This article was originally publish in the Royal New Zealand Air Force Journal 2022. This and recent editions of the RNZAF Journal are found on KEA under the Service Journal tab on the top navigation bar.
CHINA’S GREY-ZONE ACTIVITIES: CONCEPTS AND POSSIBLE RESPONSES
By Dr. P. Layton
In recent years a new term has thrust itself into the military lexicon. ‘Grey-zone’ has become verbal shorthand for the type of prickly interactions many Indo-Pacific states have with China. These new kind of fractious interstate relations are equally baffling and disconcerting but fortunately falls short of war. However, the nature of grey-zone activities means defence forces are deeply involved in addressing the challenges they pose. Grey-zones may not feature warfighting but they do involve war-fighters.
This article looks at the grey-zone from a defence viewpoint and mainly at the strategic level.[1] The highest form of strategy is grand strategy, which involves building and applying power. Building and applying power are clearly interdependent, however, this article focuses on applying power. It does not discuss building the power necessary, as that is more of a mobilisation problem.
The article initially discusses what grey-zone is, and equally crucially is not, to derive some implications useful when considering responses. The second part discusses some of the conceptual background to China’s imaginative and innovative grey-zone actions. These actions happen within a particular intellectual framework and a specific context; they are not some isolated, independent activity. The third section notes some planning issues and suggests some response options while the fourth looks to the future to appreciate how China’s grey-zone activities might evolve, potentially positively but possibly negatively. The final section delves into two conceivable grey-zone responses the RNZAF could usefully become involved in.
Defining Grey-Zone
Michael Mazarr comprehensively examined the idea of grey-zone in a seminal 2015 work. He considered grey-zone conflicts involved the purposeful pursuit of political objectives through carefully designed operations; a measured movement towards the objectives rather than seeking decisive results within a specified time period; acting to remain below key escalatory thresholds so as to avoid war; and the use of all the instruments of national power, particularly non-military and non-kinetic tools.[2]
Readily apparent is that grey-zone activities do not include making war, instead actively seeking its avoidance. In so excluding war but also not being peace, the grey-zone idea blurs the distinction between the two, creating an undefined middle ground. If peace is the ‘the absence of violence’, the grey-zone idea generates a conceptual puzzle in not being either war or peace.[3] This definitional pedantry highlights that a core aspect of grey-zone is that aggressors rely on the existing peace being sufficiently resilient for the grey-zone activities to succeed.
Given these broad grey-zone characteristics, several implications become apparent. Grey-zone actions aim to gradually accumulate successes. That is, they are a cumulative strategy not a sequential strategy in the classification schema that J.C. Wylie noted in the mid-1960s. A cumulative strategy is what Wylie thought air warfare strategies were: aircraft went out every day, fought small tactical actions and gradually won.[4] There was no single grand decisive battle like Waterloo or Gettysburg or Kursk, just a day by day accumulation of successes until a tipping point was reached.
This also means that grey-zone actions don’t just happen; they are implemented in a carefully-designed campaign plan[5] controlled by strategic-level commanders. The highest levels of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and PLA command structures are involved. Grey-zone actions are not those of tactical commanders free lancing. This highlights that while Chinese grey-zone operations involve coordinating many non-military entities, they ultimately rely on hard military power provided by the PLA and wielded by the Party. Without the PLA, China’s grey-zone activities would be very different and much less effective.
Importantly, the aim in these grey-zone operations is to avoid and indeed prevent military escalation. The operation at the tactical level must be tightly controlled as the Chinese strategic leadership do not wish to accidently start a war. It’s a form of carefully scripted brinkmanship.
Grey-zone operations then are appropriate only for a time of resilient peace. If the peace is delicate with all postured and ready to fight, grey-zone operations will be too risky to undertake. Grey-zone relies on a resilient peace that can absorb a grey-zone shock and bounce back, not a fragile peace that can suddenly shatter, starting a war. The implication of this contextual requirement is that the target of grey-zone actions needs to be cooperative. They must be invested in keeping the peace and not wishing to break it; this has implications for deterrence as discussed later.
The grey-zone’s characteristics makes it distinctly different to hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare is a type of war used to try to conclusively win a campaign through the use or threat of violence. This is in sharp contrast to grey-zone’s gradualism built around carefully avoiding using violence. In broad terms China uses grey-zone while Russia employs hybrid warfare; the two techniques or nations should not be conflated.
