ADVANCING 

STRATEGIC THOUGHT 

SERIES

MASTERING THE 

GRAY ZONE:

UNDERSTANDING A 

CHANGING ERA OF 

CONFLICT

Michael J. Mazarr

Carlisle Barracks, PA and

UNITED STATES 

ARMY WAR COLLEGE

PRESS

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Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

MASTERING THE GRAY ZONE:

UNDERSTANDING A CHANGING 

ERA OF CONFLICT

Michael J. Mazarr

December 2015

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ISBN 1-58487-712-X
vii

CONTENTS

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

About the Author .....................................................xi

1. Introduction............................................................1

2. Measured Revisionism: The Engine 

 of Gray Zone Campaigns......................................9

3. The Advantages of Patience: Gradualist 

 Campaigns for Advantage..................................33

4. Unconventional Tools .........................................43

5. Understanding Gray Zone Conflict...................55

6. Gray Zone Campaigns in Action: 

 China and Russia .................................................79

7. Seven Hypotheses on the Gray Zone ...........101

8. Strategies for Dealing with 

 Gradualist Challenges ......................................125

ix

FOREWORD

This manuscript examines the increasingly important form of rivalry and statecraft that has become 

known as “gray zone strategies.” In regions from Eastern Europe to the South China Sea, such tactics in the 

hands of ambitious regional powers pose a growing 

challenge to U.S. and allied interests. This monograph 

aims to provide a broad introduction to the issue to 

help leaders in the U.S. Army and the wider joint Department of Defense and national security community 

better understand this challenge. Dr. Michael Mazarr, 

a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation 

and Associate Program Director of the Army’s Arroyo 

Center there, defines the issue, examines the most 

notable current cases of gray zone strategies, offers 

several hypotheses about the nature of this form of 

conflict, and suggests a number of policy responses.

The monograph emphasizes that many gray zone 

tools and techniques have been employed for centuries. But the analysis rightly contends that such approaches have renewed relevance, both because some 

new technologies have made them more effective than 

ever and because several major powers are making 

extensive use of gray zone campaigns.

We hope that the report will be of interest to audiences throughout the U.S. Army and in the wider 

defense community. Many U.S. commands, offices, departments, and services are grappling with 

the practical implications of gray zone strategies. 
This research can help inform their understanding of 

the challenge and point the way to effective responses.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

x
xi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL J. MAZARR is a Senior Political Scientist at 

the RAND Corporation. Prior to coming to RAND, he 

spent 12 years as Professor of National Security Strategy, course director, and Associate Dean at the U.S. 

National War College in Washington, DC. From late2008 to early-2010, he served as Special Assistant to 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From October 

2000 to November 2001, he was president and chief executive officer of the Henry L. Stimson Center. Before 

coming to Stimson, he was senior vice president for 

strategic planning and development at the Electronic 

Industries Alliance in Arlington, VA. He has been a 

U.S. Naval Reserve intelligence officer, a term member 

of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a founding 

member of both the Council on Security Cooperation 

in Asia-Pacific and the Committee on Nuclear Policy. 

He taught as an adjunct professor in the Georgetown 

University Security Studies Program from 1989 to 

2012 and again beginning in 2015. From 1993 to 1995, 

Dr. Mazarr was legislative assistant for foreign affairs 

and chief writer in the office of Representative Dave 

McCurdy (D-OK), where he was responsible for foreign affairs issues and legislation and the drafting of 

major political speeches. Before working in Congress, 

Mazarr was a senior fellow in international security 

studies at the Center for Strategic and International 

Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, and oversaw major 

Center studies in a number of substantive areas. From 

1995 to 1999, Dr. Mazarr served as editor of The Washington Quarterly, director of the New Millennium Project, and dean of the Young Leaders Program at CSIS. 

He has authored ten books, including North Korea and 

the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation (1995) and 
Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity (2007). He has edited 

seven anthologies; published essays in The Economist, 

Policy Review, Survival, The New Republic, The National 

Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, International Security, and elsewhere; 

and authored editorials in The Washington Post, The 

New York Times, and other newspapers. Dr. Mazarr 

holds A.B. and M.A. degrees in government and national security studies from Georgetown University, 

and a Ph.D. in policy analysis from the University of 

Maryland School of Public Affairs. 

xii
1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In the remote reaches of the South China Sea in the 

Spratly Island chain, China is creating land. In order 

to bolster its claims to the waters of the region, Beijing 

is pouring millions of metric tons of sand and concrete onto submerged reefs, creating artificial islands.1

Island-building is merely one of the most obvious of 

many actions, ranging from propaganda to economic 

coercion and swarming fleets of fishing vessels, that 

China has been taking to solidify its assertion of 

territorial and resource rights throughout the region.2

Step by forceful step, China is laying the groundwork 

for a new order in the region that recognizes Beijing’s 

unquestioned primacy, and for an international system whose norms and institutions reflect China’s interests and preferences.3

 “China is biding its time,” one 

report recently concluded, “slowly eroding American 

credibility in the region, changing facts on the ground 

where it believes it can and carefully calibrating 

the coercion of its rivals in the South China Sea.”4

This series of actions is a powerful example of an 

approach being used by more and more states with 

partial, but still obvious, revisionist intent—that is to 

say, states dissatisfied with the status quo and determined to change important aspects of the global distribution of power and influence in their favor. Unwilling to risk major escalation with outright military 

adventurism, these actors are employing sequences of 

gradual steps to secure strategic leverage. The efforts 

remain below thresholds that would generate a powerful U.S. or international response, but nonetheless 

are forceful and deliberate, calculated to gain measur-
2

able traction over time. In one important sense, they 

are classic “salami-slicing” strategies, fortified with a 

range of emerging gray area or unconventional techniques—from cyberattacks to information campaigns 

to energy diplomacy. They maneuver in the ambiguous no-man’s-land between peace and war, reflecting 

the sort of aggressive, persistent, determined campaigns characteristic of warfare but without the overt 

use of military force.

China’s use of gradual, multi-instrument strategies 

to amass a decisive legal foundation for its claims in 

the South China Sea represents the leading example of 

this approach.5 But Russia’s recent actions in Eastern 

Europe, while employing far more direct action and 

violence, also constitute a variety of the tactic. Iran’s 

pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional influence 

can also be viewed as a variety of gray zone strategy.6

Even the burgeoning diplomatic and economic strategies of such rising powers as Brazil, Turkey, and India 

can be seen as much more restrained, but still notable, 

examples of gray zone campaigns.

This monograph suggests that large-scale operations in this indistinct landscape will be the dominant 

form of state-to-state rivalry in the coming decades. 

Henceforth, international rivalry may be characterized largely by such campaigns, which go today by 

a confusing array of names—unconventional, hybrid, 

gradualist, nonlinear, unrestricted, and more. This 

monograph aims to survey these analyses and bring 

analytical coherence to the issue. 

To be clear, this report does not contend that gray 

zone approaches will be the only form of emerging 

conflict. As stressed, major combat—traditional warfare—remains possible, though unlikely. Hybrid warfare sits at a different place on the spectrum of conflict 
3

and is likely to be employed by various combatants. 

Rivals can still compete at the low end of the spectrum 

through classic diplomacy and covert operations. Gray 

zone campaigns therefore reflect only one challenge in 

an emerging mosaic of conflict.

Nor does this analysis contend that gray zone tactics 

are entirely new. States have been using these kinds of 

approaches for centuries, in some ways for millennia. 

Concepts such as political destabilization, support 

for proxies and militias, information campaigns, and 

much more have been a staple of statecraft since the 

city states of ancient Greece were vying for influence. 

This analysis contends, however, that there are at least 

three reasons why we should pay more attention to 

gray zone issues. First, a number of leading aggressive 

powers—notably China, Russia, and Iran—appear to 

be making extensive use of these strategies. Second, 

the cost of major aggression has become so severe, 

and economic and social interdependence so powerful, that states with some degree of aggressive intent 

arguably will be in the market for alternative ways to 

achieve their goals. These realities increase the incentive to use gray zone approaches. Finally, while some 

gray zone tools have been used since ancient times, 

others—such as cyber weapons, advanced forms of 

information campaigns, and elaborate civilian tools of 

statecraft such as coast guards—are relatively recent 

and lend growing intensity to these campaigns. For 

all these reasons, a very old and well-established set 

of strategic tools has taken on increasing importance.

The concept of gray zone conflict has been increasingly evident in U.S. military writings over the last 2 

years. The 2015 National Military Strategy characterizes 

the future military environment as a “continuum” 

on which many forms of conflict short of major war 
4

are likely to be a focus of U.S. defense policy.7 At an 

April 2015 U.S. Army War College conference, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work argued that 

adversaries were increasingly using: 

agents, paramilitaries, deception, infiltration, and persistent denial to make those avenues of approach very 

hard to detect, operating in what some people have 

called ‘the gray zone.’ Now, that’s the zone in which 

our ground forces have not traditionally had to operate, but one in which they must now become more 

proficient.8

A number of U.S. Army sources, especially in the 

special operations community, have given increasing 

attention to gray zone issues.9

This monograph argues that three elements—rising revisionist intent, a form of strategic gradualism, and unconventional tools—are creating a new 

approach to the pursuit of aggressive aims, a new 

standard form of conflict. Evidence from a number of 

sources, including ongoing campaigns by China and 

Russia, suggests that gradual gray zone strategies 

may be becoming the tool of choice for states wanting 

to reframe the global order in the 21st century.10 The 

idea of competing below the threshold of major war is 

hardly new: States and nonstate actors have employed 

gray zone approaches for thousands of years, most 

ambitiously during World War II and the Cold War. 

Nonetheless, this analysis finds reason to believe that 

gray zone conflict represents an identifiable and intentional strategy for several states, and a phenomenon of 

growing importance. If that hypothesis is valid, then 

the United States needs to become adept at operating 

in this environment. 
5

This report represents an initial, exploratory 

analysis, one aimed at defining and categorizing the 

issue and offering an initial set of plausible conclusions about the phenomenon. It works to distinguish 

the concept of gray zone strategies from related notions such as hybrid, nonlinear, and unconventional 

warfare. It then lays out seven hypotheses about the 

emerging form of conflict, which together can help 

bound and define the challenge. The report concludes 

with recommendations for U.S. policies, strategies 

and capabilities that could help deal with this form of 

conflict. 

One of its most important themes is that gray zone 

strategies carry significant potential costs and limitations. They are not magic wands or panaceas for basic 

strategic dilemmas. Though they attempt to remain 

under certain thresholds that would trigger escalatory 

responses, they tend to generate balancing behavior that cancels out a significant proportion of their 

intended results. Even gray zone aggression marks 

its authors as threatening and operating outside the 

bounds of acceptable behavior in the context of international rules, norms, and institutions. It may slide 

under key thresholds, but it cannot escape notice as a 

form of aggression. The limitations of such campaigns 

mean that an effective response can be mounted, and 

the concluding chapter of this monograph suggests an 

overall strategy for dealing with such tactics.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 1

1. See, for example, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, “China’s Island 

Factory,” BBC Online, September 9, 2014, available from www.bbc.

co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8701/index.html. Carl Thayer has 

argued that commentators should not declare that China is “reclaiming land,” which implies a legitimate maritime claim; it is 
6

creating artificial island with no maritime rights significance, he 

argues. See Carl Thayer, “No, China is Not Reclaiming Land in 

the South China Sea,” The Diplomat, June 7, 2015.

2. In June 2015, Beijing, China, announced that it would 

“complete” its land reclamation project “soon”; see “China to 

‘Complete’ South China Sea Land Reclamation,” BBC News, June 

16, 2015.

3. There is a lively debate about the true nature of China’s 

objectives in the region. The argument here will not portray China 

as an unlimited revisionist determined to conquer other states, 

or even one with clearly imperialist ambitions. But there seems 

a broad consensus that China believes it has a natural right to 

geopolitical primacy throughout key regions close to its borders. 

See, for example, Gregory Chin and Ramesh Thakur, “Will China 

Change the Rules of Global Order?” The Washington Quarterly, 

Vol. 33, No. 4, October 2010; Thomas J. Christensen, “Obama and 

Asia: Confronting the China Challenge,” Foreign Affairs, Vol., 

94, No. 5, September/October 2015; Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in 

Asia, New York: W. W. Norton, 2011; and Adam P. Liff and G. 

John Ikenberry, “Racing Toward Tragedy? China’s Rise, Military 

Competition in the Asia Pacific and the Security Dilemma,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 2, Fall 2014.

4. Christopher Yung and Patrick McNulty, “China’s Tailored Coercion and Its Rivals’ Actions and Responses: What the 

Numbers Tell Us,” Washington, DC: Center for a New American 

Security, January 2015, p. 13.

5. As one analyst has warned, “China’s furtive, incremental 

encroachments into neighboring countries’ borderlands . . . have 

emerged as a key destabilizing element in the Asian security landscape.” Brahma Chellany, “China’s Salami-Slice Strategy,” Japan 

Times, July 25, 2013.

6. “Tehran has proven to be adept at such salami-slicing tactics,” one source has concluded, gradually accumulating elements 

of nuclear capacity without crossing any obvious red lines that 

would generate a violent answer. Mark Fitzpatrick, “Report on 

Iran Nuclear Program: Situation Not Yet Hopeless,” al-Monitor, 
7

August 31, 2012. The same issue is brought up in terms of a potential Iranian breakout from an agreement, which would not 

be, as George Shultz and Henry Kissinger have argued, a clearcut event. More likely it will occur, if it does, via the gradual accumulation of ambiguous evasions” which would pose serious 

challenges to U.S. diplomacy. See George P. Shultz and Henry 

Kissinger, “The Iran Deal and Its Consequences,” The Wall Street 

Journal, April 7, 2015.

7. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, The National Military Strategy of 

the United States of America 2015 Washington, DC: Department of 

Defense (DoD), June 2015, pp. 3-4.

8. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, Speech at the 

U.S. Army War College Strategy Conference, April 8, 2015, available from www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1930. 

9. As just two examples, see Claudette Ruolo, “SOCOM Commander: Success Depends on Total Force Readiness,” DoD News, 

March 26, 2015, available from www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.

aspx?id=128461; and Chuck Oldham, “SOCOM: Navigating the 

Gray Zone,” Defense Media Network, June 23, 2015, available 

from www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/socom-navigating-thegray-zone/. The U.S. Special Operations Command released a 

2014 white paper on “Counter-Unconventional Warfare”; see the 

coverage at Robert A. Newson, “Counter-Unconventional Warfare is the Way of the Future. How Can We Get There?” Defense 

in Depth Blog, Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 

October 23, 2014, available from blogs.cfr.org/davidson/2014/10/23/

counter-unconventional-warfare-is-the-way-of-the-future-how-can-weget-there/. 

10. Nonstate actors could also make profitable use of gradualist approaches, but this analysis focuses on state actors. The use of 

such strategies by nonstate actors could have unique features that 

make them best left for a separate treatment.

9

CHAPTER 2

MEASURED REVISIONISM:

THE ENGINE OF GRAY ZONE CAMPAIGNS

In the 2002 version of the National Security Strategy, 

the George W. Bush administration suggested that 

classic balance-of-power theories of state rivalry had 

become obsolete. Because of shared interests in areas 

such as trade and counterterrorism, the world’s major powers now had grown to share many interests in 

common. More than that, the document argued that 

leading powers were converging on a “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.” It went on:

Today, the international community has the best 

chance since the rise of the nation-state in the 17th century to build a world where great powers compete in 

peace instead of continually prepare for war. Today, 

the world’s great powers find ourselves on the same 

side—united by common dangers of terrorist violence 

and chaos. The United States will build on these common interests to promote global security. We are also 

increasingly united by common values. Russia is in 

the midst of a hopeful transition, reaching for its democratic future and a partner in the war on terror. Chinese leaders are discovering that economic freedom is 

the only source of national wealth.1

Developments since 2002 suggest that these claims 

are only half true. Major powers do share common 

interests, and collectively benefit from many aspects 

of a rules-based order. Russia profits from integrated 

and stable energy markets, China from global trade 

accords and free passage of trade. All are threatened by terrorism, piracy, global warming, and other 

common dangers. 
10

Yet, these mutual interests do not imply that all 

major states are satisfied with the existing order. A 

number of rising powers are frustrated with current 

patterns of influence or goods, or the shape of rules 

and norms, and have assembled campaigns to transform that order in service of their interests and values. 

Such powers are neither status-quo nor militaristic; 

they are both integrated into the world community 

and deeply exasperated with it. We might call them 

“measured revisionists.” 

If world politics were composed solely of statusquo powers, there would be little engine of gray zone 

conflict. If it were brimming with bellicose military 

predators, then the primary threat would be of traditional combined arms warfare. But an analysis of the 

revisionist strategies of key rising powers suggests 

that neither of these things is true. Instead, the emerging pattern may be an ambiguous and complex middle ground—a growing number of states determined 

to use tools below the threshold of war to shift international rules, norms, distribution of goods, and patterns of authority to their benefit. They are the leading 

architects of gray zone campaigns today and likely to 

remain so for the foreseeable future.

This analysis is not meant to suggest that only 

measured revisionists, or revisionists more generally, 

would use gray zone strategies. The United States 

and other countries have employed many tools and 

techniques characteristic of this form of conflict, from 

propaganda to information operations to covert and 

proxy operations. But the most persistent and forceful of such strategies will issue from revisionist states, 

who have the most urgent motive to force change. 

But to be clear, to the degree that gray zone conflict 

becomes a more typical pattern in world politics, it 
11

will be used in ambitious and active ways by a broad 

range of actors.

Measured revisionism is not inherently an aggressive or adventuristic viewpoint. It is, in a sense, 

entirely natural to the worldview of rising powers. 

Such states recognize the value of a rule-based order 

and harbor no interest in aggressive wars. But they 

are ambitious; they do demand and presume a transformation of some elements of the system; and they 

therefore possess a motive to seek out deliberate but 

powerful strategies for change.

RECOGNIZING REVISIONISTS 

A number of revisionist or dissatisfied powers appear to be in the market for options to transform the 

status quo. They are frustrated with various aspects 

of their current position—their degree of regional or 

global influence, their ability to shape international 

rules and institutions to their benefit, the looming authority of U.S. power—and want to engineer a future 

international order more of their own design. Such a 

mindset can be found not only in China, Russia, and 

Iran, but also, in different ways, nations like Brazil, 

Turkey, and India.

Scholars and analysts seldom define what they 

mean by a revisionist or dissatisfied state, and developing criteria to usefully distinguish status quo from 

revisionist actors can be exceptionally difficult.2 Recent U.S. actions, for example, in Afghanistan, Iraq, 

Libya, and Syria, and in self-consciously advocating 

for democratic revolutions from North Africa to eastern Europe, would meet many of the conditions commonly associated with revisionism. The United States 

has rejected or failed to ratify a long list of interna-
12

tional accords. In order to pose revisionists against an 

“international order,” moreover, that order must be 

understood in specific enough terms to know when a 

state was trying to undermine it. Just how many elements of the rule-based order a country would need to 

oppose to be counted as a revisionist is unclear.

Existing definitions generally point to states that 

have some burning reason for overturning major elements of the existing system.3

 One scholar defines 

revisionists as “states not satisfied with the status 

quo and interested in pursuing goals more expansive 

than strict defensive-minded security maximization.” 

More specifically, revisionism demands “a preference 

for changing the international distribution of goods—

including, but not limited to, territory—and a willingness to incur costs in pursuing that preference.”4

Another analyst suggests that “Revisionist states seek 

to change the distribution of goods (for example, territory) among the great powers in international relations, while status-quo states prefer to keep things as 

they are.”5 In one of the leading recent assessments of 

the issue, Randall Schweller argued that “staying in 

place is not the primary goal of revisionist states. They 

want to increase, not just preserve, their core values 

and to improve their position in the system.” As a result, they “must gain relative to others.”6

Beyond this general desire for transformation of 

existing power relations, revisionists have often been 

viewed as willing to undertake military adventurism.7

The focus on military aggression characterizes the related concept of rogue states, which was discussed 

widely as a leading challenge for U.S. foreign policy 

in the 1990s. Rogue states, explains one analysis, are 

states that “have been effectively labeled as persistent 

and/or grave violators of core norms of the interna-
13

tional community.”8 Perhaps the most common definition of rogues involves a combination of support for 

terrorism and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, 

usually combined with repression at home.9 Secretary 

of State Madeleine Albright gave a 1998 speech in 

which she referred to rogues as “those that not only do 

not have a part in the international system, but whose 

very being involved being outside of it and throwing, 

literally, hand grenades inside in order to destroy it.”10

These characteristics, however, go beyond what 

I have in mind with the concept of a measured revisionist. This category of states has powerful interests 

wrapped up in sustaining most elements of the international system, and much of their behavior fits easily 

into the category of “responsible stakeholders” in that 

system. They also crave the recognition that comes 

from such inclusion—most fear and resent being labeled as the sort of marginal troublemakers implied 

by the rogue state category. These characteristics are 

critical to understanding the emerging pattern of conflict, because it is precisely in the limited, mixed, and 

sometimes paradoxical motives of measured revisionists that we find the basis for gradual, constrained 

forms of nonmilitary conflict.

A CHALLENGING CONCEPT 

Categories can be as misleading as they are helpful, masking differences between individual states in 

the effort to shape them into meaningful groups. In 

the context of understanding gray zone conflict, the 

notion of measured revisionism can be helpful in describing the origins and engines of such strategies. But 

it is important to recognize some of the potential analytical challenges with this category.
14

To begin, the very idea of a revisionist state is 

likely to embody some degree of imprecision. Dozens 

of states seek to “change” the international system in 

some way, and it is not clear what precisely a state 

needs to do in order to be labeled a “revisionist power.” The significance of their motivations and intentions lies precisely in how much they seek to change 

the system, and in what way, but these nuances can be 

lost in a generic framework.

It is also difficult to recognize states intent on 

changing the international order without a clear definition of that order. George Modelski has offered a 

set of potential factors, indicating that states are concerned with several specific aspects of order: Security, 

bargaining power, market access, and ability to shape 

the rules of the system.11 Designating states as rogues 

or renegades presumes some agreed order whose 

rules they are violating.12 Some of the ambiguity of 

such definitions arises when trying to identify states 

interested in transforming the international system: 

Just how many specific issues must they attempt to 

revise before they count as “revisionists”?

For the purposes of this analysis, I consider states 

revisionist if they aim to substantially transform, to 

their benefit, significant international rules or norms, 

the structure or operating procedures of international organizations, the balance of power or influence among states, or the distribution of international 

goods. Revisionists view existing global rules, institutions, norms, and power balances as insufficient to 

meet their goals, or unjust, or biased against them, or 

some combination of all of these.

Even defined this way, however, it can be difficult 

to distinguish revisionism from classic great power 

competition. In the realist portrait of world politics, 
15

states are always jockeying to enhance their relative 

power—meaning that they are all dissatisfied with 

their present standing to some degree. They aim to 

change the distribution of goods and influence in 

their favor. From the standpoint of the broader model 

being developed here of gray zone rivalry, all great 

powers are constantly using a wide range of instruments to enhance their position. Yet, in discussing 

the category of rogue or “renegade” states, Miroslav 

Nincic suggests that the threat they pose has partly 

“supplanted classical power politics as the distinctive 

feature of international politics.”13 We will need clear 

criteria, then, to distinguish a true revisionist from a 

run-of-the-mill, self-interested great power—and to 

distinguish day-to-day great power competition from 

what could be understood as more elaborate, formalized gray zone conflict.

