IRREGULAR WARFARE PODCAST: IN THE GREY ZONE, THE ALLIANCE IS THE MESSAGE

In the blurred spaces between peace and war, a contest over influence plays out. But how is the contest won? What are the components of an effective strategy in this gray zone? What role do irregular warfare campaigns play? And how do strong alliances enable these campaigns?

This episode of the Irregular Warfare Podcast explores these questions and more, specifically looking at the competition for influence in the Indo-Pacific region, where observers can see the broad contours of China’s gray zone strategy. In competition with this strategy are the activities of a network of actors, a centerpiece of which is the strong alliance between the United States and Australia.

The episode features a discussion with two guests. Clementine Starling is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program and the author of a 2021 strategy paper, “Seizing the Advantage: A Vision for the Next US National Defense Strategy,” which forms the basis of the conversation. And David Van is a member of the Australian Senate, where he has worked extensively on foreign affairs and defense issues and where he serves as the deputy chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs and as a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade.

Find out more here: Irregular Warfare Podcast: In the Gray Zone, the Alliance is the Message - Modern War Institute (usma.edu)

Irregular Warfare Podcast Transcript:
I think it's easily demonstrable that China is at war with. Taiwan, you never do anything like you do not fight your hardest challenges on your own.

We're seeing democracy eroded right across the Indo Pacific region and until we really start to push back on some of that with some actual actions, not just words. I think we're really gonna struggle as we go forward.

Welcome to Episode 79 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Adam Darnley-Stuart and my co-host today is Julia McClenon. This episode is the first in series of podcasts dedicated to Project Grey Zone. Today's episode explores the relationship between Australia and the United States and it's focused on China's grey zone activities in the Indo Pacific.

Our guests begin by defining the grey zone and what is meant by the term influence. They then discuss examples of China's grey zone strategy in the context of global security challenges. Our guests conclude with recommendations on why the alliance between Australia and the United States is critical in effectively competing in the grey zone.

Clementine Starling is the director of the Atlantic Council's forward defence Programme clementines 2021 strategy paper, seizing the advantage of vision for the next U.S. National Defence Strategy is the focus of this podcast.

David Van is a Liberal senator for Victoria. During his time in the Senate, David has spoken in the Chambers extensively on foreign affairs, defence and trade and energy and the environment.

David is the deputy Chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs and Aid of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and trade, as well as deputy chair of the Senate Standing Committee for the scrutiny of delegated legislation.

You are listening to the Regular Warfare podcast dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Senator David Van and Clementine Starling. David Clementine, welcome to the Regular Warfare podcast.

Hi there, Adam. Thank you so much for having me. Especially paired with such an amazing guest such as Clementine. So it's wonderful to be here joining you from Melbourne, Australia.

Thank you so much. It's so wonderful to be here and join you all and equally as well to be part of this conversation, I'm joining from Washington, DC.

Clementine, your 2021 paper, seizing the advantage of vision for the next U.S. National defence strategy, you recommend the DoD orientate to focus more on the grey zone. Could you start by explaining exactly what Grey zone is and why it's relevant during times competition?

Yeah, happy to. So just a little bit of background on the report. My team and I write a U.S. National defence strategy about every four years depending on the change of the US administration to lay out what we think should be the US strategic level goals. So prioritisation of threat. Assumptions of what the security environment looks like today, but also projecting forward into the future and really trying to outline a blueprint for aligning actions across the US Department of Defence. With that list of strategic priorities, so as you noted in our 2021 report which preceded the Biden administrations, NDS, we really kind of built on some ideas that were put forward in the 2018 NDS and yes, that was put together by the Trump administration. So that, as I'm sure some of you will remember. Characterise this shift in the security environment. Towards great power competition and I think that really reflected this bi partisan acknowledgement in the US about the need to move away from about two decades of counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East. Now towards this two major near peer competitor environment that the US is facing with China and Russia. So that really made the groundwork for us in the question. Well, what does that competition look like? So before the Biden team released our NDS my team and I ran analysis on not only the very traditional conventional military threats posed by China, but we set out to unpack the more untraditional, non physical, non kinetic, harder to measure ways that China and Russia are competing. Below the threshold of armed conflict to achieve their strategic goals. So we set up a Grey Zone task force at the Atlantic Council to really get at that problem. To answer your question, when I seek to define what the Grey Zone is, I see it visually as a spectrum of activities and intent. So you've got on the far left cooperation on the far right, armed conflict and warfare, and then in the middle is the grey zone that's everything in between. So adversarial competition below armed conflict and that's really described in US joint doctrine as the competition continues is the kind of term for it but the way I see the Grey Zone it's a term used to describe sets of often in that middle space, so ranging from diplomatic, informational, military economic efforts to achieve 1 strategic objective. Sometimes those activities can be clandestine, covert, unofficial or outside of acceptable means of behaviour, which I think is probably a key thing that we'll touch on today. Really, the activities are aimed at undermining the security of the target entity or projecting the interests of the actor, but without triggering active armed conflict.

