|
HYBRID WARFARE
“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu.
During the cool war, the very effective propagandistic, fabrication of fake news and mass mental manipulation instrument of CIA was the 2 famous radio station, Free Europe and Voice of America. Real, the 2 radio stations, was the 100 % real weapon in the hand of the cool war winner, United States. The Free Europe and Voice of America was the real deathly smoking gun of Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treat.
The 2 radio stations, Free Europe and Voice of America, was the more dangerous and effective weapon of hybrid war ever used until now in the history of humanity.
The systematic study of mass psychology revealed the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the society, which society has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. That because, the rules of society since long time ago are in total contradiction with the feeling, the emotion, the conscience, the instinct of each citizen. The complexity of society created in each citizen the perfect double personality :one personality in the middle of society and completely other when the citizen is hide, alone.
Hybrid warfare is the use of a range of different methods to attack an enemy, for example, the spreading of false information, or attacking important computer systems, as well as, or instead of, traditional military action.
Technology has opened up new ways to conduct hybrid warfare.
In this new era of hybrid warfare, adversaries are able to threaten each other security interests without resorting to direct military action.
Hybrid warfare combines military and nonmilitary actions, including disinformation campaigns.
Deceiving an attacker is one of the tactics of hybrid warfare.
Hybrid warfare has been the bandwagon term to describe modern warfare in academic, policy, and journalist accounts. It describes a wide array of warfare techniques that do not correspond with earlier notions of warfare.
The concept of “Hybrid Warfare”, which has been emerged thanks to today’s differentiated perceptions and by rapid technological developments of which the symmetrical means and asymmetrical means are used together, leads to the new approaches in the military thought.
Globalization, technological developments and the information revolution have made the world accept an order of change which the humanity has never experienced before. This order has influenced almost everything in our conceptual-empirical lives and the concept of war has not been an exception to that.
The concept of “Hybrid Warfare” emerged as a product of this change in the literature in 2007. First used by Frank Hoffman, the concept of “hybrid warfare” reflects a type of war, in which many kinds of war are being used simultaneously in a way best suiting the current circumstances. Within this scope, it is meaningless to classify wars as large/small wars or regular/irregular wars. Hoffman argues that, in the forthcoming period, the conventional forces, irregular warfare and terrorist groups and crime organizations will be present within the same operation area and time.
Within this context, the most prominent feature of the hybrid warfare is the combination of irregular warfare tactics and high technology. The hybrid warfare will not remain limited only to non-state actors but, in the future; it will also be used conventionally against more powerful states by other states.
Hybrid Warfare is a term that has enjoyed significant currency in recent years. Its early advocates were keen to assert that the use of new technologies, new clandestine methods or the actions of new actors, operating below the thresholds that could define armed conflict, was a hybrid or blend of insurgency and conventional warfare.
In many ways, however, hybrid warfare is not new. Hybrid threats, the combined or blended methods of attack, are designed using particular ‘ways’ to fulfill easily identifiable political ‘ends’, in order to force an enemy to be compliant to the will of its adversary. Such a process would be familiar to scholars of classical war theory.
Nevertheless, advocates of hybrid war maintain that the current character of war indicates that there is an erosion and subversion of established norms and thresholds, not only involving war fighting, but also in international relations. These erosive elements take five forms: The first is political, such as the subversion of our political economy by means of misinformation, cyber sabotage or espionage. The second takes the form of being diplomatic, namely the attempt to break or divide allies. The third takes the form of military means, using local irregular forces, one’s own troops in disguise, sabotage and assassination, proxies, brinkmanship or terrorism. The fourth is the social dimension, using media campaigns to demoralize our populations. The fifth is economic attack, using sanctions, the purchase of our assets, the buying up of resources or even interference with the prices that our consumers pay. It all sounds overwhelming and is threatening precisely because it appears to be beyond the capacity of military forces to defend against it. Indeed, the military instrument appears to be less relevant or appropriate than diplomatic, economic or political measures.
“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu.
Over two thousand years ago, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu realized that indirect warfare is one of the most efficient ways of fighting an enemy. It allows an opponent to defeat their adversary without directly engaging them, thereby saving themselves the resources that would have to be expended in a direct confrontation. Attacking an enemy indirectly can also bog them down and put them on the defensive, thereby making them vulnerable to other forms of attack. It also carries with it a certain opportunity cost for the defending side, since the time and resources that they spend in dealing with the indirect attack could potentially have been put to better use elsewhere.
Besides the tactical advantages, there are also strategic ones as well. There may be certain constraints (e.g. alliances, military parity, etc.) that prevent one entity from directly launching hostilities against another. In this case, indirect warfare is the only option to destabilize the other. In the current day, weapons of mass destruction and the emerging multipolar world place limits on direct confrontation between Great Powers. Even though the US still retains the world’s strongest conventional military, the nuclear parity it shares with Russia serves as a reminder that unipolarity has its limits. Additionally, the international system is morphing in such a way that the political and physical costs of waging a conventional war against certain countries (i.e. China, Iran) are becoming too much of a burden for US decision makers, thereby making this military option less attractive. Under such circumstances, indirect warfare acquires a heightened value in strategic planning and its application can take on a variety of forms. Direct warfare in the past may have been marked by bombers and tanks, but if the pattern that the US has presently applied in Syria and Ukraine is any indication, then indirect warfare in the future will be marked by “protesters” and insurgents. Fifth columns will be formed less by secret agents and covert saboteurs and more by non-state actors that publicly behave as civilians. Social media and similar technologies will come to replace precision-guided munitions as the “surgical strike” capability of the aggressive party, and chat rooms and Facebook pages will become the new “militants’ den”. Instead of directly confronting the targets on their home turf, proxy conflicts will be waged in their near vicinity in order to destabilize their periphery. Traditional occupations may give way to coups and indirect regime change operations that are more cost effective and less politically sensitive.
The book focuses on the new strategy of indirect warfare that the US has demonstrated during the Syrian and Ukrainian Crises. Both situations left many wondering whether they were observing the export of Color Revolutions to the Mideast, the arrival of the Arab Spring to Europe, or perhaps some kind of Frankenstein hybrid. It is asserted that when the US’ actions in both countries are objectively compared, one can discern a new patterned approach towards regime change.
This model begins by deploying a Color Revolution as a soft coup attempt, only to be followed up by a hard coup Unconventional War if the first plan fails. Unconventional Warfare is defined in this book as any type of nonconventional (i.e. non-official military) force engaged in largely asymmetrical combat against a traditional adversary. Taken together in a two-pronged approach, Color Revolutions and Unconventional Warfare represent the two components that form the theory of Hybrid War, the new method of indirect warfare being waged by the US.
The Moscow Conference on International Security in May 2014 focused heavily on the role of Color Revolutions in advancing US foreign policy goals across the world.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that "Color revolutions are increasingly taking on the form of warfare and are developed according to the rules of warcraft." The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Anthony Cordesman attended the conference and has published photos of the PowerPoint slides presented there. He also included notable comments from each speaker. Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, had an especially important presentation. He introduced the concept of the “adaptive approach” to military force. By this he means that non-military means (identified as Color Revolutions) are aided by the concealed use of force and open military interference (after a pretext is found) against an opposing state.
The Adaptive Approach first introduced by Gerasimov must be further examined, and this is one of the goals of the book. Because it is so new, the concept has not been fully developed and must be refined. For example, the absence of Humanitarian Intervention/Responsibility to Protect à la the Libyan scenario in Syria and Ukraine needs to be accounted for. It is therefore theorized that in today’s complex international environment, the closer that US destabilization operations get towards their targeted cores (Russia, Iran, China), the lower the probability of direct warfare and the higher the chances that indirect means (Color Revolutions and Unconventional Warfare) will be applied. Of course, this axiom can theoretically be reversed as the respective cores become weakened, distracted, or lose their strategic initiative and unipolarity goes on the upswing. Because Libya is on the extreme periphery of Russia and Iran, direct regime change methods were eventually applied, but since Ukraine and Syria are much closer to the targeted cores, indirect regime change attempts via Color Revolutions and Unconventional Warfare have been the primary plan in the evolving multipolar world. Since a repeat of the Libyan War so close to core states’ borders is extremely difficult for the US because of the international situation (more so for Ukraine than for Syria, since Russia is much stronger of a core than Iran, which has undergone a relative weakening in the past year), it is proposed that the Syrian and Ukrainian models will become the standard in the future.
Although the Libyan scenario may be the ultimate goal of American military planners, it will come to be seen as more of an anomaly than a rule as the US advances deeper into Eurasia. Additionally, the Adaptive Approach as expressed at the Moscow Conference on International Security 2014 has not been placed into a geopolitical context, nor does it provide an in-depth explanation of Color Revolutions or Unconventional Warfare. There is also no mention of how these two concepts are bridged between one another, which is because the Adaptive Approach idea is very new and had only been first coined in May 2014. Accordingly, the field is open for new research into these topics that can connect everything together into a unified theory. Since the understudied and newly unveiled Adaptive Approach is identified as an emerging threat to global security, the book takes on a more pressing and timely character than ever before.
The object of research is US grand strategy and the new patterned approach to regime change is the subject. The book restricts itself towards only analyzing the Color Revolution and Unconventional Warfare aspects of the Adaptive Approach, believing them to be a new theory of warfare in and of themselves. The fusion of these two can stand alone from the third step of military interference, and it will be argued that this hybrid may be more preferable than expanding the destabilization operation to Humanitarian Intervention/Responsibility to Protect. The structural events in Syria and Ukraine serve as the case studies for testing this new theory, and it will be taken for a given that the reader has some level of pre-existing knowledge about these situations. The book aims to elaborate upon and analyze the evolving US regime change template and method of warfare first described at the Moscow Conference on International Security 2014, as well as showing that the combination of Color Revolutions and Unconventional Warfare represents a new theory of state destabilization that is ready for strategic deployment all across the world.
Contemporary American foreign policy towards Russia is the result of the accumulation of geopolitical theory. Being situated nearly halfway across the world from one another and in opposite hemispheres, it is natural that geopolitics would figure prominently in the policy formation of each state towards the other. Both countries are also strong powers capable of projecting influence and force beyond their borders, even more so nowadays for the US than for Russia. In fact, it will be argued that the US has developed a Eurasian-wide approach towards dealing with Russia and other powers, and it is this strategy that is at the heart of Hybrid Wars. In order to get to this point, however, an overview of geopolitical pillars that led to it must first be commenced. Without an understanding of the theoretical principles that led to today’s policy, it is not possible to adequately comprehend the significance of the new theory and its pivotal place in American strategic planning.
