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Establishment think tanks and the ‘gray zone’, a breakdown
The ‘gray zone’ refers to the space between ordinary diplomacy & total war. Arming proxies, etc., to shape a certain local/regional dynamic.
It’s also a term used by the establishment to justify empire [thread]
The ‘gray zone’ refers to the space between ordinary diplomacy & total war. Arming proxies, etc., to shape a certain local/regional dynamic.
It’s also a term used by the establishment to justify empire [thread]
Far as I can tell, gray zone fetishization started around 2015 (origins of term, earlier), and has only escalated since then. CAP talks about it all the time; CSIS has a whole project on it http://csis.org/grayzone
But these technocratic (‘objective’) analyses are always about the US ‘responding’ to the gray zone activities of some ‘other’ — and not the other way around. The US is merely ‘reacting’ to violence w/o agency or cause
The notion that the ‘other’ started it — that the US is reluctantly entering the gray zone — omits the fact that gray zone activities have been built into military doctrine for far longer than it has been of major interest to establishment think tanks
Some version of this military planning chart has been around since 2006. ‘Phase 0’ is about ‘shaping’, which mostly entails ‘security cooperation’ (US parlance for arming proxies). Who’s instigating who again?
(And of course it’s in gray)
(And of course it’s in gray)
And it doesn’t matter if Iran or whoever stops their own version of ‘security cooperation’, the US’ gray zone activities are meant to go on forever:
And this indefinite/infinite mandate has never been evaluated, and it’s run by a federal agency that failed its first and only audit: https://www.securityreform.org/commentary/military-budget-justification-cooperation-transparency-accountability
This obsession is *at best* irrelevant to the working class. If CSIS /CAP were grassroots-funded, the question is not whether they’d be talking about this stuff, but rather if they’d exist at all.
An alternative funding model: http://patreon.com/SPRI
An alternative funding model: http://patreon.com/SPRI
