The transformation that has taken place in the nature of interstate competition in recent years has increasingly called into question the traditional distinction between war and peace. Cyberattacks, disinformation activities, economic coercion, sabotage, interference with critical infrastructure, and the use of non-state actors have become instruments for constraining rival states’ room for manoeuvre without resorting to direct military confrontation. In the international security literature, this phenomenon is generally discussed within the framework of the “grey zone” or “hybrid threats.”
However, this transformation cannot be explained solely by the diversification of the instruments used by states. The more fundamental change lies in the fact that a state’s domestic political and societal vulnerabilities have themselves become direct elements of international competition. While military capabilities, economic power, and geographical position remain important, public trust in institutions, the resilience of the information environment, and perceptions of the political system’s legitimacy have also become factors affecting foreign-policy capacity.
From this perspective, one of the defining characteristics of grey-zone competition is that, rather than occupying an adversary’s territory, it seeks to increase the costs associated with decision-making. In the case of an overt military attack, it is often possible to identify the perpetrator, the nature of the attack, and the appropriate target of retaliation with a relatively high degree of certainty. In cyberattacks, sabotage, or information operations, however, the problem of attribution is far more complex. It may not always be possible to determine quickly whether a failure at an energy facility is the result of a technical malfunction or sabotage, whether a cyberattack has been conducted directly by a state or through a proxy group, or whether a narrative spreading rapidly across social media is organic or the product of a coordinated campaign.
This ambiguity creates a significant strategic advantage for the attacker. The target state must protect its security while simultaneously taking into account the risk of escalating tensions through an excessive response. Grey-zone activities can therefore generate a political impact considerably greater than the physical damage caused by individual incidents.
In the European security environment, this trend has become increasingly visible in recent years. NATO has stated that Russia makes use of various hybrid tools, including sabotage, cyber activities, electronic interference, disinformation, and political influence operations. The fact that Alliance documents on resilience treat the protection of energy systems, transportation networks, telecommunications infrastructure, and digital systems as integral components of collective security is likewise indicative of a broader transformation in the understanding of security.
What is particularly noteworthy here is that defence is no longer conceived solely in terms of strengthening military capabilities. The ability of states to maintain essential services during crises, preserve the functionality of public institutions, and ensure continued public access to reliable information is also regarded as part of national resilience. Security, therefore, has acquired a meaning broader than the mere protection of state borders.
Africa represents another major arena of competition in which similar instruments operate under different political and historical conditions. External influence struggles on the continent cannot be understood simply as an extension of great-power competition. The legacies of colonialism, patterns of economic dependency, differences in state capacity, security challenges, and crises of political representation directly shape the local environment in which external actors operate.
For this reason, the effectiveness of external intervention often depends less on creating new societal problems than on the capacity to exploit vulnerabilities that already exist. Studies published by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies show that disinformation campaigns across Africa have increased significantly in recent years. Although the visibility of Russia-linked networks is particularly noteworthy, local political actors have also made use of disinformation techniques in elections and domestic political competition.
It would therefore be analytically incomplete to reduce the problems of Africa’s information environment solely to external interference. One of the principal factors enabling external actors to exert influence is low institutional trust. Afrobarometer surveys across the continent indicate that trust in parliaments, political leadership, the police, and judicial institutions remains limited in many countries. Economic inequality, perceptions of corruption, and problems relating to state capacity can further deepen this erosion of trust.
At this point, institutional trust ceases to be merely a sociological variable associated with domestic politics. When public trust in the state, media institutions, or electoral processes weakens, external actors may gain significant opportunities in the information sphere. A more visible relationship is therefore emerging between domestic political legitimacy and foreign-policy capacity.
The activities of Russia and China in Africa should not, however, be placed in the same analytical category. Russia-linked activities tend to feature more visible elements of disinformation, security relationships, and political influence networks, whereas China’s approach has generally developed through longer-term and more institutionalized instruments. The presence of Chinese media organizations in Africa, content-sharing agreements, journalist training programmes, and public-diplomacy initiatives have all increased Beijing’s visibility in the continent’s information environment.
Yet the capacity to exert influence and the actual production of influence are not the same thing. Local media cultures, the degree of political competition, and public perceptions of external actors determine the extent to which externally generated narratives gain acceptance. Portraying African societies as passive spaces that can easily be manipulated by external actors therefore risks overlooking both local political dynamics and the agency of societies themselves.
One of the most important variables distinguishing the current period from earlier forms of information operations is the spread of artificial intelligence technologies. Artificial intelligence did not create propaganda or disinformation. It does, however, significantly reduce the cost of content production and enables large volumes of material to be generated rapidly in different languages and for different societal groups.
The European External Action Service, in its work on foreign information manipulation and interference, has noted the growing visibility of AI-assisted content generation. Synthetic images, artificial voice generation, and automated text systems are expanding the scale of information operations while making their detection increasingly complex.
The central problem here is not merely the spread of false information. The simultaneous circulation of large numbers of contradictory narratives can also weaken societal perceptions regarding which sources of information are trustworthy. The success of information operations, therefore, should not always be measured by whether a society has been persuaded to accept a particular narrative. Creating an environment in which people come to distrust all sources of information may itself constitute a strategically significant outcome.
This development demonstrates why institutional trust is becoming increasingly central to grey-zone competition. The sustained erosion of trust in state institutions or core information sources can affect not only the domestic political legitimacy of governments but also their capacity to implement foreign-policy decisions. From security agreements and economic policies to international sanctions and military cooperation, many foreign-policy choices require a degree of domestic societal acceptance.
However, the existence of threats arising from disinformation and external interference should not legitimize governments treating all criticism as the product of foreign influence operations. Such an approach may strengthen political control in the short term, but over the longer term it can damage the very institutional trust that is meant to be protected. OECD work on information integrity similarly emphasizes that transparent public communication, independent media, a pluralistic information environment, and accountable institutions are essential components of societal resilience against disinformation.
A strategy for responding to grey-zone competition must therefore have two dimensions. The first involves protecting critical infrastructure, strengthening cyber defence, uncovering sabotage networks, and identifying foreign information operations. The second requires states to reinforce the relationship of trust between themselves and their societies.
Ultimately, the meaning of power is expanding in the security environment of the twenty-first century. Military capability, economic resources, and strategic geography remain important for states. Yet societal resilience and institutional trust are also becoming fundamental components of the capacity to withstand external pressure.
The decisive question in the future of grey-zone competition, therefore, will not simply be which states possess more advanced cyber capabilities or more extensive information-operation capacities. The more fundamental question is which states will be able to preserve the legitimacy of their institutions, the reliability of their information environments, and the relationship of trust between state and society under conditions of external pressure. In this sense, institutional trust is becoming not merely a normative value associated with democratic systems, but a geopolitical capacity that directly affects the strategic room for manoeuvre available to states.
