What is Grey Zone Warfare?
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Overview:
In commentaries on China and Taiwan, 'grey zone warfare' crops up in descriptions of Chinese actions around the island that it claims as its own.
About Grey Zone Warfare
- Grey zone warfare generally means a middle, unclear space that exists between direct conflict and peace in international relations.
- It can be broadly defined as the exploitation of operational space between peace and war to change the status quo through the use of coercive actions which remain below a threshold that, in most cases, would prompt a conventional military response.
- Activities characterised as grey zone warfare methods range from the use of proxies for kinetic action or change of territorial status quo through coercion to non-kinetic subversive actions such as cyberattacks, economic coercion, disinformation campaign, election meddling, and more recently, weaponisation of migrants.
- There are typical aspects that tend to be present in most grey zone warfare activities.
- The first is that grey zone elements remain below the threshold that would justify a military response, often through the use of non-military tools.
- The second common characteristic of grey zone activities is that they unfold gradually over time rather than involving bold, all-encompassing actions to achieve objectives in one step.
- The third characteristic, which applies to some but not all the activities in this sphere, is a lack of attributability. Most grey zone campaigns involve actions, whereby the aggressor aims for plausible deniability of its action.
- In cases where grey zone actions are open and attributable, they are justified using extensive legal and political arguments. In addition, aggressors also recruit other countries to their point of view.
- Grey zone campaigns target specific vulnerabilities in the targeted countries.
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Q1) What is Deterrence?
Deterrence simply means dissuading bad behavior with the threat of significant punishment. In foreign policy, deterrence serves a similar purpose: maintaining peace by persuading enemies that any attack will be met with a significant response. For deterrence to work, two conditions should be present: severity and credibility.Severity entails threatening a prospective opponent with a retaliation that would outweigh any potential benefits they could hope to gain from attacking. Credibility means making an opponent believe that further aggression on their part will provoke retaliation.
Source: What is grey zone warfare, mentioned by India’s Chief of Defence Staff recently?