A notional Russian strike on the Baltic States and Poland (CSBA graphic)

A new Army War College report, Outplayed: Regaining Strategic Initiative in the Gray Zone, argues that the United States should adopt innovative approaches against a new and more complex set of international security challenges. “Outplayed” is the culmination of a nine-month study effort that was sanctioned by the Army Chief of Staff and sponsored by the Army Capabilities Integration Center and the Joint Staff’s Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment Branch. The report concludes that — absent American adaptation and activism — the United States hazards substantial future strategic setbacks.

The “Gray Zone” Challenge

The United States and its defense enterprise are not keeping pace with game-changing developments in international competition and conflict. Increasingly, “gray zone” challenges and challengers have emerged to effectively rival more conventional U.S. methods and capabilities. Current archetypal gray zone challenges manifest under circumstances as dispersed and diverse as the South China Sea; the Donbass in eastern Ukraine; and the unbroken swath of active and simmering civil conflict stretching from Libya through the Levant and Persian Gulf and into the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Why “gray?” The simple answer is that there is a yawning conceptual gap between the traditional models of war and peace (call them black and white) that American strategists employ to pace plans and capabilities. Increasingly, revisionist and rejectionist actors and forces exploit the “gray” space in this gap, militating against the U.S.-led status quo by purpose or consequence and challenging American efforts to effectively match and reverse mounting strategic losses.

Our perceived inability to respond effectively to gray zone challenges stems from an imperfect reading of strategic conditions, reluctance — even paralysis — in the face of persistent resistance, and the biases of a staid defense establishment finely-calibrated for its preferred version of the “big one.” All of these factors combined offer innovative rivals and rival conditions enormous maneuver space and freedom of action. And, thus, in the end, the gray zone sees adversary motive meeting opportunity in ways that are fundamentally dislocating for U.S. strategists and decision makers.

The United States can compete effectively again. However, doing so requires real change. U.S. decision makers and strategists should recalibrate the way they assess and plan for “gray zone” challenges. Further, they must aggressively adapt key institutions, concepts, and capabilities for persistent gray zone campaigning. And, finally, they should re-seize the initiative and adopt a much more activist approach to a diverse and expanding set of purposeful and contextual gray zone threats.

Navy sailors captured by Iran in the Persian Gulf

Acknowledging Reality — Re-framing the Problem

Essential DoD gray zone adaptation requires universal recognition that an increasing number of competitors will for the foreseeable future persistently contest U.S. leadership. Some will seek to revise the current distribution of power and authority in the operative international system, as they perceive the contemporary U.S.-led status quo as unfavorable. Others will reject “the system” entirely, actively resisting any status quo regardless of who dominates outcomes within it.

There are a predictable set of “usual suspects” occupying the gray zone. High-end revisionists include China and Russia.

• China mixes the advantages of proximity with innovative political, economic, military, and paramilitary influence and intimidation to advance interests — all under a looming threat of unacceptable high-end military consequences.
• Russia has a similar proximity-based military trump card. Under its shadow, Russia employs proxy hybrid war, political subterfuge, and subversion within its “sphere of influence” to undermine, attack, and, ultimately, supplant the authority of regional competitors.
• Iran too is a revisionist actor. However, it takes advantage of the rampant rejectionism of a transforming Middle East and North Africa (MENA), liberally mixing irregular and paramilitary violence and political agitation to advance its strategic agenda.
• MENA itself is its own gray zone threat type, defined by the less purposeful convergence of failed or failing political institutions and rejectionist non-state actors. Across the region, confluences of hostile or adverse forces and conditions explode into unguided — even headless — gray zone challenges, presenting U.S. and allied strategists with volatile threat “fronts” that are less vulnerable to traditional coercive measures or defeat mechanisms.

U.S. decision makers should recognize all four contemporary gray threat archetypes as both pacers for contemporary strategy, as well as model challenges for a gray zone future that is likely only to grow more complex. In short, the barrier for entry into meaningful counter-U.S. resistance is collapsing and, therefore, the vectors and forms of that resistance are likely to multiply geometrically.

While each of these threat archetypes challenge core U.S interests in different ways, they share common “gray” characteristics. All involve asymmetric and hybrid approaches that do not conform to current U.S. defense conventions and their models for threat, response, and military campaigning. And, all are “risk confused,” presenting senior U.S. decision-makers with equally high and undesirable consequences whether they choose to actively counter them or not.