The idea that rising states typically pick up more 

revisionist goals as they become more powerful is also 

too simple. As states rise, they gain power to revise 

the order, but also, usually, growing interests in stability and predictability. As states become more powerful and developed, they also tend to become more 

conservative—they have a greater stake in the system, 

and tend to develop domestic interest groups whose 

power and prosperity depends on a functioning international order. It is no accident, then, that many 

mature states tend to be status-quo states: Once they 

have certain capabilities and power, they simply do 

not need to revise the system as much. (We can see 

this trend, for example, in China’s approach to nonproliferation. For decades, Beijing was resistant to any 

controls that would undercut its ability to develop a 

deterrent. Once a reliable deterrent was in place, it 

embraced a range of international accords.)
16

Nor do many discussions speak to the reasons 

why states become revisionist. There can be many 

such reasons: Pressure from domestic interest groups; 

the ambitions and personality of specific leaders; or 

state capacity—the idea that states will attempt to revise the system to their benefit when they believe they 

have sufficient power to do so. The reasons why states 

seek revisionist goals can be all-important in understanding the degree of threat or challenge they pose to 

U.S. interests and the international order.

Ideas and ideology play a particularly significant 

role in driving the preferences of revisionist states. 

Ideological motivations provide one important indicator in distinguishing revisionists from run-of-themill great powers. While great powers are interested 

in greater power for generic reasons, true revisionists 

tend to act in service of a nationalist vision grounded 

in grand narratives. Revisionists are often frustrated 

states who believe the international system is biased 

against them and possess passionately-held ideas of 

their rightful place in the world. Their desire to change 

the system comes not merely from a bloodless calculation of relative gains, but from an emotional sense, 

grounded in historical myths, that they have been 

called by destiny to play a greater role in the world.

DEGREES OF REVISIONISM 

It is critical, therefore, to realize that there are different varieties of revisionists, and that the boundaries between revisionism and other typologies of states 

are indistinct. There are the extreme cases, David Zionts has explained, like Nazi Germany, which “fail to 

moderate even when survival is at stake.” Much more 

common, though—and he gives the example of Iran 
17

during the period of the Iran-Iraq war—are cases of 

states which, “while ultimately aiming to avoid selfdestruction will nonetheless persist in revisionist aims 

in spite of compelling external factors.” The difference, in other words, is between “those that respond 

to failure or other systemic changes by moderating 

their revisionism and those that persist.” Zionts refers 

to the two categories as “reasonable” and “unreasonable” revisionists.14

Randall Schweller distinguishes four types of 

states on the status quo-revisionist spectrum. He describes “lions,” states ready to fight for what they 

have but indifferent about taking risk to gain more; 

“lambs,” countries hesitant even to defend what they 

have; “jackals,” anxious to gain power but obsessed 

with preserving what they have and thus risk-averse 

even as they are opportunistic; and “wolves,” belligerent predators determined to gain more and willing 

to undertake massive risk, “even if losing the gamble 

means extinction.” Relaxed about “the fear of loss, 

[wolves] are free to pursue reckless expansion.”15

These analogies are only suggestive, but they provide a framework for thinking about the challenge 

posed by various states today. By Schweller’s standards, there have been very few true wolves. He provides Hitler’s Germany as an example, and Saddam’s 

Iraq may be a modern counterpart, though, even in 

that case, Saddam was risk averse in important ways. 

A key question for the future is the status of the chief 

antagonists to the current system—China, Russia, and 

Iran. None of them are close to being a wolf; all are 

too risk-averse. But they seem more determinedly revisionist than Schweller’s “jackals,” which are largely 

opportunistic rather than calculating.
18

There might be room for at least one additional 

category of state: States partially satisfied with the 

existing system but determined to gain a larger share 

of influence within it. These states will be more persistent and calculating in promoting their agenda 

than the more opportunistic jackals, but will not rank 

anywhere close to wolves in their suicidal urge to 

power. They will not merely be on the lookout for 

opportunities; they will follow long-term campaigns 

designed to enhance their influence relative to others, 

and especially to the leading states in the system. But 

they will not want to push these efforts to the point 

of jeopardizing the entire system, from which they 

enjoy regime-sustaining benefits. These would be the 

measured revisionists.

Another way of categorizing revisionists is to look 

for specific criteria that can be used to locate them on a 

spectrum of state behavior. Alastair Iain Johnston has 

offered five such criteria to measure revisionist intent 

on the part of a state actor.16 They are:

1. Low participation rates in regulatory international institutions.

2. Participation in the institutions without actually 

accepting norms.

3. Participation and norm-following, but opportunistic, ventures to change the rules of the game “in 

ways that defeat the original purposes of the institution and the community.”

4. An internalized preference for “a radical redistribution of material power in the international system.”

5. Actions to achieve such a redistribution, 

especially by military force.

We might add other indicators to Johnston’s helpful list. These could include strength of revisionist ide-
19

ology: Is the state or regime built on a narrative that 

speaks to a requirement to overturn elements of the 

system? Another factor could be resoluteness: Is the 

state fully committed to revisionism or is its interest 

in changing balances of power episodic and variable? 

The role of military force offers another criterion: To 

what degree is the state prepared to use military aggression to achieve a redistribution of power? True 

revisionists perceive military power as the leading 

tool to overturn existing orders and reorient power 

relationships.

Figure 2-1 outlines out a typology of regime types 

relative to status quo or revisionist orientation. Posing 

the types as a spectrum simplifies a more complex relationship of variables, but the typology does convey 

some of the basic distinctions involved. For the purposes of this analysis, the category of most interest is 

that of measured revisionism—states that do not meet 

the classic predatory characteristics of militaristic revisionists, but are nonetheless determined to change 

the system in comprehensive ways, beyond the issue-specific desire for reform of what I call “targeted 

revisionists.”
20

Source: Four of the categories and their characteristics are drawn 

from Randall Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the 

Revisionist State Back In,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1, 

Summer 1994, pp. 100-104.

Figure 2-1. Typologies of State Preference: 

Status Quo Versus Revisionist.

By this standard, China, Russia, and Iran would 

seem to count as measured revisionists—but so are 

a dozen other rising powers determined to capture 

more influence. Their interests are not absolute or 

Passive 

Status Quo

(“Lambs”)

Active 

Status Quo

(“Lions”)

Targeted 

Revisionist

Measured

Revisionist

Opportunistic 

Predator 

(“Jackals”)

Reckless 

Predator

(“Wolves”)

No motive 

to overturn 

system or 

gain relative 

advantage; 

limited 

investment 

in currentpatterns. 

Security 

through appeasement 

and bandwagoning.

Powerful 

defense of 

existing status, supports 

rules-based 

order, little 

motive for 

aggressive 

relative gains 

acquisition. 

Self-defense, 

balancing.

Satisfied 

power with 

no motive to 

harm system, 

but revisionist 

and riskaccepting on 

a few issues; 

little ethnonationalist 

motivation; 

sensitive 

to relative 

power, violent 

in defense of 

order.

Primary goal 

is preserving power; 

favors many 

elements of 

global order, 

but dissatisfied with current status, 

power relations and rule 

sets; strong 

nationalist 

narratives and 

motivation; 

determined to 

enhance relative power.

Seeks change 

in power 

balance, but 

risk-averse 

and self-protective; values 

security of 

regime more 

than change 

in status; will 

ally with lions 

as well as 

wolves.

Values 

relative gains 

more than 

security. 

Highly risktolerant and 

aggressive. 

Doctrinal or 

ideological 

requirement 

to spread 

territory. 

Determined 

to upset 

system. 

Unlimited 

aims.

Sweden United 

Kingdom United States China North Korea Nazi Germany
21

even always very clear, which increases their appetite 

for more cautious and gradual approaches as opposed 

to risky and urgent ones. Meantime these revisionists 

are not uncompromising; they do not seek to bring 

down the existing international order, many aspects 

of which clearly serve their interests, so much as they 

hope to remold, shape, and modify it to enhance their 

own standing. Their interests and objectives in these 

revisionist campaigns are thus limited.

Within this typology, perhaps the most important 

distinctions lie in the middle of the spectrum. Status 

quo powers are of little concern, and there are few real 

jackals or wolves—and when they exist, they generally spark balancing behavior that mitigates their threat. 

Moreover, while such states may use gray zone strategies, it will be in service of larger aggressive aims that 

spread into traditional military aggression. Figure 2-2 

offers a framework for comparing the more common 

types of states.17

Figure 2-2. Comparing Moderate Revisionisms.

Active Status Quo Targeted Revisionists Measured Revisionists

Basic objective Preserve stability and 

status quo distribution of power; 

reinforce norms and 

institutions

Generally preserve status 

quo but also change a 

small number of specific 

aspects of power / goods 

distribution

Support many aspects 

of rules-based order but 

transform international 

order in key aspects of 

power dynamics and rulesetting influence

Example state / 

actions

Germany / support 

for global economic 

norms

United States / defense 

of global order but also 

quasi-revisionist support 

for democratic revolu- tions

China / sponsorship of 

alternative economic and 

regional strategic institu- tions

Role in global 

institutions

Strong, supportive, 

respect norms and 

rules

Strong though willing 

to strike out unilaterally 

when pushing on tar- geted issue of revisionist 

intent

Mixed: Strong and supportive role on majority of 

rules/norms that benefit 

interests; active effort to 

subvert norms and institu- tions in revisionist areas
22

Figure 2-2. Comparing Moderate Revisionisms. 

(cont.)

MEASURED REVISIONISTS AND 

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 

Measured revisionists therefore represent a strange 

hybrid, a largely cautious, conservative state determined to foster a transformation of the international 

order. They are determined to revise power relationships but aim to do so without causing general mayhem. They are risk-averse, to a degree, except with 

regard to a tiny handful of core vital interests that 

would provoke violence. The majority of their actions 

may fall squarely into the basket of responsible stakeholders in the global system. As world politics grow 

more multipolar and more characterized by regional 

and global rivalries, more states seem to be joining 

this ambiguous category.

Active Status Quo Targeted Revisionists Measured Revisionists

Risk 

tolerance

Limited for actions 

that revise elements 

of system; stronger 

but still constrained 

for actions deemed 

necessary to respond 

to challenges

Higher in areas identified as needing change; 

limited tolerance for 

risk in areas of military 

adventurism or outright 

conflict; higher tolerance 

for diplomatic, economic 

initiatives

Higher across the board 

but especially in non-military areas where dangers 

of outright conflict can 

seemingly be controlled

Identity-based 

motivations

Largely satisfied with 

identity and role in 

overall system

Largely satisfied but having usually rationalistic 

belief in, or sometimes 

moral commitment to, 

value or advantages of 

changing specified elements of system

Significant degree of 

frustration about relative 

identity, role and degree 

of recognition in international system. Impulse 

for change comes in part 

from grievance over insufficient identity. Stronglyfelt ethno-nationalist 

commitment to regional 

hegemony and global 

influence
23

An especially important characteristic of such revisionists relates to the sources of their motivations. 

Despite the lack of an ideological requirement for expansion per se, these are frustrated powers, believing 

that they ought to have a more dominant role in world 

politics than they do. The range of measured revisionists proposed here is fairly broad, and they will have a 

very wide array of types and degrees of frustrations—

Brazil’s sense of grievance, as an example, is nothing 

like Russia’s. Nonetheless, in all cases, the national 

narratives of these states speak to a glorious destiny 

in the community of nations, and they feel that others have not offered sufficient degrees of recognition 

or respect. This identity-fueled grievance gives some 

of these powers a wary worldview and makes them 

less likely to trust in norms, rules, or institutions built 

primarily by others.

Nonetheless, even the more aggressive members 

of this group are likely to end up as measured revisionists rather than wolves or even jackals. They gain 

substantial benefits from the rules-based international 

order. They participate in its capital markets, rely on 

foreign direct investment and international loans, sell 

or buy in global energy markets, ship goods that require stability of sea lanes, produce technologies that 

demand reliable standard-setting, and more.

But there is a more subtle way in which many 

states, even with revisionist intent, rely on the international system: For recognition, another fuel of 

legitimacy. They crave leadership among the global 

society of states, even if they believe that some of the 

leaders of the current order (specifically the United 

States) are hostile to their power and goals. These are 

not states, at least in their current guise, prepared to 

act in violent contravention of all major global norms. 
24

These are not Hitler’s Germany, or Saddam’s Iraq, or 

Kim Il-sung’s North Korea. They aspire to middleclass prosperity and global leadership in a modern, 

cosmopolitan guise; their identity narratives demand 

respect for their place in the world community, not 

the subjugation of others.

Measured revisionists, therefore, will strongly 

support elements of that order, actively participating 

and investing in key institutions, voting at the United 

Nations to enforce key norms, working actively to 

enforce important rules. They will join diplomatic 

or even military coalitions, especially for generallysupported norm-building activities like humanitarian 

endeavors or combatting organized crime, piracy or 

terrorism. They will crave membership in international fora, host important standard-setting bodies and 

Track 2 processes. The complexity of their motives 

and behavior derives from the fact that, despite the interests they express with such norm- and institutionreinforcing actions, they remain committed to achieving specific ends that demand a significant change in 

existing power structures and rule-setting influence.

I would define these prudent, circumspect measured revisionists as having the following basic 

characteristics.

1. They benefit substantially, in some cases decisively, from engagement with the international community, and have little interest in destabilizing world 

politics.

2. They gain advantage from participation in international institutions and diplomatic initiatives, and 

want to preserve the ability to cooperate with other 

leading states when their interests call for collective 

problem-solving.
25

3. They are nonetheless dissatisfied with the current global balance of power and the U.S./Western 

degree of dominance in articulating and enforcing 

global norms.

4. They possess historical, cultural, and political motives to see themselves as natural leaders, in 

regional as well as global terms, and believe themselves destined and entitled to a certain amount of 

hegemony over neighbors.

5. Their current situation, both economic, cultural, 

and political, creates a sense of frustrated nationalism that gives their revisionist intent a hard edge and 

undermines the potential for trust with other leading 

powers, especially the United States.

6. Their pursuit of revisionist aims is constrained 

by their inherent conservatism, by the costs of major war (in particular, nuclear escalation risks), and 

by their dependence on the system for key national 

interests.

Great powers in various periods of history have 

shared a number of these characteristics—most centrally, a desire to tilt the playing field of world politics 

in their favor without upsetting the playing board altogether. But it is the particular combination of these 

characteristics that creates the particular challenge 

posed by measured revisionists—states determined to 

recast power balances in ways that do not risk major 

conflict. Such states are therefore emerging into this 

status looking for new techniques to expand their 

power. A number of dissatisfied states are actively 

looking for means of enhancing their influence without crossing key thresholds that would fundamentally 

upset the system. The gradual, unconventional approaches of gray zone strategies are giving them just 

such a perceived opportunity.
26

CHINA AS MEASURED REVISIONIST 

The paradigmatic case of a measured revisionist 

today is China. In its identity-fueled ambitions, its 

determination to shift aspects of international power, 

and its parallel dependence on and commitment to 

many elements of the international rules-based order, 

China reflects all the paradoxical views and interests 

of a measured revisionist. The implication is that 

China is neither clearly or solely an aggressor to be 

deterred or a “responsible stakeholder” in the international community: It is both at the same time.

The tone of the discussion on China has been 

changing over the last year, with increasing emphasis 

on Beijing’s aggressive intent. Today many, indeed 

perhaps most, observers see China as a more obviously revisionist actor.18 Yet, because of the benefits 

it derives from the international system, Alastair Iain 

Johnston argued in 2003, China should not be described as a comprehensive revisionist, and his basic 

argument remains valid today.19 China has boosted 

rather than cut back on its membership in international institutions, and arguably respected many of their 

core norms—such as territorial sovereignty and free 

trade—as well as or better than many other leading 

states.20 In some cases, such as nonproliferation, it has 

rigorously enforced many standards and potentially 

violated others. The overall portrait is not of a revisionist as much as a state trying to achieve its own 

interests within the constraints of the system.

At the same time, in areas where China views a 

more direct conflict with its interests, it has rejected the 

norms of international institutions in selected ways. 

Examples include norms of human rights and military 
27

transparency, both of which China has strongly resisted. China has shifted from being a relatively passive 

participant in various regimes and institutions to a 

more active advocate of alternative organizations that 

better reflect its leadership, influence, and interests. 

An outstanding recent example of this trend is the 

new financial institution sponsored by Beijing—the 

Asian Infrastructure Development Bank. The United 

States urged friends and allies to shun the bank, seeing it as a barely-concealed effort to drain some of 

the influence from Western-led institutions like The 

World Bank and create a mechanism to allow Beijing 

to set the regional terms of development. In any event, 

China’s initiative attracted widespread interest even 

from outside the region, with countries like Germany 

and Brazil requesting admission.21

Jonathan Holslag has argued that China’s international involvement “does not mean that it accepts 

the global order.” In its relations with Taiwan, for example, China is committed to a course that demands 

that it “profoundly change the international order 

and thus the balance of power.” Revisionism does not 

demand military aggression, Holslag contends—it is 

“merely a desire to change the international order.” 

In this sense, he believes that “China has been a revisionist power in a status quo guise,” pursuing a strategy of “revisionism at its best: assiduous and efficient 

instead of noisy and antagonistic.”22 Taken together, 

this complex pattern of international engagement and 

aggressive promotion of alternative norms and institutions marks China as a measured revisionist.

China, of course, is not the only measured revisionist on the scene. Part of the argument here is that 

a range of rising powers, all of them responsible and 

peaceful members of the world community, will be 
28

increasingly viewed in this category. An especially interesting example of this category is Brazil. It reflects 

all the major elements of the measured revisionist 

category, if in less extreme and urgent ways than its 

more aggressive members. Brazil has more moderate 

ambitions surely than China or Russia but works to 

reform global institutions.23 Brazil’s leading political 

class believes that the nation deserves a greater role 

in world politics and has been actively seeking reform 

of global rules and norms to bring greater equality. Its 

aim is to “successfully participate in shaping the rules 

and forming the regimes that govern the international 

order.”24

CONCLUSION

In sum, then, the international system is becoming 

populated with a particular type of revisionist state 

likely to be in the market for gray zone strategies. 

These states desire a shift in international distributions of power and influence, but are not tempted to 

go to war to get them. They are too dissatisfied and 

ambitious to do nothing, but too interdependent and, 

ultimately, responsible to become a military aggressor 

in classic terms. In many cases, they have turned to 

gray zone strategies as the cure for this dilemma. A 

critical aspect of such strategies, inherent to the compromise such states are making, is that they unfold 

gradually, over time.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 2

1. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 

Washington, DC: The White House, September 2002, transmittal 

letter.
29

2. Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?” 

International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4, Spring 2003, p. 8.

3. See, for example, Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World 

Politics, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 34; 

and A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger, Chicago, 

IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 1, 19-23.

4. David M. Zionts, “Revisionism and Its Variants: Understanding State Reactions to Foreign Policy Failure,” Security 

Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4, October-December 2006, pp. 632-633.

5. Jason W. Davidson, “The Roots of Revisionism: Fascist 

Italy, 1922-39,” Security Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, Summer 2002, 

pp. 125-126.

6. Randall Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the 

Revisionist State Back In,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1, 

Summer 1994, p. 87. Power transition theorists and others tend 

to equate revisionism to growth in power—rising states are more 

likely to be revisionist ones. This argument is made by power transition theorists and updated in Jason W. Davidson, “The Roots of 

Revisionism: Fascist Italy, 1922-39,” Security Studies, Vol. 11, No. 

4, Summer 2002, p. 128ff. The argument seems far too generic, 

however—there is not a reason why rising power must become 

revisionist.

7. Another source defines revisionist states as those “that seek 

to reorder an international or regional order violently”; Jason M. 

K. Lyall, “Paths of Ruin: Why Revisionist States Die in World 

Politics,” draft paper, October 2006, p. 1.

8. Wolfgang Wagner, Wouter Werner, and Michael Ondero, 

“Rogues, Pariahs, Outlaws: Theorizing Deviance in International 

Relations,” in Wolfgang Wagner, Wouter Werner, and Michael 

Ondero, eds., Deviance in International Relations: “Rogue States” and 

International Security, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 

p. 4. They go on to admit that “any attempt to define ‘rogue states’ 

by any set of objective criteria is doomed to fail,” in large measure because no one set of characteristics will bound the sort of 

states the concept is trying to identify.” The difficulty of capturing 

a single version of the concept is also discussed in K. P. O’Reilly, 
30

“Perceiving Rogue States: The Use of the ‘Rogue State’ Concept 

by U.S. Foreign Policy Elites,” Foreign Policy Analysis, No. 3, 2007.

9. This is the definition used by Mary Caprioli and Peter F. 

Trumbore, “Rhetoric vs. Reality: Rogue States in Interstate Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 49, No. 5, October 2005. 

See also Miroslav Nincic, Renegade Regimes: Confronting Deviant 

Behavior in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 

2005, p. 48-65.

10. Madeline Albright, “Remarks at the University of South 

Carolina,” Columbia, SC: February 1998, available from 1997-

2001.state.gov/www/statements/1998/980219c.html.

11. George Modelski, “The Long Cycle of Global Politics and 

the Nation-State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 

20, No. 2, April 1978.

12. This point is made in Nincic, pp. 4-5, 19-23.

13. Ibid., p. 2.

14. Zionts, “Revisionism and Its Variants,” pp. 637-638.

15. Schweller, pp. 103-104.

16. Johnston, p. 11.

17. These categories can also be defined in the context of international relations theories. Aggressive states such as predators 

can be seen as responding to the logic of offensive realism—the 

idea that an anarchic international system mandates, or at least 

justifies, aggressive actions to enhance security. More moderate 

states including status-quo powers can be viewed as variants of 

“defensive realists,” states who do not seek to increase their relative power and want only to be secure. One classic treatment of 

defensive realism is Charles L. Glaser, “Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3, Winter 1994/1995. Andrew Kydd connects this argument to state type 

by arguing that purely security-oriented defensive states ought 

to be able to convey their peaceful intentions. See Andrew Kydd, 

“Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing: Why Security Seekers Do Not Fight 

Each Other,” Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, Autumn 1997.
31

18. Aaron L. Friedberg, “The Debate Over U.S. China 

Strategy,” Survival, Vol. 57, No. 3, June-July 2015, p. 102-106.

19. Johnston, pp. 12-49.

20. See, for example, Katherine Combes, “Between Revisionism and Status Quo: China In International Regimes,” POLIS, Vol. 

6, Winter 2011/2012.

21. Jane Perlez, “Stampede to Join China’s Development Bank 

Stuns Even its Founder,” The New York Times, April 2, 2015.

22. See Jonathan Holslag, “The Smart Revisionist,” Survival, 

Vol. 56, No. 5, October-November 2014, p. 103.

23. David Rothkopf, “Brazil’s New Swagger,” Foreign Policy, 

February 28, 2012.

24. Harold Trinkunas, “Brazil’s Rise: Seeking Influence on 

Global Governance,” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution 

Latin America Initiative, April 2014, p. 2.

33

CHAPTER 3

THE ADVANTAGES OF PATIENCE:

GRADUALIST CAMPAIGNS FOR ADVANTAGE

The second defining aspect of gray zone conflicts 

is the employment of strategic gradualism. Gray 

zone campaigns are designed to unfold over time 

rather than to gain decisive results all at once. U.S. 

foreign policy, always more comfortable and effective when dealing with decisive threats, needs new 

habits of thought to deal with this aspect of gray zone 

strategies.

Military strategy has often been conceived as a set 

of interconnected actions designed to achieve rapid, 

decisive results. When the United States sought to 

eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1990, for example, it coordinated diplomatic, economic, and military 

campaigns to achieve that goal in a decisive manner 

within a specified time period. In the most general 

and common-sense terms, if someone proposes to develop a “strategy” for using force to achieve a goal, the 

immediate impression conveyed is one of a short-term 

focus. We could call these “conclusive” strategies: The 

integration of a range of steps to achieve a decisive 

objective in a relatively brief period of time. The U.S. 

military’s operational doctrines, as well, are mostly 

oriented to winning in the traditional phases of major 

combat operations.

But there is another way to approach the pursuit 

of national security objectives: Through a long set of 

interconnected actions calculated to make gradual 

progress.1 Either the interests at stake are less significant, or the risk of escalation is greater, or the actor’s 

tools are severely constrained, or some combination 
34

of all of these factors. Whatever the reason, the result 

is that the actor decides that the most effective way 

to pursue its long-term ends is not with a conclusive 

leap, but instead through a series of modest actions. 

