Mapping gray zone attacks in the emerging world
By Sam Wilkin, Director of Political Risk Analytics, WTW
Perhaps the strongest advertisement for gray zone action is Russia’s experience in its multi-year and multi-stage invasion of Ukraine. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, it did so via gray zone attacks, and the response of the West was tepid. Even as Russian troops entered the region, this fact was denied by the Kremlin, which claimed Crimea was experiencing a spontaneous uprising against Kiev. Hence the Russian troops were infamously dubbed “little green men” – Russia formally admitted their identity only later.1
Lacking a clear rallying point for Western public opinion, and without a clear policy action to seek to reverse, Western countries applied limited sanctions even as Russia, in effect, seized Crimea. The Russian government, which two years later was implicated, by a UK parliamentary report, in an assassination occurring on British soil, might conceivably have wondered just what needed to be done to provoke a reaction from the West.2
If the Russian government did speculate in this manner, the question was answered decisively following the wholesale invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022. The Western response in this case could not have been more different. As of the autumn of 2024, nearly 20,000 new sanctions designations have been applied against Russia (against less than 3,000 prior to 2022); the unprecedented seizure of foreign exchange reserves has pushed Russia into sovereign default; thousands of Western companies have withdrawn from the country; and Western governments have poured money into arming Ukraine.3
Here, then, is the advantage of the gray zone in a nutshell: because actors, actions and intentions can be obscured, gray zone attacks are difficult to respond to, retaliate against and deter. When asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria were flown to Belarus and then deposited en masse in rudimentary camps on Belarus’s western border with Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, the intention was presumably to inflame intra-EU tensions over migration, rather than achieve a specific military advantage.4 But the more bizarre the attack, the more difficult the calibration of the response.
In this edition of the Index, we map global patterns of gray zone attacks in the emerging world – both aggressors and victims. These attacks appear to have soared in recent years, for many reasons. One reason is that countries that are deeply interconnected by globalization increasingly find themselves in adversarial relationships, and these deep interconnections offer many avenues for gray zone action, especially actions directed at globalized businesses. Another reason is that new technologies have enabled gray zone actions, including cyber attacks, social media disinformation campaigns, and remote attacks by drones. These remote attack technologies are ideal for actors wishing to obscure their motives or even involvement.
As usual, a few caveats are in order. As with prior editions of the Political Risk Index, we have relied in the first instance on the expertise of the Oxford Analytica contributors who cover each country (for further detail, see the country profiles that appear in this report). As usual, ratings are assigned by the contributors on simple one-to-five scales; inter-rater reliability maybe an issue.
Another caveat, which unfortunately applies to much political analysis these days, is that politicization is a concern. We attempted to provide Oxford Analytica contributors with as neutral a definition of the gray zone as possible; but the term originated in the West and is increasingly used to criticize actions by non-western rivals. Would U.S. export controls on advanced technology, applied to China, constitute a gray zone action? Washington might disagree. We have tried to be as even-handed as possible.
In what follows, we first look to gray zone impacts, identifying major gray zone flashpoints worldwide. We then examine the emerging world’s major gray zone actors.
A review of the country profiles submitted by the Oxford Analytica contributors suggests that there are three major types of gray zone flashpoints around the world. These flashpoints, and their impacts on political and economic stability in affected states, are illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - Major gray zone flashpoints in the emerging world
Source: Oxford Analytica
The first and most costly flashpoints – in terms of impacts on political and economic stability, as shown on the map – are military conflicts and rivalries. The conflict in Ukraine long ago left the gray zone and entered the black and white world of outright warfare, and the costs of this war dwarf the costs of gray zone actions (and not only humanitarian costs: the cost to the global economy has been estimated at $1 to $2 trillion; the direct cost to foreign investors in Ukraine, in terms of write-downs of assets, at more than $100 billion).5 Yet the gray zone remains fundamental to the conflict, from Russian cyber-attacks and disinformation to Ukraine's own efforts to retaliate via unclaimed remote strikes on targets inside Russia (Ukraine has not officially declared war on Russia).
