Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict

Abstract

Abstract : In the remote reaches of the South China Sea in the Spratly Island chain, China is creating land. In order to bolster its claims to the waters of the region, Beijing is pouring millions of metric tons of sand and concrete onto submerged reefs, creating artificial islands.1 Island-building is merely one of the most obvious of many actions, ranging from propaganda to economic coercion and swarming fleets of fishing vessels, that China has been taking to solidify its assertion of territorial and resource rights throughout the region.2 Step by forceful step, China is laying the groundwork for a new order in the region that recognizes Beijings unquestioned primacy, and for an international system whose norms and institutions reflect Chinas interests and preferences.3 China is biding its time, one report recently concluded, slowly eroding American credibility in the region, changing facts on the ground where it believes it can and carefully calibrating the coercion of its rivals in the South China Sea.4 This series of actions is a powerful example of an approach being used by more and more states with partial, but still obvious, revisionist intentthat is to say, states dissatisfied with the status quo and determined to change important aspects of the global distribution of power and influence in their favor. Unwilling to risk major escalation with outright military adventurism, these actors are employing sequences of gradual steps to secure strategic leverage.

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