Alfred Thayer Mahan can be thought of as the forefather of the geopolitical thinking that led to and influenced current American policy. He published “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History” in 1890 and is credited with highlighting the importance of naval strategy in the projection of global influence4. The overriding concept behind his work was that strategic control of certain areas of the sea can be translated into control and influence elsewhere. This helped naval powers in formulating their global strategy. Partially as a response to Mahan’s treatise on the influence of sea power, Halford Mackinder wrote “The Geographical Pivot of History” in 1904. His article focused instead on the influence of land power, emphasizing that control over the Heartland (which he identified as part of Russia and Central Asia) is a necessary precondition for control over the “world island” of Eurasia. Although not a prominent part of his theory, he distinguished the Inner Crescent as being the part of the world island contiguous to the coast. Mackinder critically identified Eastern Europe as the gateway to the Heartland, later writing in 1919 that “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the World.” What is important here is that both geo - strategists proposed opposite views of how power is exercised across the world. In the context of this book, however, Mahan’s primary importance is that he influenced Mackinder, who in turn utilized some concepts of sea power in proposing the Eurasian world island and Heartland theories. Combined with his analysis of Eastern Europe’s role, Mackinder’s theoretical contributions elevated Russia’s role in global geopolitical planning and placed it in the crosshairs of those eyeing global dominance.
The next stage of geopolitical thought relating to Russia deals with interwar Polish leader Josef Pilsudski and his Prometheism strategy. Pilsudski believed that if the non-Russian people of the Soviet Union could be externally influenced to rebel against the center, the entire state could fracture into a myriad of ethnic entities that Poland could exploit via an alliance system. Although he was unsuccessful in achieving this goal, Pilsudski had a strong influence on Russian-themed geopolitics. He pioneered the idea that strategic destabilization of the periphery can spread into the interior, and this mantra can be seen as the spiritual genesis of compatriot Zbigniew Brzezinski’s highly influential Eurasian Balkans idea.
Nicholas Spykman returned to Mackinder’s Inner Crescent idea in 1944 and expanded upon it by renaming it the Rimland. He saw this region as being more important than the Heartland because of its industrial and manpower potential, as well as its recent legacy of aggressive revisionist powers (Napoleonic France and Germany in the two World Wars). This led to his revision of Mackinder’s thesis about Eastern Europe and the Heartland to instead command that “Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”
Saul Cohen took this a step further by conducting a cross-regional comparison of the Rimland states to create what he termed Shatterbelts. He defined this as “a large, strategically located region that is occupied by a number of conflicting states and is caught between the conflicting interests of the Great Powers”, which he saw as being Sub-Saharan Africa, the Mideast, and Southeast Asia. Because of their diverse characteristics, he predicted that they were more averse to conflict than any other places in the world.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter and godfather of the Mujahedeen, wrote the “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives” in 1997. In this famous work, he outlined how the US can preserve its unipolar dominance across Eurasia, specifically by utilizing something that he termed the “Eurasian Balkans”. He defines it as such:
“The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that oblong (portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia, the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East)...not only are its political entities unstable, but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation ‘Eurasian Balkans’”
Brzezinski essentially expanded the idea of the Rimland / Shatterbelt to include the newly independent former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. This places the “ethnic cauldron”, as he terms it, right on Russia’s doorstep. He then borrowed from Pilsudski to include peripheral strategic destabilization within the Eurasian Balkans as a possible method for weakening the Russian core and preserving American hegemony. This is also envisioned as preventing the collusion of continental powers that could threaten American control of Eurasia.
Brzezinski’s Eurasian Balkans concept is the apex of American geopolitical thinking. If Mackinder constructed the world island and located Russia as its Heartland, Spykman and Cohen outlined its vulnerabilities, and Pilsudski innovatively conspired to break it up, then Brzezinski combined the teachings of all of them in identifying the geostrategic imperatives of American primacy. In order to permanently weaken Russia and thus control the Heartland, it must be indirectly targeted via the Pilsudski method of destabilization in select Shatterbelt areas.
The idea is not necessarily to foster separatism within Russia itself as Pilsudski had planned (although this would also serve American goals), but instead to embrace the general idea of peripheral chaos and maximize it for strategic purposes. The logic goes that if Russia’s Eurasian periphery can remain in a constant state of destabilization or chaotic flux (or at the very least be stably filled with anti-Russian governments, which in and of itself would be extremely destabilizing), Russia would be thrown off balance and not be able to hinder America’s hegemonic plans. The closer that this destabilizing chaos can penetrate into the Russian core, the better. America’s challenge today lies in the fact that as the world grows more multipolar and Russia restores its ability to reassert its neighborly interests (and China and Iran acquire theirs), the US must now tread indirectly with its destabilizing methods. The “Shock and Awe” campaign of 2003 or the 2011 NATO War in Libya are nearly impossible to repeat in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, for example, owing to the changed international circumstances and enormous collateral (physical, financial, political) costs that they would entail. What can happen, however, are campaigns of indirect geopolitical sabotage under the guise of “pro-democracy” movements or externally supported civil conflicts. In fact, combining both of them into a “one-two punch” is the perfect “knockout” attack for dealing with Eurasian heavyweights, in this case, Russia. The novelty of this approach lies in the fact that it succeeds simply by reaping chaos and creating centripetal forces that threaten to tear a targeted society apart. It doesn’t have to overthrow a government per say in order to be a success – all that has to happen is that society becomes divided and large-scale uncertainty, the harbinger of social chaos, ensures.
This combination of vacuum and suction, as Brzezinski wrote about above, creates a geopolitical deadlock, which in turn presents an enormous challenge for the indirectly targeted state (Russia) to take initiatives past the border of the directly destabilized one. They are deadlocked into dealing with it, whether they want to or not, and this places them on the strategic defensive. This is even more so if the targeted state directly abuts the main indirect target, as Ukraine does to Russia, for example.
It is now appropriate to segue into an explanation of certain military theories that promote the appeal of indirect warfare. It is important to understand how and why American decision makers apply these concepts in order to have a better grasp of the Hybrid War theory. Select theories, strategies, and tactics will be discussed within this section, and for the sake of brevity, only the relevant aspects of each will be included.
In 1989, William Lind co-authored an article in the Marine Corps Gazette which forecast the next generation of warfare. Identified as Fourth-Generation Warfare, it is predicted to be more fluid, decentralized, and asymmetrical than the warfare of the past. When one looks at the explosion of non-state actor activity since the end of the Cold War, Lind’s prognosis appears to be correct.
This type of warfare also corresponds to the style of Unconventional Warfare, meaning that its rise can be seen as a direct consequence of Fourth-Generation Warfare. Lind also forecast that there would be an increased emphasis on information warfare and psychological operations, which perfectly meshes with the modus operandi of Color Revolutions. He writes: “Psychological operations may become the dominant operational and strategic weapon in the form of media/information intervention...A major target will be the enemy population's support of its government and the war. Television news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions.” Thus, in the context of the book, Lind’s forecasts were very prescient. They foretold the coming popularity of Unconventional Warfare and the rolling out of massive anti-government information campaigns. He also wrote that “the distinction between “civilian” and “military” may disappear”, and this has also turned out to be the case. Specifically, it will later be seen how civilians are co-opted into fulfilling de-facto military roles during Color Revolutions and how the military uses civilian support during Unconventional Warfare. Through this way, Hybrid Wars are the epitome of Fourth-Generation Warfare.
Warden writes that the enemy is like a system, therefore meaning that all of these parts are interconnected to some degree. The closer one strikes at the core, the more powerful and reverberating the attack will be. Hitting the system essentials, for example, will affect all of the circles outside of it, whereas harming the fielded military will keep the attack isolated to that ring only. This concept is very important for both Unconventional Warfare and Color Revolutions, the two pillars of Hybrid Wars. When it comes to Unconventional Warfare, the fighting units seek to attack each of these circles, but there seems to be a preponderance of focus on the middle three (population, infrastructure, system essentials) out of convenience and effectiveness. Of course, attacking the fielded military or leadership does occur, but as for the former, the odds may be stacked against the Unconventional Warfare actors, and for the latter, it may be difficult to come across such an opportunity as a high-profile target. The Five Rings look different when it comes to Color Revolutions, and there are two different sets of rings for each target: society and the individual. Society is targeted by the Color Revolution en masse after the decision has been made to initiate the destabilization.
Although both state and non-state actors engage in hybrid warfare they vary widely in their means and actions. That being said, they all exhibit the capability to synchronize various instruments of power against specific vulnerabilities to create linear and non-linear effects. By focusing on these characteristics of a hybrid warfare actors’ capabilities, together with the target’s vulnerabilities in these areas and then overlaying these with the means and effects, the Baseline Assessment was able to create a generic description of hybrid warfare. It describes hybrid warfare as: the synchronized use of multiple instruments of power tailored to specific vulnerabilities across the full spectrum of societal functions to achieve synergistic effects. The Baseline Assessment concluded that hybrid warfare is asymmetric and uses multiple instruments of power along a horizontal and vertical axis, and to varying degrees shares an increased emphasis on creativity, ambiguity, and the cognitive elements of war. This sets hybrid warfare apart from an attrition-based approach to warfare where one matches the strength of the other, either qualitatively or quantitatively, to degrade the opponent’s capabilities.
Hybrid warfare actor can synchronize its military, political, economic, civilian, informational (MPECI) instruments of power to vertically and horizontally escalate a series of specific activities to create effects. It also shows how a hybrid warfare actor can either vertically escalate by increasing the intensity of one or many of the instruments of power, and/or horizontally ‘escalate’ through synchronizing multiple instruments of power to create effects greater than through vertical escalation alone.
Given this view, understanding a hybrid warfare adversary does not lend itself solely to a traditional threat analysis based on its capability and intent for a number of important reasons.
First, hybrid warfare uses a wider set of MPECI tools and techniques that one usually will not look at in traditional threat assessments.
Second, it targets vulnerabilities across societies in ways that we do not traditionally think about.
Third, it synchronizes its means in novel ways. For example, by only looking at the different instruments of power an adversary possesses, one cannot necessarily predict how and to what degree they might be synchronized to create certain effects. Thus, the functional capabilities of a hybrid warfare adversary, although important, will not necessarily provide the right information to understand the problem.