The conflict in the Middle East is probably the most expensive gray zone conflict that has, as of this writing at least, largely stayed in the gray zone. Israeli troops have crossed the Lebanese border and conducted an intensive campaign of bombing and targeted assassinations, without an Israeli declaration of war against Lebanese Hezbollah – indeed, a striking feature of the conflict has been the effort on all sides to maximize costs while minimizing the chance of escalation to officially-declared war.
Actions in the gray zone, largely by Houthi rebels in Yemen, but also apparently by Iran itself, have disrupted global shipping, and a Western coalition has responded with airstrikes targeting the Houthis; Iran has targeted Israel with two separate barrages of missile and drone attacks, and Israel has responded with air strikes and assassinations of Iranian military commanders; Iran-sponsored groups in Iraq and Syria have launched missiles against U.S. bases (primarily, early in the conflict) and Israel (primarily, since September 2024).
Another world region that is home to several flashpoints for gray zone action is Asia. Here the realized costs of conflict have been lowest but the potential costs, at least to the global economy, are highest.6 The South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait are the main areas of gray zone activity. China's militarized fishing fleet and unusually powerful Coast Guard vessels, gray zone tools par excellence due to their nominally civilian status, have helped it advance its territorial claims in the region, according to Oxford Analytica’s contributor. Rival claimants and China have also engaged in placement of personnel and structures on islands and reefs to advance their claims. So far, according to Oxford Analytica’s analysts, gray zone actions in Asia have had the largest impact on mainland China and Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, roughly in that order.
There are two other global regions where conflicts and rivalry drive gray zone action – although, given the limited country coverage of this Index, some important flashpoints in the emerging world may be overlooked. These two regions are South Asia, were the rivalry between India and Pakistan is particularly focused on Kashmir, and historical conflicts in Central Asia, both of which, happily and unusually, appear to be on an improving trend.
A second major driver of gray zone activity is fragile states. The fragility of states including Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq is what gives major gray zone actors in the Middle East – primarily, but not exclusively, Iran – their outsized power. As of this writing, the Houthi rebels in Yemen appear likely to have improved their position within Yemen following their disruption of global shipping (partly by intimidating other states in the region into backing peace talks in Yemen). Israel's campaign against Lebanese Hezbollah may weaken that organization, but appears unlikely to stabilize the Lebanese state, and Lebanese Hezbollah has in the past thrived in that vacuum of power – providing public services, gaining popularity, and conducting military activities, where the fragile Lebanese state is unable to enforce its writ. According to Oxford Analytica’s contributor, Iran-backed organizations now also play a major role in the government of Iraq, including control of the intelligence and drone directorates, turning part of the Iraqi government into a gray zone actor in its own right – partly on Iran’s behalf.
Fragile states are an ideal launching pad for gray zone activity, partly because non-state actors, such as the Houthis, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, can enjoy great freedom of action in these poorly-governed territories. The nominal leaders of fragile states can also be induced to switch allegiance, in a world that is increasingly divided between East and West. Stronger states tend to attempt to play off the superpowers against each other; weaker states may be more likely to flip into one camp or the other, as the recent cases of Mali and Myanmar demonstrate.7 Russia's influence campaign in the Sahel region of Africa has taken great advantage of state fragility. Fragility in Bangladesh, Somalia, Cambodia, and Mozambique also plays into the hands of gray zone actors (although gray zone activity in some of these cases, particularly Mozambique, appears less intense than in the past).
Gray zone actions in fragile states can also be motivated by efforts to control spillovers, such as flows of refugees and weapons. There is a potential gray zone flashpoint surrounding unstable Venezuela. Gray zone activities by Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia appear at least in part to be efforts to control negative spillovers emanating from the region’s fragile states. And Oxford Analytica’s contributor points out that some aggressive U.S. efforts to deal with organized crime and migrant flows emanating from Mexico could be considered violations of Mexican sovereignty.
