Trump faces a growing threat of a “gray zone” war.

President-elect Trump has made ambitious promises to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and confront China, but he also faces a growing threat of “grey area” attacks from foreign adversaries, from surveillance with drones to acts of sabotage in the air, at sea and on land.

These hybrid tactics are intentionally hard to track, and NATO allies on the front lines of tensions with Russia say the alliance is not doing enough to keep up.

“If the level of deterrence in this domain is sufficient, the answer is probably not yet,” Estonian Ambassador to the U.S. Kristjan Prikk told The Hill in a conversation at the Atlantic Council last month.

“But unfortunately, when it comes to resilience, it’s not an end state that can be declared. … It’s an ongoing process to maintain and increase the level of resilience.”

Despite its geographic distance from geopolitical flashpoints in Europe and Asia, the United States is not immune to hybrid attacks, as highlighted by a Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US in 2023.

Military analysts believe drones spotted late last year over military installations in England and Germany (locations housing US troops) may have been part of a state-sponsored surveillance mission, said a US official familiar with the incidents. The New York Times.

Fears that drones could cause trouble closer to home were fueled ahead of the holidays, with reports of mysterious drone swarms in numerous East Coast states. US officials maintain that none of the unmanned objects are believed to be foreign surveillance drones.

Trump, who will enter his second term in just under two weeks, will almost certainly have to deal with gray-zone tactics, even if he gets the war in Ukraine to end quickly, as is often the case. ‘he has promised he will.

Russia, Iran, China and other NATO adversaries see “gray zone” acts of sabotage as low-risk, high-reward operations, analysts say.

NATO allies are likely to press the issue at their annual summit in July, when the alliance will update its strategy to counter hybrid warfare, mainly because of the persistent threat posed by Russia.

Among the most worrying acts of sabotage are the suspected Russian plotidentified in July, for putting explosive devices on board planes bound for the US and Canada. Another recent and suspected act of sabotage damaged two underwater telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea in December. Finnish police suspect a ship carrying Russian oil damaged cables but they have not indicated that Moscow is leading the campaign.

In July, the United States sanctioned two Russian citizens of a Russia-based “hacktivist” group, the Cyber ​​​​Army of Russia Reborn (CARR), for its targeting of water treatment plants in Texas. While the US did not accuse the Kremlin of directing the attack, the CARR group has been linked to the Russian military.

The episodes are part of a long list of events on NATO territory in recent years in which Russia is the prime suspect. These include assassination attempts on British and German soil; explosions in an ammunition warehouse in the Czech Republic; the arming of migrants crossing illegally into Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland; and signal jams to disrupt civil aviation in the Baltic region.

At the NATO summit in Washington in July, alliance members said in a statement that they had “decided on further measures to counter Russian hybrid threats or actions individually and collectively, and will continue to coordinate -se closely,” but did not outline specific actions aimed at Moscow.

NATO’s eastern flank has it sounded the loudest alarm about gray area attacks. At the July summit, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a group of Baltic officials that NATO countries are likely to accept some level of risk because Russia’s hybrid activities are too profitable for them to stop.

Russia has repeatedly denied participating in any hybrid attack against NATO.

“All these statements, all those demanded by the European capitals are completely unfounded and we resolutely refute all of them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. he told reporters in May when asked about a series of acts of sabotage directed by Russia.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during an important speech outlining the alliance’s priorities in December, he said Russia is pursuing a long-term confrontation with NATO aimed at destabilizing democratic societies and discouraging support for Ukraine.

“This is not a traditional war. It is not an Article 5, but we have to defend ourselves,” he added, referring to a key section of the alliance treaty that dictates collective self-defense: if a member state is attacked, all other members must defend him. .

Part of NATO’s response to hybrid attacks is to increase information sharing between allies to identify where apparently criminal acts may rise to the level of sabotage; arrest the perpetrators and execute sentences; increase the level of awareness of the public and private sectors; and building resilience in the cyber domain to withstand attacks on critical infrastructure.

“I would say that the way we decided to not only share more intelligence, but also step up our game in naming and shaming … but also in condemning people who have carried out some of these acts of sabotage … I think that this has already raised the level of deterrence,” Prikk, the Estonian ambassador, told The Hill.

The European Union, for its part, imposed sanctions in mid-December against people accused of participating in pro-Russian hybrid threats – the first time it has done so – and assigned four high commissioners to counter this sabotage.

Also in December, legislators with the bipartisan Helsinki Commission published a report on Russia’s hybrid warfare activities since 2022, identifying 150 hybrid operations on NATO territory that fall into four main categories: attacks on critical infrastructure, violence campaigns, armed migration and election interference, and information campaigns .

The report concluded that Russian sabotage campaigns in North America and Europe had accelerated since Moscow invaded Ukraine, in an attempt to wage a shadow war in NATO “to destabilize, distress and dissuade the transatlantic alliance” from its support for Ukraine.

But he warned that his findings underestimated the true scale of the threat, urging NATO leaders to stand together in taking Russia’s hybrid operations seriously or risk inviting an escalation, “both in Ukraine as well as within NATO’s borders.”

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