Gaining Competitive Advantage for the U.S. in the Gray Zone

·                  In Northeast Asia, Japan believes that it is engaged in an increasingly high-stakes competition with China over efforts to change the status quo of territorial sovereignty and administrative control of the Senkaku Islands and nearby areas. In Southeast Asia, countries in the region have grown increasingly wary of Chinese gray zone aggression in the South China Sea. These tactics include China’s unprecedented expansion of artificial islands, as well as the use of law enforcement and maritime militia vessels in an unprofessional and escalatory manner to deter or deny the use of living and nonliving resources in the waters. Finally, China has supplemented these strategies with growing employment of economic coercion and political subversion.

Overarching Strategic Concept for Responding to Gray Zone Threats

·                  The authors’ proposed strategic concept is built around four complementary efforts: to shape a context supportive of U.S. and partner objectives over the long term; to deter a handful of very extreme forms of gray zone aggression; to dissuade the day-to-day use of more-elaborate gray zone techniques; and to sustain resilience in the lower-level, persistent competition areas.

·                  To implement the strategic concept, the authors propose a preliminary list of about three dozen response options for U.S. officials to consider, such as stationing permanent new military capabilities in key locations, anticipating political meddling and blunting the effects with information operations planned in advance, and denying the aggressor participation in key economic institutions.

Recommendations

·                  The United States and its allies, partners, and friends must decide what actions they will resolutely not tolerate in the gray zone environment. Because of the difficulty in stopping gradual, sometimes unattributable actions involving secondary interests, identifying the actions that the United States will seek to deter is the one reliable way to draw a boundary around the possible effects of gray zone encroachment.

·                  A multicomponent strategy like the one outlined in this report will be of limited utility if the U.S. government continues to lack a clear coordinating function with the responsibility for overseeing a renewed effort to gain strategic advantage in the gray zone. An important part of any gray zone response strategy, therefore, is undertaking institutional reform, such as assembling a purpose-built office in the U.S. government, with a significant devoted staff, to run counter–gray zone campaigns.

— Read more in Lyle J. Morris et al., Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Gray Zone: Response Options for Coercive Aggression Below the Threshold of Major War (RAND, 2019)