One leading purpose of such approaches can be to 

avoid the sort of fundamental clash that characterizes 

conclusive strategies.

Evaluating the use of gradual approaches to strategy poses analytical difficulties in part because the 

idea overlaps with so many existing concepts, each 

of which has been defined somewhat differently 

over time. Two are especially relevant: “Salami slicing,” and the use of a series of limited faits accompli

designed to sum up to decisive effect.2 Such gradualist approaches may also be attractive to revisionists 

today because such concepts tend to align with their 

strategic cultures: Chinese and Iranian strategic tradition recommends indirection and avoiding unnecessarily decisive fights where possible. In the strategic 

culture of these revisionists, the height of wisdom is 

not fighting a decisive, costly battle brilliantly. It is 

avoiding the need for such a battle in the first place 

while still achieving one’s strategic goals. Step-by-step 

gray zone campaigns represent just such an approach.

THE CLASSIC THEORY: SALAMI SLICING 

The gradualism I have in mind is closely analogous to the “salami-slicing” strategies discussed in 

Thomas Schelling’s classic work, Arms and Influence. 

Schelling began his discussion of this concept with 

a charming metaphor. “Tell a child not to go in the 

water,” he wrote:

and he’ll sit on the bank and submerge his feet; he is 

not yet “in” the water. Acquiesce, and he’ll stand up; 
35

no more of him is in the water than before. Think it 

over, and he’ll start wading, not going any deeper; 

take a moment to decide whether this is different, and 

he’ll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back 

and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon, we are calling him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever 

happened to all our discipline.3

The problem, Schelling writes, comes from the ambiguity of commitments—the central theme in his discussion of salami slicing tactics. Even a country with 

a seemingly iron-clad promise to defend a border is 

“unlikely to start a war the first time a few drunken 

soldiers from the other side wander across the line 

and ‘invade’ our territory.” (In the context of recent 

gray zone campaigns, this is exactly the problem that 

Ukraine faced with the initial Russian incursions of 

clandestine fighters.) Aggressors can thus use “tactics 

of erosion,” testing the “seriousness of a commitment 

by probing it in a noncommittal way, pretending the 

trespass was inadvertent or unauthorized if one meets 

resistance.” If the defender fails to respond decisively, 

the aggressor has set a precedent, and then moves 

rapidly on to the next step in the series. An aggressor 

can thus “begin his intrusion on too small a scale to 

provoke a reaction,” Schelling explains, “and increase 

it by imperceptible degrees, never quite presenting 

a sudden, dramatic challenge that would invoke the 

committed response.” Through this “steady cumulative pressure,” as Schelling calls it, the aggressor 

eventually achieves a dramatic change in the status 

quo that—if they tried to bite it off all at once—would 

have produced a crisis, or war.4

The point of such tactics, in Schelling’s model, is 

very specific—to degrade the credibility of the defender’s deterrent threats. With each move that goes 
36

unpunished, the likelihood that the defender will respond the next time declines. Incremental approaches, 

then, carry the long-term danger of undermining the 

potency of promises and policies aimed at deterrence 

or reassurance.

An inherent danger in such approaches, as 

Schelling recognizes, is that an aggressor will provoke 

a violent response inadvertently, doing something it 

hopes will pass under the threshold of response, only 

to see it spark a massive crisis. The Soviet-North Korean invasion of the South in 1950 is one such example, 

an effort to use probing attacks leading to a larger intervention in the thought that the resulting ambiguity would provide the United States with the excuse 

it desperately wanted to stay out of the conflict. But 

it had the opposite effect, galvanizing not only a direct U.S. response but also a wider surge of defense 

spending under the aegis of National Security Council 

(NSC) Directive-68. This case illustrates the inherent 

danger of a constant stream of gradualist initiatives: 

They create an ever-present risk of escalation despite 

the desire of the aggressor to avoid them.

FAITS ACCOMPLI

A second relevant concept is the fait accompli, a 

quick, limited grab to demonstrate control before anyone can react. Political scientist Daniel Altman has 

investigated this particular issue in a fascinating 2015 

dissertation that uses the concept as a lens to examine 

salami-slicing strategies. Altman views faits accomplis as strategies designed to grab a limited gain before the other side can respond, acting suddenly and 

decisively in a manner that poses the defender with 

a dilemma of acquiescing or pursuing a dangerous 
37

escalation. Such strategies target gains small enough 

“that the adversary will let it go rather than escalate.”5

Like salami slicing and other gradualist approaches, 

of which they can be an example, faits accomplis aim to 

confront a defender with a choice between giving in 

and risking larger conflict.

They are not signals, because they involve an actual action which is not dependent on an opponent’s 

concession and is designed to be nonreversible. 

Altman explains that: 

Faits accomplis take many forms in addition to seizing territory, including the construction of a nuclear 

reactor in violation of red lines from the international 

community. Most military operations are not faits accomplis. Military operations which do qualify include 

land grabs seizing territory, hostage-rescue raids like 

Israel’s 1976 raid on Entebbe, and airstrikes to destroy 

weapons of mass destruction sites such as Israel’s 1981 

destruction of the Osirak reactor.6

Faits accompli need not be gradual, of course. Indeed, part of their essence is their suddenness; they 

are designed to be lightning strikes that achieve their 

goals before the defender can react. The key is the 

scale. An abrupt invasion that grabs half the land 

area of a neighboring state before anyone can respond 

could be a fait accompli, but it is far more elaborate 

and decisive than would be appropriate for a strategy 

of gradualism. On the other hand, the swift appearance of a Chinese outpost on a barren and unoccupied 

rock in the South China Sea can be another version 

of a fait accompli that would fit snugly into gradualist approaches: A long series of modest faits accompli

that promote objectives over a period of time. In this 

regard, Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine stand right 
38

at the upper bounds of gradualism, and, in fact, some 

would argue that they exceed it.

DEFINING STRATEGIC GRADUALISM 

Building on the concepts of salami-slicing tactics, 

incrementalism, and faits accompli, gray zone campaigns can be characterized by their use of a general 

form of “strategic gradualism.” One observer has defined gradualist strategies as involving “the slow accumulation of small changes, none of which in isolation amounts to a casus belli, but which add up over 

time to a substantial change in the strategic picture.”7

The goal is often not just to achieve a narrow objective, 

but rather to use an avalanche of incremental steps as 

the catalysts of an entirely new strategic reality. 

Gradualist approaches are especially appealing 

to measured revisionists. Such states want to overturn elements of the system without causing general 

instability. They tend to be patient enough to take a 

piecemeal approach if it will help balance their mixed 

goals of transformation and stability. They are more 

willing than outright predators to surrender the speed 

and absoluteness of conclusive strategies for the more 

ambiguous and uncertain, but also less risky and escalatory, incremental approach.

At the higher end of the spectrum, gradualist 

strategies range from unconventional war strategies, 

proxy conflicts, the covert use of regular militaries, 

nuclear saber-rattling, wide-ranging and severe economic sanctions, and large-scale cyber activities, to far 

less elaborate activities at the lower end. At the more 

elaborate end, gradualist strategies begin to look very 

much like more limited conclusive ones: There is no 

hard-and-fast line between the two. The primary dis-
39

tinction is that gradualist strategies—like all elements 

of gray zone campaigns—are chosen specifically to 

avoid red lines and escalation, with a clear knowledge 

that they must unfold over time. 

Gradualist strategies can also be designed to exploit the fissures in partnerships and alliances. The 

basic conundrum involved in gradualist challenges is 

tough enough for any one strategic actor to deal with. 

When the challenge is expanded to several or dozens 

of nations in formal or informal alliances or coalitions, 

each with its own distinct interests, risk appetite, and 

political procedures and complications, the potential 

for decisive or even meaningful responses to individual slices of the salami becomes almost negligible. 

Dealing with the gradualist approaches of both China 

and Russia today demonstrates this difficulty: In both 

cases, regional alliances or informal coalitions have 

had difficulty coming to consensus on the degree of 

threat involved in these incremental moves.

Gradualist approaches also complicate the task of 

deterrence and balancing. It becomes harder to recognize when a state is in direct conflict with another, 

for example, when conflicts unfold over time and 

can be difficult to identify. Such approaches create a 

demand for coherent long-term strategy, not merely 

a response to each individual event—a particularly 

troubling implication for the United States, which is 

constitutionally challenged in its ability to sustain coherent long-term efforts. Gradualism also complicates 

the cost-benefit calculus for specific policies, because 

actions appropriate to a specific imminent action can 

be counterproductive in the context of a long-term 

campaign.

Gray zone strategies, therefore, will tend to reflect 

these aspects of what can be called strategic gradu-
40

alism. They will unfold over time, bit by bit, each 

step carefully remaining below clear thresholds of 

response. Over time, however, the architect of such a 

campaign intends for these incremental steps to sum 

up to a decisive change in the status quo. Such strategies thus involve measured revisionists acting in a 

deliberate and gradual manner to achieve partial revolution in the existing system. We have one major element left to examine—the tools and techniques used 

by such actors to build their gray zone campaigns.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3

1. This is similar to the conception of Daniel Altman, who 

argues that traditional interstate bargaining theory focuses on 

relatively simple efforts to get the other side to back down—the 

equivalent of a conclusive strategy in a bargaining context. See 

Daniel Altman, “Red Lines and Faits Accomplis in Interstate Coercion and Crisis,” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, 

MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015, p. 18.

2. A related literature which bears on gradualist approaches 

is the concept of incrementalism. There is an extensive literature 

on incrementalism as a response to uncertainty: Decisionmakers 

do not feel confident enough in forecasting the results of strategic moves to make big gambles. Therefore, they proceed in small 

steps, tip-toeing ahead in a complex and unpredictable landscape. 

In a famous essay, Charles Lindblom examined the challenges of 

complex high-level decisions and argued that “This might be described as the method of successive limited comparisons. I will 

contrast it with the first approach, which might be called the 

rational-comprehensive method.” Policy comparisons are simplified by the “limitation of policy comparisons to those policies that 

differ in relatively small degree from policies presently in effect.” 

See Charles E. Lindblom, “The Science of ‘Muddling Through,’” 

Public Administration Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring, 1959, pp. 

81, 84. Decisionmakers bite off small pieces of the problem because anything more runs into irresolvable clashes of values and 

interpretation.
41

3. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Ed., New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 66-67.

4. Schelling, pp. 67-68.

5. Altman, p. 21; the quote is from Glenn Snyder and Paul 

Diesing, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and 

System Structure in International Crises, Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

Legacy Library, 2015, p. 227.

6. Altman, p. 21; the quote is from Snyder and Diesing, p. 227. 

Altman defines salami-slicing tactics as “repeated faits accomplis,” 

though I would suggest a slightly different interpretation. A state 

can use many actions as a salami-slicing tactic, including, but not 

limited to, the specific technique of a fait accompli. If Russia were 

intent on further salami slicing in Eastern Europe, for example, 

it could make political claims, undertake information warfare 

campaigns, or offer supplies to friendly militias in countries on 

it periphery. All of these could be part of gradual slices of action 

without meeting the technical term of fait accompli.

7. Robert Haddick, “America Has No Answer to China’s 

Salami-Slicing,” War on the Rocks Online, February 6, 2014.

43

CHAPTER 4

UNCONVENTIONAL TOOLS

The third and final component of gray zone strategies involves the employment of unconventional tools 

of statecraft that remain below the threshold of traditional conflict. The use of such tools and techniques is 

hardly new. Greek city-states were employing proxy 

militias, fifth columnists, and early forms of information warfare several millennia ago.1

 During the Cold 

War, each side sought to undermine and destabilize 

the other without risking major conflict, and the suite 

of unconventional warfare (UW) measures became 

very elaborate. U.S. and Soviet techniques ranged 

from political warfare to propaganda to covert operations of every imaginable type, including support for 

guerrilla organizations seeking to undermine allies 

and proxies of the opposing superpower. Both sides 

developed conceptual frameworks to guide these 

often covert tools of statecraft, such as the Western 

notion of “measures short of war.”2

States using modern gray area strategies build on 

this history by employing a range of tools to promote 

their interests and sometimes pursue their measured 

revisionist agendas without risking major warfare. 

When China sought to gain geostrategic and territorial advantages in the South China Sea, it employed 

a wide range of instruments of power. It backed its 

claims with historical narratives that spoke to its 

rightful mastery of large parts of the region. It approached regional states with offers of economic assistance and other carrots in exchange for cooperation. 

It employed civilian fishing fleets to blanket certain 

areas and placed oil drilling stations in key locations. 
44

It used civilian construction companies to create new 

land where none had existed, and launched cyberharassment of states that contested its claims.

Iran has wielded a similarly impressive array of 

unconventional, gray zone tools to bolster its influence in the Middle East and beyond. It deploys a complex and extensive network of covert operatives and 

quasi-military forces through its embassies and other 

locations. It uses energy diplomacy and the proceeds 

of oil riches to fund its various causes. It has a welldeveloped network of proxies, none more powerful 

than the leading hybrid warfare actor in the world—

Hezbollah—to help carry out its strategic ambitions. 

It has taken gradual steps to build a residual nuclear 

capacity that offers, at a minimum, the potential for 

nuclear breakout if it were ever deemed necessary, as 

well as general geopolitical leverage.

Such tools have been discussed under the umbrella 

of a wide range of potential categories and issues. This 

category of tools and techniques has been described 

as a form of warfare that is unconventional, gray area, 

hybrid, unrestricted, untraditional, and more. Part of 

the challenge is to clarify this menu of concepts and, 

especially, to be clear about the central issue that is 

challenging the international system today. Three 

concepts in particular—hybrid warfare, UW, and political warfare—are especially useful in understanding 

the role of unconventional and nonmilitary elements 

of statecraft in making possible the new emphasis on 

gray zone strategies.

HYBRID WARFARE 

One leading proponent of this concept, scholar 

Frank Hoffman, defines hybrid threats as “Any adversary that simultaneously employs a tailored mix of 
45

conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and 

criminal behavior in the same time and battlespace to 

obtain their political objectives.”3 Hybrid conflict, he 

suggests, involves the employment of a broad spectrum of tactics and weapons in the same campaign, 

the combination of various tools—from high-end military operations to terrorism, criminality, cyberattacks, 

insurgency, terrorism, and more—in order to target 

an opponent’s vulnerabilities. Hoffman has described 

this as “multi-modal” conflict.4 Hybrid warfare, Hoffman continues, is characterized by “states or groups 

that select from the whole menu of tactics and technologies and blend them in innovative ways to meet 

their own strategic culture, geography, and aims.”5

Defined this way, hybrid warfare would seem to 

be a very broad and encompassing concept, more than 

expansive enough to include gray zone strategies. Indeed, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has officially used this term to describe Russian actions in 

Ukraine.6 Most commonly however, commentators 

have used the term “hybrid warfare” to refer to combinations of conventional and unconventional means 

designed to produce or lay the groundwork for eventual decisive operations by military forces. It is not a 

gray area tactic in itself so much as the appendage of 

gray area tactics to major war.7

Hybrid warfare marries conventional military operations, either sequentially or in parallel, to a range of 

other tactics largely built around psychological operations and information warfare. The goal is to target the 

opinion of publics in states waging war, both to reinforce the commitment of friendly publics and destroy 

the morale of adversaries. Most hybrid approaches 

also point to strategies that integrate guerrilla and 

other irregular operations with conventional ones.8
46

The result is a cross-boundary military effort that integrates many different forms of competition and conflict into a cohesive whole. But, again, the purpose of 

hybrid warfare is either to win a conclusive campaign 

through the use of force and some level or violence, or 

else to set the stage for some sort of decisive military 

action, perhaps through combined arms operations. 

Hybrid warfare is closer to a variety of conventional 

warfare than a true alternative to it.

In another article, Hoffman makes clear the limitations of his hybrid concept. “The problem with the 

hybrid threats definition,” he wrote: 

is that it focuses on combinations of tactics associated 

with violence and warfare (except for criminal acts) 

but completely fails to capture other non-violent actions. Thus, it does not address instruments including economic and financial acts, subversive political 

acts like creating or covertly exploiting trade unions 

and NGOs as fronts, or information operations using 

false websites and planted newspaper articles. It also 

fails to address what a pair of Chinese Army Colonels 

discussed in their book titled Unrestricted Warfare (really War without Borders) that was explicitly critical of 

Western and American conceptions of war. That concept included diplomatic and financial and information tools as part of a larger conception of warfare.9

Hybrid warfare, then, in Hoffman’s sense, still refers to the employment of tools and techniques of violence to achieve political ends—but tools that mix approaches from forms of types of warfare often thought 

distinct, such as decisive action and irregular war. 

Such operations overlap with the higher-intensity end 

of gray zone conflict as I am defining it, but the hybrid 

warfare concept clearly imagines a far more violent 

clash that involves direct use of many military instru-
47

ments. In this sense, hybrid war is truly “war” in a 

Clausewitzian sense, whereas gray zone strategies are 

a less violent and looser form of conflict.

UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE 

A number of the tactics and techniques being 

employed in gray zone strategies overlap with classic UW. The term often is used to apply to a wide 

range of activities, but its technical definition refers, 

as David Maxwell has made clear, to efforts to support foreign insurgencies. He cites the official Department of Defense (DoD) definition, which characterizes 

UW as “activities to enable a resistance movement or 

insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power through and with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied 

area.”10 A number of early discussions also include 

political terrorism in service of insurgent campaigns 

in this category.

Greek city-states engaged in long-running campaigns of subversion against each other using all manner of proxy and insurgent forces, including fomenting slave rebellions. The Romans made extensive use 

of UW in connection with hundreds of proxy forces 

throughout its empire.11 In the modern era, UW perhaps reached its heyday in World War II and the Cold 

War that followed. Such operations were common in 

World War II, as in Allied operations to disrupt the 

German occupation of Yugoslavia.12 During the Cold 

War, Moscow employed a range of UW strategies in 

various theaters as part of its general approach to subversion.13 The United States and its allies used UW just 

as energetically to undermine Communist rule from 

Afghanistan to Eastern Europe.
48

The concept of UW is making a comeback in a context where major powers desire to avoid direct confrontation, while engaging in competition and rivalry 

over important but ultimately secondary interests. In 

both Afghanistan and Iraq, senior leaders in DoD—

both within the policy process and to the general public—advertised the operations as UW campaigns, involving U.S. support for local proxies more than direct 

application of U.S. conventional military might.14 Russia’s gray zone strategies in the Caucasus and Eastern 

Europe have also made liberal use of guerrilla tactics 

and local proxy forces.

POLITICAL WARFARE 

A closely related category is sometimes referred 

to as “political warfare.” It involves measures to promote fragmentation and instability on the home front 

or within the military of an opposing power. Some recent descriptions of gray zone forms of conflict have 

employed the term “political warfare” to describe 

some of what has taken place in Eastern Europe and 

elsewhere: Russia’s cyber campaign against Estonia 

in 2007, for example, was designed in part to convey 

political messages about the inability of Estonia’s government to safeguard its citizens.

In one sense, all of gray zone conflict represents a 

form of political warfare. Its goal is to employ a range 

of tools of statecraft to achieve specific political objectives. Its activities are integrated tightly into political 

realities and dynamics, and it can only work if it succeeds in molding political realities and perceptions in 

the intended way. Gray zone conflict, then, is political 

warfare to a great degree. But there are specific ways 

in which the more directly politically-oriented tools 
49

of such campaigns can be understood as a discrete 

category of effort.

George F. Kennan’s famous invocation of “measures short of war” laid out a range of diplomatic, political, economic, and other aspects of broad national 

security strategy. During the Cold War, the Soviet 

Union employed what it called “active measures,” 

political, economic, and social subversion designed 

to weaken the West and clear the way for the victory 

of socialism. The key difference was that these measures would be used consistently to work out rivalry 

between “great centers of power and ideology in this 

world”—measures used for the “promulgation of 

power.”15 Kennan was discussing a context of persistent competition, rather than one in which states could 

resolve their disputes and move on to another issue. 

“Political warfare,” Kennan argued, “is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace.”

In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short 

of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such 

overt actions as political alliances, economic measures 

(as ERP—the Marshall Plan), and “white” propaganda 

to such covert operations as clandestine support of 

“friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological 

warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.”16

The strategic coherence of U.S. Cold War political 

warfare can be exaggerated,17 but the approach was 

certainly at the center of both U.S. and Soviet Cold 

War strategies. The reason, moreover, was somewhat 

similar to the basis for the current surge in interest—

the desire to avoid direct confrontation.
50

The primary importance of political warfare today 

is in terms of integrated strategies bringing together 

information operations, development aid, regime 

support, and other nonviolent options to encourage 

specific political outcomes. Some have argued for 

a political warfare concept at the heart of the global 

contest with violent extremism.18 China has arguably 

been waging versions of political warfare in its campaigns for influence in Africa and Asia.

CONCLUSION

These three concepts give some flavor of the sort 

of unconventional, cross-boundary set of tools and 

techniques that can be employed in gray zone conflict. 

They can be integrated into holistic, gradual campaigns to achieve political ends. Such tools appear 

to be of particular interest to measured revisionists, 

states determined to reframe global balance of power 

but equally committed to achieving that goal without 

major war and, in fact, without even losing their status as a recognized member of the rules-based international order. 

In these ambitions, such powers are aided by the 

development of a wide range of gray zone concepts, 

approaches, and technologies that provide multiple 

avenues to pursue limited revisionist intent without 

risking major war. Many of these have been on display in recent years—actions from economic sanctions 

and energy diplomacy to cyberattacks to information 

operations to generate revisionist narratives to sponsorship of militias and fifth columnists to the aggressive use of nonmilitary forces such as coast guards. 

Such tools and techniques are not new. But the sum 

total of their effect has become unprecedented, and 
51

offers peaceful revisionists a meaningful avenue to 

their goals without outright conflict.

The combination of these three elements—measured revisionism, strategic gradualism, and unconventional tools and techniques—together account for 

the origins and character of gray zone conflict. The report turns now to a more detailed assessment of that 

concept.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4

1. See, for example, Dave Coughran, “Another Way to Fight: 

Unconventional Warfare from Rome to Iran,” Harvard Kennedy 

School Review, May 2, 2013, available from harvardkennedyschoolreview.com/another-way-to-fight-unconventional-warfare-from-rometo-iran/.

2. John J. Tierney, Chasing Ghosts: Unconventional Warfare in 

American History, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006, focuses 

to a large extent on guerrilla tactics but is a fascinating and impressive survey.

3. Cited in Frank Hoffman, “On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare vs. Hybrid Threats,” War on the Rocks, July 28, 2014, 

available from warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-not-so-new-warfarepolitical-warfare-vs-hybrid-threats/. 

4. Frank N. Hoffman, “Hybrid Threats: Reconceptualizing the 

Evolving Character of Modern Conflict,” Washington, DC: National Defense University Strategic Forum No. 240, April 2009, 5.

5. Other defining recent works on hybrid war include William J. Nemeth, “Future War and Chechnya: A Case for Hybrid Warfare,” Thesis submitted to the Naval Postgraduate 

School, June 2002, available from calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/

handle/10945/5865/02Jun_Nemeth.pdf?sequence=1; Colonel John 

J. McCuen, “Hybrid Wars,” Military Review, March-April 2008; 

and Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid 

Wars, Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute, December 2007.
52

6. “Hybrid War, Hybrid Response,” Washington, DC: North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization, July 3, 2014.

7. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work made this distinction in his 2015 U.S. Army War College speech, arguing that 

“as difficult and as challenging as the gray zone will be, it will 

pale in comparison when that type of conflict then escalates from 

the shadowy actions of ‘fifth-columnists’ and ‘little green men,’ to 

state-sponsored and state-directed hybrid proxy war.”

8. A good summary is András Ràcz, Russia’s Hybrid War in 

Ukraine, Helsinki, Finland: The Finnish Institute of International 

Affairs, June 2015, pp. 28-34.