The final source of gray zone action is much milder than either geostrategy or state fragility: ideological polarization. One might argue that this polarization is part and parcel of geostrategic competition. Certainly, Russia's efforts to support the populist right in Europe and the U.S., and efforts of these groups to support each other, have been seen in that way (although Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ideology appears anything but populist).
In Latin America, the continent is notably divided between the populist left (for instance, Mexico, Colombia, and arguably Brazil) and the populist right (for instance, El Salvador and arguably Argentina). Mercifully, Latin America is an oasis of relative peace where regional rivalries are muted (Venezuela’s threats against Guyana being a notable exception). But ideologically-opposed regimes in Latin America have at the very least been accused of interference in each other's politics. Thus far this interference seems mild and of limited impact compared to the other gray zone flashpoints discussed here.
That said, ideology plays a role in other, more serious gray zone flashpoints, as we shall see in the next section. Anti-French sentiment has been vital to the effectiveness of Russia’s gray zone strategies in the Sahel region of Africa; anti-imperialist ideology unifies the otherwise disparate Iran-backed actors operating in the fragile states of the Middle East. The importance of ideology in fueling gray zone action therefore should not be overlooked.
According to Oxford Analytica's contributors, the most active states operating in the gray zone are China, Iran and Russia (see Figure 2). It is immediately apparent from the map that today's gray zone action is largely an Eastern hemisphere phenomenon. However, that picture is somewhat misleading, as the Index does not cover the advanced economies, and therefore does not map or consider gray zone activities by Western states. The history of U.S. (and Soviet) gray zone activity in Latin America, for instance, could fill a very large multi-volume set.
Indeed, Oxford Analytica's contributor contends that the government in Beijing currently sees China as being under substantial gray zone pressure from the West. This pressure includes not only the presence of U.S. forces in Asia and efforts to arm Taipei, but also, and perhaps most dramatically, U.S. efforts to limit China's access to high technology.
From Washington's perspective, these efforts are focused on limiting China’s military capabilities, applied to a country that is already a technological leader in many industries. However, adoption of existing technologies is one of the main methods that poorer countries use to catch up with richer countries. The U.K., the world’s wealthiest nation at the time, had to do much innovation itself and took more than 80 years to rise from a per-capita income of $5,000 per head to $10,000; the U.S., adopting many U.K. manufacturing technologies, took only 40 years; Japan, South Korea and China, adopting U.S. (and other) technologies, accomplished the same feat in a mere 10 years.8 China’s income per capita at current prices and exchange rates is now about $13,000, similar to Argentina and Malaysia, and against a U.S. figure of $87,000.9 With some justification, China’s government is concerned that the West’s gray zone efforts will inhibit the country’s catch-up growth, and Oxford Analytica’s contributor rates the impact of the West’s gray zone actions against China as significant.
Figure 2 - Major gray zone actors in the emerging world
Beijing’s own usage of gray zone tactics is not limited to rivalry with the U.S., and includes pressure applied to Taipei, as well as extensive actions in the South China Sea, currently directed most heavily against the Philippines. Countries including Lithuania and South Korea have also been targeted via Chinese economic pressure, Oxford Analytica’s contributor claims – these pressures are perhaps the equivalent of Western sanctions programs, although in Beijing’s case “exact reasons are not always made explicit.” Historically, mainland China has also traded gray zone efforts against regional rival India, although after a historic October 2024 meeting between India's president and the Chinese premier, perhaps there is some hope for improvement on that front.10
Russia also employs gray zone tactics in its rivalry with the West, most notably via disinformation campaigns and electoral interference. Russia has also operated in the gray zone to seize territory, first in Georgia and then in Crimea (Ukraine) – actions that, partly because of their ambiguous nature, were only mildly challenged by the West.
