The actions undertaken by the United States against Venezuela reflect a grey-zone warfare approach.
About Grey-zone Warfare
- Grey-zone Warfare involves a set of activities that occur between peace (or cooperation) and war (or armed conflict).
- It aims to harm an adversary without them feeling threatened or realising they are under attack
- Tactics Used: Cyber operations (Using Malwares to disrupt Power grids, telecommunications networks, etc.), Raids, special operations, proxy violence or Salami slicing (China’s tactics) that deals with small military actions to conquer the opposition's territory piece by piece, etc.
- Key Features
- Operations below the threshold of war: The aggressor relies on non-kinetic or indirect instruments that fall short of provoking a conventional military response.
- Incremental and prolonged escalation: Actions unfold gradually sometimes over years or even decades limiting the defender’s ability.
- Exploitation of target vulnerabilities: Operations are tailored to political, economic, technological, or societal weaknesses of the target state.
- Plausible deniability and weak accountability: The aggressor avoids acknowledging involvement.
India faces persistent grey-zone warfare from China and Pakistan. It can deal with it by Integrating of Cyber Defence into Military planning, Regular red-teaming (method of testing cybersecurity effectiveness) of critical infrastructure, etc.