9. Hoffman, “On Not-So-New Warfare.”

10. David Maxwell, “Do We Really Understand Unconventional War?” Small Wars Journal, October 23, 2014. See also 

Mark Grdovic, “Developing a Common Understanding of Unconventional Warfare,” Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 57, Second 

Quarter, 2010.

11. Coughran, “Another Way to Fight.”

12. J. Darren Duke, Rex L. Phillips, and Christopher J. 

Conover, “Challenges in Coalition Unconventional Warfare: The 

Allied Campaign in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945,” Joint Force Quarterly, 

Fourth Quarter 2014.

13. For early discussions of these tactics, see Raymond L. Garthoff, “Unconventional War in Communist Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, July 1962; Franklin A. Lindsay, “Unconventional Warfare,” 

Foreign Affairs, Vol. 40, No. 2, January 1962; and Andrew C. Janos, “Unconventional Warfare: Framework and Analysis,” World 

Politics, Vol. 15, No. 4, July 1963.

14. Hy Rothstein has argued that these claims were somewhat 

misleading, and that both campaigns relied much more on conventional military power than would a true UW campaign. See 

Hy Rothstein, Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare, Newport, RI: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2006.
53

15. George F. Kennan, Measures Short of War: The George F. 

Kennan Lectures at the National War College, 1946-1947, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1991, pp. 4-5.

16. George Kennan, Policy Planning Staff Memorandum, “The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare,” 

May 4, 1948, available from academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/

johnson/65ciafounding3.htm. 

17. Scott Lucas and Kaeten Mistry, “Illusions of Coherence: 

George F. Kennan, U.S. Strategy and Political Warfare in the 

Early Cold War, 1946–1950,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 33, No. 1, 

January 2009.

18. Donovan C. Chau, “Political Warfare: An Essential Instrument of U.S. Strategy Today,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 25, No. 

2, 2006.

55

CHAPTER 5

UNDERSTANDING GRAY ZONE CONFLICT

Gray zone conflict therefore reflects the collision of 

three major trends in world politics: The limited but 

nonetheless transformative intentions of measured revisionists; the reliance on incremental approaches to 

revise elements of the system one bite at a time; and 

the employment of nontraditional tools of statecraft to 

achieve gradual but decisive results in the no-man’sland between peace and war. The result is a pattern of 

state rivalry that can substitute for traditional military 

aggression, and which can pose serious challenges to 

U.S. strategy. 

At the same time, however, there are powerful 

constraints on the effectiveness of these approaches, 

and they can easily become counterproductive. As we 

will see, as much as gray zone strategies attempt to 

escape significant retaliation by staying “under the 

radar” of key thresholds, they do not always succeed. 

Both China and Russia have prompted serious blowback with their gray zone efforts. There may be a real 

dilemma at the core of such strategies: They can either 

avoid meaningful response or achieve significant and 

timely results, but they have difficulty doing both.

THE MOTIVE: THE RISKS OF MAJOR WAR, 

AND RELATIVE WEAKNESS

The growing importance of gray zone strategies 

does not assume that full-scale armed aggression has 

become impossible. But the costs of large-scale aggression have become severe while the potential benefits 

have declined, and it has simply ceased to be a mean-
56

ingful option for nearly all states nearly all the time.1

Warfare between major powers in Europe, Asia, or the 

Middle East remains entirely plausible, but, if it occurs, it is likely to emerge through some combination 

of accident, miscalculation, and misperception rather 

than because of the conscious choice of a national 

leadership. The trend is more than theoretical: Extensive recent empirical work indicates that the incidence 

and severity of major war has declined significantly 

over the last century, and projects that, absent possible 

shocks to the system, it is likely to continue to do so.2

This monograph has identified a number of specific reasons why outright aggression will only serve 

a state’s interests under exceptionally narrow conditions. Territorial aggression promises to be more 

costly than ever before, partly because of the risk of 

nuclear escalation but also because of the role of media and the combination of advanced insurgent tactics 

and technologies of resistance. The value of aggression has declined at a time when states can acquire 

what they need through trade, and when the relative 

importance of such territorially-based prizes as minerals and raw materials is not what it once was. Aggressors risk being shunned by the international community and ejected from the economic, technological, 

and social networks essential to national prosperity. 

Leading interest groups in major states view their 

own stakes as bound up with peace and stability and 

oppose measures that would threaten those values. Of 

course, when an opponent is a nuclear power or allied to one, the risk of national devastation outweighs 

any potential advantage that could be gained from 

adventurism.3

Yet rivalry, aggression, and frustration with existing distributions of goods and power hardly have dis-
57

appeared from the map of world politics. Many states 

still view key neighbors with suspicion and even hatred. Security dilemmas remain as real today as they 

have been throughout the history of the state system. 

Rivalry will continue in different ways, and Nadia 

Schadlow has argued for attention to “the space between peace and war” as a critical future trend in 

world politics. The battlegrounds in these conflicts 

revolve around the information environment and perceptions, and states try to gain the upper hand with 

coercive actions short of large-scale military use.4

In the meantime, many states can also be attracted 

to gray zone techniques because of their relative weakness. Russian and Chinese gray zone tactics lately have 

been interpreted as indications of cunning and influence, when, in fact, they may speak to a fundamental inability to do anything more.5

 Russia’s economic 

weakness may mean that it simply cannot acquire a 

conventional military of sufficient strength to pursue 

its regional goals, leaving it to turn to gray zone campaigns as an alternative. Mark Galeotti has pointedly 

observed that Russia, “a country with an economy 

somewhere between the size of Italy’s and Brazil’s is 

seeking to assert a great power international role and 

agenda.” He uses the phrase “guerrilla geopolitics” 

to characterize the resulting attraction to gray zone 

strategies: Russia is trying to punch above its weight, 

and shifting to major combat would expose at least 

some of its vulnerabilities.6 For China, Russia, Iran, 

and others, operating in the gray zone allows them to 

dampen the relative power differences between them 

and the United States and its allies. In this sense, gray 

zone strategies are a form of asymmetric tool, a sort of 

multi-instrument insurgency.
58

DEFINING GRAY ZONE CONFLICT

In this context, gray zone conflict might be understood as having a number of characteristics. It could 

be considered as a form of conflict that:

• Pursues political objectives through cohesive, 

integrated campaigns;

• Employs mostly nonmilitary or nonkinetic tools;

• Strives to remain under key escalatory or red 

line thresholds to avoid outright, conventional 

conflict; and,

• Moves gradually toward its objectives rather 

than seeking conclusive results in a specific 

period of time.

An important distinction regarding such means 

of conflict is whether states actively and consciously 

choose gray zone strategies as an alternative to other 

forms of seeking their political objectives. In some 

cases, states experimenting with gray zone techniques 

are really developing variations on the theme of traditional combat—things like asymmetric war, which 

involve open fighting if in irregular ways, or limited 

war, which involves outright combat pursued with 

mutually-agreed constraints.7 Or they could be using 

gray zone campaigns as a prelude to potential warfare, rather than an alternative to it. Relatively weak 

states may grab at gray zone tools and techniques, 

not because they consider this set of options a unique 

and coherent strategic concept, but because they have 

no choice. This monograph argues that we see some 

evidence that states have indeed embraced gray zone 

strategies as a distinct and specific form of conflict, but 

that evidence remains inconclusive.
59

Figure 5-1 lays out a range of tools and techniques 

that can be used to assemble gray-zone campaigns. 

These lists are in no way meant to be comprehensive; 

they are suggestive and illustrative of the sort of actions available to measured revisionists. These are 

tools that in one way or another tend to fit well into 

gray zone approaches. None is necessarily designed 

to achieve a rapid victory in the sense of the classic use 

of military force.

Figure 5-1. Gray Zone Tools and Techniques.

Economic Military / Clandestine Informational Political Other

High 

End

• Blockade

• Severe sanctions

• Energy coercion

• Nuclear posturing

• Movements of 

troops, threats

• Creation of fait accompli situations

• Large-scale covert 

actions to weaken 

regime

• Discrete acts of 

violence at key 

moments

• Use of UW forces 

(SOF, covert operators) in direct action 

with deniability

• Sponsoring large 

scale proxy violence

• Major 

propaganda 

campaigns

• Large-scale 

deception 

and denial to 

conceal revisionist intent

• Support for 

domestic 

opposition, 

exiles, guerrillas, 

militias

• Major claims in 

global forums to 

support revisionist intent; urgent 

efforts to change 

rules, distribution of goods

• Conclude formal 

alliances

• Sign treaties

• Large scale 

cyberattacks

• Use of 

nonmilitary 

assets 

(coast 

guard,

 fishing 

fleets) to 

create de 

facto 

presence

Middle 

Ground

• Targeted sectoral denial

• Limited sanctions

• Large-scale exercises

• Signaling

• Moderate covert 

actions for leverage 

or specific goals

• Sponsoring moderate proxy activities

• Expand/revise 

military presence in 

regions/states

• Develop and 

publicize 

historical narrative

• Moderate 

propaganda 

campaign

• Dialogues with 

adversary political opposition

• Moderate efforts 

in international 

forums to revise 

rules

• Establish 

regional concerts

• Cyberharassing, 

targeted 

cyber 

actions

Low 

End

• Trade policies

• Implied 

economic 

coercion

• Small-scale covert 

actions for modest 

goals

• Low-level backing 

for proxy attacks

• General 

information 

diplomacy

• Use of global 

forums to assert 

goals on persistent basis

• Networks, Track 

2 efforts

• Low-level, 

ongoing 

cyber 

activities
60

A given gradualist campaign could involve a 

whole mosaic of actions assembled from this broad 

menu. The key to a gray zone campaign is not so much 

the tools—though by definition they will remain short 

of high-intensity conflict—as much as the phased 

and incremental way they are employed, and the fact 

that the campaign is seeking to achieve political goals 

short of major war rather than laying the groundwork 

for, or supporting the conduct of, combined-arms 

operations.

Such strategies could then involve a range of possible actions, captured in Figure 5-2. These can range 

from peacetime cooperation to competition to lowlevel gradualism to moderate to high-level, as in Russia. A number of these approaches could be combined 

into an overall campaign, and the intensity can be 

modulated depending on the interests at stake or the 

risk tolerance of the aggressing state.

Figure 5-2. A Spectrum of Gray Zone Techniques.
61

Nuclear weapons can also support gray zone strategies in a number of specific ways. By definition, these 

strategies are designed to stay under key thresholds, 

to force the choice of escalation onto the defender and 

ideally achieve intended political objectives without resort to major combat. In the process, nuclear 

weapons can help to insulate gray zone campaigns 

by raising the perceived risk of escalation. Russia, for 

example, has undertaken many avenues of gray zone 

aggression—all the while making explicit reference to 

its potential willingness to use nuclear weapons to defend interests it identifies as vital. The effect is to magnify the dangers of escalation for the other side, and 

clear the way for Russia’s gray zone actions. Indeed, 

a number of strategic capabilities and threats—cyber 

and long-range conventional strike as well as nuclear 

weapons—can play this role in gray zone campaigns.

OPERATING BELOW THRESHOLDS, 

CREATING DILEMMAS

The central strategic concept of gray zone strategies is to confront their targets with a conundrum. Any 

one specific act in the chain will have limited stakes, 

but responding to it has the potential to escalate and 

create a crisis. One source uses the terminology of 

salami-slicing gradualism to build an argument that 

applies to gray zone strategies more generally:

Policymakers in Washington will be caught in a bind 

attempting to apply this military power against an accomplished salami-slicer. If sliced thinly enough, no 

one action will be dramatic enough to justify starting 

a war. How will a policymaker in Washington justify 

drawing a red line in front of a CNOOC oil rig anchoring inside Vietnam’s EEZ [exclusive economic zone], 
62

or a Chinese frigate chasing off a Philippines survey 

ship over Reed Bank, or a Chinese infantry platoon 

appearing on a pile of rocks near the Spratly Islands? 

When contemplating a grievously costly war with a 

major power, such minor events will appear ridiculous as casus belli. Yet when accumulated over time 

and space, they could add up to a fundamental change 

in the region.8

Despite the risks and complications of responding, 

therefore, ignoring the gradual steps allows the aggressor at least in theory to progressively change the 

strategic landscape in important ways. Gradual gray 

zone tactics are thus designed to place their intended 

targets in a no-win position: “It is the rivals of salamislicers who are obligated to eventually draw red lines 

and engage in brinkmanship over actions others will 

view, in isolation, as trivial and far from constituting 

casus belli.”9

A fundamental implication of gray zone campaigns is to blur the dividing line between peace and 

war, and between civilian and military endeavors. 

They are, in a sense, the use of civilian instruments 

to achieve objectives sometimes reserved for military 

capabilities. They place all of society at risk and create a sense of ongoing conflict, even if not through the 

deployment of traditional military formations to seize 

territory. Gray zone campaigns thus continue the tendency of various forms of conflict—terrorism, insurgency, and nuclear threats included—to make civilian 

populations a regular target.10

Conflict or War? 

Although it is a form of persistent conflict and a 

means of achieving state objectives through force, 

gray zone conflict can be distinguished from “war-
63

fare” as classically defined—a distinction that suggests the need for a new theory of gray zone conflict. 

In his initial and perhaps most famous definition, for 

example, Carl von Clausewitz writes that “War is thus 

an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”11

If this were as far as Clausewitz got, gray zone conflict 

might qualify as warfare, depending on how one defined “force.” But in many places, Clausewitz clearly 

understands war in traditional terms: As military forces applying violence in defined engagements to win a 

discrete victory.12 When he does refer to the potential 

to defeat an enemy through delaying tactics and the 

gradual imposition of costs, he clearly seems to have 

in mind violent means of doing so with military forces. More commonly, when referring to the requirements for victory, he speaks of traditional outcomes: 

Destroying enemy forces, “disarming” the enemy, 

seizing their capital, undermining their will through 

the application of violence, all designed to achieve a 

decisive victory on the battlefield. When thinking of 

war, Clausewitz had in mind what we would consider to be major combat operations: The employment 

of military forces to achieve a decisive victory on the 

battlefield.

As often as he reminds his readers that war is not

a distinct and separate activity, but merely the “continuation of policy by other means,”13 Clausewitz also 

takes pains to stress the ways in which the environment of war is unique. War is a distinctive enterprise 

with particular characteristics—violence, fear, passion 

and emotion, chance, and friction. Crossing the threshold into a situation of war is a momentous decision 

that must be understood as a departure from regular 

life, the inauguration of a different context, with different rules and realities.
64

In all of these senses, gray zone conflict cannot 

be understood as war. It does not usually involve 

violence or bloodshed, at least not as its essential 

approach. It does not aim at clearly defined engagements, and there is no identifiably distinct battlefield. 

It is not conducted primarily by military forces, or, at 

a minimum, their activities are nested deeply into a 

more integrated campaign directed by civilians. 

Gray zone conflict involves the holistic application 

of a mosaic of civilian and military tools, short of combat operations, to achieve gradual progress toward political objectives. It therefore does reflect Clausewitz’s 

core dictum about war—it is another way of conceiving “the continuation of policy by other means.” But 

it reflects such a continuation through a very different 

approach than Clausewitz would have understood as 

warfare. It is a distinct form of the use of force—social, 

economic, political, and informational as well as military force—to achieve objectives.14 It creates a blended 

version of conflict by blurring the boundary between 

peace and war, and civilian and military tools and 

categories.

One might think that Sun Tzu, the military theorist often contrasted with Clausewitz, would offer a 

concept of conflict more aligned to gray zone efforts. 

But, in fact, Sun Tzu understands war, ultimately, in 

much the same way as Clausewitz does—as the use 

of military forces in engagements for the purposes 

of decisive victory. The Art of War speaks in terms 

of the use of armies, “troops,” force, and violence to 

gain territory and crush adversary forces. It argues 

that generals work best when left alone by political 

leaders, hardly a recipe for an integrated civil-military 

campaign. It demands speed, and has little tolerance 

for gradual operations. “We have not yet seen a clever 

operation that was prolonged.”15
65

Some might find support for gray zone approaches 

in Sun Tzu’s well-known injunction that winning battles is not the key to success: “To subdue the enemy 

without fighting is the acme of skill.” But Sun Tzu’s 

dominant view, as illustrated in dozens of comments 

throughout the work, is that this is achieved by maneuvering and placement of armed forces, deception, 

some degree of clandestine operations—to “defeat 

their strategy” as Sun Tzu urges—rather than through 

operations lower on the spectrum of force. It is an 

army that is taking these actions, not a range of civilian 

capabilities.16 Avoiding battle is about using military 

strategy to affect enemy perceptions in the context of 

a face-off of military force. 

From the standpoint of classic military theory, 

then, gray zone conflict does not meet the traditional 

criteria for warfare. Its character and challenge will be 

specific to its nature, and must be thought of differently than war itself. This fact has a number of implications. One is that the principles governing the conduct 

of conventional warfare need to be modified, and in 

some cases abandoned, when conceiving of a doctrine 

for gray zone conflict.

A second and equally important implication has to 

do with the legal implications of gray zone conflict. 

The United Nations (UN) Charter prohibits “armed 

attack” on a neighbor, in service of UN overarching 

goal of preventing “breaches of the peace.” Because 

they do not reflect unambiguous use of force, gray 

zone techniques can create significant challenges from 

an international legal standpoint. It is not clear, for 

example, whether these coercive and often aggressive actions meet the standard of “armed attack” and 

therefore allow retaliatory action under Article 51’s 

guarantee of self-defense. In a controversial 1985 deci-
66

sion, the International Court of Justice ruled that Nicaraguan meddling in El Salvador did not generate a 

self-defense situation, and held that U.S. support for 

the contras violated international law.17 One goal of 

gray zone strategies is to remain below this particular 

threshold and thus not furnish defending states with 

a rationale for retaliation that is legal under international law.

States engaged in gray zone conflicts, therefore, 

are not technically “at war.” The permissions and 

protections of many international agreements that reference wartime, from the UN Charter to the Geneva 

Conventions, do not apply to gray zone contexts. The 

last 15 years have been a continual reminder of the 

great challenges of conducting quasi-wartime activities in a context that does not, in many critical ways, 

qualify as war. Because gray zone conflicts can last for 

years—perhaps even decades—exceptions to normal 

social or political norms will be much more challenging to sustain. As they do with the political context, 

then, gray zone campaigns create a vague, ambiguous 

environment for legal standards and judgment.

A third challenge is that, in a gray zone conflict, 

it can be difficult or impossible to define “victory.” 

The goals of traditional warfare are typically clear, 

the definition of success or victory is self-evident, and 

once one side has “won,” it is obvious to everyone. In 

gray zone campaigns, however, a clear concept of victory can be elusive. For China, the day when all other 

regional powers accede to Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over key components of the South China Sea 

would represent an unambiguous signal of victory. 

But such a day, in such unequivocal terms, is never 

likely to arrive: There will be no “surrender ceremony” with other states signing a document abandoning 
67

their claims. Instead, the campaign is likely to persist 

for years, generating occasionally clear advances, 

frequent reversals, and no final objective outcomes. 

The same will be true for the United States and allied 

responses to such campaigns.

We can already see the challenges of waging such 

conflicts for U.S. and friendly democratic states. Such 

societies are more comfortable with simple, traditional conflicts with well-defined objectives, a defined 

time frame, and a clear winner. Operating a changing, ambiguous, long-term campaign challenges the 

strategic personality of democracies. Because so many 

elements of gray zone strategies operate in the shadows—secret and clandestine activities—running such 

campaigns can undermine public oversight of foreign 

and national security policy.

At the same time, one lesson is that states employing gray zone campaigns may find themselves frustrated in their ability to achieve objectives in measurable 

ways. Patience and a measured, long-term approach 

are appealing until they fail to generate progress. 

Indeed, one lesson of recent and historic experience 

may be that gray zone campaigns often simply do not 

work, or will be perceived as failing given the political 

pressures weighing on national leaderships at critical 

moments. They could then set the stage for an escalation if a state views the desired objective as a vital 

interest.

Limitations, Constraints, and Dilemmas. 

Gray zone strategies are not perfect, and they do 

not always achieve the goals laid out for them. In 

fact, they can become counterproductive: If pursued 

aggressively enough, they will generate some of the 
68

same backlash and counterbalancing as traditional 

military campaigns. When considering the potential 

danger posed by such tactics, it is important to recognize their weaknesses as well as strengths.

To begin with, gray zone strategies simply can 

fail to achieve the broader political goals laid out for 

them. Unlike traditional military operations, they do 

not involve decisive moves to achieve specific outcomes. They creep up on their goals gradually—but 

that process can be interrupted or countered. China’s 

series of actions in the South China Sea, for example, 

can only go so far without the forcible annexation 

of certain land masses. It might never prompt other 

countries in the region to accept Beijing’s territorial 

claims. Gray zone strategies represent a sort of compromise for their authors, generating less risk than 

outright aggression but also reflecting a less decisive 

form of action and less guarantee of success.

The potential for gray zone progress, moreover, 

depends at least partly on the degree to which the 

intended targets are able to respond in kind. To the 

extent that Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and other 

targets of China’s gray zone efforts build their own 

capabilities in these areas—generating counternarratives, using information campaigns to promote their 

version of events, deploying expanded civilian maritime capabilities to the area, actively subverting China’s efforts through such means as harassment and 

cyber actions—the result could be a gray zone stalemate rather than gradual Chinese progress. Like any 

other strategy, efforts in the gray zone can be matched 

and countered.

Indeed, in the long-run, if the set of international 

norms, rules, and institutions that has been building up since 1945 remains largely intact, the authors 
69

of aggressive gray zone strategies may be at a disadvantage in such contests. The main advantage of such 

approaches is to achieve strategic advantage while 

remaining below certain thresholds for response. It 

is now clear, however, that gray zone campaigns being undertaken by China, Russia, and Iran are in fact 

generating significant concern and reaction—in part 

because they are viewed as violating key norms of 

conduct widely respected in the world community. 

In order to press its gray zone campaign effectively, 

for example, China must refuse binding negotiations 

to settle its maritime claims in international institutions—it might not get the outcome it wants. In choosing gray zone aggression over formal talks, though, 

China identifies itself as an aggressor and a state unwilling to play by the rules of international politics.

There may be something of a dilemma for the architects of gray zone strategies, then, a mirror-image of 

the dilemma such strategies try to impose on their victims. It may be that gray zone strategies can be either 

powerful enough to achieve real progress, or stealthy 

enough to fall so far below thresholds of response 

that they generate no effective counteraction—but not 

both. If a gray zone strategy is powerful enough to 

make real progress toward significant political goals, 

it is likely to threaten norms of international conduct, 

and thus fail in its central goal of avoiding a meaningful response. This is certainly the pattern we see in 

Asia, Europe, and the Middle East today.

This dilemma points to the major risk of gray zone 

strategies: That they will reveal their authors as clandestine adventurists and provoke powerful and even 

escalatory responses. Many analyses of gray zone strategies seem to assume that states which confront them 

cannot or will not take decisive or even meaningful 
70

steps to respond, that they will be lulled into a sense 

of security and fearful that any response will escalate 

into conflict. There has been some of this flavor in the 

West’s response to Russian gray zone aggression in 

Eastern Europe, to be sure, and there is little question 

that such techniques do pose a serious challenge for 

U.S. and allied national security strategies. But Russia’s actions have prompted serious countermoves, as 

have China and Iran’s—from arming alternative proxies to diplomatic campaigns to economic sanctions to 

military deployments and exercises.

