A set of hostile operations remaining below the threshold of open conflict, designed to stay undeclared, unattributable and ambiguous.
Hybrid war, sometimes called gray-zone conflict, designates operations that inflict costs and uncertainty on an adversary while remaining below the formal threshold of war. It is waged through cyber-attacks, sabotage of infrastructure, jamming of navigation signals or disinformation, and relies on intermediaries, ships under flags of convenience, criminal or diaspora groups, to blur responsibility. Its insurance stake is major, because it erases the four properties on which the classical war exclusion rested: it is neither declared, nor attributable, nor bounded, nor kinetic. The founding question of any exclusion, does this loss arise from war, then becomes without a certain answer. Hybrid war further blurs the line between criminality, espionage and war, placing each loss on a continuum rather than on one side or the other of a clean line.
The sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea by ships dragging their anchors, with no state claiming responsibility, is a typical case of hybrid war that defies insurers' war exclusions.
conflit de zone grise, guerre de zone grise, hybrid warfare, gray-zone conflict