Fourth, hybrid warfare intentionally exploits ambiguity, creativity, and our understanding of war to make attacks less ‘visible’. This is due to the fact that they can be tailored to stay below certain detection and response thresholds, including international legal thresholds, thus hampering the decision process and making it harder to react to a hybrid warfare attack.
Fifth, relatedly, and arguably more than conventional types of warfare, a hybrid warfare campaign may not be seen until it is already well underway, with damaging effects having already begun manifesting themselves and degrading a target’s capability to defend itself. The issues described above provide the basis for expanding the traditional enemy-centric threat analysis. To this end, the Analytical Framework model focuses on the vulnerabilities of the defender, the ability of the hybrid warfare attacker to synchronize a wide variety of its capabilities during its attack, and the effects created as a result of these actions against specific vulnerabilities of its intended target.
The Analytical Framework is based on three discrete, yet interlocked, categories. While analytically separated here, they need to be understood in concert, because the sum of hybrid warfare is greater than each individual part. They are:
Critical functions and vulnerabilities;
Synchronization of means (horizontal escalation)
Effects and non-linearity.
Critical functions are activities or operations distributed across the political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure spectrum which, if discontinued, could lead to a disruption of services that a working system (for example, a state, its society or a subsection thereof) depends on. Critical functions can be broken down into a combination of actors (for example, individuals or organizations), infrastructures (for example, ‘critical’ national power grids) and processes (for example, legal/jurisdictional, technical, political).All critical functions have vulnerabilities that present a hybrid warfare opponent/actor with the possible conditions for exploitation, depending on the means at its disposal. However, it is important to realize that not all vulnerabilities necessarily present themselves as opportunities for an opponent to exploit. Alternatively, an adversary may choose not to exploit a particular vulnerability depending on its intentions. Furthermore, vulnerabilities within critical functions may not be known to a target system (for example, unknown vulnerabilities such as a zero-day cyber-attack), and may only present themselves as events unfold.
Example: Exploiting vulnerabilities, the deep sectarian, ethnic and economic divisions in Syrian society were exploited by both Iran and ISIL with a view to achieving their strategic objectives.
Example: Exploiting vulnerabilities, In May 2014 the Russian hacker group Cyber Berkut exploited cyber vulnerabilities (routers, software and hard drives) of the Ukranian National Election Commission to undermine the credibility of the elections.
Synchronization of means and horizontal escalation Synchronization is the ability of a hybrid warfare actor to effectively coordinate instruments of power (MPECI) in time, space and purpose to create the desired effects. The ability to synchronize both military and non-military means simultaneously within the same battle space is considered a key characteristic of a hybrid warfare actor. Synchronization allows the hybrid warfare actor to ‘escalate’ or‘ de-escalate’ horizontally rather than just vertically, thus providing further options for the attacker. For example, by escalating along the horizontal axis (MPECI spectrum) through synchronization of different means, a hybrid warfare actor can stay below certain detection and response thresholds. By using this method, they can apply as much, or even more, coercion than if they were to escalate one instrument vertically. In other words, through horizontal escalation a hybrid warfare actor can create effects similar, or even greater, than applying overt coercion through, for example, the military or political instrument of power, because of its force multiplying effects.
Synchronization also allows for de-escalation of one or more instruments of power and/or switching between means while keeping the overall escalation at a certain level. Also, one instrument can be used for compensatory measures, as a carrot, while others are used as coercive, as a stick. In essence, synchronization and horizontal escalation provides the attacker with more options than if they were to use unsynchronized vertical escalation alone. Crucially, much of what is done in the horizontal axis can be ambiguous – either hidden from view (for example, cyber operations), conducted with unclear intent (such as investing in foreign critical infrastructure) or not readily definable as a hostile and aggressive act (instigating non-violent protest, for example).
Synchronization has several advantages for the attacker:
The ability to tailor means and vulnerabilities to effects;
The ability to use coercion while staying below the target’s detection thresholds;
The ability to use coercion while staying below the target’s response thresholds;
Easier to simultaneously escalate and de-escalate.
Example: synchronization, in autumn 2013 Iran synchronized terrorist threats, cyber-attacks and propaganda to influence the calculation by the US and allies in order to deter external intervention in Syria.
Example: synchronization, in parallel with setting up secret military training camps, ISIL established missionary offices spreading their Salafi message in local communities as well gathering information on all social structures. This information was utilized to target political and military opposition.
In hybrid warfare, effects are understood as a change of state of an entity. They are the results of synchronized actions tailored against specific vulnerabilities of a target system.
The ability of a hybrid warfare actor to synchronize means against specific vulnerabilities to create effects means that one cannot readily discern a linear causal chain of events. The more elements that are in the mix the more difficult causality becomes.
Action A does not necessarily lead to outcome B. Moreover, the same action may cause a different effect in a different context. Although it is possible to analyze effects through consequence/impact analysis of very specific actions taken against specific targets (for example, blowing up a dam will lead to flooding which will result in X amount of damage given the amount of water in the reservoir) this does not provide an indication of how one might be attacked.
While some form of causality and second and third order effects might be visible in hindsight, non-linearity makes analysis, and especially prediction based on past empirical examples, extremely difficult. The problem with non-linear effects is that they can only be ‘seen’ once they have manifested. They are by definition unpredictable. This also means that the adversary cannot plan or control these effects. More importantly, they will need to be highly adaptable if they are to be ready to capitalize on the different effects of their actions as they occur.
Critical functions and vulnerabilities. The target of a hybrid warfare attack is represented by the pie chart divided into PMESII sectors (indicated along the outer ring). This shows the potential scope and breadth of operations of a hybrid warfare attacker. It also emphasizes the need of each state to consider mapping out its own critical functions and vulnerabilities across PMESII in terms of its status: normality, crisis and emergency.
Synchronization of means and horizontal escalation. The upper left corner of the figure lists the diverse set of means used by hybrid warfare actors, organized into color-coded MPECI instruments of power. The figure then locates the use of a particular means into a specific PMESII sector of the target. In Figure 2’s example, the graphic indicates that military means (color red) were used to target a critical function in the information sector of a target state. For visual clarity, Figure 2 only shows the single military hybrid warfare event described above.
For synchronization of means to be represented in this graphic, multiple events (star symbols) comprising different MPECI means (indicated by color) would need to be shown. Horizontal escalation would be represented in this graphic by showing a variety of hybrid warfare events comprised of multiple MPECI means across the different sectors of the target state.
Effects and non-linearity. Figure 2 depicts effects by illustrating how a military event in the information sector can be related to an effect in the political sector which in turn can create an effect in the infrastructure sector. The graphic also identifies how first and second order effects stem from these events.
Although not depicted here, a key aspect of the potential effects of hybrid warfare is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ caused by a series of synchronized, low-observable or unobserved events operating below the threshold of what would normally constitute ‘war’. Moreover, they normally only become apparent once their cumulative and non-linear effects begin to manifest themselves.
To get a better understanding of how the Analytical Framework model works, this section applies an empirical case study of the Ukrainian Conflict (2013-2015) to the framework. These are intended to further help the reader understand the nature of hybrid warfare by applying the Analytical Framework.
The illustrative example in this section of the Ukrainian Conflict focuses on Russia’s use of the economic spectrum of the MPECI instruments. Here, the use of gas and lending instruments allowed the Russians to create SAPs to put pressure on Ukrainian governments over the whole time period and synchronize them with other instruments of power such as military and informational. Critical functions and vulnerabilities The case study identifies two types of vulnerabilities that represent enabling factors for facilitating the implementation and execution of a specific synchronized economic attack package as part of the hybrid warfare campaign.
Vulnerabilities inherent to Ukraine. -Weak macroeconomic fundamentals in Ukraine.-High levels of foreign debt in Ukraine.
Vulnerabilities created intentionally by Russia.-Gas supply and transit contracts between Russia and Ukraine.-Russian loan structure to Ukraine.-High levels of Ukrainian dependency on Russian gas. Synchronization of means and escalation patterns The case study identifies two different SAPs.
Synchronized attack package 1 (SAP 1) represents the adversarial actions undertaken by Russia and its proxies (mainly Gazprom and Gazprombank) within the Ukrainian gas domain during the conflict period.
on the unpredictable events that followed the social and political chaos in Ukraine.
Without speculating on Russian intentions, Moscow did capitalize on the turmoil in Ukraine to annex Crimea and adapted to the changing circumstances by refashioning their SAPs from compensatory to coercive instruments (for example, acceptance of the loan offer provides a temporary relief for Ukraine but over the medium to long term it leads to financial and political dependence). Throughout the whole conflict period examined in this case study, the SAPs were active parts of the synchronized means that Russia used to great effect in escalating or de-escalating the conflict as they saw fit.
For instance, the ‘nuclear options’ or maximum vertical escalation embedded within the SAPs that could have been used in the conflict remained on the table.
While Moscow decided against using this option because it would likely have caused economic collapse with unpredictable and negative consequences for Russia, it is also likely that one of the effects of the embedded ‘nuclear options’ was a successful deterrence of Ukraine from annihilating Russian proxies with the use of conventional military forces.
Throughout the conflict period, the Russians were active in tactically and operationally switching between escalation and de-escalation across various instruments of power. Although compensatory measures played an important role, Russia was able to keep the overall level of strategic escalation high and stable. By synchronizing various elements such as the gas supply and pricing and the loan offers, the Russians expanded the number of potential tactical combinations that could be utilized for strategic utility. The SAPs were designed in a way that they could be simultaneously used to escalate or de-escalate and used for compensation or coercion depending on the changing circumstances of the conflict.
Both SAP 1 and SAP 2 is indicative of Russia’s deliberate and highly structured and flexible approach to shaping potential future conflict space. While the decisive moments of the conflict (for example, annexation of Crimea, Minsk 1 and Minsk 2) were dictated by hard military power, SAP 1 and SAP 2 likely provided escalation dominance for a limited military campaign. While this section is only a limited outline of a very complex conflict it shows how the Analytical Framework can be used to further our understanding of how tailor-made synchronized attack packages work against specific contextual vulnerabilities in the target system.
