Research on gray-zone conflicts: How do different deniability strategies influence willingness to respond with force?

A new article from Lauren Sukin and her colleague Kathryn Hedgecock (United States Military Academy) finds that in gray-zone conflicts, states generally use deniability (obscuring which actors took which actions) to limit the extent of accountability for their aggression in the international system. Using a survey experiment on US military cadets (N = 735), the authors argue that the use of…