Editorial: Naval Review 113/1

The grey zone threat or hybrid warfare is growing exponentially. History is written by the victors as are the attempts to regulate and determine the rules surrounding armed conflict. This has worked relatively well in dictating accepted rules and practice in the traditional environments of Land, Sea and Air, specifically in the periods following total war when the world had become weary of mass conflict and industrial slaughter. The grey zone has always existed and thrived: the Cold War methods were espionage and relatively minor conflict through proxies.However, as the Second World War passes beyond living memory and even the heady days of the Cold War retreat beyond the recollection of the middle aged, the development of other areas determined by the ever increasing pace of the progress of technology has opened up three other environments where those seeking to cause mischief can operate with relative impunity due to the lack of rules and regulations, namely, Space, Cyber and Artificial Intelligence. The blockade, disruption or obliteration of a traditional environmental line of communication may be interpreted as a casus belli but what about interference with satellites, computers or undersea lines of communication? These grey zones are increasingly being exploited with ease as the world struggles to understand and keep up with the tremendous pace of change, let alone impose some sort of consensus legislation. It is these new threats, along with the already existing traditional threats, which pose the biggest challenge to what is euphemistically termed global stability, but I suggest that things will get a lot worse before they get better. As UK Defence continues to struggle to make the case for serious and long overdue investment, the grey zone problem set continues to rage at the limit of control, there is much to be learned – no matter how distasteful – from the play books of enemies and our friends who have mastered the dark arts of deniability no matter how improbable. As Stuxnet, the Salisbury poisonings and the damage to the Estlink-2 cables remind us, we ignore the grey zone threat at our peril.

The new President of the United States has set the bar high for European and Canadian spending targets for NATO. With only a matter of weeks until the SDR is announced, the Defence case has no doubt been made, and made well, but ultimately there are two people to persuade, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Strong defence must equate to strong deterrence, which in turn creates the conditions for growth and prosperity. A strong defence and deterrence by a disjointed West, including the United Kingdom, failed Ukraine over a decade, when our under investment in deterrence ultimately collapsed – as the ‘special operation’ rolled into action billions were wiped from stock markets and global trade was massively disrupted. The shocks in the energy markets fuelled inflation and ultimately rattled western liberal democracy to its core and, along with mass immigration, has shifted politics away from the centre, predominantly towards the right. These unfortunate consequences for the West have not been lost on Putin and his friends, fuelling their appetite for more mischief in the grey zone. Do our leaders really understand these linkages and appreciate just how badly broken UK Defence and conventional deterrence is, or indeed the true size of investment necessary to begin to put it right? No matter what the outcome of the defence review, the time has come to grasp the nettle, with current spending already approaching 2.3%, it is clear that another 0.2% by goodness knows when will not cut the mustard.