The instruments of power used by the Russians were tightly linked to their capabilities and the vulnerabilities of Ukraine, all orchestrated in escalation and/or de-escalation patterns according to their political goals. In addition, they were used in ambiguous ways, hidden from view or conducted with unclear intentions making it difficult for the Ukrainians to understand and respond until the instruments had already taken effect. The case study shows clearly how a hybrid warfare attack in one sector has effects in different sectors, but it also shows that controlling the non-linear effects is not always possible. Importantly, this Russian hybrid warfare attack was specifically designed to the political, social, economic, informational and military context Ukraine found themselves in.
As the previous case study shows, hybrid warfare attacks focus on specific vulnerabilities of the target making them highly contextual. To respond to this threat, certain steps need to be followed. First of all, the target needs an assessment of its critical functions and vulnerabilities. Once critical functions and vulnerabilities are identified, thresholds must be established to monitor changes in the functional status (for example, the total stress) of one’s critical functions. Thresholds help identify and define the severity of a hybrid warfare attack (or suspected attack) by pre-determining levels (for example, normality, crisis or emergency) along with the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded to move from one status level to the next. Specific indicators should also be built to help determine if and when a hybrid warfare action or effect is occurring. Building a baseline (for example, status normal) is a critical first step in identifying hybrid warfare activity. Without having a sense of what is normal, it is difficult to ‘see’ actions that may be part of an ambiguous hybrid warfare attack. An attack from a hybrid warfare actor using the MPECI instruments of power may be disruptive, but not to an extent that one is able to distinguish them from normal incidents. However, if it happens many times or in other sectors simultaneously, it may cross thresholds due to the fact that synchronized efforts can lead to cumulative and non-linear effects. The Baseline Assessment established that hybrid warfare does not neatly fit into traditional attack-phase thinking. It does not necessarily evolve linearly through escalatory phases towards a strategically defined end state. Instead of operating in phases, a hybrid warfare attack evolves through simultaneous escalation and de-escalation at the tactical and operational level across the vertical and horizontal axis, flexibly exploiting and taking advantage of effects as they occur. As such, understanding a hybrid warfare attack and how to respond to it requires a near real-time monitoring of one’s vulnerabilities, the capabilities and actions of a hybrid warfare actor and the possible effects attacks against the system may cause.
As we have seen, responding to a hybrid warfare threat requires it to be contextualized according to the specific capabilities and vulnerabilities of the target system. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate the location of an attack, the means that will be used, or the vulnerabilities that will be exploited (or indeed even ‘created’) by a hybrid warfare actor, persistent monitoring of one’s critical functions is necessary. Only by estimating the target system’s status (critical functions and vulnerabilities) and mapping the actions taken by the hybrid warfare actor can one understand how the threat evolves and where the target system is in terms of its state (normal, crisis or emergency). This monitoring process involves identifying events as potential risks to one’s critical functions, possible attempts to exploit specific vulnerabilities, and then ‘connecting the dots’ which enables the target to identify, react, respond and ultimately counter a hybrid warfare
This time series depiction of how a hybrid warfare attack might occur does not follow a linear phase model, but rather tactically and operationally escalates and de-escalates different MPECI instruments simultaneously while escalating the conflict altogether. In time series 2, the attack on the infrastructure is de-escalated while the attacker shifts its focus to create hybrid warfare events in the informational and economic sector increasing the overall stress level on the target.
Hybrid warfare’s tailored targeting of its adversary’s entire PMESII spectrum logically drives a requirement for states to conduct a hybrid warfare self-assessment to identify critical functions and find vulnerabilities (upper left box). This process does not replace traditional threat analysis. Rather, national self-assessment supplements efforts to understand the hybrid warfare threat across each of the MPECI tools that are available. The traditional threat analysis is supplemented by a hybrid warfare threat analysis (lower left box) in which the military focuses on the ‘M’ (military) hybrid warfare threat, while civilian subject matter experts and the private sector, in close cooperation, assist with non-traditional threat analysis dealing with political, economic, civil, informational (PECI) hybrid warfare tools. The red arrow indicates how hybrid warfare threat analysts should attempt to think of how a specific hybrid warfare actor might tailor attacks to different vulnerabilities of intended targets across the PMESII spectrum.
Crucially, this analysis must consider how these means of attack may be formed into a synchronized attack package tailored to the specific vulnerabilities of its target. Together, this process must be part of an integrated national approach coordinating whole of government, military and private sector expertise to ensure comprehensiveness (upper right box). In turn, this integrated approach should be institutionalized in an intergovernmental coordination body (for example, the Executive Counter-Hybrid Warfare Steering Committee) responsible for monitoring changes in the situation and evaluating their effects. Institutionalizing a process to collect and disseminate threat and vulnerability information to the appropriate parties will enhance hybrid warfare early warning efforts, assist resiliency efforts, and may even have a deterrent effect as the conditions of possibility may be closed off for the attacker. Finally, in principle, these efforts should be replicated at the international and multinational levels (lower right box) to enhance counter-hybrid warfare efforts. This analysis leads us to make the following policy recommendations.
Hybrid warfare is designed to exploit national vulnerabilities across the political, military, economic, social, informational and infrastructure (PMESII) spectrum. Therefore as a minimum national governments should conduct a self-assessment of critical functions and vulnerabilities across all sectors, and maintain it regularly.
Hybrid warfare uses coordinated military, political, economic, civilian and informational (MPECI) instruments of power that extend far beyond the military realm. National efforts should enhance traditional threat assessment activity to include non-conventional political, economic, civil, international (PECI) tools and capabilities. Crucially, this analysis must consider how these means of attack may be formed into a synchronized attack package tailored to the specific vulnerabilities of its target.
Hybrid warfare is synchronized and systematic – the response should be too. National governments should establish and embed a process to lead and coordinate a national approach of self-assessment and threat analysis. This process should direct comprehensive cross-government efforts to understand, detect and respond to hybrid threats.
Hybrid threats are an international issue – the response should be to. National governments should coordinate a coherent approach amongst themselves to understand, detect and respond to hybrid warfare to their collective interests. Multinational frameworks – preferably using existing institutions and processes – should be developed to facilitate cooperation and collaboration across borders.
Hybrid warfare involves the synchronized use of military and non-military means against specific vulnerabilities to create effects against its opponent. Its instruments can be ratcheted up and down simultaneously, using different tools against different targets, across the whole of society. In this respect, hybrid warfare expands the battlefield.
It also creatively exploits our cognitive predisposition to emphasize the military instrument of power, allowing opponents to leverage non-military ((M)PECI) means against a wider set of unconventional targets. This, in turn, allows hybrid warfare actors, at least initially, to operate ambiguously below the target’s thresholds of detection and response. In practice, this can make identifying the starting point of hybrid warfare very difficult. Moreover, it increases the possibility of a hybrid warfare actor inflicting significant damage on its opponent before that opponent can respond to, or possibly even detect, a hybrid warfare attack. This strong and fluid element of ambiguity within hybrid warfare adds a new dimension to how coercion, aggression, conflict and war are to be understood. In this respect, new geostrategic contexts, new applications of technologies, and new organizational forms suggest the likelihood that this form of warfare will persist and continue to evolve into the future. The Analytical Framework model developed here provides a practical guide for understanding and countering this hybrid warfare threat at the national and multinational levels.
Hybrid Warfare is a term that has enjoyed significant currency in recent years. Its early advocates were keen to assert that the use of new technologies, new clandestine methods or the actions of new actors, operating below the thresholds that could define armed conflict, was a hybrid or blend of insurgency and conventional warfare.
In many ways, however, hybrid warfare is not new. Hybrid threats, the combined or blended methods of attack, are designed using particular ‘ways’ to fulfill easily identifiable political ‘ends’, in order to force an enemy to be compliant to the will of its adversary. Such a process would be familiar to scholars of classical war theory.
Nevertheless, advocates of hybrid war maintain that the current character of war indicates that there is an erosion and subversion of established norms and thresholds, not only involving war fighting, but also in international relations.
These erosive elements take five forms: The first is political, such as the subversion of our political economy by means of misinformation, cyber sabotage or espionage. The second takes the form of being diplomatic, namely the attempt to break or divide allies. The third takes the form of military means, using local irregular forces, one’s own troops in disguise, sabotage and assassination, proxies, brinkmanship or terrorism. The fourth is the social dimension, using media campaigns to demoralize our populations. The fifth is economic attack, using sanctions, the purchase of our assets, the buying up of resources or even interference with the prices that our consumers pay. It all sounds overwhelming and is threatening precisely because it appears to be beyond the capacity of military forces to defend against it. Indeed, the military instrument appears to be less relevant or appropriate than diplomatic, economic or political measures. It would be tempting to It would be tempting to tackle only the symptoms of these problems. For example, if confronted by so-called ‘little green men’ (regular troops of the belligerent nation disguising its soldiers by adopting the uniforms of its proxies or appearing without identification), the military preference is to confront and fight those ‘little green men’. At the tactical level, there may be merit in defeating and destroying these ambiguous units, but one must guard against the obvious enemy stratagem of trying to draw in and adversary, goading or luring one’s own forces into a situation that merely reinforces the enemy’s propaganda. A better solution is to remain strategic. That is, to concentrate on the enemy’s ‘ends’ and not their ‘ways and means’. The purpose must be to deny the enemy the achievement of their strategic objective. This requires an understanding of the enemy’s intentions, their goals and the relationship between ‘means’ and ‘ends’.
There are historical precedents that can help deal with the problem of hybridity. The first illustration is the American Revolution. A series of economic protests in the 1770s turned into a political uprising despite the belated offers of political concessions by the government of the United Kingdom. Because the British thought their security was at risk, conventional forces were sent in to disarm and garrison the angry American colonists. The resistance nevertheless increased and the reinforcements that were sent from Britain could do little more from hold the ports and major cities of the country.
In every military encounter, the American patriots found themselves beaten by conventional British forces. So, the American revolutionaries adopted a different strategy which consisted of three parts.
The first was political, to convince the colonists to support the revolution and to convince the British politicians to stop the war, launched through pamphlets and word of mouth in what today we regard as the eighteenth century equivalent of ‘social media’. Second, there was a diplomatic offensive, the objective of the revolution being to acquire French backing, in order to divert the Royal Navy on which the British garrison depended to sustain its occupation and military campaign. The third component was to wage a guerilla war, to exhaust the limited British reserves, to build a regular force of their own at the same time, and to build political institutions to shift local allegiance permanently away from the British. The critical component of this war was, however, not the hybridity of methods, be they diplomatic, political and guerrilla warfare. It was, in fact, the strategic change, namely the moment that France entered the war against Britain in 1778. Britain was compelled to shift its resources to protect the Caribbean and the approaches to the British Isles itself. In other words, to defeat hybridity, the British should have concentrated on a political or strategic solution. The Americans understood it. The British did not, and, as a result, they lost.
