Solving America's Gray Zone Puzzle
ABSTRACT: Until the missing pieces of the role of global power transitions, of American "flawed by design" concepts of war and peace, and of paradoxical consequences resulting from America's roles and actions to maintain and disrupt the international system are calculated into the ongoing strategy and force planning reforms, any resulting changes of those efforts will inadequately prepare America to fight, win, and fully finish gray zone wars. For anyone paying even the slightest attention to recent global security affairs, particularly over the past three to five years, denying the significant change and disruption of what has long been the conventional sense of world order would be difficult. Determining if and how the character, scope, and direction of geopolitical competition has changed, and is changing, from the previous and current norms is the most fundamental, and arguably the most essential, imperative facing grand and military strategists as well as the national leaders and polities they serve at such times of major geostrategic inflection. Perhaps the clearest recognizable signs supporting such a claim are the measurable rise in adversarial actions taken by a number of nationstates and nonstate actors as well as the prolific increase in scholarship related to their activities. Nonstate actors such as al Qaeda and hybrid non Westphalian forms of self declared alternative statehoods such as the Islamic State challenge the legitimacy of both the norms, principles, rules, and decision making processes of the current Western advanced industrial state based majoritarian international order and the United States as lead nation, hegemon, and "guaranteeing power" of the current world order." Another sign lies in the heuristic devices and labels scholars and practitioners alike adopt and use to describe and assign meaning to these adversarial behaviors in simple understandable terms and the early practical responses and reactions to match, counter, and then ultimately, overmatch these challenges and restore the status quo ante. The increasingly adversarial relationships the United States faces with great powers such as Russia and China, in addition to regional level disruptors such as North Korea, Iran, and the self declared Islamic State lead the concerns of America's senior defense leadership. Consequently, the Pentagon and the armed services call for major strategic shifts in policy, war plans, planning architectures, and approaches. The United States' top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, recently stated "our traditional approach where we are either at peace or at war is insufficient to deal with that dynamic" the 'four plus one' challenges [of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as Islamist extremism] and the five domains" of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Moreover, Dunford recognizes the state of "adversarial competition with a military dimension short of armed conflict" military and security studies scholars and practitioners have come to label gray zone conflict. (2) This particular description, which answers the key questions of whether and how the character of geopolitical competition has changed, now represents an increasingly resonant line of inquiry in defense circles. But, just how smartly are we forming our understandings of, redesigning our overmatching strategies for, and planning our operational approaches to these so called gray zone problems? In the following pages, we argue current US defense efforts to better understand and to deal with this gray zone puzzle, while sound and necessary, remain insufficient. In short, these three missing cause and effect pieces to the complete gray zone puzzle are missing. If these elements are not soon acknowledged and sufficiently incorporated into our planning and capability development activities, future strategic efforts of the United States national security and defense enterprise to meet, overmatch, and overcome future gray zone threats will be left wanting.