Conflict Zone Modern War Strategy

Conflict Zone is a real-time strategy title from the talented bosom of up and coming European developer MASA and uber-publisher, Ubi Soft. Set in the near future, the current European peacekeeping forces have been disbanded to create the International Corps for Peace (ICP), tasked with combating strife and dissension across the world in the name of humanitarian aid. Unsurprisingly, there's an archenemy at play in the form of GHOST, a shadowy organisation dedicated to undermining political stability, causing conflict wherever necessary, and opposing the rise of ICP.

Enter the world of modern warfare, where the manipulation of media and civilians leads to military victory. As the commander of peacekeeping armies, you must build a campaign using strategy and spin control. Rescue hostages with news cameras rolling and gain public support to upgrade your units; harm innocents, and watch your popularity and power plummet. In Conflict Zone, media manipulation, brainwashing, and human shields are just as important as superior combat skills.

Much recent discussion of gray-zone conflict has focused on US difficulties in responding to gray-zone challenges, whether those challenges stem from states such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea or from nonstate entities such as ISIS. Despite its overwhelming conventional military superiority and its technological sophistication, the United States has had trouble responding effectively to gray-zone threats: as Philip Kapusta noted in a 2015 article,

Recent US targeted counterterrorism strikes can similarly be viewed as gray-zone activities. By insisting that targeted US strikes in sovereign states are only made when the state at issue consents or when such strikes are necessary in self defense, the United States deflects claims that such strikes constitute unlawful uses of force, violating UN Charter provisions and long-standing principles of sovereign nonintervention. But since the United States has for the most part declined to formally acknowledge particular strikes, identify targets, or specify the factual or legal basis for particular strikes, critics can neither definitively prove US involvement nor critique specific US actions. (Have all US targets been individuals who could plausibly be viewed as combatants in an armed conflict, or civilians directly participating in hostilities Alternatively, could the targets of such strikes plausibly be viewed as posing an imminent threat of armed attack to the United States Given the secrecy and lack of formal acknowledgement, no one can say for sure.) In effect, the lack of certainty about US actions or motivations makes it impossible for external actors to determine the lawfulness of US strikes.

Of course, the proliferation of gray-zone activities could also spur legal and institutional innovation. If all or most states come to accept a new interpretation of key terms and concepts relating to the use of force, the international law on the use of force will evolve. If states cannot agree on how to interpret key concepts, the risk of conflict between states will go up, but the increased risk of conflict may itself trigger the creation of new dispute-resolution mechanisms (be they judicial or nonjudicial), which can in turn develop new authoritative interpretations of the law.

Crisis Group developed this interactive map to track the geography of casualties along the front lines and deeper inside the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone. Casualty data includes deaths and injuries of Armenians and Azerbaijanis from exchanges of fire along positions, sniper shots along with mine explosions in the conflict zone and along the front lines, aggregated monthly. All of these are plotted on a map which includes front lines before and after the 2020 war, drawn using satellite imagery, and the NKAO, as defined by Soviet-era maps. The Lachin corridor is presented as defined in current official maps published by the Russian peacekeeping mission to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Crisis Group analysts collected data regarding incidents reported by Azerbaijan, Armenia and de facto Nagorno-Karabakh authorities in the conflict zone between 1 January 2015 and 26 September 2020, including both incidents that resulted in casualties and those that did not. Analysts cross-checked these reports against open source media reports.

We have learned from conflicts around the world that livelihoods adjacent to and sometimes far from the conflict zone can also be put at risk. In part, the risk arises because of inadequate attention paid to people whose economic well-being is already precarious; in part because of the inevitable knock-on effects in a highly connected world.

In framing scenarios for how the war will potentially affect livelihoods outside the conflict zone, we draw upon a wide range of expertise.1This framework considers perspectives from the Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Oxford Economics, and leading geopolitical experts. We see two critical dimensions.