While grey-zone activities may be defined and their logic understood, the question arises of why would a country consciously decide to employ them? The use of grey-zone is a deliberate choice, not an accident. The logic behind these activities may be comprehended and insights gained through discussing some pertinent conceptual background. This is especially necessary as contemporary Chinese strategic thinkers can make use of strategic principles devised during the 3rd to 5th Century BC by perceived icons of early Chinese military thought such as Sun Tzu, Wu Qi, Sima Rangju, and Sun Bin. These principles have definite differences to the mainstream ideas Western strategic thinkers presently use.
Background Strategic Thinking
A recent study of the Chinese way of war argued that the most important concept from early Chinese thinking today is that of gaining strategic advantage over another through purposeful manipulation of the strategic environment. The concept of strategic advantage, or shi, ‘is the foundational principle behind almost any PLA action’, Chinese diplomatic activities and geo-strategic manoeuvres.[6]
The term ‘gaining strategic advantage’ is though, somewhat vague. In more concrete terms, in the grey-zone context, it includes: having the initiative; being in control of the situation when taking all factors into account; an ability to set the agenda of the matter in question; forcing the opponent to always consider your response first before they take actions; the opponent respecting your capabilities and potentially self-policing themselves; and annexing the others’ imagination and so constraining their strategic thinking.
Accordingly shi is a belief held by individuals about the present context rather than a quantifiable material circumstance. Given this, shi is dynamic as to how the various factors are perceived can change as the situation evolves and countervailing strategies are implemented. Shi is then an understanding by one side of the current state of the interaction between it and another.
In his book, A Treatise on Efficacy, François Jullien, a French philosopher, provides a valuable description of how traditional Chinese strategic thinkers considered strategic advantage could be gained. Underpinning such thought was a view of reality as a process that unfolded.[7] Time was not leading anywhere specific, it was simply and progressively unfolding, giving one an anticipatory view of the future.[8] This flow of time, often expressed using water metaphors, could then be purposefully shaped: ‘strategy is always a matter of knowing how to impinge upon the process upstream, in such a way that an effect will then tend to ‘come’ of its own accord.’[9]
This idea is the basis of Sun Tzu’s advice that ‘ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.’[10] Battles do not need to be fought and won, as early upstream action means the situation did not evolve in a direction whereby a clash was later needed.
China’s approach aims to work with the flow or as a colloquial saying has it: the trend is your friend. The most important perceived trend is that ‘the East is rising, the West is in decline and the tide of history is flowing in China’s favour.’[11] This leads Chinese strategists to believe the international system is becoming multipolar, so providing abundant space for China to strategically manoeuvre within. The trend also supports the notion that China’s strongest card, economics, is the dominant force shaping the world today, not military might.[12] This means that major power war is improbable and so a resilient peace can be relied upon as a basis for Chinese actions.
The Chinese strategic construct concept differs from Western strategic thinking in three important ways. Firstly, Chinese strategic thinkers held that situations were constantly evolving. In contrast, the strategy models Western thinkers have devised tend to consider their course as being imposed on a circumstance, at least momentarily, ‘frozen’ in time. Secondly, the Chinese ideas were not based about using your agency to reshape the world, but instead exploiting the course the world is already on. In international relations terms, this means that Western strategists privilege agency; Chinese strategists structure. Lastly, early Chinese strategists effectively sought no defined endpoint. Instead, they suggested intruding on the flow of time to move it in a favourable direction. Western strategists have a fundamentally different approach in advocating having a carefully considered strategic objective, an ‘end’.
Chinese strategic thinking, is then, at odds with the traditional Western balance of power grand strategies founded on using the threat or application of violence to create a favourable balance. This concept envisages creating a large military force that will deter others taking disagreeable actions. If they persist, military force can then be used to physically stop them. Fighting is at the core of such balance of power constructs whereas keeping the peace is at the core of grey-zone. Further highlighting the difference between river of time and balance of power notions, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong advised that in managing China: ‘There will be rough spots…deal with them as issues in a partnership which you want to keep going, not issues which add up to an adversary which you are trying to suppress.’[13]
The Western idea of competition is a different idea again. Competition has overtones of bringing others to your side.[14] If the adversary keeps doing annoying things however, it’s unclear what the response should be given the lack of an enforcement mechanism. The Chinese strategic concept is agnostic to how many are brought to your side as long as China retains strategic advantage over others, on an individual, bi-lateral basis.
If China’s working with the flow approach is fundamentally different to Western constructs, then a key issue becomes the interaction between China’s approach and others’ strategies. China’s approach may sidestep them, and continue chalking up triumphs.
