The chapter explains that non-state actors controlling the area outside the effective control of the State can incur responsibility for the violations of their obligations under international human rights law. The norms of the responsibility of peace operations and de facto regimes provide an existing but rarely applied legal framework. Peace operations and de facto regimes incur responsibility not only for wrongful acts committed by persons or groups of persons whose conduct is attributable to them, but also for the failure to comply with their own due diligence obligations.

The chapter argues that judicial control mechanisms can provide effective remedies for individuals in ‘grey zones’ provided that the applicant can establish the responsibility of the respondent State and the (quasi-)judicial body is willing to exercise certain judicial activism to promote individuals’ access to international justice. The chapter highlights certain major deficiencies of judicial control mechanisms, before recommending certain tools of judicial activism that may promote individual applications from ‘grey zones’. If the attributability of the conduct to the respondent State is established, judicial control mechanisms are likely to have an impact on the human rights situation in the ‘grey zone’.

Non-judicial control mechanisms are international monitoring proceedings where the monitoring body has no competence to give opinions on individual petitions. Non-judicial control mechanisms are not characterised by the systemic deficiencies of judicial mechanisms that hinder their availability for individuals. Their procedure is more flexible and open ratione personae to address recommendations to States and non-state actors involved in the territorial situation. The chapter claims that non-judicial control mechanisms can establish a constructive dialogue with States and non-State actors controlling territory and follow a holistic approach, monitoring the conduct of all international law subjects implicated in the area.

The chapter answers the question of whether international human rights treaties apply to the conduct of States in an area outside the effective control of the territorial State. In international human rights law, ‘jurisdiction’ is the principal criterion of the scope of application ratione loci of conventions. States and monitoring bodies have interpreted the notion of jurisdiction ratione loci first in cases related to the conduct of States beyond their borders (outside State), and later with regard to the territorial State in a part of its own territory outside its effective control. The chapter explains that the two States’ jurisdictions are concurrent and complementary.

International human rights law binds non-state actors when they exercise effective control over the territory and imposes on them positive obligations in accordance with their effectiveness. Among possible legal bases, the de facto control theory is the most widely accepted explanation under which territorial control, irrespective of the legal title, instigates certain obligations. The chapter first explains that international human rights law has a binding effect on peace operations and de facto regimes. Second, it demonstrates that the specificity of the limits of their positive obligations results from the immunities of peace operations, on the one hand, and from the non-recognised status of de facto regimes, on the other.

When an area of the State’s territory is controlled by subjects other than the territorial State, the committed human rights violations may engage the responsibility of States in two different ways: States (especially the territorial State or the outside State) can be held responsible for the conduct of the non-state actor, through attribution, or for the violation of their own obligation of due diligence, independently of the attributability of the non-state conduct. Because of the lack of special attribution rules enshrined in the respective conventions, human rights treaty-monitoring bodies interpret the general rules flexibly in order to make human rights effective, in conformity with the principle of effet utile.

The book grapples with the applicability and application of international human rights law in geographic areas where the State that is recognised as the sovereign of the territory (territorial State) has lost effective control over a part of its territory. As such regions vary both as to the manner in which the territorial State has lost its territorial control and as to the subject that has taken over territorial control of the area, the chapter classifies and delimits the geographic areas on which the book focuses, and presents its conceptual framework.

International human rights law imposes obligations on States that have jurisdiction over facts occurring in the ‘grey zone’, namely, the territorial State and the outside State. The principal question which the chapter answers is dual: what the scope of the obligations binding the concerned States is in respect of the ‘grey zone’ and what the limits are of these obligations, especially compared to the obligations binding them in a ‘normal’ situation where the State has effective control over its entire territory. The chapter claims that the degree of the State’s effectiveness and the lawful limitations the State introduces can decrease the modalities of the expected protection but cannot restrict the heart of the obligations under human rights conventions.

‘Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.’ The readers of George Orwell's 1984 know that Oceania had in fact previously been at war with Eastasia, the third great power mentioned in the book, and that the alliance had probably shifted several times before already. But who the enemy is does not matter to the regime of Oceania; what matters is that there is an evil to make war against, in order to legitimise the dictatorship of Big Brother. The war is not meant to be won; waging permanent war has become an end in itself.