The risk of escalation, moreover, is ever-present, 

and could confront the authors of gray zone strategies 

with outcomes for which they are ill-prepared. As we 

have seen, gray zone approaches might be properly 

understood as strategies of the weak, states that might 

theoretically consider more direct military action but 

which are not confident of their ability to prevail. Escalation would bring them into a perilous domain, one 

with significant dangers of military failure. Gray zone 

strategies generate a constant risk of such escalation 

by creating an atmosphere of contention and zerosum rivalry and a sense of a state trying to impose its 

will through force. They also tend to involve a long 

series of provocative, sometimes violent actions which 

could spark a larger dispute at any moment: Run-ins 

between Chinese and U.S. vessels and aircraft and 

the pro-Russian Ukrainian militia’s shoot-down of a 

civilian airliner are leading examples of such potential 

triggers. Gray zone strategies are not like steady diplomatic campaigns: They are forceful, destabilizing, 

and operate constantly on the knife-edge of escalation 

to the sort of outright conflict their authors want to 

avoid.
71

It is also worth noting that gray zone strategies are 

not cost-free. Russia’s campaign in Eastern Europe, for 

example, must entail significant direct costs: The operational expenses of its major military actions; funds 

delivered to proxies; and specific capabilities built for 

such campaigns. There is no reliable estimate of the 

cost of such a campaign, but it is likely to run into the 

billions, creating an opportunity cost of other activities or capabilities foregone. Even more substantially, 

both Iran and Russia have faced stiff economic sanctions as a result of their efforts to achieve advantage in 

the gray zone: Again, even restrained aggression contravenes international norms and can provoke punishments. By all accounts, these sanctions have done 

serious damage to Russian and Iranian economies. Finally, there is the geopolitical cost of being identified 

as an aggressor—the cooperation foregone, the potential friends alienated, the counterbalancing provoked.

In sum, then, while gray zone strategies represent a 

notable threat to U.S. and allied interests, their potential should not be overestimated. They have important 

limits and constraints. Russia and Iran are almost certainly worse off today—economically, geopolitically, 

and militarily—because of the costs of and reactions 

to their gray zone campaigns. China is already paying 

a significant price for its gray zone adventurism. The 

following recommendations are designed to build on 

this fundamental insight—that gray zone strategies 

require their authors to challenge international norms 

and can easily generate powerful counter-campaigns 

even as they remain under given thresholds. An effective response would build on this reality and use 

international norms, rules and institutions as the basis for punishing and deterring would-be gray zone 

aggressors.
72

THE CHALLENGE TO U.S. STRATEGY

Despite their limitations and risks, carefully developed gray zone strategies pose a serious challenge to 

U.S. national security strategy. This is true for a number of reasons. First, U.S. foreign policy tends to be 

more comfortable with broad and simple principles—

blunt warnings for specific actions and unconditional 

commitments. The U.S. global role, moreover, is most 

legitimate when acting in defense of clear norms or 

principles that have been unquestionably violated by 

some revisionist power. The United States is more often confounded when it confronts ill-defined, seemingly innocuous actions by revisionist challengers 

working to furnish themselves with genuine legal and 

political validation.

These factors reinforce the basic dilemma that 

gradualist approaches are trying to engineer. As Daniel Altman has argued, if deterring the first fait accompli 

fails, how do states prevent being taken apart piece by 

piece with salami tactics? “Making credible the threat 

to retaliate is essential for deterrence, but it is no easy 

task when the stakes are limited.”18

From an operational perspective, as well, the U.S. 

military tends to focus on the major combat aspects of 

campaigns—the “Phase III” component, as it has been 

known over the last decade and a half. U.S. operational doctrine, force structure and technologies are 

designed and procured in order to prevail once Phase 

III kicks off. As has been demonstrated repeatedly in 

recent conflicts, the U.S. military tends to assume that 

the pre-war and post-war contexts are someone else’s 

responsibility. Pre-war actions are generally limited to 

“preparing the battlefield,” actions designed strictly 

to improve U.S. performance in the main fight.
73

Steven Metz has catalogued a number of aspects 

of U.S. strategic culture that make it temperamentally 

unsuited to fighting gray zone conflicts. “America is 

organizationally and psychologically unprepared for 

unrestricted warfare,” he has argued:

Washington’s instinct is to compartmentalize the elements of power and apply them in sequence, first 

trying diplomacy and phone calls, treating crises as if 

they are simply a big misunderstanding. . . . The entire 

American strategic culture, ethos and security organization is diametric to unrestricted warfare. The United 

States wants its conflicts and security problems to 

remain tidily restricted. Its strength is greatest when 

there is no political ambiguity or ethical confusion, 

and when partners jump on board. This is precisely 

why America’s adversaries will not fight this way.19

The United States often appears to display frustration with gray zone strategies, as if they are somehow 

violating norms of international conduct. In a way, 

they are—gray zone aggressors are seeking to reshape 

international norms and meddle with the rule-based 

order in ways that the United States will find both 

threatening and underhanded. Moreover, the persistence and aggressive character of such actions is characteristic of an era of growing rivalry and competition 

among leading powers that runs against the U.S. narrative of leading states with largely aligned interests 

seeking stability.

The challenge today is to develop a mindset and 

a national security strategy appropriate to an era of 

mixed or paradoxical trends. What seems to be emerging is a period of rivalry alongside cooperation on 

shared interests, fierce ideological competition alongside a deepening global commitment to basic cosmo-
74

politan goals, national strategies that respect the value 

of a rule-based order, and yet use gray zone tactics 

that threaten elements of that order. All of this points 

to the need for complex, nuanced, sometimes contradictory approaches to promote global stability at a 

time of growing tension.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 5

1. Any broad conclusion such as this will have to admit exceptions, and the concept of the infeasibility of large-scale aggression 

is no different. The U.S. invasion of Iraq could be said to be an 

outlier, for example.

2. One recent example is the Global Defense Outlook 2015, 

Deloitte, 2015, pp. 10-12.

3. This is not merely a theoretical conclusion. A number of 

recent studies have used elaborate statistical models to confirm 

the trend, and to suggest that it is likely to continue. The most 

widely cited recent example is the work of Steven Pinker, and his 

book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 

New York: Penguin, 2012. See also his updated analysis, “Has 

the Decline of Violence Reversed Since the Better Angels of Our 

Nature Was Written?” Unpublished paper, n.d., available from 

stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/has_the_decline_of_violence_reversed_since_the_better_angels_of_our_nature_was_written.pdf. 

4. Nadia Schadlow, “Peace and War: The Space Between,” 

War on the Rocks, August 2014.

5. Lawrence Freedman has argued that Russia’s tactics in 

Ukraine have been “driven by weakness as much as by strength.” 

Lawrence Freedman, “Ukraine and the Art of Limited War,” War 

on the Rocks, October 8, 2014.

6. Mark Galeotti, “‘Hybrid War’ and ‘Little Green Men’: How 

It Works and How It Doesn’t,” E-IR, April 16, 2015, p. 2.
75

7. Andràs Ràcz, Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine, Report No. 

43, Helsinki, Finland: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2015, pp. 19-42, discusses various of the concepts at issue 

here—hybrid, asymmetric, nonlinear, and so on—and the distinction clearly emerges.

8. Robert Haddick, “Salami Slicing in the South China Sea,” 

Foreign Policy, August 3, 2012.

9. Robert Haddick, “America Has No Answer,” War on the 

Rocks, February 2014.

10. Thomas Schelling discussed this trend in Arms and 

Influence, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966, p. 27.

11. Clausewitz recognizes that war is hardly complete and 

distinct, that his portrait of “total war” is a partial caricature. It 

would be valid, he explains, if “war were a wholly isolated act” 

that “consisted of a single decisive act or a set of simultaneous 

ones” or if “the decision achieved was complete and perfect in 

itself.”(p. 78) But none of these things is actually true. But in the 

real world, efforts tend “to fall short of maximum.” States can’t 

employ all their resources at once. “Warfare thus eludes the strict 

theoretical requirement that extremes of force be applied.” Later 

he says war is not a “complete, untrammeled, absolute manifestation of violence” but a more qualified endeavor in which the 

political object determines the object and the type of force to be 

applied. He argues that not all wars are fought to unconditional 

surrender; that using political coercion to win without destroying the enemy’s forces; that using “the duration of the war the 

bring about a gradual exhaustion of his physical and moral resistance.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1984, p. 75.

12. The role of violence, for example, has pride of place in 

the trinity—a combination of chance, policy, or politics, and “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity.” When he asks what means 

can be used to prosecute war, he answers, “There is only one: 

combat.” Combat can take different forms, he admits, but quickly 

adds, “Everything that occurs in war results from the existence of 

armed forces; but whenever armed forces, that is armed individuals, 
76

are used, the idea of combat must be present.” Warfare therefore 

consists of “everything related to the fighting forces.” Essentially, 

he says later, “war is fighting”; in a number of places, he defines 

it as the use of armed forces for an engagement. “War is a clash 

between major interests,” he writes at another point, “which is 

resolved by bloodshed.” Clausewitz, On War, pp. 89, 95, 127, 149. 

He has a whole chapter on physical danger on the battlefield, with 

bullets hissing past and “shot failing like hail”; cf. 113.

13. Ibid., p. 87.

14. A closely related literature is that dealing with limited 

warfare, the various types of conflict short of the classic Clausewitzian notion of “total” war. Conflict can be limited in time, 

destructiveness, scope, participants, or many other ways, and so 

gradualist strategy could be considered one form of limited war. 

Freedman recently argued that “The concept of limited war . . . requires that the belligerents choose not to fight at full capacity, and 

so prevent a conflict gaining in intensity and expanding in both 

space and time.. . . . The concept comes into play only when the 

limits have been chosen and accepted by both parties.” Freedman, 

“Ukraine and the Art of Limited War.” 

15. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samuel B. Griffith, trans. and 

with an introduction, London, UK: Oxford University Press, 

1963, p. 73.

16. As Samuel Griffith argues in his introduction, “Never to 

be undertaken thoughtlessly or recklessly, war was to be preceded by measures designed to make it easy to win”; Sun Tzu, The 

Art of War, pp. 77, 79, 101; Griffith, “Introduction,” in Sun Tzu, 

The Art of War, p. 39.

17. This issue’s connection to current Chinese gray zone strategies is discussed in James Kraska, “How China Exploits a Loophole in International Law in Pursuit of Hegemony in East Asia,” 

FPRI E-Notes, January 2015.

18. Daniel Altman, “Red Lines and Faits Accomplis,” 

Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of 

Technology, 2015, p. 26.
77

19. Steven Metz, “In Ukraine, Russia Reveals Its Mastery,” 

World Politics Review, April 16, 2014.

79

CHAPTER 6

GRAY ZONE CAMPAIGNS IN ACTION:

CHINA AND RUSSIA

This chapter seeks to illustrate the nature of gray 

zone strategies by examining two campaigns currently underway—China’s effort to solidify its hegemony in the South China Sea, and Russia’s campaign 

to produce dominance in Eastern Europe. The case for 

China and Russia’s employment of gray zone strategies remains provisional. The evidence discussed is 

suggestive, not conclusive. It is possible that what we 

are seeing in both cases is an example of a disconnected series of actions rather than a coherent strategy, or 

else an example of something else entirely—such as a 

simple clandestine military fait accompli. 

In order to evaluate whether these countries are 

consciously employing gray zone strategies, the 

analysis examines five questions:

1. Would their overall national posture and security strategies embrace such approaches?

2. Do they have identified objectives that require a 

shift in the rules-based order?

3. Have they developed, in official or quasi-official places, theories or concepts that support such 

strategies?

4. Have any official sources endorsed the idea?

5. Do we see behavior that correlates with gray 

zone strategies?

Even a positive answer to all five questions would 

not prove that a state has chosen gray zone strategies as 

their default approach. This section, however, argues 
80

that there is sufficient evidence in all five categories 

to suggest that there may be a pattern in Chinese and 

Russian statecraft, one that deserves further study.

Another question is whether these two actors are 

employing comparable strategies, or whether China 

and Russia are, in fact, pursuing highly distinct approaches. The analysis suggests that there are enough 

similarities that these two campaigns suggest the potential relevance of the gray zone concept. Yet there 

are significant differences between the two which 

once again illustrate the challenges of categorizing 

strategies: Russia’s approach to Georgia and Ukraine 

is far more aggressive and militarized than anything 

China has yet attempted in the South China Sea. Russian approaches strain the “non-military” criteria for 

gray zone campaigns, and could perhaps be just as 

easily categorized as paramilitary invasions designed 

to achieve a fait accompli. Nonetheless, Russia’s actions meet the basic definitions of gray zone strategies—most importantly, Moscow appears to view its 

approach as one restrained enough to avoid triggering 

key thresholds.

Figure 6-1 roughly plots the scope of the two campaigns on the spectrum of gray zone activities outlined 

in Chapter 5. In each case, the full range of activities 

extends to the left and right of the colored boxes—in 

particular, the Russian campaign encompasses the political narrative-building on the lower-intensity side of 

the scale. Moreover, China’s use of swarming civilian 

maritime agencies overlaps to some degree with Russia’s use of paramilitary incursions. The figure reflects 

the idea that, while emphasizing different places on 

the spectrum, both fall into the broad concept of gray 

zone strategies.
81

Figure 6-1. Chinese and Russian Gray Zone 

Strategies.

BEIJING’S GRAY ZONE STRATEGY 

A leading example of such an approach has been 

China’s pursuit of gray zone revisionism in the South 

China Sea. China clearly has some degree of revisionist 

goals, satisfying the second criteria suggested earlier. 

Beijing desires regional hegemony to gain control of 

specific resources and counterbalance, and eventually 

replace, U.S. geopolitical preeminence in Asia.1 But 

like other measured revisionists, China’s aggression 

is strictly bounded. It has no desire to collapse global 

economic institutions or create spiraling new regional 

instability. It has been more than willing to take patient, decades-long approaches to even vital claims in 

the name of preserving a global system amenable to 

economic growth and prosperity. It seems well aware 

Russian Gray Zone Campaign Chinese Gray Zone Campaign
82

of the advantages of recognition as a responsible global 

actor. For these and other reasons, China has become 

a measured revisionist—a state determined to change 

aspects of the current system without overturning 

it. Its basic national strategic posture would, indeed, 

therefore appear to call for something like gray zone 

strategies to pursue revisionist goals but do so while 

managing risk and preserving stability.2

There are reasons to believe that Chinese conceptions of strategy are inherently attuned to gray zone 

approaches. In both official and unofficial statements, 

Chinese strategy emphasizes the holistic, multidomain 

aspects of even military confrontations, tightly integrating political, diplomatic, informational, and economic elements.3

 China tends to favor patient, indirect 

approaches if at all possible, a preference grounded in 

classic Chinese strategic thought.

In recent years Chinese scholars have issued a 

number of theoretical works emphasizing the value of 

gray zone strategies. The publication of such concepts 

does not necessarily indicate that governments have 

adopted them. But a number of factors suggest that 

these theories are at least suggestive of state intent: 

They have been authored by current or former military officers; they were issued by state-run publishing 

sources; and there are numerous related discussions 

or publications or official comments that suggest these 

ideas have taken root and reflect at least some degree 

of official thinking.

The most important example of such gray zone 

theorizing in China is the well-known Chinese report 

authored by two colonels in the Chinese military entitled “Unrestricted Warfare.”4

 It constitutes a vision 

of future conflict that breaks down the dividing lines 

between civilian and military affairs and between 
83

peace and war, in a persistent campaign for relative 

advantage. The title refers to lack of limits on use of 

range of tools to achieve power, not on warfare of extreme violence. “Unrestricted Warfare” contends that 

nonmilitary tools are becoming equally prominent 

and useful for the achievement of previously military 

objectives. Cyberattacks, financial weapons, information attacks—all of these taken together constitute the 

future of warfare. The “battlefield is everywhere”—

the very essence of an unrestricted war.

The document is more suggestive than analytical, 

throwing out 100 provocations without providing solid empirical examples or operational detail. It is not as 

clear as it could be about the line between “unrestricted” and classic warfare, or whether the unrestricted 

variety is truly a substitute for major war or only an 

adjunct. (At times, for example, the document refers to 

a complex jumble of everything—long-range kinetic 

strikes alongside cyber operations and financial punishments.) It does not recognize as well as it could that 

these techniques are hardly new, and that states have 

dipped into the full range of the unrestricted warfare 

toolkit over the millennia. But it remains one of the 

best portraits of a different way of conceiving conflict 

in the gray zone.

Finally, in the Chinese case, we do appear to see 

behavior consonant with a state employing a gray 

zone strategy for revisionist intent. To achieve its 

goals in the South China Sea, China has taken a long 

series of actions that have built up a persistent claim 

to regional hegemony—a series of steps that would 

appear to add up to a coherent gray zone campaign 

for competitive advantage. China has employed a 

wide range of tools and techniques as part of this campaign.5

 It has published detailed political claims to ter-
84

ritory within its “nine-dashed line.”6 It has generated 

historical narratives and documentation in support of 

its claims and stated a determination to resolve disputes to its satisfaction. It has deployed a “staggering 

variety and number of civil law enforcement and civilian commercial vessels and aircraft” in swarming and 

presence missions throughout the region; indeed it 

brought together five distinct civilian maritime agencies into a unified Coast Guard in 2013 to enhance the 

mutual collaboration in these forces.7 It has employed 

the China National Offshore Oil Corporation for regional coercion, deploying an oil rig near the Paracel 

Islands in 2014. It has integrated a range of economic, 

diplomatic, and informational steps into a coherent 

campaign of influence. Figure 6-2 outlines the range 

of tools being employed.

Figure 6-2. China’s Gray Zone Campaign.

Gray Zone Characteristics China’s Actions

Pursues political objectives through 

integrated campaigns.

• Outlined political foundations for claims in South China Sea 

(SCS) area. Narrative, propaganda efforts.

• Numerous elements in seemingly coordinate campaign: 

Maritime, political, economic, military.

• Theoretical foundations for integrated non-military approach.

Employs mostly non-military or 

non-kinetic tools.

• Paramilitary: Deployment of civilian fishing fleets and 

aircraft to establish presence in disputed areas, swarm and 

overwhelm other claimants’ activities, or reinforce Chinese 

presence claims under pressure.

• Economic: Offering direct aid or favorable trade deals, signing access agreements or joint development deals, threatening or imposing sanctions.

• Energy: Use of oil rigs as presence tools; energy agreements 

and aid as inducements.

• Diplomatic: Conducting direct coercive diplomacy, working 

to undermine cooperative or coalition responses to China’s 

actions, engaging in negotiations. Establishing parallel norms 

and institutions that preserve basic stability of a rules-based 

order but shift influence to Beijing.

• Informational: Formal statements, social media campaigns, 

publicizing narratives; use of cyber capabilities to gather and 

shape information, threaten punitive actions.
85

Figure 6-2. China’s Gray Zone Campaign. (Cont.)

Beijing has placed these tools and techniques to 

work supporting a long series of coercive actions. In 

2012, Beijing established a settlement on Woody Island 

in the Paracels. In April 2012, it ratcheted up pressure 

on Scarborough Reef, and eventually the Philippine 

forces had to pull back for lack of resources. In November 2013, it declared an Air Defense Interdiction 

Zone (IDIZ) in the East China Sea. It has employed 

state-owned institutions like China National Offshore 

Oil Corporation to create de facto expectation of administrative control of resources, and deliberately 

provoked close-run military engagements with other 

powers in the region, especially the United States 

and Japan.

Taken as a whole, then, the approach would appear to meet the criteria for the pursuit of revisionist 

objectives by the gradual application of gray zone tools 

and techniques. As long ago as 2000, Andrew Scobell 

referred to China’s emerging use of nonmilitary force 

in the region as a “slow-intensity conflict,” a strategy 

of moves that tries to “lull the other claimants into believing that no conflict exists.”8

 Van Jackson similarly 

Gray Zone Characteristics China’s Actions

Strives to remain under key escalatory thresholds to avoid outright 

warfare.

• Seemingly clear intent to remain below thresholds of 

response, including UN Charter definition of “aggressive 

actions” that trigger self-defense provisions.

• Willing to retreat to ease tensions and preserve thresholds.

Moves gradually towards its objectives rather than seeking decisive 

results in a short period of time.

• Long-term, incremental series of steps to achieve strategic 

objectives.

• Willing to step backwards to ease tensions and preserve the 

capability for long-term progress.
86

has argued that “states that challenge the status quo 

are increasingly doing so in ways that are deniable, 

by pursuing types of coercion that make attribution 

difficult, or that blur the distinction between aggressor and defender.” He calls this “gray-zone coercion.” 

China, he suggests: 

has engaged in a pattern of assertiveness over territorial claims without directly employing People’s 

Liberation Army naval forces, instead relying on nontraditional actors and non-traditional means—fishing 

vessels, the Coast Guard, water cannons, construction 

crews that build artificial islands in disputed areas, 

intrusive but unarmed reconnaissance drones, and 

‘sonic devices’ that induce nausea in their targets.9

An important criterion distinguishing gray zone 

strategies from standard issue, persistent but uncoordinated great-power competition is some degree of intentionality and design. In order to have some meaningful coherence and standing, a gray zone strategy 

must be conceived of as an intentional campaign, with 

specific lines of effort and identified (even if somewhat 

vague) objectives. It must be deliberately chosen as an 

alternative to traditional military operations.

There is evidence that China’s gray zone approach 

in the South China Sea is an intentional strategy that 

meets these criteria—but it is important to stress that 

this is a provisional judgment based on incomplete evidence. Chinese officials, for example, repeatedly have 

mentioned gray zone concepts. Major General Zhang 

Zhaozhong of China’s People’s Liberation Army has 

referred to a “cabbage strategy” for gaining influence—wrapping targeted islands with “concentric 

layers of Chinese fishing boats, fishing administration 

ships, maritime enforcements ships, and warships.”10
87

China appears to coordinate various aspects of its nonmilitary approaches to achieve holistic effect. It calibrates the degree of belligerence to keep the strategy 

under thresholds of response, scaling back for a year 

or more at a time when regional reactions becomes too 

intense.

At the same time, China is investing heavily in the 

capacity to wage major warfare. It is buying new generations of ships and aircraft, new tanks, new targeting and precision strike capabilities, and much more. 

It has an avowed intention to reach the frontiers of 

military technology and development by 2020, and to 

achieve various forms of military parity with the United States. Beijing clearly is not neglecting the potential for major conflict, or the value of an increasingly 

dominant regional military posture along traditional 

lines. Again, the increasing relevance of the gray zone 

does not imply that other forms of conflict no longer 

demand attention, or that they have become impossible. In fact, China’s emphasis on enhanced capacity 

for traditional military operations is not inconsistent 

with a gray zone emphasis. But the gray zone is only 

one part of the potential spectrum of rivalry and conflict, and must be understood as such.

Gradual, gray zone strategies place the United 

States in an uncomfortable position. It will be more difficult to gather regional support for decisive responses 

to restrained seemingly nonmilitary moves by China. 

The gradualism of the strategy is especially problematic: China has been able to step forward boldly for a 

year or more with various provocative actions, then 

step back and wage a charm offensive to reset regional 

and global perceptions before another push forward. 

It is salami slicing its way to the achievement of its 

objectives, and at no point does it create a sufficient 
88

balancing dynamic to effectively check its activities. 

In the process, its strategy may be undermining the 

utility of regional strategies that assume or rely upon 

conclusive approaches: Elaborate plans for large-scale 

conflict, such as the concept of Air Sea Battle, for example, are of little use in counteracting China’s gray 

zone gradualism.11

As suggested earlier, gray zone strategies come 

with significant costs and limitations, and these have 

been evident in China’s campaign in the South China 

Sea. One source of cost is budgetary: Although precise 

figures are unknown, Beijing is surely paying a significant price for the maritime capabilities, day-to-day 

operations, and major construction projects in the region. This creates opportunity cost with other potential expenditures; abandoning the gray zone strategy, 

for example, might allow China to invest in additional 

military capabilities. Surely the more important cost, 

however, is geostrategic. Despite Beijing’s effort to 

operate below various thresholds, its ambitious and 

aggressive gray zone posturing has provoked a significant reaction throughout the region. Other states are 

bolstering their maritime capabilities, coordinating 

their responses, and cozying up to the United States. 

The region increasingly views China as an imminent 

threat and is taking steps to balance Chinese power. In 

the long-run, especially if economic powerhouses like 

Japan and South Korea join the process, this is not a 

contest that China can hope to dominate.