The balance of power, and competition grand strategies, places stress on deterrence, which is convincing an adversary through threat of punishment or denial not to start a war. The nations using such balance of power or competition grand strategies will accordingly be reluctant to start a conflict. Their desired intent is for the status quo to continue; they are not revisionist states. War thus represents a failure of their strategy. Given this, they will self-deter as they wish to avoid a grand strategic failure.
Equally, China does not want a war. It needs a resilient peace for grey-zone to work. Balance of power or competition grand strategies arguably give China the resilient peace context it needs to operate in the grey-zone.
China’s grey-zone activities are both made possible by the discerned trend of “the tide of history is flowing in China’s favour” and designed to reinforce it. China’s grey-zone strategy is incremental, slowly nibbling away at the edges, making use of diverse military and non-military measures, being careful not to drive others into a major war, controlled at the highest Party levels, and enduring. A pushback by another country may mean a temporary Chinese pullback, but the Party’s grey-zone strategists will be back better than ever, having learned from their short-term reversal. It’s a forever drain on the other, smaller country’s resources.
There are however, some contradictory aspects in China’s schema. Seeking ongoing strategic advantage highlights there is no end. The river of time flows on and on, meaning that actions required to maintain the desired advantage are similarly forever, with the accompanying implicit high resource burden for China.
Just as importantly, the river model leaves out that in human society, actions tend to inherently lead to counter-actions; in reality the river does not continue unchecked indefinitely. Luttwak termed this ‘the paradoxical logic of strategy’ where successful actions cannot be repeated as the other party adapts in response to ensure the same outcome cannot be gained in this way again.[15]
China’s grey-zone activities are now generating their own countervailing forces. The Party has aggressively contested territory on its borders with India, with Japan in the East China Sea and with ASEAN states in the South China Sea. In adopting this course, China has gained considerable notoriety and the regional influence that formidable belligerence brings. However, it is unclear how effective these activities will be over time.
The ASEAN states bordering the South China Sea, Japan, and India, are becoming increasingly concerned and taking more and more steps to resist these unwanted Chinese intrusions. China’s grey-zone activities may now be going against some emerging regional pushback trends that China has unintentionally created. Countries are starting to take actions in response to China’s grey-zone actions, reorienting their defence force structures accordingly and, most worryingly for China, beginning to come together to act collectively.
Australia represents an interesting example of this approach. Australia’s Defence Strategic Update 2020 determined that the long-standing defence planning assumptions of a long warning time before possible military action, must now be revisited given ‘grey-zone activities directly or indirectly targeting Australian interests are occurring now.’ The Update continues that:
In the Indo-Pacific, [grey-zone] activities have ranged from militarisation of the South China Sea to active interference, disinformation campaigns and economic coercion. Defence must be better prepared to respond to these activities, including by working more closely with other elements of Australia’s national power.[16]
Accordingly, Australia’s engagement with South East Asian countries and the South Pacific is being deepened, and more stress placed on the QUAD, the G-7 and the EU. Debate has started about the US-Australia alliance and the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement expanding beyond security into economic matters. Ideas have been floated about possibly taking a broad collective approach where many democracies unite against economic coercion.
However, it is unclear if much of this will work. The military element is effectively balancing; it might not solve the grey-zone issue as discussed earlier. It’s also uncertain if Australia would want to get involved in, for example, India’s border skirmishes with China; this may be a step too far for most countries.
In the economic arena, countries are talking about supporting Australia, but action is missing. No state wishes to constrain their nation’s companies trading with China and generating sizeable export revenue. At the recent China-US summit in Alaska, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying nicely captured this tension in tweeting: ‘Interesting. The US is now switching from ‘America First’ to ‘Australia First’?’[17]
The success of Australia’s pushback strategy is uncertain. Like all engagement grand strategies, it relies on others being willingly involved to the point of taking mutually supporting actions. It’s still a work in progress. However, it is also conceptually interesting in highlighting that a strategy to manage China does not need to focus on China. Moreover, it is a state-level strategy, whereas engagement grand strategies suggest focusing on the sub-state, interest group level.
Planning and Responses
China’s grey-zone approach is a shape-shifting chameleon that evolves over time in incremental steps. The response to it might need to be similar but not asymmetrical as traditionally recommended by military strategists. This could mean adopting a measured forward planning approach that allows iteration step-by-step into the future. In contrast, more conventional planning techniques work backward from an identified end state.
