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

2014年，“灰色地带战争”成为全球重大战略挑战。俄罗斯在乌克兰的行动既不属于任何公开的战争形式，也不属于任何容易辨认的战争形式，这让学者、权威人士、政界人士和西方武装部队感到困惑。这种和其他介于战争与和平之间的“灰色地带”的冲突被描述为一系列“原始概念”：“新战争”、低强度冲突、战争以外的行动、第四代战争、混合战争，以及“灰色地带战争”，它们的一个共同点是战争发生了变化。“现代战争”的时代已经一去不复返了，那些穿着制服的人为了取得决定性的胜利而进行激烈的战斗。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，对“心灵和思想”的长期斗争，几乎无限的暴力，以及从代理民兵到网络战争的大型工具箱，其目标是破坏对手的稳定。然而，这个项目是建立在这样一种观念之上的，即历史上充斥着与“乌克兰”或“阿富汗”更相似的冲突，而不是与19世纪和20世纪常规战争（即欧洲战争）的所谓规范。我们的网络的创新之处在于，假设灰色地带战争是最合适的分析术语，以捕捉连接“后现代”和其他形式的冲突的关键因素，这些冲突超出了19世纪和20世纪以欧洲为中心的规范：在宣布国家间战争与和平的国家之间存在有组织的暴力。一种全球性的、长期的历史研究方法使我们能够在分析灰色地带战争时纳入各种各样的案例，从中世纪的欧洲围城战到19世纪的中日朝鲜代理人战争。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规范的各种形式的战争来提供概念清晰度，并创建“灰色地带战争”的类型学。在借鉴具有代表性的历史案例研究中，我们将确定它们的潜在维度，创建和讨论分类类别，测量和排序它们，绘制变化图，并最终提供重要的概念构建块。该项目具有全球范围和协作性质，将创建一个由来自不同学科的学者组成的网络——从历史到国际关系再到安全研究——进行协作、比较和对比不同的案例，以共同创建灰色地带战争的类型。然后将对结果进行分析和评估，与当前相关的军事战略和理论进行比较，目的是根据相关的历史例子对这些战略和理论进行批评和/或补充。这将为目前研究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理解。为了实现这些目标，我们将举办两个工作坊、一个圆桌会议和一个简报会。第一个研讨会的重点是在历史案例研究的基础上发展灰色地带战争的类型学。在第二次研讨会期间，学者和实践者将共同测试历史信息类型学与当代案例研究。在圆桌会议期间，我们将测试和促进灰色地带战争类型和案例研究在当前和未来军事战略、理论和行动以及更普遍的外交和国防政策中的适用性。最后，我们将组织一个在线简报会，面向广大记者、非政府组织代表和其他感兴趣的各方，展示我们的发现，并讨论它们的相关性和意义。

'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.