Another example would be the Hashemite revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. In this example, the Arabs, who formed an important part of the Ottoman Empire, had not responded universally to the call to arms by the Caliph, the Sultan of the Turkish Empire, in 1914.
Despite large numbers of Arabs serving in the Ottoman Army, the Arab nationalists in Syria and in Mesopotamia actually opposed the Ottoman regime. A secret movement within the Ottoman army even began a dialogue with the British enemy. Hashemite Sherif Hussein, the Guardian of Mecca, also refused to endorse the Caliph’s call to arms and, after secret talks with the British, and thinking that he was likely to be purged by the Ottoman authorities; Hussein declared independence against the empire in June 1916. The Hashemite’s seized Mecca and used a form of hybrid warfare, trying to demoralize the Ottoman Army and at the same time trying to contest the legitimacy or the authority of the Sultan’s call to arms in that war. Their hybrid methods included not only recruitment of associated Arab clans but also obtaining British money and weapons, particularly heavy weapons, airpower, naval and logistical support.
The Hashemite’s enlisted different Bedouin clans to give an impression of Arab unity, even though they represented only one small dynastic group. Some 15,000 were involved in the Arab revolt. But there were at least 300,000 still fighting on the side of the Ottoman Empire during the war. Indeed, Cemal Pasha, the Ottoman Governor of Syria, had some success in persuading a number of Arab groups to remain loyal to the Ottoman Empire, in Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and Arabia.
Nevertheless, the Arab revolutionaries, backed by the British, captured Aqaba by negotiating the surrender of small isolated Ottoman garrisons. The Arab Northern Army, as it later became known, relied on British military success to make further progress, particularly in Palestine. They claimed their own political victory in Damascus in October of 1918. Of course, they obtained some concessions from the British, although not the French, in that final few months of the war, and then in the peace of 1919. In other words, they achieved their strategic objectives through hybrid methods.
The Ottoman Empire did not tackle the Hashemite’s ‘ends’ as they were engaged in dealing with their ‘ways and means’. The Sultan’s government was also engaged in an existential struggle on multiple fronts and did not priorities the Hashemite Revolt.
What might we deduce from these two brief historical examples? First of all, in these cases political warfare was as important as military operations. But, it is also clear that, in both examples, unconventional methods on their own, namely hybrid methods, were not enough to secure victory. It was external allies that were critical to success in both cases. Therefore, if one were to try to combine political actions with a disinformation campaign, including denial at the state level, limited but rapid military operations, a mixture of means to overload the enemy’s command and control, and to exploit the seams and divisions of society, then a truly hybrid strategy could be successful.
What we derive from this is a classic definition of hybrid war. There are many examples in history of this approach being used. But the ‘ends’ of these methods, that is to say, the purpose behind hybrid warfare, is always the same. Political objectives predominate. They are discernible and they can be countered by other ways and means. In other words, one can restore the balance strategically by containing or even ignoring hybrid methods and concentrating on what it is the enemy is trying to do at the strategic level.
If the British in the period 1775-1783 had focused on making political concessions and winning loyalty from the colonists, or dealt a decisive strategic blow to France, the outcome of the American Revolution could have been radically altered. Moreover, had the Ottoman authorities been successful in persuading the Arab revolutionary factions to abandon the Allied powers, perhaps with offers of post-war independence or autonomy, another plausible counterfactual is presented.
There are three domains, perhaps, in which to examine this problem: the physical, psychological and cognitive. Firstly, war is a physical activity, consisting of forces, fires and technology. One could say that war is fought by the ‘tools’ of men. The physical elements are the most obvious and most observable. In the First World War, the Ottoman Empire lacked the industrial capacity to wage a total war. After its initial advantage in numbers, it succumbed to the firepower and materiel advantages of the Allied powers.
Secondly, war is a psychological activity involving emotion, passion, belief, and spirit. War, in other words, is fought in the ‘hearts’ of men. The passions of war are the most difficult to counter. But, one can exploit the propensity of an enemy. One can draw them into situations. At the Battle of Hattin in 1183 for example, the Saracen forces observed the strength and propensity for taking offensive action by Western crusader armies and lured them into the desert where they could be destroyed through lack of water and lack of support. For all the ardor of the crusaders, the Saracens learned to turn the advantage of the enemy into a liability.
Thirdly, war is a ‘cognitive’ activity. War is fought in the ‘minds’ of men, where reason, communication strategies, plans, tactics and deception are all evident. Here, the first priority is to seek or discern the plan or objective of the adversary, while the method is only the second priority. The response should be to counter the objective, not to counter the method.
In case of the Hashemite revolt in 1916, Cemal Pasha, tried to counter the methods being used by the Arab rebels, particularly by enlisting other Arab clans and he enjoyed some success in offering to resolve the division between Arab and Turkish peoples. Elements of the Beni Sakr and Howeitat clans, for example, wavered in their support for the revolt. The Ottomans, although defeated in the Palestine campaign, achieved a significant victory using these counter-measures at the battle for Amman in 1918, where General Allenby was initially unable to capture the city. Nevertheless, by not addressing the strategic ends of the Arab Revolt or the British utilization of the Hashemite’s in Palestine and Syria, the Ottoman authorities lost the initiative. They had no answer to the physical or cognitive elements.
The British possessed greater physical power in the American Revolution and cognitively they should have been able to offer a better economic and political package than the revolutionaries, but here they lacked the ability to appeal to the psychological drivers of the revolution. Indeed, some military officers doubted the ‘means’ available could have any positive effect, namely the armed forces of Great Britain. What was needed was a comprehensive strategy involving all three elements.
Hybrid methods are common across history. The ends and the objectives are discernible and can be challenged and countered by a variety of strategies. One should seek to avoid simply ‘mirroring’ an enemy and assume that one’s own side must adopt hybrid systems or approaches.
One can combine successfully political, economic, information and military methods to create an understanding of the approaches used by the enemy and then to defeat them by delaying, denying, destroying, or disrupting the enemy’s intent.
There are different ways of approaching hybridity. In the Changing Character of War program in Oxford, we pride ourselves on being inter-disciplinary. Historians would choose a historical approach, as this article indicates, but academics from different disciplines offer alternatives. A scholar from a law department might emphasize a legal solution. A scholar of mathematics could illustrate an approach based on complexity theory. A scholar of evolutionary biology might argue that the enemy actors who adapt the fastest are more likely to survive and these are the ones that we really need to concentrate the effort on. The difference in each approach reminds us to take a critical view of what we think are ‘established ideas’ in warfare. Hybrid warfare techniques cause a great deal of concern in part because we do not fully understand what we are dealing with. Critical thinking can help to tackle the problem.
By way of some historical deductions, there are several strategic options available. One can counter some hybrid methods by deterrence, reassurance to partners and by instilling confidence in those that one wishes to influence. One would need to establish the ‘red lines’, of course, and be clear in diplomacy in order to expose the enemy’s propagandists, their contradictions, and their hypocrisy. Correspondingly, one should not be averse to discrediting enemy activities in international institutions like the United Nations.
One can use physical measures to disrupt and deter. One may seek alternative strategies by changing the axis of one’s approach and deflect the enemy’s line of operation. If for example, Daesh thinks it needs to focus on destabilizing Iraq, it would be very interesting to consider how to restabilize Syria behind them in their rear. One could use the enemy's strength determine the weight of their effort, and hence the fulcrum or pivot of his efforts, and then tilt or tip the balance, not necessarily by aggression, but defeating or disrupting their methods.
In conclusion, history offers some assurance that while warfare is indeed changing in character - it always does - its nature reassuringly stays the same. There will always be moments when infantrymen and armored forces will have to close with and destroy the enemy and hold ground. There will always be a requirement for air forces to interdict or lift friendly forces into the war zone, where maritime forces would be compelled to engage in some short and sharp maritime operations. But one can use the unchanging nature of war to one’s advantage in understanding and countering current threats. Let’s build on what is established and known about war, and not become too distracted by what appears to be novel and ambiguous. The nature of war is physical, psychological and cognitive. Each of the three elements can be considered in combination.
The ‘means’ and the ‘ends’ of hybrid warfare can be discerned and have not changed very much throughout history. It is true that the ‘ways’ are the critical component here. But they also consist of the three domains: the physical, the cognitive, and the psychological. If we break down the problem into its component parts, we will better understand the apparent ‘complexity’ we face.
Yet, above all, we should note that countering strategies against hybrid warfare are more often successful than not when they address the ‘ends’ rather than tackling the ‘ways’ and ‘means’. A strategic approach therefore offers a solution to the problem of hybrid war.
“A blend of the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.” Hoffman
Conflict in the 21st Century Since Hoffman first established the term hybrid war to describe the form of conflict that he observed to be emerging after the Cold War, a considerable quantity of literature has been written on the subject.
Interest in the concept shows no sign of abating, particularly given the recent events in the Ukraine and Syria where the term is frequently used to describe those conflicts that are taking place.
Hoffman originally defined hybrid war as being the incorporation of a, “range of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion and criminal disorder”.
He later expanded this definition to reflect hybrid war as being, “sophisticated campaigns that combine low-level conventional and special operations; offensive cyber and space actions; and psychological operations that use social and traditional media to influence popular perception and international opinion”
Adopting a strategic perspective, viewed it as being, “a combination of conventional and unconventional organizations, equipment, and techniques in a unique environment designed to achieve synergistic strategic effects”.
Two years later NATO, in trying to contextualize the events occurring in Ukraine presented it as being, “the use of asymmetrical tactics to probe for and exploit weaknesses via nonmilitary means (such as political, informational, and economic intimidation and manipulation) and are backed by the threat of conventional and unconventional military means. Recently Calha has observed that the tactics can, “be scaled and tailored fit to the particular situation”
This perspective of hybrid war establishes an environment that is complex, rapidly changing and non-linear in character. One in which a considerable number of actors, each seeking their own desired end states are present. Some may be state actors, or actors who are operating as state proxies while others may represent criminal elements or sections of society that view themselves as being disenfranchised from the existing political system. Increasingly non-state actors are empowered through the advent of new technologies that provide the means to deliver effects that were previously the preserve of the state. A consequence of decreasing barriers of entry to such capabilities. Capabilities that reach across the spectrum of the conventional to the non-conventional. This new technology allows actors to be engaged in the conflict to operate in an adaptive and flexible manner in response to the events that are occurring directly within and which influence their operational environment. Underpinning this ‘spectrum of empowerment’ is the ability to weaponized data and information through the exploitation of the virtual domain of cyberspace.