Great power politics in the 21st century does not resemble this pattern – yet. But the elements are there that could produce an uncontrollable dynamic leading to permanent open-ended rivalry between the great powers. In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart and the Cold War ended; only for rivalry to begin anew between the Russian Federation, the US and the EU. Had democracy taken root in Russia and not given way to authoritarianism, rivalry might have been avoided, if the democratic regime had accepted a reduced stature in international politics. But would a democratic Russia not also have sought great power status, like its predecessor? Likewise, a hypothetical democratic China would certainly still be a great power, might well uphold the claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea, and would definitely compete globally for markets, resources and influence. Would China and the US end their rivalry then? In fact, tensions arise even between the US and the EU, when the former perceives the latter to be gaining too much power and independence in certain areas, and, vice versa, when Brussels feels that Washington does not respect it as a strategic player. Tensions exist between China and Russia as well. Harmonisation of domestic political systems clearly does not suffice to prevent natural competition between powers from sliding into rivalry. The risk of permanent rivalry arises not because the great powers have different ways of life, but when they cannot accept the existence of peer competitors that pursue their legitimate interests in all the same theatres across the globe.

This will change everything. When in early 2020 the coronavirus spread around the world, and one state after the other succumbed and ordered society and the economy into lockdown, this was understandably the first reaction of many. For the middle classes in the affluent countries of the world, COVID-19 was the greatest disruption of their existence since the Second World War. Confined to my Brussels apartment with my husband, without visitors, and resolved to avoid online meetings as much as possible, I suddenly had a lot of writing time – indeed, almost nothing but writing time. But I too wondered for a moment whether the book project about grand strategy and the great powers that had been gestating in my mind for a few years still made sense. Soon enough, though, I concluded that in the realm of international politics, the relations between states, COVID-19 might not actually change all that much, precisely because it was a worldwide disaster. And so I sat down to write.

Had the coronavirus struck some great powers but not the others, it could have been a gamechanger, creating an opportunity for the powers that escaped to increase their wealth and influence at the expense of the others. But there was no escape. The coronavirus caused a symmetric crisis: it hit everybody. How hard depended in the first instance on the power of each and every state: the resilience of its health infrastructure, the speed and resolve of its crisis response, the scale of its economic recovery package. National leaders who delayed, putting up a show of insouciance or omnipotence, put their countries at risk. The later they acted, the more people died, the greater the economic and societal disruption, and the deeper the depths from which to recover. Many weak states anyhow have but limited capacity to protect their citizens, even in normal times. The longer-term consequences of the corona crisis obviously are asymmetrical, therefore – but only because the poor (people and states) end up even poorer while the rich hold their own.

The great powers of the early 21st century – the United States, China, Russia and the European Union – can mobilise more resources than anyone else. The coronavirus could not bring down a great power that responded adequately; only their own domestic mistakes could. All four initially mismanaged the crisis.

Grand strategy is more than planning. Planning is necessary: the strategist needs to plan how to mobilise the resources that the strategy requires. He must also plan for the implementation, simultaneously or successively, of the various instruments that he has chosen to achieve his desired ends. The force of habit and the weight of procedure often reduce this to a linear process: budgets are allocated, the means are acquired within that framework, and then put to use in the same way as before, without exploring alternative ways or reassessing the ends. This creates the false impression that whenever the ends are not met, the answer simply is to increase the means or, in military terms, to put more boots on the ground. Such a mechanistic approach leads to unimaginative and hence sub-optimal strategy: ‘ends + ways + means = (bad) strategy’, as Jeffrey Meiser puts in an appropriately formulaic manner. What is missing is creativity: the stroke of the imagination, and occasionally of genius, that will lead the strategist to combine instruments in new ways, or to design entirely new instruments, and to settle on novel ends in order to safeguard the interests of the state. Even a genius has to take into account the available resources, of course; that is why Field Marshal Slim wrote that ‘Imagination is a necessity for a general, but it must be a controlled imagination’. Nevertheless, creativity makes all the difference; that is why strategy is an art as much as a science. In Churchill's words:

‘Instructed judgement’, Churchill says: strategy can be taught – or I would not have written this book – but only up to a point. Since strategy is based on reason, everyone can learn its principles and the method of making strategy, just like everyone can learn how to play a musical instrument.