Thank you so much Clementine for getting us started there. David, I want to turn it over to you in case you have anything to add that you think is important as far as defining what exactly we're talking about when we reference grey zone and to hit you with the 1-2 punch on this question, if you could explain why understanding the grey zone is important. Your perspective right from a perspective of an Indo Pacific nation like Australia.

Yes. Thanks so much, Julia. As a both as a policymaker and a student of the irregular warfare, I'm sitting in a unique place down here in Australia because we're seeing this grey zone activity happening in our backyard. And in fact, you know, our country has experienced it and Clementine was exactly right. There's this spectrum and we our include our allies and partners in this. You have been looking at Grey zone activities in completely the wrong way and it's what I think has led to us being a little bit blind to what's been happening in the region. You know there is, there are clearly grey zone activities happening down here in the Indo Pacific at the South China Sea, the East China Sea. It's even happening to Australia where we're seeing geo economic coercion, which will put on that spectrum happening, you know, to us as a nation, we've seen all sorts of trade barriers. There is non-trade barriers put up which I think is very much part of that grey zone for a country like Australia, the activities are really hitting home and have done over the last few years. So like Clementine I see the grey zone. It's not just the little green men in Crimea here we've been seeing the Chinese have used grey zone tactics over the last two decades. You're with their maritime militia, their cyber militias, and there's been a lot of activity that has happened over the last, especially 10 years, but probably going back, I could argue, even going back to the Civil War in China, where they've been using these same sorts of tactics. They were a tactic of Mao Tse Tung. You know, your listeners shouldn't forget that, these aren't new tactics for some of our competitors.
This question is for both of you. Whether you see Grey zone activities as necessarily something new or is this something that is an extension of some of the existing communist tactics that we saw during the middle of the 20th century? What's new about it and maybe what's old?

So what's new about the grey zone? I think in some ways nothing but in a lot of ways a lot of new things. So what do I mean by that? I think the more prevalent use of the Grey zone terminology does not indicate a novelty in the nature of warfare per say, but more how competition is characterised. We saw active measures being used by Russia throughout the Cold War. David just touches on the tonnes of examples of forms of irregular warfare being used by China well before today but I think what is probably slightly different about the way we are characterising the growing zone or hybrid conflict or activities in that space today. That technology has enabled us to do more at pace across domains that we couldn't do so before. So that has, I think, opened up many more tools in both our toolboxes, but also the tool boxes of our adversaries that seek to undercut US, Australia and other countries interests abroad without needing to take physical or kinetic action and so I think that has complicated our picture of where the lines of peace stop and where the lines of warfare start and not new. I think a lot more complex in a modern age of having both digital lives where we are quite technology dependent and I think it's enabled quite new approaches, but we're still really learning how to grapple with.

Thanks clementine. I think there is a great response and as I alluded to earlier, I don't think grey zone is new. I can take people back to lots of different tactics being used over decades. Whether you say it was during the Cold War or even during the Cultural Revolution, more recently there has been lots of that. I think what is new and this Is where I think the Irregular Warfare Institute should take some credit is educating policymakers. Like myself in that irregular warfare exists because I think way by way I mean that Western countries and France and allies have been a little bit blind to it and blindsided by. That there is no doubt that some of our competitors have been actively working against us, they just haven't been firing bullets or dropping bombs. So we've seen the Indo Pacific change dramatically over the last couple of decades. Megan, you can take it back to the Vietnam War. It's a real thing that we're seeing now. And the policy makers really need to be alive to, because if we don't as commentate argues in her paper, if we don't start taking actions and possibly offensive actions, not just defensive actions against grey zone tactics, all of a sudden like we have seen. You know our region. Or our world can change very, very quickly.

Thanks, David for those insightful comments. We'll switch now to a central theme of today's discussion. What is influence and why does it matter for the grey zone?