The step-by-step approach replicates China’s approach, in being able to proceed carefully and permit changes along the way, so as to avoid triggering a strong response from China. It also means that the Party’s leaders and PLA’s senior commanders mentally adjust to each step and become accustomed to the new normal before the next one develops. This incremental approach means each pushback does not appear dangerously escalatory or threatening to the Chinese leadership group as it is undertaken.
Each pushback step can also be conceived as sensing the Chinese grey-zone environment and learning more about Chinese thinking, tactics, techniques and procedures. In being iterative, and acknowledging the paradoxical nature of strategy, each step may build from the previous, but could need to change to succeed. Design thinking might be useful when planning these steps.[18]
The specific implementation of the measured forward planning approach depends on the context. The approach in itself is simply a framework to apply to a problem. In the Chinese grey-zone case, there are several broad planning guidelines that might usefully inform such an application.
First, China’s grey-zone actions occur within a deliberately protracted campaign. Countering it using a measured forward planning approach will by design, be similarly protracted. Such a counter-campaign ‘is likely to persist for years, generating occasionally clear advances, frequent reversals, and no final objective outcomes.’[19] Such a potentially drawn-out operation will be taxing for all, not least because of the extra people, funds and equipment required during the long process.
Second, an important part of a successful grey-zone counter may be the capability to respond quickly to new developments. Allowing for a new Chinese grey-zone step to become the accepted new normal may make reversing it, or even registering disapproval, problematic. Responding in a timely manner may mean establishing adequate, policy-guided, crisis management mechanisms. Moreover, wishing to be able to react quickly suggests developing and exercising various scenarios before the new grey-zone development occurs, so decision makers and analysts in some future time of crisis can readily access considered possible responses.[20]
The development of these responses may involve using wargames of varying fidelity. A rigorous procedure of wargaming the reactions of numerous participants can suggest how the situation may evolve and the possible outcomes. Even if this assessment of the future proves inaccurate, such wargaming will allow high-quality analysis of the potential political and military risks associated with each operation.
Third, high quality intelligence is essential. This is quantitative intelligence of the battlespace in terms of detailed information about each participating military unit and civilian entity, but also qualitative intelligence about each of the various actors so as to understand how they will react. Given this, there will be a good understanding of the military and political dynamics shaping the situation as it evolves. This element though makes it important to have sufficient intelligence resources, collection systems and skilled analysts available.
Fourth, the approach would be most effective if it was complemented by involving regional actors diplomatically so as to create the political manoeuvre space for timely action.[21] Broad-based consultations with regional partners would create a favourable political environment, ensure worries over possible unwanted escalation were addressed, public statements were consistent and harmonised, and the timing of media messages was coordinated.
Fifth, in addition to diplomacy, selective institution building may be undertaken to develop mechanisms for resolving grey-zone crises. These may feature military-to-military deconfliction hotlines between all involved – including China – in areas of grey-zone tensions, so as to help avoid unwanted military escalation and accidents. Institution building may also incorporate expanded ways to share information among partner armed forces and militaries, an expansion of military-to-military contacts, and formalised systems for passing appropriate real-time intelligence.
Lastly, in matters of force development, investments in grey-zone capabilities should generally acquire a wide range of different means. Being dominant in a single area is likely to be less important than baseline capabilities across many mutually supporting ones. Grey-zone activities, by their nature, can be readily realigned to make a particularly impressive capability of an opponent little use when countering the other’s grey-zone actions. A wide range of means is more difficult for unfriendly grey-zone activities to work around, and gives greater response flexibility. Moving beyond these guidelines involves moving conceptually lower down the strategy/ tactical continuum into the measured forward planning process.
To achieve success, Chinese grey-zone activities integrate a number of different means across multiple domains. For example, in the South China Sea case, the so-called ‘cabbage strategy’ can include commercial fishing boats, the armed maritime militia, fisheries patrol vessels, Coast Guard ships and naval warships of various types, PLA Navy and PLA Air Force aircraft, and at times oil rig platforms. These may all operate in conjunction with social media campaigns, radio misdirection, cyberwarfare and GPS interference. This array of means when combined are much more formidable in prosecuting a grey-zone action than if used individually.