These developments reflect one of the primary 

limitations to gray zone strategies, which is evident 

in the Chinese case. Such strategies cannot escape the 

basic balancing dynamic that emerges when states 

seek regional or global hegemony. Gray zone strategies can become counterproductive for their authors 
89

by provoking such reactions, which make the achievement of regional dominance less rather than more 

likely. While gray zone strategies can achieve significant short-term gains, the irony is that their reliance 

on long-term, patient, and gradual strategies may be 

misplaced. Over the long run, an accumulation of aggressive steps will provoke reactions whether or not 

major thresholds are crossed.

RUSSIA AND ITS PERIPHERY 

A second leading example of a gray zone strategy 

can be found in Russia’s unfolding campaign to dominate Russia’s near abroad and drive wedges between 

U.S.-led alliances. These techniques have been in evidence not only in Ukraine over the last year or more, 

but also in earlier aggressive moves against Georgia 

and Estonia. Even Russia’s energy diplomacy with 

Eastern Europe reflects another variant of a gray zone 

strategy. These actions represent something more than 

classic great power politics, but are designed to avoid 

the costs and risks of outright conflict. It is possible 

to view them as something more straightforward, 

and frankly aggressive, than gray zone strategies—a 

preemptive military fait accompli that relies heavily 

on conventional military forces, sometimes deployed 

in clandestine and deniable ways. Recent battles in 

Ukraine have certainly involved force-on-force firefights consistent with major combat operations, and 

have produced casualties numbering in the thousands. 

But there is significant evidence as outlined in the five 

categories, that Moscow consciously has undertaken 

gray zone approaches.12

As in the Chinese case and in the Russian case, we 

see evidence of quasi-official publications that lay a 
90

theoretical foundation for such campaigns. There is an 

extensive literature on nonlinear war and related issues in Russian publications. Analyst Vladislav Surkov 

has discussed the potential for “a future war, which 

involves everybody and everything, all aspects of life, 

while still remaining elusive in its main contours.”13

Sergei Chekanov and Sergey Bogdanov, writing about 

asymmetric war in 2010,14 argued that geopolitical 

competition is heating up, and states will be looking 

for means to wage competition and conflict. The role 

of military force remains important, but the focus is 

on the indirect use of military power to achieve decisive ends in which the role of information and other 

nonkinetic components becomes more decisive. In a 

subsequent essay entitled “The Nature and Content of 

a New Generation War,”15 the two authors widen their 

scope to include all manner of national tools that can 

contribute to a comprehensive campaign. Asymmetry 

and indirection take their ultimate forms, with states 

employing any mechanism available to them in order 

to undermine an adversary’s power. The approach 

discards the direct, decisive mindset of conventional 

military operations for a more gradual and ambiguous approach that reduces costs and risks.

The defining example of such concepts, however, is an essay by Chief of the Russian General Staff 

Valery Gerasimov, laying out what rapidly came to 

be termed the “Gerasimov Doctrine” and which has 

also become known as “New Generation Warfare.” 

The very first line concludes that, “In the 21st century, 

we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer 

declared and, having begun, proceed according to an 

unfamiliar template.” Gerasimov describes a future in 

which a wide range of tools can bring a society to its 

knees in a matter of days or weeks:
91

Of course, it would be easiest of all to say that the events 

of the “Arab Spring” are not war and so there are no 

lessons for us—military men—to learn. But maybe the 

opposite is true—that precisely these events are typical of warfare in the 21st century. In terms of the scale 

of the casualties and destruction, the catastrophic social, economic, and political consequences, such newtype conflicts are comparable with the consequences 

of any real war. The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. 

The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political 

and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, 

they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in 

their effectiveness.

Military forces merely “supplement” these activities, Gerasimov writes. “Frontal engagements of large 

formations of forces at the strategic and operational 

level are gradually becoming a thing of the past,” he 

concludes. “Long-distance, contactless actions against 

the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving 

combat and operational goals.”16

States using “unrestricted warfare” strategies or 

the approaches laid out by Gerasimov would employ 

a wide range of tools—economic, diplomatic, informational, military, and more. In such campaigns, outright military moves are vague or ambiguous; sometimes they are more apparent, but stop well short of 

large-scale conventional combined arms combat. The 

critical factors are the encompassing, holistic nature 

of the campaign and its largely nonmilitary character. 

The specific goals can vary, however, and need not always be as elaborate as the ones sketched out by Gerasimov. The campaigns he outlines sound more like a 

conventional bombing campaign conducted through 

other means—significant impacts through the whole 

range of an enemy territory to bring about the end 
92

of their regime or their surrender on some key issue. 

Gray zone campaigns could be used for such objectives, but they can also be employed for much more 

limited ends: Gaining leverage on a specific territorial 

dispute, for example.

Philip Karber has studied Russian tactics in Ukraine 

from the front lines, and argues that Moscow is using 

“New Generation Warfare” techniques quite explicitly, using the Ukraine campaign “to both test and perfect 

it.” Karber’s account makes clear the challenge in categorizing the Russian approach. From first-hand, frontline reporting, he describes substantial tank battles, 

massive artillery duels, and the movement of Russian 

conventional forces across the border. At one point, he 

uses the phrase “real war.” Yet, he also defines “New 

Generation Warfare” in primarily nonmilitary terms: 

Political subversion, proxy sanctuary, “intervention” 

(but mostly in the form of maneuvering around the 

border and limited cross-border firing), coercive 

deterrence, and “negotiated manipulation.”17

As in the Chinese case, Russian objectives clearly 

have a revisionist cast while desiring to avoid outright conflict—Russia has national interests or goals 

that would suggest the need for gray zone revisionism. Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to renew 

Russian dominance of the near abroad, undermine 

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and 

reduce U.S. influence in the region. He has been trying to coerce the alignment decisions of neighboring 

states—Georgia and Ukraine most prominent among 

them—by essentially denying their right to throw their 

lot with the West. Yet like China, Russia’s revisionism 

comes with strict limits. So far at least, Moscow seems 

anxious to preserve its standing as a responsible member of the international community.
93

We also see behavior that implies the existence 

of gray zone strategies. As Figure 6-3 suggests, the 

approach has drawn from a shifting array of tools.18

These include coercive diplomacy, economic assistance, threats of energy sanctions, propaganda and 

information operations, cyberattacks, sponsorship of 

local militias and guerrilla organizations, support for 

pro-Moscow political movements, military maneuvers, and implied nuclear threats.19 Further evidence 

of Russia’s explicit adoption of gray zone strategies 

can be found in the significant investments in the tools 

and capabilities to engage in such campaigns. Moscow 

has built up various components of its special operating forces, Mark Galeotti notes, providing the capacity for unattributed infiltration as occurred in Ukraine. 

It has invested in its intelligence assets, to provide 

deep situational awareness for such campaigns. Moscow has expanded its propaganda tools, including 

the RT television channel and social media outlets.20

All of this adds up to a significant investment in the 

gray zone.

Gray Zone Characteristics Russia’s Actions

Pursues political objectives through 

integrated campaigns.

• Outlined political objections to NATO/Western policies in 

Eastern Europe, basis for Russian claims of hegemony, 

territorial claims. Narrative, propaganda efforts.

• Numerous elements in a seemingly coordinated campaign: 

Propaganda, political subversion, unconventional warfare, 

cyber, economic, military.

• Uses negotiation process as a cover for campaign. Generates 

enemy “violations” of ceasefires and negotiated agreements 

to justify actions.

Figure 6-3. Russia’s Gray Zone Campaign. 
94

Figure 6-3. Russia’s Gray Zone Campaign. (Cont.)

Matthew Kroenig has described this strategy as 

“a combination of hybrid warfare and nuclear brinkmanship.” The goal is to use various levels of force 

“to make gradual territorial revisions against nearby 

NATO members.” Moscow wants to avoid an outright 

conventional clash with NATO, and so it uses “hybrid 

warfare to make its revisionist actions as subtle as possible, avoiding moves that would trigger an automatic, 

robust response.” It employs tactics such as claiming 

to rescue Russian nationals, cyberwar, propaganda, 

clandestine special operations forces operations especially targeted against government facilities, economic 

Employs mostly non-military or 

non-kinetic tools.

• Paramilitary: Use proxy forces, from paid demonstrators to 

friendly militias to plain-clothes special forces, to infiltrate, 

cause disruption, eventually seize elements of state authority 

in targeted areas. Create proxy sanctuaries to protect allied 

forces; control transportation nodes in targeted areas. “Rebrand” own forces, even high-end motorized forces, as local 

proxies. At high end use direct military fires to support local 

proxies: Artillery, direct action in extreme cases.

• Political: Identify socio-political vulnerabilities in target 

states, especially ethnonational diasporas. Support separatist 

movements. Bribe local political leaders and media figures; 

manipulation of targeted and coordinated corruption.

• Economic: Sanctions or threat of same, targeted financial 

punishments, withdrawal of capital; generating a crisis to 

spark capital flight and collapse of FDI.

• Energy: Use of energy dependencies for coercive effect.

• Diplomatic: General proposals and negotiating positions that 

support narrative and objectives; reach out to friendly states, 

dampen opposition.

• Informational: Formal statements, social media campaigns, 

publicizing narratives; employ friendly NGOs in target state to 

parrot narrative.

• Cyber: Use of cyber capabilities to gather and shape information, threaten punitive actions.

Strives to remain under key escalatory thresholds to avoid outright 

warfare.

• Strategy avoids directly challenging areas of U.S./Western 

vital national interests: Crimea vs. Kiev.
95

sanctions, massing of coercive regular military forces 

at the border, all “to make small but meaningful gains 

short of outright invasion.”21 In NATO responses, official as well as unofficial, the term “hybrid warfare” has 

been widely used to describe these activities—though 

as we have seen what these analyses really have in 

mind is something closer to the concept of gray zone 

conflict.22

As Moscow’s strategy has played out, the limits 

and costs of its aggressive gray zone strategy have 

become more evident. Lawrence Freedman has pointed out, for example, that the celebrated militias and 

fifth-columnists sponsored by Moscow have run into 

significant operational difficulties. The somewhat random collection of units and forces drawn together for 

the campaign were difficult to coordinate, and some 

resisted direction from Russia. It was all well and good 

to suggest destabilizing a neighbor, but once the campaign shifted to the traditional sphere, Moscow had to 

consider the challenge of occupying parts of a hostile 

state. Its efforts to generate false narratives, Freedman reminds us, achieved little in the West, where its 

aggression was seen for what it was.23

Russia has paid a tremendous price for its gray 

zone adventurism—economic sanctions, political 

alienation, and military countermoves. The United 

States and a number of NATO allies have been training Ukrainian units, and learning much about Russian 

operational art in the process—lessons that could be 

put to good use if the conflict were ever to escalate. 

Joshua Rovner has ably catalogued the results of 

Putin’s gambits:

In the last 2 years, he has all but ruined his aspiration to return Russia to the ranks of the great powers. 
96

His ham-fisted annexation of Crimea, along with his 

transparent support for secessionists in the ongoing 

civil war in East Ukraine, has been disastrous for Russian interests. Putin’s adventurism led to stock market 

chaos, a major currency crisis, and staggering levels 

of capital flight—all of which have compounded the 

problem of collapsing oil prices. The loss of revenue 

is damaging Russia’s conventional military power because the government will struggle mightily to modernize its forces. Meanwhile, Putin has breathed new 

life into NATO, an alliance that had been searching for 

common purpose and sagging under the weight of the 

war in Afghanistan.24

At the same time, the ongoing conflict has become 

a festering drain on resources and national will. If 

Moscow’s aim in the use of gray zone tactics was to 

avoid significant retaliation, it has failed miserably.

CONCLUSION

There would appear to be sufficient evidence to 

suggest, therefore, that both China and Russia have 

explicitly chosen gray zone-style strategies to pursue 

their measured revisionist goals. As noted earlier, this 

claim remains provisional; the evidence is suggestive 

but not conclusive. Nonetheless, there is enough to 

suggest that the United States and its friends and allies ought to do more to understand the nature of gray 

zone conflict. Chapter 7 offers a number of provisional 

hypotheses about such conflicts.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 6

1. See, for example, Nayan Chanda, “China’s Long-Range Salami Tactics in East Asia,” Huffington Post, January 27, 2014; and 

John Chen, “Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable: Uncertain-
97

ty, Brinksmanship, and Salami-Slicing in East Asia,” Georgetown 

Security Studies Review, February 1, 2015.

2. Debate continues, of course, over just how limited its aspirations are, or will remain. Jonathan Holslag has argued that, to 

fulfill them, “China must become the most powerful country in 

Asia by far, and attain the power to deter other protagonists by 

force.” He lays out four specific goals of Chinese foreign policy: 

Control of key frontier lands like Tibet; sustain Party rule through 

economic growth and stability; win respect for Chinese sovereignty; and to “recover so-called ‘lost territory,’” from Taiwan to 

South China Sea islands to areas of the East China Sea and areas 

of the Himalayas contested with India. Jonathan Holslag, “The 

Smart Revisionist,” p. 96.

3. Timothy L. Thomas, “China’s Conception of Military 

Strategy,” Parameters, Vol. 44, No. 4, Winter 2014-15, pp. 41-42.

4. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, Beijing, China: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999.

5. An excellent source of data on the range of Chinese gray 

zone activities is Christopher Yung and Patrick McNulty, “China’s 

Tailored Coercion,” Report 5, Maritime Strategy Series, Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, January 26, 2015.

6. Mohan Malik, “Historical Fiction: China’s South China 

Sea Claims,” World Affairs, May-June, 2013, available from www.

worldaffairsjournal.org/article/historical-fiction-china%E2%80%99ssouth-china-sea-claims. 

7. James Kraska, “How China Exploits a Loophole in International Law in Pursuit of Hegemony in East Asia,” FPRI E-Notes, 

January 2015.

8. Andrew Scobell, “Slow-Intensity Conflict in the South China Sea,” E-Notes, Philadelphia, PA: Foreign Policy Research Institute, August 2000. “China’s actions,” Robert Haddick—one of the 

keenest observers of gradualist strategies—has written: 

look like an attempt to gradually and systematically establish 

legitimacy for its claims in the region. It has stood up a local 
98

civilian government, which will command a permanent military garrison. It is asserting its economic claims by leasing oil 

and fishing blocks inside other countries’ EEZs, and is sending 

its navy to thwart development approved by other countries in 

the area.

See Robert Haddick, “Salami Slicing in the South China Sea,” Foreign Policy, August 3, 2012.

9. Van Jackson, Testimony before the House Committee on 

Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Washington, DC, February 26, 2015, pp. 1-3.

10. Robert Haddick, “America Has No Answer,” War on the 

Rocks, February 2014.

11. Zachary Keck, “Shaming Won’t Stop China’s SalamiSlicing,” The Diplomat, July 16, 2014.

12. See Will Cathcart and Joseph Epstein, “Why Putin’s Phony Wars Work Better than ‘Real’ Ones,” The Daily Beast, August 8, 

2015. Molly McKew and Gregory Maniatis argue that Russia has 

developed a version of “pop-up war—nimble and covert—that is 

likely to be the design of the future.” See “Playing By Putin’s Tactics,” Washington Post, March 9, 2014, available from https://www.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/playing-by-putins-tactics/2014/03/09/

b5233b90-a558-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html. 

13. See the discussion in Andràs Ràcz, Russia’s Hybrid War in 

Ukraine, Report No. 43, Helsinki, Finland: The Finnish Institute of 

International Affairs, 2015, pp. 34-42.

14. S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “Asymmetrical Actions to Maintain Russia’s Military Security,” Military Thought, 

No. 1, 2010, available from www.eastviewpress.com/Files/MT_

FROM%20THE%20CURRENT%20ISSUE_No.1_2010_small.pdf. 

15. S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “The Nature and 

Content of a New Generation War,” Military Thought, OctoberDecember 2013, available from www.eastviewpress.com/Files/MT_

FROM%20THE%20CURRENT%20ISSUE_No.4_2013.pdf. 
99

16. Valery Gerasimov, “The Value of Science in Prediction,” 

Military-Industrial Courier, February 27, 2013, trans. in “The Gersimov Doctrine and Russian Non-Linear War,” Moscow’s Shadows, 

available from https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/

the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/. 

17. Dr. Phillip A. Karber, “‘Lessons Learned’ from the RussoUkrainian War: Personal Observations,” Alexandria, VA: The Potomac Foundation, July 6, 2015.

18. Examples in the figure are drawn in part from Ràcz, 

Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine, pp. 57-70.

19. Steven Metz describes the resulting strategy this way: 

“Moscow’s complex, multidimensional offensive uses intimidation, misinformation and any organization or group that can serve 

its interests.” Specific actions include disinformation campaigns, 

economic pressure, military coercion, the use of quasi-military 

groups and militias. “Moscow has adopted, even mastered, a 

form of unrestricted warfare optimized for the age of pervasive 

information, economic connectivity and social media,” Steven 

Metz, “In Ukraine, Russia Reveals Its Mastery of Unrestricted 

Warfare,” World Politics Review, April 16, 2014.

20. Mark Galeotti, “‘Hybrid War’ and ‘Little Green Men’: 

How It Works and How It Doesn’t,” E-IR, April 16, 2015, p. 2.

21. Matthew Kroenig, “Facing Reality: Getting NATO Ready 

for a New Cold War,” Survival, Vol. 57, No. 1, February-March 

2015, pp. 53-54. See also Lawrence Freedman, “Ukraine and the 

Art of Crisis Management,” Survival, Vol. 56, No. 3, June-July 

2014, p. 9. See also A. Wess Mitchell and Jakob Grygiel, “‘Salami-Slicing’ and Deterrence,” The American Interest, November 

18, 2014.

22. Agence-France Presse, “NATO Allies Brace for Russia’s 

Hybrid Warfare,” Defense News, March 18, 2015, available from 

www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/europe/2015/03/18/

nato-allies-brace-for-russias-hybrid-warfare/24979545/. 

23. Lawrence Freedman, “Ukraine and the Art of Limited 

War,” Survival, Vol. 56, No. 6, December 2014-January 2015, 

pp. 15-18, 23-24, 26.
100

24. Joshua Rovner, “Dealing with Putin’s Strategic Incompetence,” War on the Rocks, August 12, 2015, available from warontherocks.com/2015/08/dealing-with-putins-strategic-incompetence/. 
CHAPTER 7

SEVEN HYPOTHESES ON THE GRAY ZONE

In order to understand the essence of the challenge 

posed by gray zone conflict, this chapter offers seven 

propositions on the character of this tool. These are 

offered as hypotheses rather than conclusions because 

they remain provisional and suggestive. They represent invitations to delve further into theoretical and 

empirical analysis to determine the real challenge 

posed by such modes of statecraft.

HYPOTHESIS ONE: GRAY ZONE CAMPAIGNS 

WILL CONSTITUTE THE DEFAULT MODE OF 

CONFLICT IN COMING DECADES

This hypothesis flows logically from the portrait 

of the emerging shape of world politics developed in 

the first few chapters of this monograph. If world politics are indeed likely to be characterized by a growing 

number of “measured revisionists”; if these measured 

revisionists (and others) will be able to rely on gradual, incremental approaches to achieving their interests 

and goals; and if they have at their disposal a growing array of nontraditional tools other than classic 

military force to conduct those efforts, then gray zone 

strategies stand to become the default means of global 

competition. The potential for traditional major conflict will remain ever-present, but largely as a result of 

misperception, miscommunication or accident rather 

than as the purposeful strategy of a major power.

There is strong reason to believe that the coming 

decades are likely to witness growing tension and 

rivalry in international politics. This is a function of 

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102

the growing proportion of revisionism within the 

preferences and desires of major powers. But it may 

also stem from the more general multipolarity of the 

emerging system, in which a larger number of rising 

powers, whether truly revisionist or not, will be jostle 

for influence and power. At the same time, continued 

economic challenges and other factors are helping to 

fuel aggressive ethno-nationalism in many emerging 

countries, exacerbating the underlying sense of grievance, suspicion and rivalry in the system. 

The upshot of such trends is that we can expect the 

next 2-plus decades to be a time of burgeoning competition. But it will also be a time when most states 

recognize that their vital interests, including national 

prosperity and the security of the governing regimes, 

rely to a significant degree on the economic, diplomatic, and military benefits of participation in some 

version of a rules-based order. The emerging pattern, 

already well in evidence, would seem to be a sort of 

constrained or measured rivalry, and gray zone strategies represent a leading adaptation to such a context. 

“Every age had its own kind of war,” Clausewitz argued1

—and in the coming decades, the sort of warfare, or conflict, most appropriate to the context could 

be one that allows major powers to compete short of 

the threshold of major war.

As suggested earlier, though, this hypothesis does 

not imply that major war has become “impossible.” 

The evidence supports a proposition that the conscious choices of responsible state leadership would 

seldom, if ever, find reason to engage in large-scale 

conflict, and would prefer to operate in the gray zone. 

But wars can also arise through unplanned escalation, 

miscalculation, and accident. China, Russia, India, 

and other states are investing heavily in traditional 
103

military capabilities. U.S. national security strategy 

cannot proceed as if war is out of the question—only 

that, when dealing with the intentional strategies of 

leading powers, it will generally be dealing with gray 

zone approaches.

If valid, this hypothesis would have significant implications. It suggests that the most common national 

security threats will stem from gray zone initiatives 

rather than traditional military aggression. It implies 

that states are likely to invest more resources in the 

tools that make gray zone campaigns possible, everything from elite direct action special operations forces 

to social media capabilities and civilian coast guards. 

It also suggests that greater emphasis and resources 

should be devoted to developing concepts and doctrines tailored for gray zone environments.

HYPOTHESIS TWO: GRAY ZONE STRATEGIES 

DEMAND A NEW THEORY OF CONFLICT 

In the process, gray zone campaigns would also 

seem to call for a new theory of conflict—a set of principles and theories of success in gray zone environments. As we are already seeing, the authors of gray 

zone approaches hope to place defenders in challenging positions strewn with dilemmas. Responding in 

traditional ways might not work, and can even be 

counterproductive. Gray zone conflict must be understood in fundamentally different ways from major 

warfare.

In major war, for example, classic doctrine holds 

that success comes from focus, concentration, speed, 

and decisiveness. The principles of gray zone conflict 

will be very different. Sample operational principles 

for success in the gray zone might include:
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• The ultimate objectives of any campaign will derive from political interests and goals that will be 

entirely contingent to the situation. The essential 

purpose of any gray zone campaign is to create new political facts on the ground consonant 

with the aggressing state’s interests. This principle is similar to Carl von Clausewitz’s classic 

dictum that war serves political objectives, but 

in a much more encompassing manner: Every 

battlefield tactic must be conceived in political 

terms.

• Success depends on remaining below key thresholds

that would bring the conflict into a different 

realm. Patience is more important than rushing, if the risk is triggering a massively disproportionate reaction. As Russia discovered when 

moving on from Crimea to Ukraine proper, the 

cardinal sin in gray zone campaigns is becoming too ambitious. Once a campaign has triggered a disproportionate response, the advantage of the gray zone realm has been lost, and 

the risks of escalation grow.

• Efforts must be coordinated to achieve effects greater 

than the sum of their parts. Success in gray zone 

campaigns is all about holistic effects. Again, 

this is similar to concepts of combined arms 

and joint operations, but, like the issue of politics, it extends the insight to its natural conclusion. It points to further development of crossboundary, interagency collaboration on gray 

zone campaigns, a goal that remains elusive 

within the U.S. Government.

• Defense leaders must rethink what is considered the 

core or basic effort and what is considered an option or branch. Today, military planning focuses 
105

on the moment when conventional operations 

begin—Phase III, in the current parlance. It is 

the hub around which all efforts revolve. Other 

places on the spectrum (either pre-war or postwar) are considered supporting branches of the 

main effort. Increasingly in a gray zone world, 

however, U.S. planners will need to take Phase 

0 and Phase 1 activities seriously as the core 

effort, with a large-scale Phase III operation 

only emerging as a potential option if the gray 

zone crisis escalates. This reinforces the lesson 

that gray zone conflicts blur the boundaries 

between military and civilian endeavors: Military operational planning will likely be forced 

to give much greater attention to activities 

and phases traditionally discounted, or left to 

civilian agencies.