Yeah, that's a great question. So by influence, I mean ones ability to convince others of what they want them to do or the ways in which they want them to see things. So we often characterise influence as it's the hearts and minds. Peace, right? Of one's population. So China and Russia both have refined their ability to shape domestic perceptions through social media manipulation and censorship. You know absolute control and other ways of popular media in their own States and the vast amounts of data collected. Through technology platforms and new technology tools that are now at almost every countries disposal I think, have really extended our reach and ability to approach influence operations in new ways. So I think for China from the influence operational side not losing face and projecting a positive image of China to the rest of the world remains very important for CCP. But in recent years under choosing appearing, I think Beijing has become increasingly comfortable. With infiltration and coercion as part of its influence operations, I think Taiwan and Hong Kong really constitute like laboratories for Beijing's political warfare. we've seen traditional Chinese media penetrating kind of Taiwan's private cyber news, these local intermediaries to carry messages forward that Taiwan is. A part of. China it is better off reunified. So I think the types of influence operations. Information operations that we've seen China use have evolved over time and have become quite more aggressive. There's a very interesting report that was put out by IRSENM. The French MoD’s Research Institute, actually that I would recommend everybody takes a read of it-looks at the ways in which China's influence operations have increasingly become more like masters and some of the sharing of the playbooks between the two countries. That's a really. Interesting report to look at for those interested in understanding China’s influence operations better.

I think the way Clementine described it is the democratisation of technology is one of the keys here. If it wasn't for cyber, I don't think we would have even started seeing grey zones as quickly as we have, or not that I think it's been that quick. But then that's also given us the ability to see this misinformation disinformation as part of a irregular warfare. It's become apparent I sat on a Senate Select Committee looking at foreign interference through social media. It's an ongoing committee and inquiry. But we're always hearing just mind boggling accounts of misinformation and disinformation and things that I think if our countrymen were alive too, you know, they'd be seeing the world in a whole different way. Here in Australia, we've seen protests from the other side of the world. All of a sudden explode here and I can't see it as being organic. Therefore, you know you have to look at what the effect is and if the effect is just unifying our people. Sowing, disharmony making people you know, argue against each other but you know not. in the old fashioned polite debating way. It's showing real hate and divide and almost disintegration of our nations. It's really dangerous.. and as a policymaker I'm so scared if we're not tackling this all day every day, then we're doing something wrong.

I think you have a very vehemently agreeing audience with you here today and likely in our podcast listeners as well. I'm so grateful that you're able to speak frankly about these issues. We know that our adversaries, particularly the two that we're all pointing to right now, don't view the world, let alone warfare, the same as we do and so you could detail the argument as to why we may already be at war with China over Taiwan in the grey zone.

Yeah, I think it's an important question as to, are we at war already? And I think the answer to that probably varies based on your perspective, even within a single nation. And I completely agree that cultural differences and concepts of warfare absolutely vary amongst. It's I think in the US or perhaps or in Western terms in general, we'd probably shy away from saying that we're at war with China. Maybe saying we're not at war with China yet, but we are in a competition. And we are in conflicts in keyways, but that's not necessarily how China views it. In 1999, two Chinese military strategists penned a paper called unrestricted warfare. Which I'm sure. Some of your listeners are familiar with and they took their observations of the US victory in the Gulf War, which demonstrated the utter preponderance of the US military and what they took away from that. Is why would you compete with the US conventionally, militarily, when you don't have a chance of winning that way. So instead, move the fight against the US off the military battlefield. And build asymmetric advantages in other areas where you can get one up on the US and its allies. So in that paper they proposed the continuous use of non-military operations to compensate for US conventional military superiority and then that concept was followed in 2003. I think, might get my dates on wrong by the three Warfare’s concepts, which really zeroed in on information related warfare using psychological, public opinion and legal means. So I say all of that to really. Demonstrate that I think perception is immensely key. When we approach this question. Understanding the history, the mindset, the doctrine and priorities of the potential adversary are really, really important for deterrence. And I think help us get our understanding that whether or not we think we are at war, if an adversary believes that we are within their concept of what warfare means, then that that better make us sit up and pay attention.