A tailored approach might accept the robustness of China’s combined means approach and not try to deter the grey-zone activity as a whole. Instead, such a concept might aim to disaggregate the collective threat into individual un-supporting means, and then counter the identified vulnerable components of China’s grey-zone operation as was practical. Such tailored deterrence could be further customised among the various regions in which China is undertaking grey-zone activities. The land border with India, the South China Sea, and the Senkaku Islands all feature different types of grey-zone activities, although all strive to advance incrementally. The general ways to tailor the deterrence of grey-zone activities might include[22]:
- Disaggregating the local grey-zone strategy. This constructs a tailored deterrence tactic targeting specific elements of the local grey-zone campaign. It involves not deterring grey-zone activities as a whole but rather at an individual element or action level, such as Coast Guard vessels, PLAN maritime reconnaissance aircraft or even the GPS interference.
- Seeking marginal gains. Just as the impact of grey-zone activities stems from the cumulative effect of carefully coordinated actions, tailored deterrence aims to tip the balance in small steps. The most viable approach is to seek these marginal gains through targeting accessible vulnerabilities. This may have the greatest impact if it is possible to target those specific assets central to China’s local grey-zone campaign.
- Thinking performatively about the best means to deter. A deterrence posture may be best built around the defending elements considered most likely to be useable in a grey-zone situation, rather than around the most capable elements in terms of dispensing punishment. These most capable defending elements may not be credible to Chinese decision-makers as they may hold them unlikely to be used given fears over unwanted escalation. This returns to the idea of declaring redlines, and whether the entity being deterred thinks the retribution promised, if the redlines are crossed, is improbable in this time of resilient peace.
- Focus on the decision-makers involved. Central to all successful deterrence is understanding those who it is wished to deter. The specific decision-makers at the various levels controlling a local grey-zone activity may have goals, motivations and vulnerabilities that can be discerned and exploited to inform a tailored deterrence strategy. The more these actors can be understood, the more tailored the deterrence measures can be made, and the more effective they will be.
The overall intent of these four steps is to frustrate, undermine, and deny the individual Chinese elements being used in a combined manner, in the local grey-zone actions. As frustrations mount up, these may tip the balance away from grey-zone activities being an attractive option for Chinese statecraft.
This approach is not seeking a containment or a rollback of China’s grey-zone successes. Instead, it’s envisaged simply as a response to an unwanted activity. The onus then shifts to the Party and PLA decision-makers who can stop an activity or choose to escalate. The latter is improbable given China’s success relies on peace holding; escalation would send a global signal highlighting a significant Communist Party failure. Nevertheless, any pushback, even verbal complaints, carries real risks and needs carefully managing.
Potential Grey-zone Activity Evolution
The future is uncertain but not necessarily completely random. In the case of China’s grey-zone activities, the nature of such operations means a resilient peace must be maintained. If the future does not feature this, other kinds of military operations will be called for, but not grey-zone ones. Grey-zone activities are both a feature and a product of our time.
In terms of the life cycle of the strategy, Chinese grey-zone activities have arguably reached their Clausewitzian culminating point. The Party’s chosen strategy has reached a point where it might have achieved the greatest effects for the effort expended. Beyond this point, greater efforts may well yield diminishing results and bring only marginally greater benefits.
China could sense this and move to another strategy, hopefully abandoning its present course and shifting to a more constructive one. On the other hand, the Party may double down. Chinese grey-zone activities may grow more aggressive and violent, as the recent deaths of Indian soldiers on its border with China suggest.[23] Such considerations can help when thinking about future grey-zone activities, however the construct needs to be much more detailed to be useful. The earlier discussion of grey-zone theory suggests that such actions involve two principal variables. Decision-makers must decide if violent or non-violent actions are to be undertaken, and whether non-military or military instruments are to be used.
Most grey-zone implementations will lie somewhere between those four extremes of violence/non-violence and non-military/military. The four drivers create four possible alternative futures as in this diagram:
In broad terms, these four futures are:
- Playing by the rules China. An optimistic future of a responsible stakeholder China that abides by the rules it agrees to, in both spirit and actions.
- Whatever it takes China. A deterioration from now, so maybe a near-term prospect. It’s an angry China.
- Pushing the envelope China. In this evolved future, China makes much more use of the PLA but in a non-violent way. This is a bellicose China.
- Do as you are told China. This worse-case future is on the limits of grey-zone activities. There is a high risk of the resilient peace breaking down and armed conflict starting. This is a belligerent China.
It’s important to recall that Chinese grey-zone activities are not static, isolated events but extend over lengthy periods, sometimes decades; they are accordingly dynamic and evolving. In this, they may not change for the worse; good developments are as possible as unfortunate ones. However, the broad changes are important to track as these could provide warning of future possible changes and so avoid a strategic surprise. Suitable responses could then be considered in a measured manner and without the time pressures induced by a sudden, unexpected crisis.