• In most cases, everything will depend on an effective narrative that becomes broadly accepted, at 

least within target populations (which can be a 

subset of a state). In classic military operations, 

unconditional victories can be won by states 

with bankrupt narratives. This will seldom be 

the case in the gray zone.

• Gray zone campaigns will demand more ongoing 

adaptation and experimentation. Planning for 

conventional military operations is designed 

to produce an effective force at the outset of a 

war capable of winning the conflict in relatively 

short order, using the concepts, doctrines, and 

capabilities in place from the start. Adaptation 

and innovation take place during every war, of 

course. But in gray zone campaigns, the balance 

between pre-existing approaches and adapted 

ones may change significantly. Because of the 
106

wide range of tools engaged in the conflict, the 

different forms and intensities it can take, and 

the groping, ambiguous nature of gradual approaches, these campaigns will likely demand 

a much higher degree of experimentation and 

learning-by-doing. They will call for a greater 

emphasis on innovation (both in concepts and 

capabilities), rapid prototyping, and flexibility 

in the basic strategy being employed.

• In gray zone contests, success or failure will usually be a function of the relative social resilience 

and vulnerabilities of the two sides. Rivals in gray 

zone conflict will depend most of all on larger 

strengths, weaknesses, and realities more than 

the quality of the tools employed. As an example, when states have weaknesses in their 

political unity, rivals can use that as the foundation to construct aggressive narratives and 

destabilize the state.

As noted earlier, U.S. military operational doctrine 

tends to focus on the major combat operations phase of 

a conflict. U.S. Joint Operational Planning approaches 

and procedures are all about getting to “Phase III” so 

that the United States can “win” in traditional terms. 

Yet, a major purpose of gray zone strategies is to ensure that, by the time Phase III kicks off, the enemy has 

already lost. Their political situation, social cohesion, 

ability to rally international support, logistical base, 

battlefield awareness, and many other critical sources 

of strength will be to atrophied that they will either 

surrender to the gray zone aggressor’s political goals 

short of major combat, or else collapse quickly when 

it begins. In addition to studying the broad principles 

of conflict in the gray zone as suggested earlier, there-
107

fore, the U.S. Government should develop operational 

doctrines for these other phases of conflict.

HYPOTHESIS THREE: GRAY ZONE 

CAMPAIGNS GENERATE A SENSE OF 

PERSISTENT WARFARE

By making it more difficult to recognize the difference between peace and war, gray zone strategies are 

likely to foster a sense of relentless confrontation and 

invite the perception in the capitals of major powers 

that they are already at war with rivals or competitors. 

This is increasingly the flavor, for example, of the U.S. 

official dialogue on China, and becoming so of Russia 

as well.

National leaders expect classic geopolitical competition, even among friends and, in some cases, allies. 

States spy on one another, seek relative advantage in 

trade deals, use cyber techniques to gather information (sometimes to benefit their domestic industries), 

engage in industrial policy, and employ tariffs and 

nontariff barriers to boost their economy, and much 

more. In other words, they play at the “low intensity” 

end of the gray zone conflict spectrum on a regular basis, without creating a sense of bellicose confrontation.

By moving the scale of competition toward the 

right side of the spectrum, however, gray zone strategies risk replacing a sense of generally accepted levels 

of competition with a bitter and mutually hostile environment. Spying and seeking economic advantage is 

one thing; dispatching civilian fleets or covert infiltration units to generate persistent coercive pressure is a 

very different proposition. Many countries in Eastern 

Europe surely feel that Russia is at war with them today, and many U.S. national security officials believe 
108

the same about China. What this means is unclear, but 

that is part of the character—and risk—of gray zone 

approaches: Exactly what constitutes being “at war” 

becomes something in the eye of the beholder. A continuous series of aggressive actions built around elaborate political claims will come to be seen as a war-like 

campaign. State interpretations of others’ goals and 

intentions may harden as all sides begin to view gray 

zone activities as evidence of limitless revisionism.

Such a perception would lay the groundwork for 

spirals of hostility, arms races, and other unstable outcomes. It might make it easier for states to make escalation decisions, since the perception will not be that 

they are starting a war—only taking the next logical 

step in one. Such heightened sense of conflict will also 

make it less likely that competitive states would be 

able to cooperate in areas where they genuinely share 

mutual interests.

As noted in Chapter 5, washing away the line between peacetime and wartime will create significant 

legal dilemmas for U.S. policy—a process that has 

been well underway over the past 15 years. Both U.S. 

and international law make important distinctions 

between what is allowed in peace as opposed to wartime. The United States has stretched that distinction 

during its war on terror, unilaterally determining itself to be at war in ways that the international community has not always accepted. If the pattern becomes 

truly generalized—if gray zone campaigns make the 

difference between peace and war almost moot—then 

important legal restraints on state action could be lost.
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HYPOTHESIS FOUR: GRAY ZONE CONFLICT 

INCREASES THE POTENTIAL FOR 

INADVERTENT WAR 

In one sense, the greater reliance on gray zone 

strategies could be a hopeful trend in international 

security: States adopting gray zone approaches have 

chosen to avoid major war. In fact, these strategies 

create a whole range of risks all their own. Given the 

constraints suggested earlier, the most likely routes to 

war are through misperception, accident, or miscalculation. Gradualist strategies set the stage for all three. 

States may feel the ability to take greater risks with 

gray zone tools, for example, convinced of their ability 

to restrain escalation, only to find that specific actions, 

or the sum of several gray zone tools, begins to push 

the conflict up the escalatory ladder. Once a gray zone 

campaign is underway, moreover, it is easy to imagine the collection of actions creating a siege mentality 

on the part of the defender, leading to progressively 

more violent forms of confrontation. Aggressors may 

underestimate a defender’s willingness to hit back 

and perhaps escalate in order to deter future meddling, thus sparking a spiral of conflict.2

In these and other ways, gray zone strategies are 

invitations to misperception. When Thomas Schelling 

discusses “the power to bind oneself,” he is looking 

for strength in deterrent or reassuring promises by 

making the realm of potential choice very limited in 

a crisis. In a famous line, Schelling argued that “It is 

essential, therefore, for maximum credibility, to leave 

as little room as possible for judgment or discretion in 

carrying out the threat.”3 The emphasis is on threats 

that are credible, with specific, stated, or clearly implied objectives. Gray zone strategies are by definition 
110

ambiguous, with their goals and techniques masked 

and often explicitly denied. What the author of the 

strategies actually wants may not be clear—even to 

them. They often leave equivocal the commitments in 

play and, to some extent, even the national interests 

involved. 

Schelling’s discussion of the manipulation of risk 

also highlights the dangers. In a bargaining situation, 

either or both (or all) sides may use the risk of escalation as a coercive tool. It is the use of unpredictable 

actions to create danger that makes countries want to 

give in and step back from the brink. The question, he 

argues, is usually not between “peace” and “war”—it 

is whether one or both sides are willing to take some 

risk with an undefined danger of war. “It is the essence of a crisis that the participants are not fully in 

control of events,” he explains. Their mutual awareness of this fact contributes to the coercive power of 

risk-taking. He specifically highlights limited war as 

not merely a direct means to an end, but also an “action that enhances the risk of a greater war” and thus 

a form of risk-taking coercion.4

The danger here, of course, is that misinterpreted 

lessons from a contest of risk-taking could spiral into 

wider conflict. There is a real risk, Schelling explains, 

that “the other will genuinely misinterpret how far he 

is invited to go. If one side yields on a series of issues, 

when the matters at stake are not critical, it may be 

difficult to communicate to the other just when a vital 

issue has been reached.”5 This is precisely the danger 

with gray zone strategies. If Russia can take 150 smallish steps toward the destabilization of Ukraine, it will 

be exceedingly difficult to convey that the 151st might 

cross some invisible threshold. The problem can also 

become more fundamental: Britain and France had 
111

acceded to dozens of German provocations in the 

years leading to 1939, and, by the time the Wehrmacht 

massed to invade Poland, London and Paris’s insistence that they would respond this time fell on deaf 

ears. Gray zone strategies can create an inherent and 

inevitable lack of clarity on red lines that invites escalation and undermines deterrence. 

Having been allowed to get away with many 

gradual steps, a gray zone aggressor’s appetite may 

be whetted. If progress bogs down, it may be more 

likely to escalate than if never allowed to begin at all. 

This may be part of the story with regard to Russia’s 

actions in Ukraine, which flowed from a burst of confidence in the wake of the astonishingly successful 

seizure of Crimea.

Viewed from the other side of the dispute, though, 

the opposite dynamic can be equally dangerous: Having taken dozens of steps forward, a gray zone aggressor may walk itself into a perception of emergent 

interests, and willingness to take further risk, that it 

did not have to begin with. In the gray zone strategist’s own mind, the accumulation of small steps may 

create, over time, what is to them a hard-and-fast commitment—one that is missed by a potential challenger 

engaging in wishful thinking. (The incremental U.S. 

commitment to the Vietnam War is one example of 

how individual choices can accumulate to the point 

where credibility is at stake.) Even if a challenger begins a process, assuming that they intend to remain 

within the gray zone, the very aspect of such strategies that creates a dilemma for the defender—the 

fact that, on its own, each step does not engage vital 

interests—can lull the aggressor into taking so many 

actions that they generate a situation of vital interests 

for themselves. Once Russia has taken 100 gray zone 
112

actions toward Ukraine, for example, including the 

publication of extensive political narratives justifying 

its claims, it may have backed itself into a corner from 

which it cannot withdraw. If the gray zone strategy 

cannot generate success for its political objectives, it 

may feel compelled to escalate.

Part of the danger stems from the fact that the authors of gray zone strategies do not see themselves 

as aggressors. They believe that they are responding

to American and allied provocations. This self-perception creates a real risk is of a cycle of mutuallyescalating gradualist actions.

Eventually, the aggressor, if its campaign continues to expand, is likely to trip over some sort of an 

escalatory threshold. The problem is that, in gray zone 

campaigns even more so than traditional military 

confrontations, neither side has a very good sense of 

where precisely these thresholds are. If the victim of 

the gradualist moves believes it has no good response 

and risks being salami sliced to death, it may decide it 

has no alternative but to escalate—and it might do so 

fairly randomly, at a moment or on an issue that the 

aggressor has no way to anticipate. It may be impossible to know in advance when the defender will reach 

their point of intolerance, because the judgment is as 

much subjective, political, and personality-driven as 

it is rational and objective. Eventually, “someone is 

likely to draw a red line somewhere,” Robert Haddick 

has argued: 

The issue for U.S. officials is whether they will be the 

ones to do that drawing, and thus retain the initiative, 

or whether someone else, having lost confidence in 

Washington, will do it instead. When that happens, 

the U.S. will find itself reacting to events, rather than 

shaping a favorable outcome in advance.6
113

The risk of escalation is magnified by the widespread use of proxies in gray zone strategies. Because 

such campaigns often involve an integrated but not 

fully coordinated network of paramilitary forces, civilian government agencies, hackers, propagandists, 

allies and outright mercenaries, the initiator of gray 

zone campaigns will seldom have full control over the 

outcome. The natural tendencies toward friction in 

conflict are magnified when the opposing forces are 

not largely cohesive armies but somewhat arbitrary 

grab-bags of actors, some of whom have little stake 

in stability. The potential for state-sponsored but selfdirected organizations to generate escalatory spirals is 

very real.

From a geopolitical standpoint, gray zone tactics 

also risk escalation in part by complicating the task of 

interpreting the intentions of rising powers. International relations literature has noted the challenges of 

uncertainty in world politics, and specifically the difficulty of being sure about the intentions of others. This 

is, in fact, the leading engine of instability in neorealism and, to some degree, in many other classic and recent variants of realist thought. It is precisely because 

states cannot be certain about what others intend that 

they feel the need to prepare for the worst, and generate security dilemmas.7

 Such tactics also blur the lines 

between status quo and revisionist powers. They can 

allow a state to masquerade as a status quo power 

while working energetically on a revisionist agenda. 

Gray zone strategies target a weak spot of the selfenforcing aspect of the international system. A critical 

norm is the unwillingness of most states to risk exclusion from the overall system with acts of such obvious 

violence and aggression that they become outcasts. Interests dictate otherwise. But the precise vulnerability 
114

of the international system is the thinness of its regulatory architecture: Whereas on the domestic front, a 

“gradualist” approach to overthrowing one’s neighbor might quickly run afoul of the dense network of 

laws and regulations governing interactions of citizens 

(running afoul, for example, of harassment or trespassing laws or building codes), on the international scene 

the legal network is far less well-established. Adventurists can get away with a lot more before they hit 

the tripwire of the self-enforced cooperative security 

that reflects shared interests. Put into the language of 

international relations theory, it is more difficult for 

classic balancing dynamics to operate when members 

of the system cannot decide whether a state needs to 

be balanced at all.

One reason states hesitate to take the revisionist 

route is that revisionism generates reactions and can 

be self-defeating. Gray zone strategies, in effect, split 

the difference, and make it difficult for anyone—even 

officials in the aggressive state itself—to know if its 

agenda is truly revisionist or not. Incremental moves 

adopted as part of a gray zone strategy create a sort of 

ongoing game in which each side must decide whether 

to continue to play—to take more moves, to escalate, 

or step back. If the established power believes that the 

challengers have limited aims, the best course is to appease; if they are a new Hitler, with boundless goals, 

the established power should stand fast. Such uncertainty over the challenger’s real intentions confront 

the established power with a large and ongoing dilemma: “The earlier the declining state draws the line, 

the stronger it is, and the higher its expected payoff in 

the event of war. But the earlier it draws the line, the 

higher the probability of an unnecessary war.”8
115

HYPOTHESIS FIVE: GRAY ZONE CAMPAIGNS 

UNDERMINE DETERRENCE

Over time, a major risk of gray zone campaigns is 

that they could dissolve the credibility of U.S. commitments and deterrent threats. Indeed, this is, to 

some degree, the conscious intent of the authors of 

such strategies. Beyond the progress achieved toward 

political goals, with each small step that goes unpunished and unreversed, a revisionist lays more seeds 

of doubt that the United States (or others) would 

respond to something bigger.9

This effect can occur because gray zone campaigns 

disrupt the basic action-reaction dynamic of game 

theoretic approaches to rivalry and deterrence. The 

assumption of such theories is that two (or more) sides 

interact through relatively clear signals of their interests and intent, and that both sides are playing on a 

chessboard where interests and risks are objectively 

available. Russia knows, for example, that the Baltic 

states are North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

members and understands the U.S. commitment to 

Article V of the Alliance; NATO can further signal 

intent via a number of actions. In theoretical terms, 

a good example of available preferences as a guide 

to interactive choice is the prisoner’s dilemma: The 

assumed players can see the lineup of rewards.

Gray zone strategies complicate this process and 

raise ambiguities at many levels of signaling and deterrence. Just what intent may be at stake is not always 

clear, because there can be a wide gulf between the 

importance of one step in a gradualist chain and the 

ultimate effect of the whole series. States intentionally conceal their intentions in gray zone campaigns, 

meaning that it is difficult, if not impossible, to reli-
116

ably read the goals of other actors into the situation. 

In short, gray zone strategies interrupt the process 

of accurately conveying intentions, making strategic 

interactions far more fluid and ambiguous.

At the same time, by generating a long series of 

actions that do not very often spark effective countermoves, gray zone strategies can undermine deterrence more directly, by ruining the confidence that the 

defender will act. As two scholars have argued:

The second way deterrence can fail is gradual, through 

a chipping-away at the credibility of the leading power in the system. . . . [O]ne of the parties is intentionally seeking to readjust the status quo undergirded by 

deterrence by means of a gradual alteration of expectations and credibility. The revisionist side wants to 

engender a gradual failure of deterrence because it 

considers the existing geopolitical order not to be attuned to its interests or prestige. . . . The objective is to 

alter in a steady and almost stealthy way the expectations of future behavior that keep deterrence alive. 

That is, the revisionist power wants to make all parties involved—the rival as well as his allies—believe 

present promises of behavior will not be honored in 

the future. Once such a belief sets in, the options for 

the targeted powers are limited to accepting the new 

geopolitical reality or restoring the status quo ante. In 

either case, deterrence has failed—not violently, but in 

the realm of perceptions and expectations.10

Thomas Schelling’s classic discussion of signaling 

and credibility emphasized the danger that small violations of deterrent threats could snowball. The reason why the United States had to defend California, 

he argued—apart from its intrinsic value—was that 

the United States could not surrender California and 

sustain its pledge to defend Oregon or Florida. “Once 
117

they [the aggressors] cross a line into a new class of 

aggression,” he argued, “into a set of areas or assets 

that we always claimed we would protect, we may 

even deceive them if we do not react vigorously.”11 Yet 

gray zone strategies can create precisely such a situation, in which the aggressor is allowed to “cross lines 

into new classes of aggression” because the campaign 

is so cleverly designed that no single step provides an 

opportunity to “react vigorously.”

The danger, then, is not merely to a specific deterrent pledge or bilateral relationship—it is to the 

structure of the rules-based order in general, and the 

credibility of U.S. and allied power that underpins 

that order. We can see the first hints of this in Eastern 

Europe today, for example, with the widely-held perception that Russia has been able to wage a version 

of war against neighboring states without being decisively confronted. This perception is exaggerated—as 

we have seen, Russia has paid a significant price for 

its gray zone adventurism. But to the degree that other 

potential aggressors believe that it has succeeded, the 

credibility of U.S. deterrent threats in other theaters, 

especially in relation to gray zone aggression, will 

decline.

A particular challenge in terms of the effects of 

gray zone aggression on credibility is that the United 

States will not recognize the threat for what it is until 

too late. If Iran were to launch a war of aggression in 

the Persian Gulf, the implications of a failure to respond would be obvious. (Indeed, the risks of such 

failures can be much more obvious once aggression 

has occurred rather than beforehand—a phenomenon 

we see in the Korean War and other cases.) The costs of 

not responding for the future of U.S. credibility will be 

fairly obvious. But if Iran takes 50 gradual gray zone 
118

actions to undermine its neighbors, the dangers to U.S. 

credibility of any one action—or any five or 10—will 

be masked. This will continue until the actions reach 

some critical mass, at which point the injury to the 

reliability of U.S. promises might be irrecoverable.

HYPOTHESIS SIX: GRAY ZONE CONFLICT 

DEPENDS UPON LARGER SOCIAL, POLITICAL 

AND ECONOMIC FACTORS FOR SUCCESS 

OR FAILURE 

The idea that war serves political objectives is 

hardly new. But while the operations of major combat 

serve political ends and are meaningless absent some 

higher political goal, the day-to-day operations of 

traditional military campaigns are themselves somewhat independent of the political sphere. The success 

or failure of the Union Army at Gettysburg, PA, had 

huge political ramifications, but success or failure on 

that battlefield had everything to do with military 

operational decisions that were isolated from the 

larger context.

In gray zone conflict, there is no such segmentation. The outcomes of gray zone conflicts will seldom be determined by the operations or campaigns 

themselves—they will be the product of larger forces. 

Russia’s success (or failure) in its various campaigns 

has been a product of local social and political factors 

more than the skill or resources involved in its own 

operations. Indeed, gray zone techniques can properly be thought of tools to take advantage of pre-existing political, social, or economic vulnerabilities rather 

than as efforts capable of achieving decisive results on 

their own.
119

Mark Galeotti refers to the failure of Russia to undermine Ukraine as a whole and suggests that “the 

military is purely part of a political campaign, and 

that has been a disastrous failure.” Authors of gray 

zone campaigns, he urges, must keep in mind that 

success “depends above all on a clear and accurate 

understanding of the political context in which it will 

operate.” The whole point of gray zone campaigns is 

that their “diverse components must be effectively 

combined to win the underlying ‘political war’ to 

achieve the desired aim.”12 The openness of the current Russian economy makes Moscow vulnerable to 

being alienated from global trading and capital markets. It cannot prolong an endless gray zone campaign 

is the result is that Russia is alienated from the world 

economy.

From the standpoint of defending against these 

strategies, Phillip Karber emphasizes the importance 

of denying gray zone aggressors the social and political leverage points they use to fracture the stability of their targets. In Eastern Europe, for example, he 

stresses the importance of providing ethnic Russian 

minorities with a strong stake in the societies, and 

eliminating the official corruption on which gray zone 

infiltration tactics can feed.13

A powerful example of these lessons can be drawn 

from the Cold War. The Soviet Union threw every 

manner of gray zone weapon at the West in the form 

of its active measures, and none did serious damage. 

This was not due to the lack of sophistication of those 

campaigns, or the resources or commitment invested 

in them. It was a product, quite simply, of the ultimate 

truth of the Cold War: The Western socioeconomic 

system was stronger, and long-term trends favored 

the West. Mutual gray zone harassment was destined 

to have a much greater effect on the Soviet Union 
120

because of the inherent vulnerabilities of its system 

and the relative robustness of liberal democracy. Responding to gray zone campaigns is all about enhancing the political resilience of the target state. 

This was George Kennan’s greatest insight. The 

West would win the Cold War, he believed, because 

of its social and economic, not military, superiority. 

The goal of its military and geostrategic efforts was 

merely to avoid defeat, keep the Communist world 

from gaining a false sense of momentum through conquest, and wait for history’s persistent energies to do 

their work. Our task is much the same with gray zone 

strategies today.

As suggested earlier, gray zone tactics are often the 

strategy of the weak, not the strong. They allow states 

like Russia and Iran—otherwise being bowled over by 

the tide of history—to find avenues to exercise power and pursue their regional ambitions. The key for 

the United States, then, is not so much to become the 

world master of gray zone tactics on the small scale. 

It is to attend to the big picture and ensure that larger 

trends work to the U.S. advantage.

HYPOTHESIS SEVEN: GRAY ZONE CAMPAIGNS 

HAVE POWERFUL LIMITATIONS 

Some of the recent literature on gray zone techniques has an urgent or even defeatist tone, implying 

that these techniques provide huge advantages to revisionists determined to undermine U.S. power and 

gain relative advantage. This analysis has conveyed 

some of the opportunities reflected in such strategies. 

But, as I argued earlier, it is also important to appreciate their limitations—ways in which gray zone strategies reflect something well short of a magic wand of 

geopolitical advantage.
121

The most obvious limitation is suggested by the 

preceding hypothesis. Gray zone strategies allow 

states to capitalize on others’ vulnerabilities, but they 

seldom, if ever, offer avenues to achieve decisive results on their own. Beijing cannot be certain of achieving its ultimate goals in the South China Sea through 

gradual gray zone tactics and techniques alone. If others resist sufficiently, China will ultimately need to 

decide whether to escalate to more elaborate forms of 

aggression.

For all the recent analysis of gray zone conflicts, 

for example, there is little evidence that such activities can have conclusive results on their own. Neither 

the U.S. nor Soviet Cold War-era gray zone efforts 

appear to have been decisive. (Certainly, the Soviet 

active measures campaign achieved little of note.) It 

remains unclear how much China will achieve with its 

campaign in the South China Sea. Russia’s successful 

grab of Crimea may count as more of a quasi-military 

fait accompli rather than a true gray zone campaign. 

In short, further research is needed to understand the 

experience of gray zone strategies.

Just as the defenders in gray zone campaigns face 

certain dilemmas, so do the aggressors. The more aggressive they are, the more forceful the instruments 

they employ, the more likely they are to achieve the 

coercive leverage needed to achieve their objectives. 

But the higher the degree of force involved, the more 

likely the gray zone strategist is to provoke a more 

elaborate response. Galeotti has emphasized the ways 

in which Russia’s campaigns in Ukraine have shown 

both the potential for and limits of gray zone strategies. The major price paid by Russia due to its operations in Ukraine shows that “this is by no means the 

guaranteed war-winner some had initially assumed.” 
122

Ukraine’s resistance hardened, the West imposed 

severe sanctions, and the campaign went from the 

intended goal of a short, quick win to a “bleeding 

wound”14 that is sapping Russian strength.