Great points there, Clementine, and I'll take it a step further. I agree with you. I don't think we are at war with China as yet, but I argued in a paper I wrote last year that I think it's easily demonstrable that China is at war with Taiwan. There's lots of evidence, both grey zone and sub military paramilitary. That they have taken steps. That can only be construed as aggressive towards Taiwan. We're seeing right at the moment after the president's visit to the states. That these tactics, which are purely military, are set, being done to intimidate Taiwan, send very strong messages, and what I assume our intelligence services are seeing a lot more than we are. What's happening behind the on, cyber, etc. There is a lot of evidence out there that China has been at war with Taiwan or more that there will. You never stopped after the nationalists fled to Taiwan. There was no Armistice. You know, there was no treaty. So, you know, in some ways you could say that the revolution will you continued. And there's continued non stop. To this day, I think what we're seeing now is a change of tempo in that war. Clearly, Xi has said that he wants a unified Taiwan. He sees it as part of his legacy, so there's a lot of evidence that he's moving on that he's certainly all the preparation that we've seen going. On you know. The build up of their military, all their other capabilities and misinformation, disinformation that makes me nervous if you see someone looking to hit you, you want to be ready to duck or hit back.

Both very insightful regarding not always to look at it from a western centric view. The complex problems we face, but to truly understand our competitors so they potentially don't. Turn into adversaries. Because when they do turn into adversaries, we're positioned right to actually combat them wherever, whenever in the world. So when we think about the triangle. Of Russia, Iran and China, the types of violence that they pursue during competition or the ones we're likely to see pursued later on in competition.

Yes, I think violence is used outside of, I suppose what you can necessarily characterise as warfare. There are probably different forms of intimidation, coercion that we see demonstrated by. Some kind of? MAYNAB adversaries in the security environment and China from Russia, I think Russia Today seems a really stark example, obviously there is a live conflict going on within Ukraine waged by Russia and you know, arguably a lot of us didn't really see it coming. Despite a lot of comic warning signs in 2008 and beyond in Russian and Ukraine itself, so I think one of the concerns and difficulties when we talk about the grey zone is that competition continuum. I don't think it should be viewed chronologically. There is not necessarily linear development. From cooperation through competition up to armed conflict. The reality is that it's a spatial concept that we do see grey zone activities take place alongside armed conflict, alongside cooperation and multiple types of activities can be taking place across different domains, some military and some non traditional. Domains and in different parts of the globe, all at the same time. And I think what this gets at is one of the major challenges of the Grey Zone itself, which is not the concept that it is new, that, that it includes coercive approaches that often fall below perceived thresholds for military action and so what that means. Is 1. It can be harder to recognise when an actor is seeking to change the status quo in a way that will negatively impact you and 2, it makes it harder to determine whose area of responsibility across the government or private sector it is to respond to that threat. So who has the Authority to do what and when I think often armed conflict violence is an easier thing to diagnose. It is an easier thing to know where you're left and right limits are to respond to him. I'm not saying it is easy or should be downplayed. In terms of the very real human costs associated with it, but I think in a lot of ways we know how to respond to a lot of different types of military plans, operational plans for a lot of different types of military scenarios. We don't have that for the types of activities that take place in the Grey Zone because it's very, very difficult to characterise the types of actions taking place. The piece all of the elements of the puzzle together to really understand how what is happening in one region in one part of the world where is. Perhaps the Wagner. Group in Africa has implications for what Russia? Can be doing in Europe and so I think what I found is that lack of ownership, of tracking and analysing those below threshold actions taking place globally as well as the lack of clarity of the entity that's actually leading our response to those actions that has. Resulted in us not being very responsive or holistic in our approaches to countering Grey Zone activities.

Our militaries are very used to having rules of engagement. If someone shoots at me I'm allowed to fire back. Yet, you know really took, I think cyber warfare to bring to mind that we might be attacked without a bullet being fired. Now we've seen, as Clementine alluded to, Russia and Ukraine, where there was Georgia, Chechnya. You know then into the Ukraine, we've seen similar tactics here. Used and it's incredibly damaging and weakening to a target country if you like or target population without, you know, actual kinetic warfare and until we as policymakers and defence planners start looking at, OK, well, this is happening. Where else should I be looking for some of these effects? I think it's the fact that you have to look for not the smoking gun. I think when you're looking at foreign interference, especially there in in Sabre, like if you see a dead body with a bullet hole in it, you don't need a smoking gun to know that someone shot someone. This is an analogy that I use, particularly in that foreign interference space, it's a real thing, and until they're alive to all these not just the effects that you'll look at the motivations or where might this lead us to? We missed all the signals in the South China Sea over the last couple of decades where there was arguably real violence going on, whether it was against you know, Vietnamese fishing fleets, Filipino ships, etcetera. These are all real examples of what we're probably above grey zone, but because they were done by non-military actors, there wasn't a strong response or maybe there just wasn't the will to respond when it was so far away. It was this land. Well, who really cares about them? What do they mean? Especially, you know, Xi was lying to Obama, about what was going on and then just came out and did it. You must look at the effect not the words, not the insubstantial parts of it.