RNZAF Response Contribution Possibilities
China’s grey-zone actions are generally conducted distant to New Zealand. Even so, New Zealand may be able to make some meaningful contributions to the overall management of China’s grey-zone challenge. This may be particularly so in the South China Sea imbroglio, which has become the poster child for Chinese grey-zone activities.
In the South China Sea, China is undertaking a long-term, carefully planned program of territorial expansionism involving the Paracel Islands, Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands, together with all of the South China Sea lying inside the so-called nine-dash line. This rather imprecise line first appeared on a map published by the pre-communist Kuomintang government in December 1947. The nine-dash line encompasses more than 80% of the South China Sea and cuts deeply into the Exclusive Economic Zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines, agreed to under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).[24]
China’s grey-zone activities in the South China Sea are on-going as it tries to both deepen and extend its control over the Sea and its islands. The earlier discussion noted several high-level planning guidelines related to responding to grey-zone activities. The guidelines pertaining to institution building and intelligence are ones where resource-constrained, small-middle power New Zealand could possibly have influence.
Institution building includes developing mechanisms for quickly resolving any unintentional grey-zone crisis at the military working level. Such mechanisms may now be necessary as China begins to operate and base PLA Naval and Air Force aircraft in the South China Sea. The airspace in this area will become more crowded and the possibility of an air incident will increase.
A recent example is a formation flight by some 16 strategic air transport aircraft across the South China Sea to about 60nm north of Sarawak State in East Malaysia. The Ilyushin Il-76 and Xian Y-20 aircraft flew in an “in-trail” tactical formation at an altitude of between 23-27,000 feet.[25] While legal under international law, the lack of prior advice to Malaysia that their EEZ would be overflown by a large military aircraft formation and without that formation contacting the regional air traffic control centres, raised flight safety and political concerns. A pair of Royal Malaysian Air Force Hawk light combat aircraft was sent to intercept and visually identify the Chinese formation.[26]
Incidents such as this if mishandled could lead to an inadvertent crisis and even potentially military escalation. It may be prudent to begin discussions with the PLAAF and PLAN on formal risk management initiatives. These could be expected to take some time to agree and implement, making an early commencement of talks important.[27]
Such an initiative could be undertaken under the aegis of the Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) that comprises Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The 50-year old FPDA is currently constrained to the Malaysian peninsular and includes maritime and air defence exercises.[28]
The FPDA as a multilateral organisation would have more weight than any single nation in working with China to devise risk management procedures and processes. This could include installing a hotline between the FPDA command facilities and similar Chinese facilities in the South China Sea, so as to both occasionally trial agreed rules, and if necessary, coordinate responses to an air incident.
There may be some national sensitivities with agreeing risk management rules with China given its island air bases are beyond the Malaysian peninsular. In that regard, Malaysia has begun military exercises with other countries in East Malaysia, including with the US Marines, and may be more open to discussions on the matter than it has been in previous decades.[29]
Irrespective, over the next several years Chinese military air operations in the South China Sea are likely to spread west and butt up against peninsular Malaysia’s airspace and thus the FPDA region. While there is time, it would be prudent to begin discussing crisis management procedures with the PLAAF and PLAN before a crisis occurs.
New Zealand, as a key FPDA country, could take the initiative to suggest that FPDA begin talks with China. In this, the FPDA not just has multilateral heft, but in not representing any particular nation would not be perceived as unintentionally legitimising China’s South China Sea claims by discussing airspace safety matters with it.
The second area where the RNZAF might be involved is in space-based intelligence collection. In 2020 the idea of grey-zone ‘deterrence by detection’ emerged. This concept assumed that countries undertaking grey-zone activities would be deterred if they knew they were under periodic surveillance and that any such actions would be widely and quickly publicized.[30] In this, the publicizing of detected grey-zone activities would not need to include any conclusions or normative assessments. Simple notification of such activities being underway would be sufficient for the concept to operate.