The central theme running through this new form of warfare, as Hoffman himself notes, is the blurring of the boundaries that have traditionally existed within previous forms of conflict. Blurring that can be seen as taking place between those involved in the conduct of a hybrid conflict: Regular and irregular forces; terrorists, criminals and other, non-aligned actors that see an opportunity to achieve their own goals. Furthermore, there is a blurring between the means of war reflected in the use of conventional and unconventional capabilities and the integration of kinetic and non-kinetic effects within a single battle space. Finally, technology is blurring the domains of the physical and the psychological and the physical and the virtual. It is the nature and the extent of this blurring of boundaries that mark out the character of hybrid war as being different from the recent, similar manifestations of conflict described as 4th Generation and Compound Warfare.
To simplify the complexity of hybrid war the economic model of the competitive market provides a useful analogy. A competitive market is one in which a large number of producers (actors) compete with each other to achieve market dominance with the intent of maximizing their profit. In such a market no single producer, or group of producers can dictate how the market operates.
A similar situation can be seen to exist in hybrid war where many actors engage in completion, through the mechanism of conflict in order to gain political dominance within the intent of fulfilling their desired, political goals. Within an environment that increasingly no one actor is able to dominate with certainty.
The application of this analogy allows the use of a further economic concept, that of technological fusion to be applied directly to hybrid war as a means to describe its functionality.
Competitive Market: To achieve market dominance through competition
The market contains multiple competitors
Resources are used where they are most needed and where they are most effective in order to achieve the aim
Companies respond in an adaptive and flexible manner based upon the action of their competitors
Competitive dominance is driven by technology development
Exploitation of the information domain is critical
Competition occurs from the local to the global
Hybrid War: To achieve political dominance through conflict
Multiple actors compete in hybrid war
All capabilities available to the actors are mobilized in order to achieve the desired aim
Actors respond in an adaptive and flexible manner based upon the actions of their adversaries
Advantage is gained increasingly through the development and application of technology
Exploitation of the information domain is critical
Conflict occurs across multiple domains
“The purposeful application of information in the design, production, and utilization of goods and services and in the organization of human activities”
In this definition technology is not seen purely as an object that has been constructed to fulfil a specific purpose such as a car or a smart phone. Rather it assumes a holistic approach that encompasses the initial ideas behind the need for the object, through its design, construction, how it is used and the impact that it has upon human activity and behavior. Applied in the context of hybrid war this definition reflects Kello’s observation that, “It is not technology that proves to be battle winning, it is the understanding of what it can do and how it is enshrined in doctrine that provides advantage”.
Adoption of this perspective of technology is important for three reasons. Firstly, it recognizes that technology is not something that is divorced from the human actor but exists as a response to their needs and demands. Secondly, that the existence of technology influences and changes the behavior of the human actor in regard to how their need is satisfied. Finally, these changes in behavior produce a transformation in the nature and character of society. Development of the Internet has fundamentally transformed the way individuals socialize or shop.
This process of transformation is increasingly observed in the conduct of hybrid war where the development of advanced information systems and their interaction with additive manufacturing (3D printing) is changing the character of conflict in ways that reach far beyond the kinetic impact of the weapon systems that result from these new methods of production.
The use of a technological perspective through which to construct the functional model of hybrid war reflects the adoption of a technologically determinist philosophical position to the understanding of the concept. The technology employed within a hybrid war is seen to act as an agent of social change that influences the behavior and intents of the actors involved. This is a deliberate choice. Justification being based upon three factors. The first of these is that war, and in particular hybrid war, can be observed as representing a form of a political and social activity in which individuals, organizations and states engage directly. As Clausewitz reflects war is, “...the intercourse of governments and individuals...the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other mean.
The second factor centers upon Floridi’s assertion when considering the impact of computers and information systems on individuals, those humans have now become dependent upon the digital technology of the 21st Century across all aspects of their activity. Certainly, this is the case in respect of war where increasingly machines are used in place of human beings to deliver effect. The third factor, a consequence of the previous.
One, is that this dependency drives a continuous search by actors for new forms of technology that can be used to gain an advantage.
Fumio Kodama, a Japanese business analyst uses the ideas contained within the construct of technological fusion to explain how businesses must operate in a highly competitive market that is driven by rapid technological change in order to achieve market dominance.
Market dominance being seen to occur when a business possess significant power to behave in a manner that is independent, “of its competitors, customers and consumers” dominance has to be achieved in a complex market environment containing multiple actors each of whom possess the capacity to act with agility and flexibility in response to events in the pursuit of their goals. In such an environment, Kodama makes it clear that businesses must continuously innovate and evolve in order to mitigate both known and unknown threats that challenge their market position. The two key resources necessary for enabling these activities are technology and information.
Kodama considers the critical process by which this innovation and evolution can occur as being technological fusion. A concept that he defines as, “...nonlinear, complementary and cooperative. It blends incremental technological improvements from several previously separate fields of technology to create products that revolutionize markets” (Kodama, 1992).
A process in which the action of combining two or more technologies together produces a solution that is greater than the sum of each of the original parts. The successful achievement of this action requires a cultural element. The adoption of an approach that requires an acceptance that existing boundaries will need to be blurred or broken in order for success to be achieved. In the market environment these include boundaries between different forms of technology, between traditional competitors and between different markets. It is only through such action that the requirements of nonlinearity, complementarity and cooperation can be met.
Kodama quotes the development of liquid crystal displays through the fusion of electronic, crystal and optics technology in a consortium led by Sharp and Sony’s purchase of a major film studio as part of their long-term strategy of building a total entertainment business around the synergy of audio and video hardware and software as examples of this culture in action (Kodama, 1992).
Recent examples of technological fusion, that have seen the breaking of traditional boundaries include the bio-printing of human tissue through the combination of medical technology and 3D printing and the production of self-cleaning glass through the integration of glass manufacturing and nanotechnology.
As Kodama suggests, the result of the application of technological fusion is the development of hybrid technology .
The impact of previous industrial revolutions on conflict can be illustrated by consideration of the evolution of weapons production and delivery. The 1st Industrial Revolution, the use of water and steam to enable mechanical production provided the means to combine different materials in the production process. Leading to such advances as rifled infantry weapons, which could be produced in greater quantities and with greater reliability than had previously been possible by hand.
War became increasingly sustainable and lethality increased as was illustrated in the Crimean War (1853-1856). The 2nd Industrial Revolution saw the use of electrical power within the manufacturing process. Resulting in the ability to mass-produce items and to enable the development of ever more powerful means of destruction. Whole armies could now be equipped rapidly with an increasing variety of weapon systems at significant scale. Weapons systems that was capable of delivering effect over ever increasing areas and from greater distance. This is demonstrated to no greater effect than by the role played by artillery throughout the First World War (1914-1918).
The 3rd industrial revolution, the application of the use of electronics and information technology led to the production process becoming automated. Further increasing the speed at which the instruments of war could be produced while greatly changing their use and operation. War itself became increasingly automated, with the effects being delivered from greater distance and with increasing precision. A form of warfare seen in its infancy in the 1991 Gulf War and which came of age in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The 4th industrial revolution is defined by one of its leading advocates, Klaus Schwab as being the, “fusion of technology that results in the convergence of the lines between the physical the virtual and the biological spaces”. It is an industrial revolution in which technology no longer recognizes the barriers that have previously existed between the physical domain, the recently constructed virtual domain and that of the biological world. The confluence of the fledgling technologies of this revolution including Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, nanotechnology and materials science across the three domains are producing odak’s ‘hybrid solutions’.
Schwab differentiates this 4th industrial revolution through the identification of three defining features. Firstly, the breadth and depth of its impact. An impact that is resulting in previously unimagined paradigm shifts occurring across all areas of human activity: The economy, business, societal and the individual. For Schwab these changes not only impact far more than those experienced in previous industrial revolutions upon, “...the “what” and the “how” of doing things but much more significantly in the “who” we are. This impact is fueled by a world in which new technology, “... begets newer and ever more capable technology.” Technology itself has become a driver for its own further development.
The second feature is the velocity with which the transformations being brought about by the 4th revolution are occurring. Transformations that are taking place at an exponential rate rather than in the linear manner experienced in the past. Where previously the impact of an emergent technology may have taken many years to achieve wide, significant influence this period can now only take months. Compare the 101 years between the invention of the internal combustion engine powered automobile in 1807 by de Rivaz and Ford’s production of the Model T to the 2 years taken by Apple’s iPod in the period 2001 - 2003 to change the way that individuals listen and interacted with their music collections to the speed at which computer ‘apps’ now achieve influence time as witnessed by the impact of Facebook on our social interaction.
Schwab’s third factor is the transformation of “entire systems” occurring across and within states, organizations, industries and society. Entire business processes are changing through the innovation of such technologies as 3D printing, the emergence of flat organizational structures and the demise of the traditional boundaries between the consumer and the supplier as is the case with AirBnB and Uber. In the political arena the impact of this factor can be observed in the Changing nature by which populations engage with their Governments. In the UK individuals can undertake such diverse tasks at signing a petition against an unpopular piece of legislation to registering their car (United Kingdom Government, 2016).
This context of the 4th industrial revolution is important for the functional model of hybrid war that is being proposed. In that the model seeks to reflect the combination of the emergence of new technologies, the speed with which this is occurring and the increasingly shared empowerment that these technological developments provide to an expanding range of actors. For Kasperson the 4th Industrial Revolution is, “creating the massive democratization of the capacity to inflict mass damage”. Historically, to inflict large scale damage has required capabilities and resources only held by the state, this increasingly may not be the case (Kasperson, 2015). This ‘democratization of capacity’ may prove to be, alongside the blurring of the traditional boundaries, an equally defining feature of modern hybrid war.
Three core concepts can be identified as being present within each of the constructs discussed in the preceding paragraphs: the competitive market perspective of hybrid war, technological fusion and the 4th Industrial Revolution.
These are Emergence, Convergence and Transvergence. As a logical consequence of this shared heritage these three concepts are used to construct the model of hybrid war proposed by this paper. Within the model these concepts will be reflected as distinct elements of a single process that creates momentum within a hybrid conflict. It is through the investigation of this process that the model allows understanding and insight to be gained into hybrid conflict.
