In April, US President Joe Biden issued his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented the Integrated Review of Security, Defense, Development and Foreign Policy to parliament. Both leaders expressed concern over the increasing challenges in the gray zone and promised measures to respond more effectively.
The gray zone is the space between peace and war involving coercive actions that fall outside normal geopolitical competition between states but do not reach the level of armed conflict. Actions in the gray zone are conducted by states often using proxies including terrorists, and also by terrorist organizations in their own right. Gray zone actions are aggressive and often ambiguous, deniable and opaque. They are intended to damage, coerce or influence, to destabilise target states or undermine the international status quo. They usually seek to avoid a significant military response, though are often designed to intimidate and deter a target state by threatening further escalation.
FBI agents arrested Gaafar Mohammed Ebrahim al-Wazer, a Yemeni national, 17 months ago, shortly after he attempted to schedule a White House visit and abruptly withdrew a request to renew his legal immigration status, citing U.S. involvement in a brutal civil war in his native country.