Such a grey-zone ‘deterrence by detection’ system could be supported through exploiting emerging Space 2.0 technologies, particularly lower-cost space access and nanosats. Companies such as Rocket Lab, now launching from the North Island of New Zealand, suggests the space access possibilities. The company-designed two-stage rocket is constructed using carbon-composites and includes ten engines built using additive manufacturing; the rocket can insert about 220kg into orbits of 300-700km for about $5m.[31]
Nanosats as the name suggests are small satellites, weighing between 1-10 kg and can provide a cost-effective in-orbit surveillance capability. In March 2021, Rocket Lab launched the experimental M2 CubeSat surveillance satellites developed in a collaboration between UNSW, Canberra Space and the RAAF.[32] These 10kg satellites demonstrated several technologies including maritime surveillance systems for ship detection using optical imaging of large surface vessels, and the sensing of ship-borne transmitting Automatic Identification Systems (AIS).[33] Another example is the commercial Kelos Scouting Mission nanosats that use radio frequency sensors to detect, identify and geolocate concealed and covert maritime activity, including vessels that turn their AIS off so as to allow Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing activities.[34]
Such performance at an affordable cost means middle powers are increasingly able to launch and operate their own national space-based systems either alone or in combination with others.[35] The NZDF could use Australian or NZ developed nanosats, or access commercial services, to provide data to help build a difficult-to-deceive picture of grey-zone activities underway across the South China Sea. The nanosats would be designed for the specific grey-zone deception activities of most concern and launched into the optimum orbits, possibly polar. Moreover, as the grey-zone activities evolved over time, new nanosats could be quickly devised and launched.
China’s grey-zone activities grind remorselessly on, but in so doing educate all about grey-zone characteristics and create an opposing pushback. As is customary, the paradoxical nature of war applies, in that those impacted by a damaging strategy will over time devise optimized counter-moves.
The future is uncertain and so prudence would suggest being prepared, both today and tomorrow, for good and bad possibilities. In this, we have perhaps much greater agency than early Chinese strategic thinkers would imagine. New Zealand, while remote to the centres of grey-zone activity, may be able to make some useful contributions to their resolution.
Dr. Peter Layton is a Visiting Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University and a RUSI Associate Fellow. He has extensive aviation and defence experience and for his work at the Pentagon on force structure matters was awarded the US Secretary of Defense’s Exceptional Public Service Medal. He has a doctorate from the University of New South Wales on grand strategy and has taught on the topic at the US National Defense University. For his academic studies, he was awarded a Fellowship to the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy. He contributes regularly to the public policy debate on defence and foreign affairs issues and is the author of the book Grand Strategy. His papers, articles and posts may be read at <https://peterlayton.academia.edu/research>.
Footnotes
[1]. This article draws on Peter Layton, China’s Enduring Grey Zone Challenge, Canberra: Air and Space Power Centre, 2021.
[2]. Michael J. Mazarr, Mastering the Gray Zone, Carlisle: U.S. Army War College Press, 2015, p. 58.
[3]. Chiara Libiseller & Lukas Milevski, “War and Peace: Reaffirming the Distinction”, Survival, 63:1, 2021, pp. 101-112, p. 105.
[4]. J.C.Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1967, (Australian Naval Institute Press reprint), pp. 23-30.
[5]. Thomas Dobbs, Garth Fallon, Sarah Fouhy, Tennille Marsh and Machlan Melville, Grey-Zone Activities and the ADF: A Perry Group Report, Canberra: Australian Defence College, 2020, p. 5, < https://theforge.defence.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-10/Grey%20Zone_0.pdf >.
[6]. Timothy Thomas, The Chinese Way of War: How Has it Changed?, McLean: MITRE, June 2020, p. 2, 5, 45, 77.
[7]. François Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, Translated by Janet Lloyd, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004, p. 92.
[8]. Ibid., p. 189.
[9]. Ibid., p. 121.
[10]. Sun-tzu, The Art of War, Translated by John Minford, London: Penguin Books, 2005, p. 12.
[11]. Colin Flint and Zhang Xiaotong, “Historical–Geopolitical Contexts and the Transformation of Chinese Foreign Policy”, The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2019, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 295–331, p. 327.
[12]. Zhou Fangyin, “Chinese scholars view of international structure”, pp. 23-43 in Huiyun Feng, Kai He and Xuetong Yan (ed.), Chinese Scholars and Foreign Policy: Debating International Relations, London: Routledge/ Taylor and Francis Group, 2019, pp. 24-25.
[13]. Stephen Dziedzic, “Australia and Singapore commit to working on ‘safe and calibrated’ travel bubble”, ABC News, 11 June 2021, <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-11/australia-singapore-travel-bubble-talks/100206972>.
[14]. Peter Layton, “Trampling the Grass: China-US Leadership Competition”, Australian Outlook, 22 November 2018, <https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/trampling-grass-china-us-leadership-competition/>.
