

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171. Obama, 2015 NSS.

172. Austin III, The Posture of U.S. Central Command. 

173. Ibid.

174. Jeremy M. Sharp, Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations, Washington, DC: U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, November 1, 2012, available from fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/201051.pdf, pp. 4-8.

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177. Christopher M. Blanchard, Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy, Washington, DC: U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, October 18, 2012, available from fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/200057.pdf, pp. 15-17.
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178. Ibid., pp. 1-4.

179. Missy Ryan and Hassan Morajea, “In Libya, the Islamic State’s black banner rises by the Mediterranean,” The Washington Post, October 8, 2015, available from www.washingtonpost.com/world/nationalsecurity/in-libya-the-islamic-states-black-banner-rises-by-the-mediterranean/2015/10/08/15f3de1a-56fc-11e5-8bb1-

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180. Brian Michael Jenkins, The Dynamics of Syria’s Civil War, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 

2014, available from www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE115.html.

181. Macon Phillips, “President Obama: ‘The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but 

President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way’,” Washington, DC: The White House blog, August 

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182. Kenneth Katzman, Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights, Washington, DC: U.S. Library of 

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183. Ali Khedery, “Lost in the Middle East,” Politico, August 12, 2014, available from www.politico.com/

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184. Austin III, The Posture of U.S. Central Command.

185. “Operation Inherent Resolve: Targeted Operations Against ISIL Terrorists,” U.S. Department 

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186. Ibid.

187. U.S. Department of Defense, “Press Briefing by Secretary Carter and General Dunford in the 

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188. General Lloyd J. Austin III, “Operation Inherent Resolve,” Statement for the Record presented before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, DC: U.S. Central Command, September 16, 2015, 

available from www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Austin_09-16-15.pdf.

189. Derek Chollet, “Security Situation in Libya,” Statement for the Record presented to the House Foreign Affairs Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, International Security Affairs, June 24, 2014, available from docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA13/20140625/102416/

HHRG-113-FA13-Wstate-CholletD-20140625.pdf.

190. Sharp, Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations. 

191. Obama, “Remarks by President Obama at the Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent 

Extremism,” Washington, DC: The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, July 06, 2015, available from

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/29/remarks-president-obama-leaders-summit-countering-isiland-violent, accessed November 22, 2015.

192. Ibid.
111

193. Obama, “Fact Sheet: The Administration’s Strategy to Counter the Islamic State and the Levant 

(ISIL) and the Updated FY 2015 Overseas Contingency Operations Request,” Washington, DC: The White 

House, Office of the Press Secretary, November 7, 2014, available from https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2014/11/07/fact-sheet-administration-s-strategy-counter-islamic-state-iraq-and-leva.

194. Ibid.

195. This is a U.S. military-led line of effort.

196. Ibid.

197. Kanan Makiya, “The Arab Spring Started in Iraq,” The New York Times, April 6, 2013.

198. TheTower.org Staff, “Former Obama Adviser Dennis Ross: U.S. Inaction in Syria Led to Refugee 

Crisis and ISIS,” The Tower, January 11, 2016, available from www.thetower.org/2804-former-obama-adviserdennis-ross-u-s-inaction-in-syria-led-to-refugee-crisis-and-isis/.

199. Spencer Ackerman, “Russia’s intervention in Syria brings Obama’s dilemma to the fore,” The 

Guardian, September 15, 2015.

200. See LTG (Ret.) Michael Flynn interview conducted by Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark, “ExUS Intelligence Chief on Islamic State’s Rise: ‘We Were Too Dumb,’” Spiegel, November 29, 2015, available 

from www.spiegel.de/international/world/former-us-intelligence-chief-discusses-development-of-is-a-1065131.html.

201. This West African proverb, attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, was referenced in a letter Roosevelt 

wrote to Henry Sprague on January 26, 1900, see the Theodore Roosevelt Center website, TR Quotes, available from www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Quotes.aspx, accessed March 31, 2016.

202. Although attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, no known author has actually been identified. See 

quote available from www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Quotes.aspx, accessed March 31, 

2016.

203. “Brititsh Empire,” in The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., New York: The Columbia University Press, 

2016, available from www.encyclopedia.com/topic/British_Empire.aspx, accessed March 31, 2016.

