Gray Zone Warfare and Ethnic Conflict

Abstract

Despite the dominance of interstate wars in the contemporary international landscape, international relations can hardly be considered peaceful. In other words, states continue to engage in conflict, albeit below the threshold of open warfare. This paper examines the broader tendencies and consequences that ethnic conflict poses for future warfare as states employ hybrid tactics and gray zone strategies to support ethnic kin. Many of today’s ethnic conflicts can be described as either secessionist where external states and other international actors are drawn into a conflict, or irredentist, where two or more states enter into war over an irredentist claim. We argue that using such ethnic conflicts by external interveners for engagement in gray zone conflict is becoming a norm in international affairs. We focus on the cases of Russia’s gray zone interventions in Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic region, contrasting them with the cases of Azerbaijan–Armenia, Western Sahara, as well as Ethiopia–Eritrea, to demonstrate both continuity and transformation in warfare. We conclude by identifying some of the reasons for variation across these cases and the implications for conflict management and the future of war.