Prior to constructing the model, definition of each of these concepts is necessary in order to establish the context of how they are to be used. Emergence is defined as both the positive and the negative impact experienced by actors present in an operational environment as a consequence of the appearance of new technology. The impact drives a reaction by the actor through their perception of technology as representing a potential advantage or a possible threat that they must consider in the pursuit of their goal. Emergence reflects the recognition that there is a new factor that must be incorporated into the actor’s operational analysis. Convergence is the activity that occurs as the actor responds to the new technology, by internalizing it within their own operational design, prior to their deployment of the capability to gain advantage or their production of a counter-measures to it.
The act of Convergence precipitates a move within the operational environment once more towards a state of equilibrium. Equilibrium in the context of the new technology having become a ‘normalized’ feature of the operating environment. Transvergence is the process that re-establishes, a state of equilibrium, within the operating environment. The technology that arose though Emergence has established a new technological base line. Within the model this equilibrium remains a constant until another new technology surfaces.
The starting state for the application of these concepts to hybrid reflects the existence of an operational environment at equilibrium. One in which no actor possesses a technology that provides them with a distinct advantage. With the emergence of new technology actors within the operational space seek to find ways in which it can be employed to their advantage. Or to identify the means to mitigate any threat that they might perceive it to pose them. The consequence of these actions is to cause a state of disequilibrium to occur, perhaps being reflected on the ground by an actor undertaking an offensive in order to capitalize on a perceived technological advantage that they have gained. Concurrently, those actors disadvantaged by the technology inject increasing resources into finding a way to decreasing the impact of the threat that they consider now to be present.
This two-pronged momentum: the exploitation of the advantage and the search for mitigation continues until the effect delivered by the new technology no longer causes a destabilizing effect on the operating environment. The advantage offered by the new technology need not be in the form of a weapon system. It might also arise out of developments in other technological areas. The creation of a new set of alliances enabled through the establishment of a new communications network or the discovery of a new means to conduct information operations through cyberspace are two examples.
Emergence represents the start point of the model. It acts as the source of technological momentum that is injected into the hybrid war through the development of technology. As it occurs, those actors possessing a technological advantage seek to maximize their opportunities while those at a disadvantage work to lessen the threats to their position. These actions increase the initial momentum emerging from a specific technological development and the intensity of the conflict.
At the tactical level these activities may be reflected in the occupation of new territory or the suffering of defeat by an opponent. At the strategic level these actives might drive the creation of new collations and the dissolution of existing ones. As solutions emerge these are rapidly employed to decrease any advantage that an adversary might have gained. Further increase in the momentum of the conflict occurs as actors seek to maximize their gains or minimize their losses.
It is at this point that Convergence begins. Initially, the phase consists of the rapid “sharing” of the new technology amongst actors on the battlefield. A consequence of the interconnected, data rich, data accessible nature of the 21st Century operating domain. Resulting from these actions, the character of the conflict moves towards a new state of stability. This second movement occurring at the point where the advantage previously gained by an actor starts to decease as other actors engaged in the conflict develop and deploy suitable means of mitigation. This stage of the model continues until any advantage achieved through the technology is reduced to a level where it ceases to be operationally significant. A point at which a technological state of equilibrium exists. Like Emergence, Convergence inputs momentum into the model. As solutions are deployed engagement between actors intensifies as the tactical advantage/disadvantage imbalance decreases. Attempts are made to consolidate the gains that have been achieved or to regain situations that have been lost.
It is at this point that the final phase of the model, Transvergence occurs. As the effects generated by Convergence lead to a state of equilibrium in the conflict in which no one actor possess a significant technological advantage. a further rebalancing or strategic realignment occurs. At this phase of the model the new technologies, that provided a level of advantage have now become fully incorporated into the character of the continuing hybrid conflict. A new norm of hybrid war is created.
As with Emergence and Convergence, Transvergence provides the model with momentum. It does this by the reshaping of the ‘global’ environment in which the hybrid war is occurring as all actors acquire the new technology or the means to mitigate it. It is at this point that the model restarts its cycle. While Emergence and Convergence both influence events most significantly at the tactical and operational levels the impact of Transvergence is strategic in nature. This transference, from the tactical and operational perspective of the model to the strategic fits within the boundary-less character of hybrid war. Reflecting the reality of recent hybrid conflicts in that the traditional boundaries between these levels of operation continuously become blurred.
he operation of the model should not be seen as a constant, linear process. Nor should it be viewed as one that is focused upon either a specific strategic or tactical view of hybrid war. Depending upon the demands of the decision maker it is intended to provide insight and understanding across a spectrum running through both perspectives. At each level, consideration of the actions of the actors involved within a hybrid war, the tactics that they adopt and their use of technology can be encompassed within the model to provide a strategic or tactical assessment of an adversary’s intent. Through the identification of this intent there exists the opportunity to consider and select appropriate, future options. As an example, recognition that an adversary is focused upon the adoption of cyber technology above physical weapon systems for example, might suggest that they possess the intent to operate largely in the cyber domain. Seeking to achieve their goal through the delivery of effect against Critical National Infrastructure (Volz, 2016). From such a deduction the decision maker is now in a position from which an informed choice can be made in regard to future actions and the allocation of strategic and tactical resources and assets.
The proposed model contributes uniquely to the understanding of the concept of hybrid war in four areas. The first, and the one of most importance, is to provide an explanation of the impact of technological development upon the conduct of hybrid war. Identifying how technology provides momentum and direction for those actors who are involved in such a conflict.
Utilization of this model in combination with the traditional descriptive approach taken in consideration of hybrid war increases the holistic understanding of the concept. It achieves this by its consideration of the matter through a technological prism. Noting that new and emerging technology fulfils a central role in hybrid conflicts (International Institute of Strategic Studies 2015, McCulloh & Johnson, 2013). The second contribution made by the model is the understanding that is gained through the ability to break down the conduct of hybrid war into the three distinct phases: Emergence; Convergence and Transvergence. This ability to simplify the concept of hybrid war is important as it removes a degree of complexity from its consideration.
A third contribution that the model provides is a means to gain insight into the relative strength or position of specific actors in relation to one another through the application of a technological perspective on their respective activities. Is one actor continuing to operate in an emergent technological state while engaging with an adversary(s) who has moved to the later Convergence phase of the model. A final contribution is the role that the model can play as a means to assess the overall state of a hybrid campaign.
In this instance the assessment being made is not constructed through the traditional approach based upon the observation of events that are occurring on the ground. Rather, it is created through the interpretation of where an actor is, as seen from their application of technology and the effects that they deliver through it. Individually or collectively not one of these contributions will provide the ‘silver bullet’ to the understanding of hybrid war that decision makers and participants at all levels desire. The contribution that they do make is to offer an additional perspective through which it can be understood.
This paper has presented a functional model of hybrid war through a technological perspective. A perspective from which, it is suggested, can be drawn insight and understanding into the dynamics of this evolving form of conflict. To do so, it borrows two constructs from the discipline of economics, the competitive market and technological fusion. Building upon these, the concepts of Emergence, Convergence and Transvergence are used to produce a three-phase model of hybrid war. The model provides two important contributions to the study of this form of conflict that are not possible through the application of a purely descriptive approach. The first of these is the generation, when applied in conjunction with the traditional descriptive approach, of a considerably richer, holistic picture of hybrid war. A perspective that is not solely based upon events on the ground. The second contribution is the presentation of hybrid war in a form that allows it to be seen as a process in a manner that is different from usual winning and losing model. It is suggested that this contribution offers a view of the concept that permits the decision maker to consider it in terms of a series of progressive technological states. Thus allowing judgments to be made concerning the relative nature of the relationships that exists between the actors involved in a hybrid war and how these change in response to events. Thus bringing an important, evolutionary dimension to the assessment of conflict.
Work is required across a number of streams to move the model from its conceptual nature as presented in this paper to one that can be applied by decision makers. The principal challenge concerns the identification of the appropriate means to collect and analyses the necessary data sets, that can be used to locate an actor within the model. One solution might be to adopt the methodologies and models used within the literature of technological adoption in particular the Technological Acceptance Model . A second solution may be to consider work undertaken in the area of weapons proliferation, a discipline primarily concerned with nuclear weapons but one where increasing focus is being placed on the armament of cyberspace. A second area where work is necessary concerns the relationships that exist between each of the constructs used to build the model and in particular surrounding the points at which they meet. Does a clear ‘crossover’ point exist or is it a gradual transition from one state to another. A final work stream concerns the mechanics of how the functional model and the descriptive depiction of hybrid war merge together in order to produce the intended holistic picture. Can the merger be visualized in a manner that provides both the detail provided through description and the sense of momentum and change that it is suggested can be obtained from the functional model?
Any writers on the future of warfare assess that hybrid war as conceptualized in this paper will be the defining form of conflict of the 21st. If this is the case, then the provision of tools that provide the greatest level of understanding of such events to analysts and decision makers will become increasingly important. The model proposed in this paper represents one approach to achieving this goal. An approach that reflects the character of hybrid war and the complex, technologically driven environment in which it will occur.
If we want to talk about hybrid warfare, I think, we should have an understanding of a continuous dialectics of unity and duality between two or more forms of war. The concept of hybrid war pre-supposes the existence of at least two different ways of fighting. The normal and mainstream way of conflict is defined then as “conventional” or “regular” warfare, which is fought between state armies on open fronts since XVIIth century. At that time, we see European states having started to form standing and disciplined armies suitable to high intensity combat procedures and operations on open terrain. However, early modern and modern Western armies are also known to manage adapting themselves more or less to other combat environments and conditions in and outside of the Continent. So we cannot say that XVIIIth and XIXth century regular armies have only conducted regular warfare. The question at that point is then to define who the regular is and who the irregular. Could we differ between armies from non-state armed groups as pure representatives of either regular or irregular forms of warfare? At that point, I argue that we should also be skeptical in the use of the term “asymmetrical warfare” to describe the recent armed acts of contemporary non-state actors including urban and rural terrorist groups and insurgents.