204. James R. Holmes, “A Striking Thing,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter 2008, p. 61, 

available from search.proquest.com.usawc.idm.oclc.org/docview/205939779?accountid=4444.61, accessed Apr 

12, 2016.

205. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones, 1899-1913, “Building the Panama 

Canal 1903-1914,” available from https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/panama-canal, accessed March 

31, 2016.

206. Peri E. Arnold ed., “William Taft: Foreign Affairs,” Charlottesville, VA: The Miller Center of Public 

Affairs, University of Virginia, available from millercenter.org/president/biography/taft-foreign-affairs, accessed 

March 31, 2016.

207. “George Kennan’s Long Telegram,” Archived record of Ambassador George Kennan’s telegram to 

Secretary of State Marshall/President Truman, From Moscow to Washington, February 22, 1946, The National Security Archive website, available from nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm, 

accessed March 31, 2016.

208. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Milestones, 1945-1952, “Kennan and Containment, 1947,” available from https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/kennan, accessed March 31, 2016.
112

209. National Security Council, “National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68),” Washington, DC: 

United States National Security Council, 1950.

210. Presidential approval and reporting of covert actions, 50 U.S.C. § 3093 (a) (2016), available from uscode.

house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:50%20section:3093%20edition:prelim, accessed March 31, 2016.

211. Department of Defense Directive Number 3000.07, “Irregular Warfare,” August 28, 2014, enc. 2, 

para 11 (c), available from dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/300007p.pdf, accessed March 31, 2016.

212. Gary D. Brown and Owen W. Tullos, “On the Spectrum of Cyberspace Operations,” Small Wars 

Journal, December 11, 2012, available from smallwarsjournal.com/print/13595, accessed March 31, 2016.

213. Ibid, p. 5.

214. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, New York: Penguin Press, 2005, pp. 261-264.

215. Vincent Wei-cheng Wang and Gwendolyn Stamper, “Asymmetric War? Implications for China’s 

Information Warfare Strategies,” American Asian Review, Vol. 20, No. 4, Winter 2002, p. 172, available from

search.proquest.com.usawc.idm.oclc.org/docview/211469069?accountid=4444, accessed 12 Apr, 2016.

216. Jeff Conklin, “Wicked Problems and Social Complexity,” in Jeff Conklin, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2005, p. 7, available from cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf, accessed March 31, 2016.

217. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2015 NMS, pp. 2-3.

218. Ibid, p. 3

219. This and all insights on U.S.-competitor risk perceptions are inferred by the authors from hours 

of engagements and roundtable conversations between December 8, 2015-March 31, 2016, at various locations in the United States, Europe, and the Pacific, with defense and national security analysts and leaders.

220. Pierce, Douds, and Marra, p. 54.

221. This and all insights on U.S.-competitor risk perceptions are inferred by the authors from hours 

of engagements and roundtable conversations between December 8, 2015-March 31, 2016, at various locations in the United States, Europe, and the Pacific, with defense and national security analysts and leaders.

222. This insight first emerged from an engagement on the study effort by the authors with the NATOSupreme Allied Commander—Transformation (SACT) on December 7, 2015, in Norfolk, VA.

223. This insight first emerged from an engagement on the study effort by the authors with a senior 

USPACOM leader, Hawaii, January 2016.

224. This and all insights on the need for one or more strategic charters for counter-gray zone activities 

are inferred by the authors from hours of engagements and roundtable conversations between December 

8, 2015-March 31, 2016, at various locations in the United States, Europe, and the Pacific, with defense and 

national security analysts and leaders.

225. Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, Public Law 99-433, 99th 

Congress, October 1, 1986, § 603-104(a)(1).

226. Ronald Reagan, National Security Decision Directive No. 32: National Security Strategy, Washington, 

DC: The White House, May 10, 1982. This document was originally classified TOP SECRET as were all 

similar documents reviewed by this study going back to the Carter Administration.
113

227. For a more detailed discussion of the Solarium Project, see Raymond Millen, “Eisenhower and US 

Grand Strategy,” Parameters, Vol. 44, No. 2, Summer 2014, pp. 35-47.