Noting that IW is population centric and we'll focus on influencing population for the outcomes of national security, are there any specific types of operations, activities or initiatives do you think the USA and Australia should be focusing on now in the Indo Pacific, specifically in the grey zone?

I think we need to be able to step it up and really start ensuring that. When one of our adversaries, or some of our adversary. To do something against our national interests that we're really prepared to shoot back, and I don't mean that in a physical sense that could be in a cyber sense could be in a misinformation taking financial actions. We're seeing democracy eroded right across the Indo Pacific region and until we really start to push back on some of that. With some actual actions, not just words. I think we're really going to struggle as we go forward. I think we've lost a lot of time until we saw this as a regular warfare and seeing a regular warfare as war. Yeah. So you know, I think it's now incumbent on all of our governments to work together to take proper steps to ensure that our enemies and our adversaries are focusing. On the fact that. We know what they're. Doing we see it as being wrong and we'll take steps to correct that.

I agree with David a great deal on this. I think the reality is you cannot prioritise everything. Determining the areas where we are most at risk and the areas in which are most important to shape and compete against in the grey zone. It is important and David touched on this in terms of defensive forms of activities and operations versus offensive activities and our operations and this of course looks different depending on the tool of statecraft that you are using, but I think it's a really important point. So I start with the defensive piece of this, your priority number one has to be on the things that are most integral to the survival of your nation. We heard, I think we've all heard in the irregular warfare and grey zone spaces that the use of the term resilience building, societal resilience against the types of vulnerabilities that grows and activities tend to attack. So that is ensuring the integrity of your elections public trust. In institutions that Government can function well and people trust that it will function access to core needs energy, food, supplies, but that is not disrupted. Then I think as the US and Australia think about ways in which we are supporting our allies and partners in the Indo Pacific. In particular, I think that creates a very good baseline for ensuring that influence is kept at Bay in those areas, but, there is the other side of this, which is shaping the grey zone environment in and of itself and being more proactive. I think there is where there is a range of different priorities that you could choose. I think for the US technology, competition and maintaining US Edge is a key long-term goal in competition with China. So tackling supply chain issues are vulnerable to adversarial exploitation, you know, including industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, cyber attacks, all of those. I think key things and then I think a kind of 3rd way that I look at this is really challenging us to view the activities that the US and Australia and others do in the growth and ourselves through a slightly different lens and I think what all of this has highlighted is the importance of civil and commercial partnerships as a real cornerstone for responses in the grey zone.

Clementine’s right about building national resilience. That's incredibly important. My late, great colleague, Senator Jim Molan, Major General retired. He and I did a lot of work in this space and he left us early this year, which is a big hole in the Senate and amongst all of us. So we need to build that national resilience. I think we've got to walk and chew gum at the same time and climate times idea of strategic simultaneity is really important here, because it's not only what we're doing, but you know, we also need to look across our region because it's not hard to Find evidence that our competitors are outpacing us in other parts of the region.

You just must look at the Western Pacific or the Indo Pacific countries that are being coerced, you know the by Belt and Road debt trap. Other forms of breaking down of their civil societies for the your military ends of our adversaries, as I said, deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs and Aid Subcommittee, what we're seeing in the Pacific at the moment, our adversaries will use tools to help their case that that we will. The obvious one is corruption, so how do we call out corruption without changing the self power politics of what we need to do? There's a lot of ways that we can build up the societies in our near neighbours that are so important for our security, not just theirs and it's not ever just about Australian security. It's about the regions. So how do we either call out this corruption or do we use information techniques or cyber techniques just to take that money away again, you know, such that the rewards not left on the table and that people realise if we go down a path of taking corruption and losing our democracies because of it, you know that there will be costs. If we're not imposing costs on our adversaries. We can't say we're deterring them from taking those actions again. In our 2020 defence strategic update and we moved to the concept of shape, deter, respond. I don't think we're doing nearly enough yet, and I'll say this across all of our partners as well. We need to be doing more on the shape and deter and yes, we need to be ready to respond. That, you know, I think we're better off investing far more in that shaping and deterring element.

