The Defender's Dilemma

Elisabeth Braw

Description

National security threats facing the West are fundamentally changing. Turning away from the military as an omnibus tool of aggression, hostile governments are instead frequently using tools—including subversive economics, coercion of foreign companies, gradual border violations, cyberattacks, disinformation, and arbitrary detention of foreign citizens—that are often difficult for targeted countries to immediately identify, let alone tackle. Nonmilitary aggression is easy, inexpensive, and alarmingly effective. Businesses — American and foreign — have already suffered significant financial losses because of gray-zone attacks.
In The Defender’s Dilemma, international security expert Elisabeth Brawer offers the first sustained analysis of how these tactics in the gray zone between war and peace dangerously weaken liberal democracies, which are open societies by definition and intimately connected to the rest of the world through globalization. She discusses the breadth of gray-zone aggression and presents str

Sujets

• International Relations
• Political Science

Informations

• Publié par: AEI Press
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780844750415
• Langue: English

Extrait

The DEFENDER’S DILEMMA
Identifying and Deterring
Gray-Zone Aggression
ELISABETH BRAW

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
ISNB-13: 978-0-8447-5039-2 Hardback
ISNB-13: 978-0-8447-5040-8 Paperback
ISNB-13: 978-0-8447-5041-5 eBook

© 2022 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. All rights reserved.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational organization and does not take institutional positions on any issues. The views expressed here are those of the author(s).