Russia has also, on a minimal budget, taken advantage of fragility and anti-French sentiment in states in the Sahel region of Africa to flip regimes to its side, most recently in Niger. These initiatives have used mercenary forces funded by resource income, and proved extremely costly to Western investors, particularly in the natural resource sectors.11 (Although Oxford Analytica’s contributors point out that some African regimes that are genuinely unpopular have sought to blame this unpopularity on Russian disinformation – sometimes with little evidence.)
Iran is the final major gray zone actor covered in this Index. Oxford Analytica’s contributor contends the Iranian regime has an ideological affinity to gray zone action, and indeed, the Iranian government has proved to be an extremely effective gray zone aggressor, sponsoring nonstate actors in fragile states that have managed to achieve surprising levels of domestic popularity, both through their anti-Western and anti-Israeli actions and their provision of public services that fragile governments have failed to provide, notably in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Iran’s effectiveness, the contributor notes, is built in part on the “common denominator” of an anti-Western, anti-Imperialist ideology – at least as important as cash in uniting these disparate groups in the service of Iran’s regional objectives. This common ideology arguably complicates any effort to divide, say, the Houthis from Iran’s camp.
How the popularity of these actors will fare in the wake of the current violence in the Middle East is unclear. On the one hand, some polls suggested that Lebanese Hezbollah's rocket fire in nominal support of the Palestinian cause had increased the group's popularity, particularly among Sunni Muslims and Christians in Lebanon.12 On the other, Israel has shown a striking willingness to escalate the conflict, illustrating the dangers of gray zone activity, which can provoke a military response.
The states falling into the next category of gray zone activity are Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan. Iraq’s gray zone presence is partly as a surrogate of Iran, as Iran-backed political leaders have taken power in the Iraqi government. Egypt finds itself dealing with the spillover from numerous regional conflicts and fragile states (as do Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but these countries fall into the next rating category). Egypt’s strongest motivation is the prevention of refugee flows, and the ancillary problems of poverty and terrorism that have accompanied these flows in the past. Oxford Analytica’s contributor contends that Egypt’s gray zone efforts in Sudan, for instance, are less motivated by gain than other regional powers. That said, Egypt’s recent defense pact with Somalia, which could lead to the deployment of Egyptian soldiers in the country, is part of a complex and escalating dispute with Ethiopia13.
Finally, Pakistan is a major gray zone actor, notably in the disputed territory of Indian-administered Kashmir (although some of India’s complaints “may be exaggerated,” Oxford Analytica’s contributor writes). In comparison to India (which appears in the next rating category), Pakistan is more heavily reliant on the gray zone due to India’s larger economy, stronger military, and greater political stability.
The final set of significant emerging world gray zone actors is much longer, including Ethiopia, India, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam. These countries, which are dabbling in the gray zone, have done so for many reasons. Ukraine is under direct military attack, and its brave and effective response on the field of battle has surprised many. Ukraine has also attempted to retaliate against Russia in the gray zone (mostly with unclaimed drone attacks). Morocco’s gray zone efforts are primarily directed against separatists in Western Sahara.
India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE (the UAE is not covered in this Index) are rising middle powers – with India in particular having great-power potential. As rising powers, these countries have sought to use measures short of war to enhance their influence (indeed, one could argue that the rise of regional powers is another cause of the rise in gray zone attacks, given that gray zone actions tend to be cheaper than the use of conventional military force). The UAE has been notably aggressive in Sudan and Ethiopia (as discussed in the profiles of the affected countries) as well as Yemen (not covered in this Index). Turkey has intervened in support of its interests in numerous regional states, particularly Iraq, Libya and Syria. Saudi Arabia (along with the UAE) was an active participant in the Yemeni civil war, partly as a proxy conflict against Iran, and some years ago led a multinational gray zone campaign against Qatar. In the intervening years, however, the country seems to have stepped back from such efforts – according to Oxford Analytica’s contributor, it has “backed away from collaboration with Abu Dhabi, remains committed to a political settlement with the Houthis, has reconciled with Qatar” and even “is seeking to build up a relationship of trust with Iran.”