The other key element I think as part of this conversation around the population centric nature of Grey Zone activities and the influence peace and how you actually go about building societal resilience and that you're going to define that differently nation by nation, right. But I think we really start to think about this. As how we go about supporting allies and partners across the globe in their building of societal incidents. I think one major error we cannot overlook is education. The Baltic States, I think, have had a very, very interesting history, of course, of Russian influence, but it's during the Cold War, after the Cold War, it never went away, it's just ongoing and I think the emphasis there is some of the models that they have used to educate their own populations. What are these types of activities? What do you need to look for? What does influence look like? What does intimidation look like? I think David has said it well a couple of times in this podcast that we've lost some time in seeing irregular warfare, seeing grey zone activities as what they are and I think that education piece is something that we need to continue to really, really work out. It's all well and good to look at the Capability development aspects of this with potential technology solutions that we must have some of these challenges but none of it will work effectively if we can't convince our own populations that there is a challenge. First and foremost that they are a part of helping us collectively develop the antibodies to be able to mitigate the effects of these kinds of influence that are trying to be achieved.

I do want to pivot us back to something that David had started leading us over to and that's the idea of alliances getting into our government, to government partnerships, right? So obviously the alliance between the United States and Australia is a key and unique strength when confronting the adversaries that we're talking about in the Indo Pacific. David, I wonder what your thoughts are regarding these alliances greatest strengths to effectively compete within the grey zone in some of the ways that we're talking about today.

Yeah. Thanks, Julie. It it's a really important point. If you go back and read all the Australian, the US, the UK, French, EU, Japanese Defence, strategic White Papers, you know, especially over the last 10 years, you've seen the words integrated, deterrence creeping in, you know and now the strategic papers are effectively building on that foundation that we've come to realise that we can't do it all. Ourselves, while people were expecting the US to do it all for them, that's now not happening.  You’re seeing other countries and stepping up and really going well ‘No. If you help us do more, we will walk alongside you. You know the AUKUS pact is, I think, the greatest embodiment of that. You know, that we have always been willing and able partners when it's been in our national interest to work aside Allies and like minded countries, but without the capability, we can't be that effective. So AUKUS has, you know, set up a brilliant way forward where other partners have, will have the capability to be able to contribute to this integrated deterrence. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. I wouldn't be as brave if I was when you rather rattle off US, UK, Australia, Japan, Korea, India, France. There's some players in the Indo Pacific that when you look at them. As a true model of. Integrated deterrence. That's a powerful reason for our adversaries to really step back and taking a look at “you know, hey, maybe we've got more than we can chew here sometimes” I think, “Am I going to be the dog that. Catches the car. What do I do when I make that first bot? Can I really eat this thing I don't think I can”. Because we are such strong partners, because we've all worked so closely together and fought alongside each other for over a century now, it's important that we keep on working together, that these alliances only grow, that your share capability, share technology, sharing intelligence, which we've been doing for a long time now. It’s super important and I think one of the key things that we must concentrate on as we move forward in shaping, deterring and responding.

Yeah, that all makes sense and I love this idea that you're getting at, which is, the alliance is the message, right? The alliance itself, that's the content of the message that we're sending.

Reshaping each of the media is the message into the alliance is the message. It's important and I think the more that people concentrate on that, take that to heart, build on that, those foundations gives us something very real to work with.

I could not agree more with David on this point. I think the US said it right in its most recent National Defence strategy that allies are one of the most important strategic advantages that the United States has, and that is right. You never do anything alone; you do not fight the hardest challenges on your own. I think even in the last five years we've seen a real shift, I think among the US, its allies and partners in Europe, in the Indo Pacific with the way we are looking at China as a potential threat. I know this is a slightly different conversation for Australia, you know, Australians in the region, the threats posed by China are not remotely new, but I think we have seen this shift in consciousness to shift in awareness and willingness to call out and identify some of the long term threats posed by China that really require alliance and I think for me, the biggest area that we still need to work on is determining really who will be involved in a worst case scenario of a defence of Taiwan and I think this is where the US and Australia are extremely aligned in a lot of ways. I would include the UK as part of that too, but there are still a lot of question marks. About, of course, what that scenario may or may not look like and who will bring what capabilities to bear any potential military scenario where Taiwan is seeing attack? I think that is one of the key areas that we need to continue to be pursuing that dialogue between allies about that aligning on operational plans through those case scenarios, we shouldn't over plan for one type of scenario. But I do think that's an area that we need to be making more progress on. I think the more macro issue that David really hits on is defence and technology capability development and our ability to work together and ensure that we have interoperability. As allies to be able to go forth and act collectively and I think AUKUS has been such a tremendous step in that direction.