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Contents Cover Title Copyright Contents Introduction I. Defining and Identifying Gray-Zone Aggression II. 2014: A Decisive Year III. Gray-Zone Aggression, a National Security Threat IV. Is Sponsorship an Act of Aggression? Use of Licit Means in the Gray Zone V. Subversive Economics: When Business as Usual Enters the Gray Zone VI. Coercion, Bullying, and Subversion of Civil Society VII. Gradual Border Alterations and Surreptitious Fishing: Use of Illicit Means VIII. Producing Fear in the Enemy’s Mind: Adapting Cold War Deterrence for Gray-Zone Aggression IX. Cold War Swedish and Finnish Total Defense as Deterrence X. Building a Wall of Denial Against Gray-Zone Aggression XI. Deterrence by Punishment Concluding Reflections Notes About the Author
i ii iii iv 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 342 343
Guide Cover Title Copyright Contents Start of Content Concluding Reflections Notes About the Author
Introduction
I n March 2021, the United States was reeling from COVID-19’s continuing devastation, not to mention Donald Trump’s campaign to invalidate Joe Biden’s election victory. The latter had culminated in an assault on the US Capitol that resulted in five deaths and global shock that the president of the United States would incite supporters to attack Congress. In the background, another devastating turn of events continued to fester. On the same day Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Chinese hackers launched a devastating cyber intrusion, infiltrating an estimated 30,000 Microsoft Exchange servers in the United States and hundreds of thousands worldwide. 1 Russian cyber operators had already accessed large parts of the US government by digitally breaking into the software firm—and government contractor—SolarWinds. In the UK, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Nick Carter warned that clandestine activity by hostile states that does not reach the threshold for war could quickly “light a fuse” if it were misunderstood or escalated. 2
Less than two months before, in November 2020, Australian wine-makers lost their largest export market after China imposed tariffs so punitive as to make Australian wine unsalable in China. While officially a response to alleged Australian “wine dumping” in China, the tariffs were a de facto Chinese retaliation against the Australian government, which had decided to exclude the Chinese mobile-technology giant Huawei from its 5G network and backed an international inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. 3 Around the same time, the CEO of Ericsson, Börje Ekholm, sent a string of text messages to a Swedish minister, pleading with the Swedish government to reverse its ban on Huawei. He did so after having been pressured by the Chinese government, whose market Ericsson depends on. 4
Spring 2020 had, in turn, brought news of not just COVID-19’s catastrophic march through the world but also a less conspicuous event: a major investment in Norwegian Air Shuttle, the world’s fifth-largest budget carrier. 5 The investor, BOC Aviation, now owns a 12.67 percent stake in the company, which makes it one of Norwegian’s largest shareholders. 6 On the face of it, this was just one of millions of daily commercial transactions taking place worldwide. BOC Aviation’s ultimate owner is, however, an investment arm of the Chinese state-owned Bank of China. By means of a fully legal transaction, the Chinese government acquired a significant chunk of one of Europe’s largest airlines.
Until recently, a Chinese takeover of a Norwegian airline would have been considered positive news, and a Russian cyber intrusion involving most of the US government would have seemed unlikely. But while global business transactions have continued to increase and cyber-penetration techniques have reached ever-higher levels of sophistication, relations between the West and China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have deteriorated. 7
The most commonly cited juncture is Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and covert military activities in eastern Ukraine. As a result of these events, European countries have increased their defense spending. Between 2015 and 2019, every European NATO member state except Croatia and Belgium increased its defense spending, in some cases dramatically. (Lithuania more than doubled its defense expenditures. 8 ) NATO now has multinational battalions in each Baltic state and Poland. At the time of writing, 1,525 troops from 10 NATO member states are helping Latvia’s armed forces deter Russian aggression. Sweden, a non-NATO member state that joined many others in slashing defense spending from the 1990s onward, is likewise trying to rebuild its armed forces in response to Russia’s behavior.
These reactions to Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine are logical: If Russia could engage in subversive military activities against Ukraine, which country will be next? National leaders have a responsibility to protect their countries against armed attacks. But what if aggression comes in a completely different guise? What if it is not even carried out by the attacking country’s armed forces? The concept of gray-zone warfare is age-old, but for the past several years, it has been comprehensively used by China, Russia, and, with a more limited focus, Iran and North Korea. Regarding China, Michael Mazarr notes,
In its “gray zone” tactics and elaborate economic investment programs, China gives every indication of intending to pursue its goals short of the use of force. China’s dominant strategies, in short, are not built around conquest; the competition is not likely to be resolved by military power. 9
While much of the West worries about an invasion, gray-zone aggression is taking place every day—and it is hard to detect because it often looks like the normal bustle of daily life.
Gray-zone aggression is happening because it is exceedingly easy to attack liberal democracies in the gray zone between war and peace. Indeed, it is distinctly advantageous to use nonmilitary means of aggression. Doing so brings the attacking side the benefits it seeks, which may be industrial prowess rather than territorial gains. It makes the defender’s task harder; indeed, the aggression is extremely difficult to deter. For years, Western governments and businesses have worked to strengthen their defense against cyberattacks. Many have strengthened their offensive cyber capabilities. Governments and the wider public in Europe and North America have experienced the effects of disinformation campaigns against their societies, and myriad government and civil-society initiatives are trying to limit the spread of disinformation and make the public more resilient to such content. Yet the aggression continues, often by simply taking on new guises.
In a global environment of constant aggression in the gray zone between war and peace, in which any tool and area can be used to weaken an adversary, the defender is by definition one step behind. The COVID-19 pandemic put this changing security environment into sharp focus. Although Mother Nature almost certainly caused the most severe crisis to hit many Western countries since World War II, it was exacerbated and exploited by the Chinese government, which obfuscated when the virus was first discovered and then used European countries’ early misery for propaganda purposes.
COVID-19 also forced a significant rethink on relations with Beijing. Until the pandemic, many Western governments had tried working with Beijing on a basis of partnership or even trust. However, China’s actions in 2020—including not just “Bad Samaritanism” and obfuscation over COVID-19 but also punishment and coercion directed against Western businesses and governments—made citizens and policymakers alike conclude that their assessments of China might have been clouded by optimism bias.
COVID-19, in a sense, was China’s Crimea: the moment when the world found itself forced to reevaluate its approach. The Pew Research Center’s October 2020 report Unfavorable Views of China Reach Historic Highs in Many Countries delivered staggering figures: 73 percent of Americans held negative views of China, up from 47 percent three years before. In Australia, the rate skyrocketed from 32 to 81 percent; in the UK, from 3