Beyond the conflict zone, the invasion of Ukraine takes place at a fraught moment for the global economy and livelihoods, particularly the vulnerable. COVID-19 is receding in many parts of the world but is not yet gone, and it is still a crisis in many countries, with some of them struggling with the exit from public-health interventions. Furthermore, the possibility of a new and severe virus variant cannot be discounted. Also, inflation continues to gather steam in most parts of the world. In some, it has reached multidecade highs and is driving up the costs of living for households.

Building upon the blueprint for engaging in the gray zone laid out in Seizing the advantage: A vision for the next US National Defense Strategy, this project will set forth recommendations for integrating below-threshold activities into US national strategy.

The gray zone is the space in which defensive and offensive activity occurs above the level of cooperation and below the threshold of armed conflict. Gray zone operations, activities, and actions (OAA) are often, but not always, clandestine, covert, unofficial, or outside accepted norms of behavior. Gray zone OAA are aimed at undermining the security of the target entity or projecting the national or organizational interest of the initiator but without triggering active armed conflict. While the gray zone can be thought of chronologically (i.e., after peace, before active hostilities), it is referred to spatially to reflect that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, gray zone activity can occur during active armed conflict between actors.

Hybrid conflict (also referred to as hybrid warfare) is a subset of statecraft that uses the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) levers of national power across the competition continuum, including cooperation, competition (including gray zone OAA), deterrence, and armed conflict for the purposes of achieving national security objective(s) against a state or non-state actor(s).

These conflicts are well above the more indirect and less violent levels seen in gray zone conflicts but below the threshold of conventional war where armor, artillery and airpower assets are employed with greater degrees of integration and violence between combatants. The Islamic State or Daesh represents the high end of an irregular adversary, with high levels of adaptability and increasing lethality.8

This concept would seem to have great merit as a response to both Russian and Chinese actions in gray zone conflicts, since neither state embraces the idea that war and peace are binary conditions. Both of them, as well as other strategic cultures, envision a more complex continuum of cooperation, competition, collaboration, and conflict. Moreover, many other nations do not organize their government institutions with the same black-and-white military and non-military distinctions as the U.S. maintains.There is evidence that some components of the U.S. military are devoting intellectual capital to this issue,46 and Congress has shown interest in assessing U.S. capabilities in this domain. By its nature, a U.S. capacity for unconventional warfare would involve the ability to develop and execute a strategy that tightly integrated measures needed to counter the subversion, propaganda, and political actions of gray area conflict short of actual warfare.

It's a timely question in the wake of attacks on civilians, aid workers and hospitals in conflict zones around the world. Just this week, three hospitals in southern Syria were bombed by pro-government forces, according to The Washington Post.

Representatives of aid groups say there is a growing disregard for these rules in conflict zones around the world. \"It has become glaringly obvious that respect for international humanitarian law is in decline,\" says Scott Paul, the humanitarian policy lead of Oxfam America, a global aid agency.

When the Council has direct power over access to aid, it must act on the basis of facts and law, he said, calling attention to the upcoming vote to renew cross-border access to Syria. Noting the constraints in the Council as well as in the conflict zones, he also stressed the importance of breaking the deadlock and highlighted the critical role the General Assembly can continue to play in establishing independent mechanisms to gather evidence on violations. Where humanitarian work needs guarding from the politics of Member States, including those perpetrating access constraints, the Assembly should establish independent panels to take on fact-finding missions and deliver transparent reporting on barriers imposed on humanitarian action in conflict settings, he said.

MOHAMMAD KURNIADI KOBA (Indonesia), condemning the use of explosive weapons, especially in urban and densely populated environments, noted that when homes, hospitals and schools are destroyed, those who survive are left in devastating conditions. The world wishes to see the Security Council exercise more of its moral weight in protecting civilians in armed conflict, he said, adding that safe passage must be guaranteed without impediment for civilians wishing to evacuate and for humanitarian personnel. Underscoring the role of a people-centred approach, he said that local communities must become part and parcel of the development and implementation of any civilian protection strategy. Commending the approach taken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, South Sudan and Abyei in incorporating community engagement, he acknowledged the expectation of peacekeepers to do more to protect civilians. Such an expectation should also be followed up with adequate resources, he said, calling on Member States to make their financial contributions in full, on time and without conditions. 59ce067264

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