SUIT Evidence Cited in Defence Committee Report

A recent Defence Committee review on Defence in the Grey Zone features written evidence from the University of Nottingham's Centre for the Study of Subversion, Unconventional Interventions and Terrorism (SUIT) as well as spoken evidence provided to the select committee by SUIT member Professor Andrew Mumford.

The grey zone is defined as coercive activities that “…fall below perceived thresholds for military action and across areas of responsibility of different parts of the government”. The evidence, cited in the report, and including SUIT members  Rory Cormac, Sean Fleming, Dan Lomas, Andrew Mumford, Wyn Rees, and Bettina Renz, suggested there needed to be greater coordination of counter grey-zone activity, forming part of a wider range of recommendations on government responses to threats from nation states.

Giving evidence to the Defence Committee, Professor Mumford also said: “Hybrid threats pose a massive challenge to liberal democracies, in large part because liberal democracies are forced to try to find an appropriate balance between combating these grey zone threats on the one hand and protecting our own values system on the other”.