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Four Steps to Deterring Gray Zone Coercion

• The authors collectively find that the challenges the allies face, while difficult, are not insuperable and require Washington and Tokyo to deter gray zone coercion through four interrelated steps.
• First, the allies must stigmatize gray zone coercion through the use of their considerable norm-setting power and international institutional influence.
• Second, they should reduce the "anonymity" or "grayness" of the various domains in which China or other actors seek to carry out gray zone coercion by enhancing the sharing of information and intelligence to as great a degree as possible as a way to clarify command-and-control relationships between agents and their principals.
• Third, Washington and Tokyo need to maintain conventional preeminence, investing in the ability to deter by denying an adversary, such as China, the outcomes it seeks by defeating any efforts at gray zone or conventional coercion.
• Finally, should an adversary seek to carry out gray zone coercion, the authors suggest that the allies also need the ability to deter through punishment, imposing costs on any actor who seeks to coerce them (after the attempt at coercion has been turned back) so as to reinforce the lesson that such efforts carry consequences in other military domains or in economic, political, diplomatic, informational, legal, or institutional areas.