In sum, gray zone strategies are not magic wands. 

They have significant limitations and will be challenging to employ effectively. Their advantage over major 

warfare is also the source of their weakness: They do 

not represent strategies capable of achieving decisive 

outcomes within a defined period of time. States may 

find great challenges in attempting to achieve defined 

political objectives reliably with such approaches.

CONCLUSION

These seven hypotheses offer ways of understanding aspects of this emerging form of conflict, perhaps 

the default means by which measured revisionists 

(and others) will pursue their political goals in ways 

more aggressive than classic diplomacy. While the true 

role of gray zone strategies in world politics remains 

to be seen, there is at least the potential for it to play 

a central role in state rivalry in the coming decades, 

despite its distinct limitations. What remains is to discuss ways in which the United States and its friends 

and allies can deal with this potential technique, and 

even use it to their relative advantage.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 7

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1984, p. 593.
123

2. Amy Chang, Ben FitzGerald, and Van Jackson, “Shades of 

Gray: Technology, Strategic Competition, and Stability in Maritime Asia,” Washington, DC: Center for New American Security, 

March 2015, pp. 9-10.

3. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1960, p. 40. See also pp. 4-7, 21-52.

4. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1966, pp. 97, 105.

5. Ibid., p. 124.

6. Haddick, “America Has No Answer,” War on the Rocks, 

February 2014.

7. Andrew Kydd, “Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing: Why Security 

Seekers Do Not Fight Each Other,” Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, 

Fall 1997), pp. 116, 125-126. See also Brian C. Rathbun, “Uncertain about Uncertainty: Understanding the Multiple Meanings of 

a Crucial Concept in International Relations Theory,” International 

Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, 2007. For a pessimistic argument about 

the potential to resolve uncertainty and avoid security dilemmas, 

see Sebastian Rosato, “The Inscrutable Intentions of Great Powers,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 3, Winter 2014/2015.

8. Robert Powell, “Uncertainty, Shifting Power, and Appeasement,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 4, December 

1996, p. 750.

9. “Aware of their weaknesses against the United States and 

its allies and cognizant of the incalculability of engaging in direct confrontation with the world’s most powerful nation,” two 

scholars have argued, a number of key rivals and competitors 

“engaged instead in a cautious game of ‘salami-slicing.’ Their 

strategy is to break deterrence bit by bit, through repeated demonstrations of its insolvency in small, hard-to-counter crises.” See 

A. Wes Mitchel and Jakub Grygiel, “‘Salami-Slicing’ and Deterrence,” The American Interest, November 18, 2014.

10. Ibid.
124

11. Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 56.

12. Mark Galeotti, “‘Hybrid War’ and ‘Little Green Men’: 

How It Works and How It Doesn’t,” E-IR, April 16, 2015, pp. 4-5.

13. Phil Karber, “‘Lessons Learned’ from the Russo-Ukrainian 

War,” The Russian Military Forum, Washington, DC: Center for 

Strategic and International Studies, March 10, 2015.

14. Galeotti, pp. 3-4.
125

CHAPTER 8

STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH 

GRADUALIST CHALLENGES

Responding to gray zone strategies is inherently 

challenging for the United States, and indeed for any 

democracy. Competing successfully in this arena demands commitment to steady, coherent, long-term 

strategies. In some cases, as in responding to clandestine proxy wars, it can require operating in the 

shadows and taking actions that cannot be publicly 

acknowledged. It demands an effort to manage narratives in a manner that pushes up against the constraints of democratic policymaking. The United States 

managed to achieve all of these goals during the Cold 

War, but, in general, they do not accord well with the 

typically short-term, absolutist cast of U.S. national 

security planning.

This is not to suggest that the United States has no 

tools in its arsenal for such conflicts. In fact, it ought 

to be able to defend itself and its allies from gray zone 

aggression perfectly well. Doing so demands integrated strategies that span multiple administrations, 

but this has been possible in the past. The needed investments are modest, especially because, as Chapter 

7 suggested, gray zone strategies are somewhat selflimiting. I will suggest a number of specific capabilities that could be helpful in the tactical back-and-forth 

of gray zone conflict.

An overarching priority of these steps is to provide 

senior leaders in the U.S. National Command Authority with a wider range of nuanced options. When 

confronting gray zone campaigns today, U.S. leaders 

often confront a typical array of tools not necessarily 
126

optimized for gray zone contexts—and not always 

flexible or tailored to such circumstances. A main 

priority of any new approach should be to integrate 

a broad array of potential actions, from long-term 

work on institutions to immediate responses on the local battlefield, into coherent operational concepts for 

fighting in the gray zone. U.S. leaders should have a 

deep and extensive menu of response options for such 

situations.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Yet, the most fundamental response to this challenge is not to become tactically brilliant in the gray 

zone—it is to render the zone mostly moot, and take 

advantage of the inherent limitations and dilemmas 

involved in the employment of such strategies. These 

recommendations focus on geopolitical rather than 

military operational elements. They point to ways of 

shaping long-term trends in order to render the United States less vulnerable to gray zone disruption.

1. Set the Long-Term Trajectory: Make Sure Time 

is On Your Side. The fundamental response to gray 

zone strategies is not to combat them directly, but 

rather to set the conditions so that long-term social, 

political, and economic trends favor the United States, 

its allies and friends, and the stability of the rulesbased order. Gray zone strategies prey upon weaknesses and vulnerabilities in these areas. Addressing 

such potential danger zones is the first step toward 

becoming more resilient.

The U.S. grand strategy has been built—at least 

since 1945, in some sense from the very founding of 

the nation—on the central concept that time was on the 

side of the American experiment. The central Ameri-
127

can narrative, and foundation of U.S. grand strategy, 

is that liberal democracy is destined to triumph over 

competing ideologies. It was this essential faith that 

sustained U.S. administrations and generations during the Cold War, and it remains the basic answer to 

the gray zone campaigns of revisionists today.

The United States could pursue this goal in two 

broad and complementary ways. One would focus 

on international and external trends and institutions; 

one on domestic and internal issues. Internationally, 

the United States could work to reinforce elements of 

the rules-based international order that has helped to 

keep the peace for over 60 years. This approach must 

evolve, however, to multilateralize the governance of 

these institutions in important new ways, to open the 

running of the rules-based order to any responsible 

state. The United States can use a flexible set of norms 

and institutions to absorb and normalize the more 

constrained measured revisionism of rising states like 

Brazil, Turkey, and India.

Providing democratic, peaceful, and constructive 

quasi-revisionists with a stake in the system is critical 

to preserving the overall balance of order and preventing more aggressive revisionists like China and Russia with the opportunity to gather fellow-travelers to 

some alternative vision of the future system. This does 

not imply recruiting some of these states as “allies”; 

none of them has any interest in such a designation. It 

merely means creating a more shared sense of international ownership of rules, norms, and institutions 

so that long-term trends can reflect deepened order 

and strengthened consensus against belligerence. It is 

a strategy of endorsing partial revisionism to discredit 

more radical varieties.
128

Such an approach would build on the idea that, despite their seeming energy and momentum, measured 

revisionists are operating from a position of weakness. 

Their bellicosity is ultimately self-defeating—as much 

so with gray zone aggression as anything else. China’s 

campaign of territorial aggrandizement in the South 

China Sea has provoked a fairly significant regional 

response, for example, given that no shots have been 

fired. Japan’s new defense guidance alone and the 

tighter partnership it implies with the United States 

has probably cost China more in the overall balance 

of power than it has gained with its rhetoric and land 

reclamation. U.S. relations with Japan, Vietnam, the 

Philippines, and other victims of China’s over-reaching have been growing.1

 Russia’s even more belligerent gray zone aggression in Ukraine has generated 

economic sanctions and geopolitical isolation. Truly 

disruptive revisionism is a dead-end road, and U.S. 

efforts to manage the future of the rules-based order 

can build on these natural dynamics and reinforce this 

lesson. The goal of a strengthened, multilateralized 

emphasis on norms and institutions is, in part, to create processes and norms that such generate negative 

feedback.

The second approach to making time work for the 

United States is the oft-repeated requirement to attend 

to issues of domestic social and economic strength, 

from entitlement and tax reform to measures to ease 

inequality to infrastructure investments and much 

more. Beyond the United States, socio-economic tension and instability is a key sign of potential vulnerability to gray zone tactics. Russia has been able to 

gain a foothold in neighboring countries with restive Russian-speaking populations; unhappy, quasiindependent provinces; and weak or corrupt local or 
129

central governments.2 Helping Russia’s neighbors to 

become more stable and well-governed should be a 

major U.S. focus in responding to gray zone tactics.

Finally, the success of U.S. responses to gray zone 

aggression will depend in significant measure on 

whether they are integrated into coherent regional 

strategies. U.S. success in countering China’s South 

China Sea gray zone approaches will be a function of 

the degree to which it has an effective larger approach 

to deal with the growth of Chinese power and foster 

regional stability. Washington could develop potent 

capabilities to counter the tactical effects of gray zone 

campaigns and still fail if its general strategy is ineffectual. This is another example of the multiple ways 

in which gray zone campaigns must be seen as one 

piece of a more comprehensive picture: Setting the 

largest context will be as important to dealing with 

these challenges as any direct response.

2. Strengthen Institutions and Norms to Control 

Revisionist Tactics. A related but independent response to gray zone aggression is to build or enhance 

specific norms or institutions designed to reduce the 

impact or escalatory potential of gray zone tools and 

techniques.

One example of such norm- and institution-building would be to develop and expand confidencebuilding and crisis resolution mechanisms, such as 

processes to enhance transparency at the regional or 

issue level.3 One analyst has suggested an expansion 

of military-to-military contacts, expanded mechanisms for information sharing among partner fleets 

and militaries, and a more formal system for sharing 

real-time maritime intelligence.4
130

Beyond transparency and awareness, the United 

States could work with allies to build codified norms 

and rules that constrain gray zone adventurism and 

improve predictability. So far, China has been reluctant to move past informal promises to resolve conflicts peacefully to more elaborate and formalized 

rules for dispute resolution. The United States could 

sponsor a new round of dialogues on such initiatives. 

Globally, it could pursue such ideas as a convention 

for “cyber rules of the road” that would have the effect of limiting the use of cyber aggression as part of 

any gray zone campaign. In the process, the United 

States can build on its status as “partner of choice” to 

help convene various institutional responses to potential gray zone instability.5

Such ideas would also seem tailor-made for parallel Track 2 initiatives, privately funded and engaging researchers in all the regional countries to create 

a shared historical database and real-time picture of 

incremental moves throughout the region. These initiatives could take advantage of a number of areas of 

advancing technology, from grassroots social media 

reporting to track events to publicly-available civilian 

imagery.

A particular form of confidence-building mechanism is intensely human, and will be essential in a 

period of constant rivalry and gray zone conflict: Nurturing leader-to-leader relationships. Nadia Schadlow 

has emphasized the importance of basic relationship 

management in the effort to deal with gray zone 

conflict.6 Being able to pick up the phone and call a 

counterpart during a crisis is an essential element of 

dispute resolution, and yet the practice of building 

strong personal relationships among senior officials 

has somewhat fallen out of favor. It will be increas-
131

ingly important in the fluid, unpredictable world of 

gray zone campaigns.

3. Decide Where Accommodation Is Possible. 

Not every tool for responding to gray zone aggression 

must be confrontational. Measured revisionists ultimately desire recognition and stable prosperity. They 

do not intend to undermine the international system 

as a whole, and do not, at this point, nourish the hope 

of sending tank divisions or fleets to seize neighboring 

territories. It ought to be possible to avoid escalating 

rounds of gray zone conflict through accommodation.

Accommodation has a negative connotation today, 

as it is too often equated with appeasement. But great 

powers must accommodate their mutual interests all 

the time, and this is no less true—and arguably even 

more so—at a time of mounting rivalry. Not all gradual efforts to gain influence by other powers must be resisted, and there may be a worthwhile larger dialogue 

about concessions or negotiations in the name of collective security. The idea is in part to use a measured 

revisionist’s willingness to work gradually to sidestep risks of conflict in the short term, while granting 

some of their goals.

A good example of the soft-line foundation for 

responding to gray zone pressure may be Vietnam’s 

response to China. It is grounded in a confidence that 

the two countries share many interests and, despite 

their occasional conflicts, that Vietnam ought to be 

able to work its substantial contacts in the Chinese 

Communist Party in order to resolve key disputes.7

But it also seems based on a willingness to grant fundamental Chinese interests and not view the competition as a zero-sum game. Accommodation becomes 

more feasible if, as suggested earlier, the United States 
132

has confidence that, due to a combination of strategic realities and U.S. policy, time is on the side of the 

United States. Such a thought process again goes back 

to the Cold War, and George Kennan’s view—as indeed it was, in different ways, Richard Nixon’s and 

Ronald Reagan’s—that when long-term trends were 

working in America’s favor, compromise made sense 

in the name of keeping the peace.8

A good example can be found in Europe today. Few 

could make the case that long-term trends are favoring 

Russian power vis-à-vis Europe or the United States. 

Russia’s economy is troubled, it faces a demographic 

collapse and confronts long-term ecological issues. 

Now Moscow has incurred a serious economic price in 

the form of the sanctions imposed in retaliation for its 

aggression in Ukraine. The United States and its European partners should operate from the view that the 

long-term will be favorable to their interests relative 

to Russia’s—and that this opens the way to accommodations to prevent escalation of conflict in the shortterm. Granting Russia certain concessions regarding 

its self-defined regional security imperatives could 

make it less reliant on gray zone campaigns without 

threatening long-term Western goals.

4. Build Forces, Systems, Technologies, Concepts, and Doctrines for a Gradualist Environment. 

In addition to these broad geostrategic context-setting 

actions, the United States should also seek to develop 

specific capabilities optimized for gray zone conflict.

There is evidence that the most effective gray zone 

campaigns are holistic, integrated approaches that 

knit together the effects of many different instruments 

of power. Improving U.S. capabilities for such campaigns thus requires investments in and attention to a 

wide range of tools and techniques.
133

To begin with, the United States should build concepts of operations for gray zone conflicts, broad theories of success and planned approaches for employing a range of tools for combined effect. Gray zone 

campaigns are complex, integrated endeavors, and 

stumbling into one without a clear sense of how one 

intends to employ available tools is a prescription for 

failure. The biggest challenge may be institutional: Deciding what office should develop these concepts. The 

dilemma is that the military has the most experience 

with such concept development, but gray zone campaigns are dominantly nonmilitary in nature. Perhaps 

this calls for a small new office, housed in the State 

Department or National Security Council, including 

detailed military officers, civilian experts in other instruments of power, and scholars in the application of 

coercive diplomacy.

As a general rule, investments in gray zone capabilities ought to cover a wide range of tools. Dominance in any one area is likely to be less important 

than baseline capabilities in many mutually supporting ones. In general, high-end scenarios suggest the 

need for quality at the expense of quantity: relatively 

few high-tech systems that can provide dominant battlefield capabilities. Gray zone conflict typically calls 

for a wide range of tools.9

In terms of specific categories of investment, the 

descriptions discussed earlier give a good sense of the 

sorts of areas in which the United States ought to invest. In the information realm, the United States will 

want improved versions of its current, largely experimental projects to use social media, official content, 

and other streams of information to shape evolving 

narratives. In the economic realm, U.S. strategists 

could perhaps benefit from a more explicit and inten-
134

sively designed set of options from financial sanctions 

to anti-corruption strategies to targeted economic 

assistance. At the higher end of the spectrum, it will 

want relatively small but dedicated social operations 

and covert action units uniquely trained for gray zone 

contexts, likely including regionally-aligned special 

operations forces with world-class language skills and 

local socio-political awareness. For maritime environments, the United States will want a better balance 

between its military and nonmilitary capabilities—

suggesting a greater relative investment in the Coast 

Guard and in medical and humanitarian capabilities. 

This is only a suggestive list.

As important as any collection of specific capabilities, however, will be a structure and process designed 

to meld them together into holistic campaigns—and 

to do so over very long periods of time. It will not be 

enough to trust that the interagency system will generate effective strategies. Especially because of the 

multidisciplinary nature of gray zone campaigns, that 

outcome is unlikely. As problematic as it is to propose yet another structural fix, it may be necessary to 

create a special office—perhaps at the National Security Council staff, or perhaps within the State Department—to manage the conduct of such campaigns and 

draw together these various instruments in productive ways and over the long term.

5. Punish Selected Revisionist Acts and Broadcast True Red Lines. Finally, research on dealing with 

incremental efforts to undermine established orders, 

strategies such as faits accompli, suggests the importance of two related responses: Pointed action to punish overly aggressive revisionism, and broadcasting 

clear red lines for truly vital interests.
135

In service of the first goal, noticeable punishments 

must be imposed on an aggressor who flouts international norms with their gray zone revisionism. The 

United States and its allies can build cost-imposing 

strategies to render gray zone campaigns toxic drains 

on resources and reputation. One example might be 

a covert campaign to strengthen Ukrainian militias 

fighting Russian proxies. “By turning what Moscow 

had hoped would be a quick limited war into a prolonged war of attrition,” two scholars suggest, “it 

would be clear that revising the existing order by force 

is not cost-effective. The salami slicing, so to speak, 

would be halted and the hand holding the knife 

rapped across the knuckles.”10

The basic concept behind such approaches would 

be to build engines of negative feedback for aggressive revisionist acts, which create cost-imposing dynamics that make these self-limiting and declining 

techniques. As Thomas Schelling has argued: 

When the act to be deterred is inherently a sequence of 

steps whose cumulative effect is what matters, a threat 

geared to the increments may be more credible than 

one that must be carried out either all at once or not 

at all when some particular point has been reached. It 

may even be impossible to define a ‘critical point’ with 

sufficient clarity to be persuasive.11

Put in the plain language for which Schelling is 

justly revered, the essay continues: “The man who 

would kick a dog should be threatened with modest punishment for each step toward the dog, even 

though his proximity is of no interest in itself.”12 U.S. 

strategists need to develop a similar expectation of 

action-reaction dynamics for gray zone conflicts, to 

make clear to potential aggressors that they will pay a 
136

specific price for each of their incremental steps—and 

that there are red lines which will trigger much more 

substantial escalation.

In this context, Schelling argues for a sort of muscular gradualism. A threat, to be made more credible, 

“can be decomposed into a series of consecutive smaller threats,” giving the deterring state “an opportunity 

to demonstrate on the first few transgressions that the 

threat will be carried out on the rest.”13 He gives the 

example of a desire to get reforms on an aid recipient’s policies. Cancelling all aid may be too difficult, 

and counterproductive. So an aid donor might make a 

series of small threats, to cancel individual programs 

or grants, and in fulfilling them build leverage to get 

its larger wishes granted.

This is the crux of the challenge, however—the political price for punishing these small steps seems very 

high to many U.S. friends and allies. This is a dilemma 

measured revisionism creates. However, the fact is 

that the more the revisionists push, the stronger the 

balancing becomes—a trend we see today in Europe 

and Asia with the reactions to Russian and Chinese 

revisionist muscle-flexing.14 U.S. policy can build on 

this dynamic to create even more potent examples of 

coercive reactions to gray zone aggression.

An important requirement for such approaches 

is to look for and use moments when the gray zone 

aggressor overreaches. A central component of gray 

zone responses is to build up a gradual contrary portrait of the author of the campaign as an irresponsible 

and dangerous violator of international norms. When 

a gray zone campaign generates unplanned tension—

as when a maritime clash results in fatalities, or a 

low-level commander goes too far, or paramilitary operations intended to remain secret are unveiled—the 
137

United States can use the momentary anger to achieve 

specific objectives in its own countergray zone campaign. It can align coalitions against the aggressors, 

try to put formalized rules of the road on the books, 

pull targeted states away from aggressors’ economic 

inducements, and more. The idea is, over time, to use 

excessive steps to place a spotlight on the overall campaigns so as to complicate the efforts of the gray zone 

strategists to achieve long-term progress.

In the process, a second critical requirement is to 

make true red lines clear—and enforce them. Daniel 

Altman has argued in relation to faits accompli that:

More often than not, the best option available to a state 

confronting this problem is to rely on a strong red line 

set on a focal point to encapsulate many small units 

of value that this state cannot credibly threaten to defend individually. Knowing it cannot mount a credible defense after abandoning this red line, that point 

becomes one from which it cannot retreat without 

greater cost.15

He argues that Cold War tensions eased when the two 

sides developed a partly de facto set of clear red lines 

(in places like the inter-Korean border) that rules out a 

continual series of faits accomplis. 

This range of alternatives could offer a basic framework for dealing with gray zone revisionism. The most 

important requirement, however, is to understand and 

take seriously gray zone conflict as a distinct category 

of state action. This monograph represents a first step 

toward a more comprehensive understanding of gray 

zone conflict. As noted at the outset, it is far from the 

last word. Its goal is to provoke more discussion and 

thinking about a strategic challenge that is likely to 
138

continue confronting the United States and its friends 

and allies in the years ahead.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 8

1. Keith Johnson, “Pushing Back Against a Chinese Lake in 

the South China Sea,” Foreign Policy, April 28, 2015.

2. This issue is highlighted as a critical condition of successful 

gray zone approaches in András Ràcz, Russia’s Hybrid War in 

Ukraine, Helsinki, Finland: The Finnish Institute of International 

Affairs, June 2015, pp. 76-81.

3. Van Jackson has argued that “Gray zone coercion loses 

much of its efficacy in an environment rendered transparent. If 

a would-be aggressor knows it will be seen as such by its neighbors, that transparency may have the effect of deterring gray zone 

coercion.” Van Jackson, Testimony before the House Committee 

on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Washington, DC, February 26, 2015, p. 6. He suggests two initiatives to 

achieve this goal: Boosting regional military-to-military ties, and 

cooperative efforts to enhance maritime surveillance and awareness. “Information sharing regimes intended to increase operational transparency exist as a patchwork at the bilateral and trilateral level in Asia,” Jackson points out, suggesting that “greater 

situational awareness—ideally in real time—would benefit the 

region as a whole and increase the political costs of gray zone 

coercion or other forms of military adventurism. 

4. Robert Haddick, “Six Ways to Respond to China’s SalamiSlicing Tactics,” The National Interest, November 24, 2014.

5. The “convening function” argument is made in Boston 

Global Forum, “Recent Trends in the South China Sea Disputes,” 

June 2015, p. 11.

6. Nadia Schadlow, “Peace and War: The Space Between,” 

War on the Rocks, August 2014.
139

7. Christopher Yung and Patrick McNulty, “China’s Tailored 

Coercion,” Report 5, Maritime Strategy Series, Washington, DC: 

Center for a New American Security, January 26, 2015.

8. George F. Kennan, “Measures Short of War,” The George F. 

Kennan Lectures at the National War College, 1946-1947, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1991.

9. Zachary Keck, “Is Air-Sea Battle Useless?” The National 

Interest, May 16, 2014.

10. A. Wess Mitchell and Jakob Grygiel, “‘Salami-Slicing’ 

and Deterrence,” The American Interest, November 18, 2014. They 

also recommend much more powerful actions—which they describe as “proportional.” In this case, they suggest “working to 

foment internal problems in Russia’s more troublesome regions.” 

But they recognize that NATO lacks the willpower to take such 

bold action. In any event, I would consider such acts to be far too 

provocative.

11. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1960, p. 42.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., p. 41.

14. Jonathan Holslag, “The Smart Revisionist,” Survival, Vol. 

56, No. 5, October-November 2014, pp. 110-111. Joshua Rivner argues that the West should essentially do nothing in response to 

Putin’s gray zone aggressions, because the outcomes have been 

so unambiguously bad for Russia that the actions are weakening rather that strengthening Russian power; see Joshua Rovner, 

“Dealing with Putin’s Strategic Incompetence,” War on the Rocks, 

August 12, 2015.

15. Daniel Altman, “Red Lines and Faits Accomplis,” Ph.D. 

dissertation, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015, p. 26. He also makes the point that proportional 

responses may not be enough, p. 27.

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William E. Rapp

Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

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Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil

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