Do we run the risk of losing what China wants to do in the world by too heavily focusing on the Indo Pacific? So do we risk losing the influence gain if we reorientate to focus too much on a Taiwan Chinese crisis flash point?

Thanks, Adam, a really good question. I would agree with you. I think if we just focus on China, Taiwan or if we focus on the Belt and Road initiative as being road markers of where we need to go, I think. We'll go off the path. Whether it's Taiwan as a flashpoint or somewhere else, then yeah, I think we still need to focus on this region. A country like Australia, which relies on the sea borne trade. If we're not focusing on defending our sea lines of communication, if we're not partnering with countries to ensure that, should we need to either respond to a Taiwan crisis or any other form of flashpoint, you know that we can work right across the area. But as we've seen in Europe, you know, just this last week or so, as you see aggression step up people's appetite for partnering, balancing, if you like, ratchets up. It was amazing to see Finland join NATO and the signal that sends to the rest of the partners do matter and NATO is an incredibly powerful organisation.

Well, I think David said it really well and it's an important question. I think the one thing we know about conflict or crisis is that we can never predict it. So we don't want to be overly prescribed to one type of scenario, at the same time any good military will plan for some of the worst case scenarios and it's certainly a defence of Taiwan. Would be a really, really difficult situation for us to deal with both politically, but also, operationally in and of itself. But I do think we want to heavily focused on the Pacific. I think we have to be able to do both. We need to be able to maintain focus on the types of activities and seeing in The Grey Zone and whether it's, you know, BRI or otherwise happening globally, I think will be a much better. Situationally, what's happening globally a better global situation one is pictures. To be honest, cause a lot of what's happening in Latin America, for instance where both Russia and China are very actively working with different South American and Central American countries to undermine diplomatic ties to Taiwan and seeking the extraction of rare earth elements that can be used for lots of different means. That is an area where from the US perspective the US's backyard and I think decades of probably deprioritising that region has led to vacuums in which China and Russia have been able to fill and build strong transactional relationships with certain governments in the region. So I do think it's really important to be able to do both. Prepare for the conventional or unconventional worst-case scenarios militarily and also keep an eye on a lot of the activities that are happening elsewhere across the globe that are really concerning to us. We started by saying you can't do it. All I mean that puts a premium on working very, very closely without us and partners to buy down risk across those multiple areas.

I wonder if you have any thoughts about mobilising your citizenry or supporting your citizenry to really engage in some of these issues in their best interest, but they're largely shielded from it because those of us in defence are trying to do that leg work right. But we really need this. Kind of alliance wondering if you have any thoughts.

Yeah, it's a good question, Julia and been fairly concentrated on it of late. Your listeners might be aware that Australia's going through a defence strategic review at the moment by the government and just for context, I'm in opposition now I'm not part of the government parties, we lost the election last May and it might not be relevant but looking outside and someone with a scholarly interest in defence as well as from a policy point of view, this DSR is troubling to me.

Since we're on an Irregular warfare podcast. I'll be looking forward to coming back and discussing if I'm invited what is missing in the DSR. As Irregular Warfare might be mentioned, I'd be surprised if even the grey zone gets mentioned also be surprised if resilience gets a mentioned. I think it will be Purely be a DoD type / ADF type paper. Which I think will be missing some real tricks and opportunities, especially around that point about building resilience and being able to mobilise our people. We saw in Ukraine on the first, I think it was 24 hours, 24,000 rifles were handed out to citizenry. Australia couldn't do that. I'm not sure that we'll ever have to, but would we be able to do it if we had to get everyone comfortable with the fact that if our sea lanes of communication are cut, our economy's going to look a lot different.

I thought here from the US perspective of that so it's so interesting to be a part of this conversation and to share these different countries because I think we're all facing similar but slightly different issues. So from the US side, you know you asked the question, how do you mobilise kind of citizen awareness and support for this? It's the anniversary of all volunteer force in the US and just from the military perspective that we are facing some more retention issues in the US, not just the US that that's happening in a lot of different countries, but it's really got me thinking about what we actually mean by service. Max Brookes, the author of World War Z who wrote that book and a lot of other things, he's a fellow on my team. We're lucky to have him with us. He has talked a lot about this and what it actually means to build a civilian service. So not conscription. Not the kind of traditional forms of issues involving every member of society and it's some form of military. To say but defining service slightly differently, it could mean military service. It could mean really defying service in ways that society thinks is important for societal cohesion. Societal identity issues. I think a lot of the things that we've talked around influence are , stuff can embed when there are fractures within society and I think technology and race relation issues have really brought to light a lot of fractures that just exist, fissures that exist within society. I think when you are combating adversaries who want to take advantage of that, it's worth considering like, what do we mean by creating more of a social contract with our citizens? What role do citizens have to play to feed into feeling? Feeling secure, feeling resilient within your own country.