India, as a rising power, has sought to exert influence over the states in its environment, including Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In this year of elections, Bangladesh’s flawed polls were followed by a mass uprising and the flight of key players in the Sheikh Hasina government to India; India is now engaged in a delicate balancing act due to “perceptions in Bangladesh that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was an active supporter” of that deposed government, Oxford Analytica’s contributor writes.
Lastly, Ethiopia, as noted in the last edition of the Index, is conducting a dangerous initiative by signing an agreement with breakaway Somaliland – hoping to gain, in return, port access. But numerous regional states have now become involved in this contest, which has the potential to emerge from the gray zone into outright war.
Gray zone strategies can backfire. Russia’s gray zone efforts in seizing Crimea had the unanticipated side effect of uniting Ukrainian society. A country that only a few years before had been incapable of defending Crimea against a relatively small contingent of (unacknowledged) Russian forces rose bravely to meet the challenge of a full-scale invasion. In the Middle East, Iran’s gray zone backing of Hamas, the Houthis, and Lebanese Hezbollah has escalated into greater and greater violence, if not yet outright war (aside from between Israel and Hamas).
These failures notwithstanding, the intensity of gray zone action appears likely only to increase. As noted in the introduction, technological advances bring new avenues for the ambiguous attacks that are central to gray zone activity (artificial intelligence being presumably the next frontier). While global trade patterns are rapidly reorienting around geopolitical blocks, the world remains interconnected enough, as a legacy of the era of high globalization, to give trading partners that are becoming rivals ample space to injure each other. The shifting global balance of power, with regional powers rising in importance, may, more speculatively, be contributing to the increasing use of gray zone tactics.
Furthermore, there are more and more flashpoints for gray zone activity. The number of international violent conflicts involving governments has soared since 2007, as discussed in the previous edition of this Index – from roughly five ongoing conflicts in that year to roughly 30 today.14 Globally, the number of fragile states has improved over the past decade.15 But in the Middle East, a vicious cycle in which gray zone action begets either instability or conflict leading to greater fragility and more opportunities for gray zone aggression appears to have emerged.
Historically, multinational businesses have attempted to stay out of geopolitics, seeking to reap the benefits of economic growth wherever in the world it may be found. That stance is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, as many gray zone actions directly target commercial activity.
Perhaps no area of commercial activity has been more directly targeted than shipping – the subject of the next two essays in this edition of the WTW Political Risk Index.
1 https://www.rferl.org/a/from-not-us-to-why-hide-it-how-russia-denied-its-crimea-invasion-then-admitted-it/29791806.html
2 https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039224996/russia-alexander-litvinenko-european-court-human-rights-putin
3 https://www.castellum.ai/russia-sanctions-dashboard
4 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Braw_Defenders_Dilemma_31.pdf; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/12/poland-to-temporarily-suspend-asylum-rights-amid-belarus-border-tensions; https://cepa.org/article/russia-and-friends-spill-blood-in-the-grayzone/
5 https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/foreign-firms-losses-exiting-russia-top-107-billion-2024-03-28/; https://www.ft.com/content/c4ea72b4-4b02-4ee9-b34c-0fac4a4033f5; https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/worlde/v46y2023i4p874-886.html; https://www.economicsobservatory.com/ukraine-whats-the-global-economic-impact-of-russias-invasion
6 https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/media-centre/press-releases/geopolitical-conflict-scenario?utm_source=slipcase&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=slipcase
7 https://willistowerswatson.turtl.co/story/political-risk-index-winter-2022-2023-gated/page/3
8 https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2020?lang=en
9 https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/CHN?zoom=CHN&highlight=CHN
10 https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyxw/202410/t20241023_11514914.html
11 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kked7ydqyo
12 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/lebanon/what-lebanese-people-really-think-hezbollah
13 https://ecfr.eu/article/threes-a-crowd-why-egypts-and-somalias-row-with-ethiopia-can-embolden-al-shabaab/
14 https://willistowerswatson.turtl.co/story/political-risk-index-h1-2024-gated/page/4/3
15 https://fragilestatesindex.org/
