Global Britain in the grey zone: Between stagecraft and statecraft

Abstract

The United Kingdom's integrated defense and security review put "grey zone" or "hybrid" challenges at the center of national security and defense strategy. The United Kingdom is not alone: The security and defense policies of NATO, the European Union, and several other countries (including the United States, France, Germany, and Australia) have taken a hybrid-turn in recent years. This article attempts to move the hybrid debate toward more fertile ground for international policymakers and scholars by advocating a simple distinction between threats and warfare. The United Kingdom's attempts to grapple with its own hybrid policy offer a national case study in closing the gap between rhetoric and practice, or stagecraft and statecraft, before an avenue of moving forward is proposed-informally, through a series of questions, puzzles, and lessons from the British experience-to help international policy and research communities align their efforts to address their own stagecraftstatecraft dichotomies.KEYWORDS Hybrid warfare; hybrid threats; grey zone; defense strategy; United Kingdom; Integrated ReviewIn a speech now seen as a prologue to the United Kingdom's (UK) recent review of national security, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (Integrated Review), General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the Defence Staff, described the present and future strategic context as "a continuous struggle in which non-military and military instruments are used unconstrained by any distinction between peace and war" (Prime Minister's Office, 2020b).Carter's answer to this challenge was the new Integrated Operating Concept 2025 (IOpC25), which represented "the most significant change in UK military thought in several generations" and would lead to "a fundamental transformation in the military instrument and the way it is used" (Prime Minister's Office, 2020c). The Integrated Review follows Carter's assessment,

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