The Darker Shade of Gray: A New War Unlike Any Other by Nathan Freier - Center for Strategic & International Studies Critical Questions
In its September 1999 Phase I report New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, the United States Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) darkly concluded that “Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.” Two years later, the United States suffered catastrophic terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens. Ultimately, Hart-Rudman was about challenging what was then contemporary U.S. national security bias and convention, forcing U.S. decisionmakers to fundamentally reconsider how core U.S. interests would be threatened in the coming decade. Unfortunately, key aspects of their message fell on deaf ears or failed to penetrate institutional predispositions about consequential threats. The United States and its leadership were simply lulled by post-Cold War primacy into profound vulnerability.
The next wave of unconventional warlike aggression against the United States and its allies is well-underway. Elite U.S. leadership has been warned about the strategic hazards of effective counter-U.S. gray zone resistance—especially that originating in Beijing and Moscow. Among many others, CSIS has undertaken meaningful work on gray zone challenges. All of this ongoing work recognizes that the United States is clearly suffering setbacks and losses in the face of Russian and Chinese gray zone campaigning. However, as in the case of Hart-Rudman’s counsel and the subsequent 9/11 attacks, the United States appears to be as flat-footed and perhaps more fundamentally threatened by gray zone challenges than it was pre-9/11 from terrorists…