The Centre for War and Diplomacy (CWD) at Lancaster University is pleased to announce the release of Into the Grey: Understanding Grey Zone Warfare, the flagship analytical report of the AHRC-funded project Into the Grey: Grey Zone Warfare in Past, Present, and Future.

Led by Marco Wyss (Lancaster University) and Samuël Kruizinga (University of Amsterdam), and authored by Johanne Marie Skov, the report offers the first truly global and longue durée examination of grey zone competition.

Bringing together scholars from history, law, international relations, and security studies, the project challenges the dominant assumption that grey zone activity is a novel or exclusively contemporary phenomenon. Instead, the report shows that ambiguous forms of rivalry between war and peace have existed across cultures and centuries—from the Han Empire to the French Wars of Religion, from Cold War borderlands to today’s cyber-enabled geopolitical contests.

A central finding is that the grey zone is inherently fluid, impossible to fix in clear legal, spatial, or temporal terms. Rather than a tightly defined category, it is best understood as an ideational space between war and peace—a space that states and non-state actors exploit to pursue strategic objectives without triggering open conflict.

The report also warns against what it calls “defence orientalism”, noting that Western governments frequently portray grey zone activity as something others do, even though Western powers have long operated in similar ways themselves.

Other key insights include:

• Purpose and strategic value: Grey zone methods allow states to alter or preserve the status quo, gain advantage, or avoid undesirable escalation—even when they have the capability to wage war.
• Actors beyond the military: Civilians, proxies, private military companies, and informal networks play decisive roles, often blurring the boundaries between combatant and non-combatant.
• Whole-of-society vulnerability and resilience: Disinformation, sabotage, and societal pressure points make the civilian sphere central to both threat and defence.
• Continuity over time: While technologies evolve, the fundamental nature of sub-threshold rivalry remains strikingly consistent.
• Conventional forces still matter: Deterrence and escalation control require credible military capabilities—grey zone competition cannot replace them.

The report concludes with practical implications for policymakers, including the need to distinguish clearly between grey zone activity and hybrid warfare; invest in societal resilience and strategic communication; understand how legal ambiguity shapes competition; and develop flexible frameworks that account for the shifting thresholds of contemporary rivalries.

For further information about the project, please contact:

Marco Wyss – m.wyss@lancaster.ac.uk

Samuël Kruizinga – s.f.kruizinga@uva.nl