Into the Grey: Grey Zone Warfare in Past, Present, and Future

走进灰色：过去、现在和未来的灰色地带战争

• 批准号: AH/W01128X/1
• 负责人: Marco Wyss
• 金额: $ 4.71万
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FW01128X%2F1
• 关键词: Into; Grey; Zone; Warfare; Past

'Grey zone warfare' emerged as a key strategic global challenges in 2014. Russian operations in Ukraine, which were not part of any declared or easily recognisable form of warfare, confounded academics, pundits, politicians and Western armed forces. This and other conflicts in the 'grey zone' somewhere between war and peace were then described by a host of 'proto-concepts': 'new wars', low-intensity conflicts, operations other than war, fourth-generation warfare, hybrid warfare, and, indeed, 'grey zone warfare', whose one common denominator was that warfare had changed. Gone were the days of 'modern warfare', the domain of uniformed men fighting pitched battles to achieve decisive victories. Replacing them was 'post-modern' fluidity and diffusion, an erosion of traditional distinctions between war and peace, protracted struggles for 'hearts and minds', an almost limitless spectrum of violence, and a large toolbox ranging from proxy militias to cyber warfare with the wide-ranging objective of destabilising adversaries.This project, however, is founded on the notion that history is rife with conflicts that have more in common with 'Ukraine' - or, indeed, 'Afghanistan' - than with the supposed norm of 19th and 20th-century regular, i.e. European, warfare. Our network innovates by positing that grey zone warfare is the most suitable analytical term to capture the key element connecting both 'post-modern' and other forms of conflict outside the Eurocentric 19th and 20th-century norm: organised violence existing between the states of declared interstate war and peace. A global, longue durée historical approach allows us to include in our analyses of grey zone warfare a diverse range of cases, ranging from sieges in medieval Europe to the Sino-Japanese proxy war over Korea in the 19th century.Yet, grey zone warfare is an essentially contested concept, lacking clearly defined parameters. We thus aim to provide conceptual clarity by studying various forms of warfare that do not fit the European norm of state-based conflict, and to create a typology of 'grey zone warfare'. In drawing on representative historical case studies, we will identify their underlying dimensions, create and discuss categories for classification, measure and sort them, map variations, and, ultimately, provide important conceptual building blocs.Global in scope and collaborative in nature, this project will create a network of scholars from a variety of disciplines - ranging from History to IR to Security Studies - to collaborate, compare and contrast different cases in order to jointly create a typology of grey zone warfare. The results will then be analysed and assessed in comparison to current relevant military strategies and doctrines, with the aim of critiquing and/or adding to those based on relevant historical examples. This will add important new ideas and data to both current scholarly approaches to grey zone warfare, the curricula of military academies, doctrinal manuals, policy on both the tactical, operational and strategic levels, and increase public understanding of the complexities of the grey zone phenomenon.In order to accomplish these aims, we will organise two workshops, a round-table and a briefing session. The first workshop focuses on developing a typology of grey zone warfare on the basis of historical case studies. During the second workshop academics and practitioners will together test the historically informed typology against contemporary case studies. During the round-table we will test and promote the applicability of the typology of grey zone warfare and case studies for current and future military strategies, doctrines, and operations, as well as foreign and defence policy more generally. Finally, we will organise an online briefing session, aimed at a wide audience of journalists, NGO representatives, and other interested parties, to present our findings and discuss their relevance and implications.

2014年，“灰色地带战争”成为一项关键的全球战略挑战。俄罗斯在乌克兰的行动不是任何已宣布或容易辨认的战争形式的一部分，这让学者、专家、政界人士和西方军队感到困惑。这场冲突以及其他处于战争与和平之间的“灰色地带”的冲突，当时被一系列“原始概念”所描述：“新战争”、低强度冲突、非战争行动、第四代战争、混合战争，甚至还有“灰色地带战争”，其一个共同点就是战争已经发生了变化。“现代战争”的时代已经一去不复返了。“现代战争”是穿着制服的人为取得决定性胜利而进行激烈战斗的领域。取而代之的是“后现代”的流动性和扩散，战争与和平之间的传统区别被侵蚀，为“心灵”而进行的旷日持久的斗争，几乎无限的暴力行为，以及从代理人民兵到以破坏对手稳定为广泛目标的网络战的大型工具箱。然而，这个项目基于这样一个概念：历史上充斥着冲突，这些冲突与19世纪和20世纪的常规战争--即欧洲战争--更相似。我们的网络进行了创新，认为灰色地带战争是最合适的分析术语，可以捕捉到关键要素，即在宣布国家间战争与和平的国家之间存在的有组织暴力，这些要素连接了19世纪和20世纪以欧洲为中心的规范之外的“后现代”冲突和其他形式的冲突。从全球性的、长期的历史角度来看，我们可以在对灰色地带战争的分析中纳入一系列不同的案例，从中世纪欧洲的围困到19世纪中日对朝鲜的代理人战争。然而，灰色地带战争本质上是一个有争议的概念，缺乏明确定义的参数。因此，我们的目标是通过研究不符合欧洲基于国家的冲突的标准的各种形式的战争来提供概念上的明确性，并创建一种“灰色地带战争”的类型学。在借鉴有代表性的历史案例研究时，我们将确定它们的潜在维度，创建和讨论分类类别，测量和分类它们，绘制变化图，并最终提供重要的概念构建块。该项目将创建一个来自不同学科-从历史到IR到安全研究-的学者网络，以合作、比较和对比不同的案例，以便共同创建灰色地带战争的类型学。然后将对照当前相关的军事战略和理论对结果进行分析和评估，目的是批评和(或)补充以相关历史事例为基础的战略和理论。这将为当前对灰色地带战争的学术方法、军事院校的课程、理论手册、战术、作战和战略层面的政策增加重要的新思想和数据，并增加公众对灰色地带现象复杂性的了解。为了实现这些目标，我们将举办两次研讨会、一次圆桌会议和一次简报会。第一期讲习班的重点是在历史案例研究的基础上制定灰色地带战争的类型学。在第二期讲习班期间，学者和实践者将共同测试历史知识类型学与当代案例研究的对比。在圆桌会议期间，我们将测试和促进灰色地带战争类型学和案例研究对当前和未来军事战略、学说和行动以及更广泛的外交和国防政策的适用性。最后，我们将组织一次面向广大记者、非政府组织代表和其他有关各方的在线简报会，介绍我们的调查结果，并讨论其相关性和影响。