Our future is threatened by gray zone warfare

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

The classroom often feels worlds away from the frontlines of global conflict, but a recent forum in Manila brought the stark reality of modern warfare into sharp focus.

It became clear that the battlegrounds of the 21st century aren’t just fought with armies but through insidious gray zone operations, lawfare, and cyberattacks.

These asymmetric threats are deliberately designed to destabilize and coerce, falling just below the threshold of conventional war.

At the high-level forum, “Navigating Asymmetric Threats: Cross-Regional Strategies for Europe and the Indo-Pacific,” organized by the Stratbase Institute and the European Council on Foreign Relations, the warnings were dire.

Rear Admiral Guillaume Pinget, Commander of the French Armed Forces in the Pacific, described how these challenges “have become a strategic tool.”

He warned that “the use of force in state disputes is now uninhibited.”

“A technological race is taking place in parallel,” he explained.

“AI, drone, space, information, cyber, and electronic spectrum adds new areas of confrontation, while we still have to keep our confrontational core… It is a threat to our economic, democratic, political model, individual freedom, freedom of our nations and people,” Pinget added.

Stratbase Institute President Prof. Victor Andres “Dindo” Manhit emphasized the urgent need for a united front against these shared dangers.

“The nations and the people of Europe and the Indo-Pacific share more things than one might imagine,” he said.

“We may be halfway across the world from each other but changing times have narrowed the gaps and have intertwined our present and our future.”

“Security and prosperity are our common goals, and both regions are equally driven to achieve this for their people,” Manhit stated.

Our own National Security Adviser, Eduardo Año, pinpointed where this crucial cooperation must be strengthened.

“Shared stakes and closer coordination in freedom of navigation and stability especially across the troubled and turbulent waters of the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the West Philippine Sea and East China Sea should be our main armors in conflict prevention and diplomacy,” he urged.

“Let us put in mind that no ASEAN member states seek conflict, but all face the risk of consequences of escalation.”

Año also called for creating strategic alternatives to reduce dependency on any single power.

“Exploring other diplomatic alternatives such as developing assistance, education, infrastructure and health, which offer partners choices beyond dependence on a single country such as China, is something we can work on together,” he proposed.

He stressed the importance of “ASEAN-centric mechanisms” for managing disputes and ensuring “sustained engagement and long-term cooperation between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”

Looking forward, he sees technology as a key part of our collective defense.

“The way ahead for us should be about innovation strategy and harnessing new technologies as tools for collective security,” he stressed.

“Despite unprecedented risks, I am optimistic that our regions have the resources, the capacities and willpower to shape the future.”

James Crabtree, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at ECFR, drew a direct line from the conflicts in Europe to the constant pressures we face here.

“Those of us who live in Europe have been watching with rising alarm at the events on our eastern frontier with Russian drones in Poland, Russian helicopters in Estonia…” he said.

“Here in the Philippines, we saw only yesterday another example of the grey zone activity that your military and your Navy and your Coast Guard have to cope with on a regular basis, not to mention rising incidents of the threats to cable infrastructure and other examples in Taiwan and elsewhere around the region.”

Listening to these experts, I realized that the fragility of our undersea internet cables, the weaponization of legal frameworks, and the double-edged sword of artificial intelligence are no longer abstract concepts.

They are the clear and present dangers that define our generation’s greatest security challenge.