Building a Wall of Denial Against Gray-Zone Aggression Elisabeth Braw APRIL 2021 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Executive Summary ATO member states and partners today face national security. Countries from Finland to Singa- N national security threats that extend far beyond pore feature considerable societal participation in military aggression. Indeed, they are regularly targeted national security, but deterrence of gray-zone aggres- by nonmilitary means, so-called gray-zone aggression. sion also offers considerable potential for innovation. Because gray-zone aggression can include any mea- This report, adapted from my upcoming book The sures below the level of war, including illegal ones, it Defender’s Dilemma: Deterring Gray-Zone Aggression, is impossible for the targeted countries to deter every outlines a whole-of-society model for deterrence by act with the threat of punishment. denial and proposes measures governments could This means liberal democracies should give more take or coordinate to incentivize businesses and the attention to societal resilience. By involving all parts wider population to help keep their countries safe. of society in keeping the country safe in case of a The proposals include community stress testing, vol- crisis, they can signal to adversaries that aggression untary resilience training for teenagers and other will not have the desired effect. Today civil society demographic groups, and government-industry con- is, in most countries, a largely untapped resource in sultations on national security issues. 1 Building a Wall of Denial Against Gray-Zone Aggression Elisabeth Braw “ n case of war, please ring [the bell] twice.”1 In 1939, objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately I Rudolf Minger was prepared. The Swiss defense and jointly, by means of continuous and effective minister’s advantage was, of course, that he had a good self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop idea of what sort of attack to expect, and so did his their individual and collective capacity to resist country’s population. Defending a country against armed attack.”2 Even though the North Atlantic gray-zone aggression poses a much harder challenge Treaty was signed in 1949, NATO never treated resil- because the targeted country cannot be sure what ience as a priority, partly because its member states forms of aggression will be used and indeed who could rely on the alliance’s powerful deterrence by should mount the defense and deterrence. punishment. By contrast, during the Cold War, Swe- Deterrence of gray-zone aggression is possible, den and Finland made exemplary use of resilience, though it requires a radical shift in liberal democra- creating a wall of denial that signaled to the Soviet cies’ approach to national security, toward a system Union that an invasion would involve an unpalatable that involves not just the government but also the pri- cost-benefit calculus.3 vate sector and wider society. Collectively, the govern- NATO did increase its focus on Article 3 at its 2016 ment and civil society can create a wall of resilience Warsaw Summit, when it adopted the so-called seven that denies opportunities to aggressors. Together, lib- baseline requirements for civil preparedness. eral democracies’ governments can also develop deter- 1. Assured continuity of government and critical rence by punishment by playing to their strengths: that government services; they have allies, that their citizens and private sectors can choose to play a part in national security if offered 2. Resilient energy supplies; the opportunity, and that their countries have assets 3. Ability to deal effectively with uncontrolled foreign governments and leaders desire. movement of people; In addition to deterrence, scholars of the field often discuss dissuasion, which denotes deterrence 4. Resilient food and water resources; before any action occurs. For the sake of simplicity, 5. Ability to deal with mass casualties; this report divides deterrence into two parts: deter- rence by denial and deterrence by punishment. This 6. Resilient civil communications systems; report outlines a whole-of-society model for deter- 7. Resilient civil transportation systems.4 rence by denial. As NATO officialsWolf-Diether Roepke and Hasit Thankey note, “Resilient societies . have a greater Civil Society, a Resource propensity to bounce back after crises: they tend to recover more rapidly and are able to return to NATO’s Article 3, known as its resilience article, pre-crisis functional levels with greater ease than less reads: “In order more effectively to achieve the resilient societies.”5 2 BUILDING A WALL OF DENIAL AGAINST GRAY-ZONE AGGRESSION ELISABETH BRAW With whole-of-society gray-zone threats target- The UK government’s Fusion Doctrine from 2018, ing them, liberal democracies must similarly create a too, foresees an effort exclusively undertaken by the whole-of-society wall of denial as the bottom of their government. deterrence pyramid and form part of countries’ gen- eral deterrence. (As discussed in my previous AEI This approach will ensure