For U.S. defense and military leadership specifically, two implications are clear from any deliberate assessment of contemporary gray zone challenges. First, “gray zone” threats are emerging as real pacers for U.S. defense and military strategy. And, second, adversary gray zone success will persistently erode U.S. position and influence to the extent senior leaders fail to innovate, adapt, and act against it.

Graphic courtesy Sen. Dan Sullivan

Four Recommendations

“Outplayed” arrived at four key recommendations for DoD leadership. The recommendations are intended to set the United States back onto a more competitive path. The first two concern national- and department-level policy and strategy while the second two focus on operational plans and military capabilities.

First, DoD leadership requires new lenses to assess gray zone-related demand and design strategy to combat specific gray zone threats. Thus, DoD should develop a common, compelling, and adaptive strategic picture of the range of gray zone threats and their associated hazards. This common strategic picture should generate insights on the current gray zone landscape, its likeliest future trajectory, and, the sharp deviations from current trends that might emerge to disrupt coherent strategy development and strategic planning.

Second, DoD leadership should recognize that a coherent whole-of-government approach to gray zone challenges is ideal but also excessively aspirational. In short, DoD should not wait for comprehensive national-level guidance before thoughtfully considering its own gray zone options. Specifically, DoD should “lead-up” and develop actionable strategic approaches to discrete gray zone challenges and challengers.

Clearly, DoD cannot act alone in this regard. It can, however, move-out and develop ‘playbooks’ tailored to specific gray zone threats. These tailored plans may include actions such as adaptable deterrence, U.S. presence and posture, mission-tailored U.S. forces, routine and targeted demonstrations of U.S. capability and will, enhanced partner resilience, cooperative security relationships, and U.S./partner inter-operability. Ultimately, it is a national-level call whether DoD acts or implements these plans. However, it is an implicit defense responsibility to be ready for that call.

Third, assuming increased activism, U.S. combatant commanders should possess the requisite responsibility, authority, and tools essential to buffer at-risk U.S. interests and achieve favorable outcomes in gray zone environments. “Outplayed” recommends that — once chartered by the national command authority — DoD must empower its combatant commanders to operate against active gray zone challenges with new capabilities and agile, adaptive models for campaigning. This includes gaining and maintaining regional initiative, shaping regional security dynamics to limit competitor freedom of action, and containing less immediately controllable gray zone hazards.

Finally, fourth, the United States will need operational capabilities and concepts targeted at demonstrating resolve, gaining and regaining initiative, and creating dilemmas for adversaries in decidedly gray environments. Prevailing against purposeful high-end military adversaries in traditional campaigns remains an inviolable defense priority. However, joint general purpose and special operations forces, as well as joint functional capabilities and enablers will need to provide greater persistent gray zone utility.

A key concept in this regard should be recognition that hybrid challenges require equally hybrid solutions. Thus, DoD should develop and employ new and adaptable concepts, capabilities, and organizational solutions to confront mounting gray zone challenges. For example, “mission-tailored” formations should replace fixed formations. And, all forces will need to possess the agility and adaptability that enables them to disaggregate and re-aggregate into the right combinations in relatively rapid order to meet combatant commander’s unique gray zone demands.

US, Ugandan, Tanzanian, and Kenyan troops stand at attention during a joint exercise.

Adapt or Fail

The United States and its defense enterprise can regain the strategic initiative and more effectively safeguard its core interests with reinvigorated gray zone “adaptation” and “activism.” While to date “gray zone” challenges have frustrated U.S. efforts to respond, DoD can take a number of practical steps in the areas of policy, strategy and plans, and capabilities and concepts to restore the United States’ competitive edge. While the gray zone is by definition a “whole-of-government” problem, DoD will need to “lead up.” Failure to act invites irreversible strategic consequences.

Colonel Robert S. Hume, U.S. Army Retired, is a professor in the U.S. Army War College’s (USAWC) Department of Command, Leadership and Management; Mr. Nathan P. Freier is a research professor in USAWC’s Strategic Studies Institute; Lieutenant Colonel Chris Compton, U.S. Army, and Lieutenant Colonel Sean Hankard, U.S. Marine Corps, are 2016 graduates of the Army War College. Mr. Freier was the project director and Colonels Hume, Compton, and Hankard were contributing authors on the USAWC report “Outplayed: Regaining Strategic Initiative in the Gray Zone.” The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.