No, I definitely agree. From the time that the idea of service in the modern society is very different to what service to the nation was potentially 50-60-70 years ago and those fundamental to building the resilience of society won't be more like both your points of views on what do you think are the biggest restrictions placed on democratic nations to effectively compete in the grey zone.

Yeah, that's a great question. So Grey Zone activity persists in a delta of norms, right? Well in the US and its allies and its adversaries are all playing by distinct sets of rules. But are slightly different from one another, so there have been some studies there that Autocracies tending to have an advantage in the grey zone in two ways. One, the nature of their very centralised systems that allow the CCP, for example, to Marshall whole of state resources to execute operations in the grey zone. Then secondly, the openness of democracy is the often diffuse nature of power that exists within democracies can really leave us more vulnerable to Grey zone activities and sometimes less effective at cobbling together national responses. So I do think kind of thinking through some of those elements. Bring to light some of the difficulties. That we can often. Have in responding to grey zone threats with that. I think the other element is a key part of grey zone activity can often be. Undermining international norms of behaviour, the US, Australia, our allies, our partners, we are bound by self, bound by rules based international order and obligation to work within accepted norms. Often we don't see that in terms of the types of activities. A deliberate flouting of those norms by Russia and China. So really identifying where we see those differences, I think it is key. I do want to say and it's not all Doom and gloom I think that West does. Have some advantages in defending against those and activities. For instance, a free and open press is particularly critical in in calling out these types of activities that we see our adversaries do really flourish best in the dark. Likewise, I think partnerships between the allies and partners really allows democracies to bring more weight to a problem collectively that is otherwise quite difficult to counter on your own.

Excellent. Thank you so much Clementine and David, as someone who has made a career of their conviction in the capability of a representative system and a representative government, I'm very curious your thoughts on the same.

Thank you so much, Julie and I agree with everything that Clementine just put so succinctly and wonderfully. I think some of the things we need to think about is how do we put some more of that sunlight on some of these issues and I watched with amazement at before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You know how the US was declassifying information and getting it out there, you know, making it public. Yeah, that seems to me a tool that we could be using a whole lot more. You know, we have amongst our friends and our allies, you know, great. Intelligence gathering capability and yes, you know most of the time that should be kept classified and out of public view, but I can't help thinking that there is some real utility in being able to get some of that intelligence out there and seeing mainly naming and shaming what some of our adversaries are doing. Are they having a corrupting influence on democracy and whether through bribery or debt trap diplomacy, there has to be more we can do to show these behaviours, to show that you know, this isn’t an east versus west, that's just not right. You can't do that. I think, the more that our Governments concentrate their minds on hey, maybe there's a new way to do this. As I said, I think the US led the way with declassify information before the Russian invasion. I think even drip feeding some of those things or starting to test some of those things as a response to grey zone activity. You could provide some real dividends for strengthening our own resilience. The resilience of countries in our region and really growing, you know that part of a defence structure that's not DoD MOD ADF but you know has some real effect. In the real world.

What is your one primary recommendation to compete better in the Grey Zone?

That's simple building awareness of it in the 1st place, I don't think Western Governments are as yet alive to, the extent that they should be. It's something I write about. I talk about. I speak about it in the Senate and certainly in the committees that I serve on. It's something I try and bring to light so people becoming aware of it and they will go “hey, grey zone” do we understand what to do about it? Do we understand how to combat it? Certainly in Australia I can say we're not there yet.

David and Clementine. Thank you for coming on the Regular Warfare podcast.

Adam, Julia, thank you so much for having us. I couldn't have found a better person to do this conversation with than Clementine. It's been a real honour and a real joy and I hope we've shared some thoughts about irregular warfare and how it exists in both the real world and the policy world.

Well, thank you so much, Adam for engineering this and to David, I have learned so much from sitting alongside you in this podcast. It's been fantastic.

Thank you again for joining us for Episode 79 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast.

We released a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Ben and Laura discuss the legacy of special operations in Vietnam.

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