that in defending our reports, deterrence by punishment is more useful in national security we make better use of all of our capa- targeted and tailored deterrence, in which a country bilities: from economic levers, through cutting-edge shapes its messaging to other countries, groups, and military resources to our wider diplomatic and cul- prospective acts of aggression.)6 tural influence on the world’s stage. Every part of A whole-of-society wall of denial is a radically dif- our government and every one of our agencies has ferent approach from the one most governments cur- its part to play.9 rently maintain. Except for papers about Sweden’s and Finland’s Cold War total defense, the concept has In its National Security Capability Review from 2018, also not been comprehensively explored in academic the UK government also addressed gray-zone aggres- papers. In their excellent gray-zone report, Lyle Mor- sion, explaining that ris et al. propose “a whole-of-government approach” with a range of government initiatives to dissuade many adversaries seek to do us harm or subvert us in rivals from engaging in gray-zone aggression. The less destructive ways, calculated to avoid provoking proposed initiatives include an armed response. We will seek to raise the cost of their malign behaviour, restrict and reduce it using continu[ing] to reaffirm, through regular senior the full range of capabilities available to us. Some of leader statements and official policy documents, the the many capabilities enhanced as a result of SDSR U.S. commitment to formal allies in Europe and Asia [the Strategic Defence and Security Review] 2015 and back[ing] these statements with enhanced par- include the new powers in the Criminal Finances ticipation in bilateral and multilateral forums to deal Act 2017 to recover criminal assets and our offen- specifically with such gray zone tactics as cyberat- sive cyber capabilities to detect, trace and retaliate tacks and disinformation. in kind.10 The United States could undertake a major dip- lomatic initiative, coordinated through the State The UK government labeled this innovative Department and U.S. embassies, to reinforce the inter- approach “modern deterrence.” national legal implications of gray zone aggression.7 Again, no role was foreseen for civil society. Indeed, most Western countries appear not to consider the Multilateral contacts certainly ought to be strength- potential available in civil society even though most ened. As Niklas Karlsson—a Social Democratic member of them had some form of civil defense during World of the Swedish parliament—pointed out, Western gov- War II and in the early Cold War years. In World War ernments should “make sure that foreign policy is the II Britain, for example, citizens participated in the first line of defense.” He also noted that “the UN and war effort in a plethora of roles, such as bike messen- the Council of Europe have been languishing for some ger, fire watcher, rest center operator, first aid helper, time. In the ’90s, institutions like these were essen- search-and-rescue member, and air raid warden. This tially demoted to a secondary role. Now they need an system continued after World War II, somewhat upgrade again.”8 Further, leaders of Western countries modified and under the name Civil Defence Corps. and their adversaries must maintain a constant dia- Although the corps was led by the government and logue. This will help the countries not only build coop- designed for wartime use, its members naturally used eration wherever possible but also reduce the risk of their skills during everyday contingencies. The Civil misunderstandings and resulting security dilemmas. Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968.11 3 BUILDING A WALL OF DENIAL AGAINST GRAY-ZONE AGGRESSION ELISABETH BRAW Civil society could play an even more pivotal role under changing conditions and perceived or actual in defense against today’s and tomorrow’s gray-zone threats.”12 This is clearly the baseline liberal democ- aggression precisely because the aggression is pri- racies’ governments and civil societies must jointly be marily directed against civil society. When trying to able to muster. Governments, meanwhile, must clearly improve defense and deterrence while leaving soci- lead in deterring illicit forms of gray-zone aggression ety out, governments practically guarantee they such as border alterations and intellectual property will be overstretched while leaving civil society— (IP) theft. individuals, businesses, and other organizations— In a major shift from its previous policy, in its passive observers of their own fate. Even if a govern- 2021 Integrated Review, the UK government embraced ment of a liberal democracy wanted to extend itself the whole-of-society concept. In his foreword to the to form an omnipresent wall of denial while signaling review, Prime Minister Boris Johnson writes that punishment to would-be aggressors, the costs would “COVID-19 has reminded us that security threats and be prohibitive, and the effort would at any rate be inef- tests of national resilience can take many forms,”13 fective.