228. Keith Johnson and Dan De Luce, “Washington’s Muddled Message in the South China Sea,” Foreign Policy, November 5, 2015, available from foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/05/washingtons-muddled-message-inthe-south-china-sea-lassen-fon-subi/, accessed January 11, 2016.

229. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Joint Publication 1-02, Washington, DC: United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, November 8, 2010 (as amended through 

May 15, 2011), p. 385.

230. Obama, 2015 NSS, and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2015 NMS, and reinforced by the National Intelligence Council, and U.S. Department of the Army, TRADOC.

231. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Planning Joint Operations, Joint Publication 5-0, Washington, 

DC: United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, April 13, 1995, p. III-38.

232. For an excellent discussion of the current “flawed” U.S. campaign planning model that “does not 

reflect reality” and is being “misused,” see Antulio J. Echevarria II, Operating in the Gray Zone: An Alternative Paradigm for U.S. Military Strategy, Carlisle Baracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army 

War College Press, April 2016, pp. 12-18, available from www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.

cfm?pubID=1318, accessed May 6, 2016.

233. For another independent look at “operating” against gray zone challenges, see Ibid., pp. vii-50.

234. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Planning Joint Operations, p. II-3.

235. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms.

236. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Planning Joint Operations, p. II-4.

237. For a brief description of the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning see “Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning,” Army Capabilities Integration Center website, located on the Strategic Landpower 

Task Force page, available from www.arcic.army.mil/Initiatives/StrategicLandpower, accessed April 29, 2016.

238. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, Joint Publication 1, Washington, DC: United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, March 25, 2013, p. III-7. Joint Publication 1 describes the 

global synchronizer as: 

The [Combatant Commander] CCDR responsible for the alignment of specified planning and related 

activities of other CCMDs, Services, [DoD] agencies and activities, and as directed, appropriate USG 

departments and agencies within an established, common framework to facilitate coordinated and 

decentralized execution across geographic and other boundaries. The global synchronizer’s role is to 

align and harmonize plans and recommend sequencing of actions to achieve the strategic end states 

and objectives of a GCP.

239. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Special Operations, Joint Publication 3-05, Washington, DC: United States 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 16, 2016.

240. This insight first emerged from an engagement on the study effort by the authors with a senior 

USPACOM leader, Hawaii, January 2016.

241. Max Boot et al., Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Innovation Memorandum No. 33, “Political Warfare,” Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations Press, June 7, 2013, available from www.cfr.org/warsand-warfare/political-warfare/p30894, accessed March 9, 2016.
114

242. Peter Levine, Deputy Chief Management Officer, “Goldwater-Nichols Working Group Recommendations,” Memorandum for Secretary of Defense and Chairman, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, 

DC, March 9, 2016.

243. Michael Jefferson Adams, “Jus Extra Bellum: Reconstructing the Ordinary, Realistic Conditions of 

Peace,” Harvard National Security Journal, Vol. 5, 2014, pp. 377-458.

244. Ibid., pp. 381-382.

245. Johnson and De Luce.

246. Sam LaGrone, “Confusion Continues to Surround U.S. South China Sea Freedom of Navigation 

Operation,” U.S. Naval Institute News, November 5, 2015, available from news.usni.org/2015/11/05/confusioncontinues-to-surround-u-s-south-china-sea-freedom-of-navigation-operation, accessed January 11, 2015; Nicole 

Gaouette and Barbara Starr, “New Iran video appears to show U.S. sailor in tears,” CNN, February 11, 2016, 

available from www.cnn.com/2016/02/10/politics/iran-video-u-s-sailor-tears/, accessed March 6, 2016. 

247. An excellent example of this exercise concept is offered by Douglas V. Mastriano, “Five Smooth 

Stones: How NATO Can Deter the ‘Goliath’ Russian Challenge to the Baltics,” Small Wars Journal, October 24, 2015, available from smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/five-smooth-stones-how-nato-can-deter-the-

%E2%80%9Cgoliath%E2%80%9D-russian-challenge-to-the-baltics, accessed April 27, 2016. The author argues 

that one element of a comprehensive plan to deter a Russian threat might be a REFORGER-like annual 

exercise in the Baltics to exercise a robust NATO force and demonstrate an ability to respond quickly to a 

threat to the sovereignty of the East European allies. 
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