Gray-Zone Conflict and Hybrid War—Two Failures of American Strategic Thinking

摘要

Among today's great ironies is that, despite the fact that the United States has been at war for the better part of two decades, rare is the American policy maker who speaks adeptly about our use of military power in a coherent manner. On the one hand, political leaders attempt to avoid categorizing our air strikes and raids targeting al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in countries around the world as war, while on the other hand they conflate hostile Russian acts with some form of hyphenated war. This article argues that the adoption of two prominent and fashionable theoretical terms and their various iterations—the gray zone or gray-zone conflict (usually described as the space between peace and war) and hybrid war (often described as Russia's new form of mixed-methods warfare birthed by General Valery Gerasimov)—is an example of an American failure to think clearly about political, military, and strategic issues and their vitally important connections.