[15]. Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace; Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1987, p. 7-65.
[16]. Department of Defence, 2020 Defence Strategic Update, Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, p. 5.
[17]. Jacob Greber and Michael Smith, “Leave Australia out of this: China to US”, Australian Financial Review, 19 March 2011, <https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/leave-australia-out-of-this-china-to-us-20210319-p57cd4>.
[18]. Aaron P. Jackson, “Introduction: What is design thinking and how is it of use to the Australian Defence Force?”, pp 1-26 in Aaron P. Jackson (Ed.), Design Thinking: Applications for the Australian Defence Force, Joint Studies Paper Series No. 3, Canberra: Department of Defence, 2019, p. 4.
[19]. Michael Mazarr, op. cit., p. 66.
[20]. Lyle J. Morris, Michael J. Mazarr, Jeffrey W. Hornung, Stephanie Pezard, Anika Binnendijk, Marta Kepe, Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Gray Zone, Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2019, p. 130.
[21]. Ilan Goldenberg, Nicholas A. Heras, Kaleigh Thomas, and Jennie Matuschak, Countering Iran in the Gray Zone: What the United States Should Learn from Israel’s Operations in Syria, Washington: Center for a New American Security, April 2020, p. 1.
[22]. These four sub-paragraphs draw on: Multinational Capability Development Campaign, Hybrid Warfare: Understanding Deterrence, MCDC Countering Hybrid Warfare Project, March 2019, pp. 43-44.
[23]. Manu Pubby and Kumar Anshuman, “Colonel Babu got hit in the head: A detailed account of the brawl at Galwan with Chinese soldiers”, The Economic Times, 22 June 2020, <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/indian-soldiers-put-up-a-strong-fight-pla-officer-killed/articleshow/76499852.cms?from=mdr>.
[24]. Oriana Skylar Mastro, “How China is bending the rules in the South China Sea”, The Interpreter, Lowy Institute, 17 February 2021, <https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/how-china-bending-rules-south-china-sea>.
[25]. “PLA aircraft training in S.China Sea abide by intl law without entering others’ airspace”, Global Times, 3 June 2021, <http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0603/c90000-9857169.html>.
[26]. Euan Graham, “Aerial manoeuvres in the South China Sea”, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 9 June 2021, <https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2021/06/aerial-manoeuvres-south-china-sea>.
[27]. Asia Society Policy Institute Independent Commission On Regional Security Architecture, Preserving the Long Peace in Asia: The Institutional Building Blocks of Long-Term Regional Security, New York: Asia Society Policy Institute, September 2017, p. 14.
[28]. Euan Graham, “The Five Power Defence Arrangements at 50: what next?”, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 10 December 2020, <https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2020/12/five-power-defence-arrangements>.
[29]. Ahmad Syah Ejaz Ismail, “Reassessing role in old defence pact”, New Straits Times, 12 March 2021, <https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2021/03/673054/reassessing-role-old-defence-pact>.
[30]. Thomas G. Mahnken, Travis Sharp and Grace B. Kim, Deterrence By Detection: A Key Role For Unmanned Aircraft Systems In Great Power Competition, Washington: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2020, p. 6.
[31]. Payload Users Guide Version 6.6, Long Beach: Rocket Lab, November 2020, <https://www.rocketlabusa.com/assets/Uploads/Payload-User-Guide-LAUNCH-V6.6.pdf>.
[32]. “UNSW Canberra Space launches world-leading CubeSat satellites”, UNSW Canberra, 23 March 2021, <https://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/unsw-canberra-space-launches-world-leading-cubesat-satellites>.
[33]. Melrose Brown, Brenton Smith, Christopher Capon, Rasit Abay, Manuel Cegarra Polo,
Steve Gehly, George Bowden, Courtney Bright, Andrew Lambert, Russell Boyce, SSA Experiments for the Australian M2 Formation Flying CubeSat Mission, 2020 Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS), p. 6, <https://amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2020/Space-Based-Assets/Brown.pdf>.
[34]. “Kleos Scouting Mission Smallsats Deployed”, Satnews, 10 November 2020 <https://news.satnews.com/2020/11/10/kleos-scouting-mission-smallsats-deployed/>.
[35]. Peter Layton, “Sustainable Middle Power Military Space Operations”, pp. 31-44 in 2019, Project Asteria 2019: Space Debris, Space Traffic Management and Space Sustainability, Canberra: Air Power Development Centre 2019, pp. 37-39.
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