I think that the so called asymmetrical attitude towards warfare is not the property of only the irregular part of the war. Indeed, asymmetry should be conceived as the ground and cause of any political and military success. As a historical phenomenon we generally observe asymmetric warfare in the form of a confrontation between a regular army and an irregular armed group. However, we should also notice that asymmetry in warfare occurred in most cases if one combatant sides is remarkably weaker than the other. Naturally, the weak tends and ought to be more innovative in doctrine, organization and equipment development, and consequently then in the hybridization of war. However, military history teaches us that even regular armies have the capability to adapt themselves to the weaker/ irregular enemy’s way of war by hybridizing the fight as far as they could. If this is the case, we should ask the question again: Who is then the irregular? It was the invention of mass citizen army in France at the end of XVIIIth century, which generated in Spain, Germany and Holland new practices of warfare, which we know from the historical definitions in German, French, English and Spanish as Volkskrieg or Partisanenkrieg, Guerre des Partisan, Small Wars, Kleiner Krieg, Guerilla, Petite Guerre. All these concepts were Chapter One: Changing Character of War - 24 - used to describe different ways of combat conducted on European continent by invaded countries against the regular mass army of France. But we also know that in all these cases, invaded states managed in time to form their centralist governmental structures and turn their local irregular militias into regular armies in Napoélonic terms. On the other hand, the invader, namely the Revolutionary French regular army did learn to function as a counter-insurgency force in and out of its homeland.
It is not surprising therefore, that irregular warfare was not conceived in XIXth century as a way of fighting peculiar to a special culture, religion or sociological unit. In fact, since the Napoléonic Wars a certain asymmetrical competition between empires and their opponents functioned as a continuous mutual learning process. In this historical context, regulars have learned from irregulars and irregulars from regulars, or strong from weak and weak from strong. As the first example of the compound warfare in modern age, one can easily refer to the North America and later United States, where French and Indian Wars were fought in the mid-XVIIIth century by regular forces, colonial militias and native irregulars.
From that date on, we see military actors who have been changing their way of warfare without any formal and traditional hesitation in regard to the conditions of combat environment.
What allows us then to label an armed conflict as hybrid or compound war? Hybrid war is generally defined as the simultaneous use of regular or main force and doctrine side by side with irregular or guerilla force and doctrine against an enemy. Recent literature accepts hybrid warfare as a historical phenomenon which existed even in earlier ages of human history.
At that point, I agree with Frank G. Hoffman (2009) who argues that ‘till recently what we have in world military history were examples of “compound war”, but not of “hybrid war”’. One may call the compound war as “proto-hybrid war”, but hybridity is something more than the compound use of irregular and regular tactics, doctrines and personnel under the umbrella of a military organization. Until recently, neither state armies nor non-state armed groups had actually the capability to create such a fusion, such a mixed structure of organization and doctrine what we can call hybrid warfare or hybrid army or hybrid armed group.
We have enough examples of compound warfare in world military history. Before and after 1789, empires all around the world confronted native and local resistance during their horizontal and vertical expansion. Looking at the XIXth century counterinsurgency operations, one could easily argue that many of them were not conducted against ideological terrorist groups, but more against civil insurgents who opposed governmental demands such as new taxes and/or conscription.
In the domain of regular warfare, mutual learning, as mentioned above, functioned or functions in the form of speaking the same language in different vernaculars. This works as the “imitation of success” as John Lynn (1996) proposes. Throughout the XIXth and XXth centuries the development of the modern regular mass army was realized through these imitation and mutual learning processes. However, in the domain of compound warfare, mutual learning functions and functioned throughout history in a different way, such as an interpretative translation of each other’s language into the other.
Total technological war conducted by the use of strategic bombing in WWII had another form than the total holy war declared by ISIS or by al-Qaida using terrorist instruments on various metropoles of the globe. But, the mindset in both cases to fight everywhere and every time against everybody without a civil-military distinction could be deemed as being related with the concept of modern total war. Strategies, tactics, formations, weapons, and any other component of warfare on different levels are translated from the adversary’s language into the own.
Coming back to the history of compound and hybrid warfare on the Eurasian soil, one should first notice that the region in question is historically a vast land of empires including the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkish Republic and recently it is the scene of intensive hybrid or compound warfare. From a military point of view, Eurasia presents a difficult combat environment to regular forces. Geography does not change, and determines in fact the type of warfare conducted on a terrain full with mountains, deserts, and steps.
From a political point of view, Eurasia is indeed not a region where you can easily establish nation-states and centralized state administrations. Till the invention of post-WWI nation-states, Eurasia had always been governed by imperial bodies such as Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Russian Empires. As this political situation is not a coincidence, relatively frequent use of compound and hybrid warfare is a military necessity which has been and is still dictated by local geographical, demographic, political, and anthropological conditions throughout the centuries. As the region was mainly populated by rural and nomadic people, Eurasian empires always had compound land forces containing regular soldiers and tribal auxiliaries in the form of mercenaries or part-time volunteers side by-side, even after the invention of conscription and mass army.
e employment of volunteer or hired irregular units had in fact its economic and tactical advantages for the Ottoman army on the short run, but one should notice that violent acts of these groups against the civilian population who resides the combat environment caused socio-political and international legal problems afterwards. If you hire irregulars or use proxies in your fight against local insurgents, you may not be surprised to confront greater local chaos in the long run. Ottoman irregular bands, which were known as Bashibozuks in XIXth century, were known to obey only their own chiefs but not the commissioned army officers and to use violence against their local and native adversaries. A similar situation is still valid for today’s proxy armed groups in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. As mentioned above, other overseas empires and states which intervened in Eurasian politics in the last two centuries from North Africa to Afghanistan and from Crimea to Lebanon, had similar experiences in Eurasia.
During her imperial expansion, British Empire raised also specialized troops from local populations, especially from India, but also from her other colonies to reduce financial and human costs of the Empire. Today, US Armed Forces continues to execute hybrid war operations against ISIS by using local ethnic and sectarian militias as a local auxiliary force in addition to its combined arms capabilities of air and land forces. On the strategic level, the first example of a hybrid assault in Eurasia was probably the initiative developed by German diplomats and intelligence agents together with the general staff on the eve of the WWI.
The German diplomat and intelligence analyst Max von Oppenheim, designed a strategic plan to revolutionize the Muslim populations of Russian, British and French Eurasian colonies. This plan worked under the Great Jihad announced by the Ottoman Caliphate against the Entente Powers with a certain tactical success.
The hybrid war which Russia is claimed to conduct today in Crimea, as the Western observers call it, seems to be as an updated version of XIXth century Russian overt and covert operations in the Balkans. Then, Tsarist Russian governments tried to provoke native Slavic population as insurgents against Ottoman Empire. It would be not false, I think, to call Russia as an “anxious power” in XIXth century, a non-European candidate for being a global superpower with a relatively weaker economic infrastructure than its rivals. After the end of the Cold War, we observe a similar situation in the case of post-Soviet Russian Federation political elite, who have the desire and the anxiety to restore their country’s image as a “exsuper-power”. This anxious will to power urges Moscow to apply to every instrument of war, a situation which we perceive as the Russian way of hybrid warfare.
The hybrid war which Russia is claimed to conduct today in Crimea, as the Western observers call it, seems to be as an updated version of XIXth century Russian overt and covert operations in the Balkans. Then, Tsarist Russian governments tried to provoke native Slavic population as insurgents against Ottoman Empire. It would be not false, I think, to call Russia as an “anxious power” in XIXth century, a non-European candidate for being a global superpower with a relatively weaker economic infrastructure than its rivals. After the end of the Cold War, we observe a similar situation in the case of post-Soviet Russian Federation political elite, who have the desire and the anxiety to restore their country’s image as a “exsuper-power”. This anxious will to power urges Moscow to apply to every instrument of war, a situation which we perceive as the Russian way of hybrid warfare.
If hybrid warfare matters, the question is then who and what generates hybridization of military affairs? In this regard, we are used to look first at the weaker parts of the globalized combat environment, but there is also the other side of the coin.
Especially after the WWII, the increasing democratization in Western countries caused a growing public sentiment against human and material losses in wars. Under the influence of the public vote, the decision-makers of developed countries looked for ways of avoiding human and material losses in armed conflicts. Besides the deterrence of nuclear weapons urged the super powers which have this capability to avoid any direct and grand scale conventional armed conflict against each other. First the invention and then the proliferation of nuclear weapons made this political choice a strategically necessity and the consequent situation of war avoidance opened the door to limited and small proxy wars.
These developments in the Western world have contributed to the spread of facts such as proxy wars and hybridization of warfare in Eurasia and in other regions from the mid-XXth century on. The Western intellectual and moral crisis at the turn of the XXth century, which is known as the fin de siècle nihilism, is replaced in the recent global post-modern climate by reactionary ideologies such as Salafism and Jihadism in the Eurasian lands. From a philosophical point of view, European nihilism of the late XIXth-early XXth centuries and Euarisian Salafism of the late XXth and early XXIth centuries could be taken together into consideration as intellectual-psychological sources of destructive terroristic acts in Europe a century before and now on different regions of the globe.
Contemporary belligerent discourses with intense religious and cultural references and their fanatical adherents are often deemed to be related with the historical cultural legacy of the Eurasian region. It is a factual knowledge that jihad, as a religious concept and sociopolitical practice, has its place in Eurasian history.
However, one should note that postmodern globalized armed groups which proclaim Jihad or Holy War, do not represent this historical legacy. Their discursive references for their current acts seem at first glance to be a continuation of the cultural historical legacy, but their political and military practices are novel which belong to this age. They hybridize the war as the weak part, but they are no more innocent authentic insurgents confronting the strong.
The current picture is in fact different than the XIXth century, when political violence was an instrument for empires or nation-state candidates for state-construction. In addition to new technological capabilities such as improvised explosive devices, internet and social media offer terrorist groups new opportunities for recruitment. Although political violence is not a new thing for the Eurasian region, globalized terrorist activities and urban guerrillas present us new and innovative forms of warfare and assault.
According to the concept of total war modern states of late XIXth and XXth centuries are known to use violence against civilians and soldiers without any distinction. Similarly, non-state armed groups did exist in the same age to conduct terrorist methods in pursuit of their political aims. However, it is an innovation for world political and military history that local non-state actors think and act globally as an unexpected by-product of revolution in communicative affairs. The current situation could easily be described as “the state of going to extremes” in Clausewitzian terms.
Thus the armed conflicts overrun the conventional limits of war and are hybridized by all parts to make the combat unpredictable for the other. As post-modern “jihadist” groups deny the human death referring to religious metaphysics, they try to de-politicize war and go beyond politics with their terrorist acts. Virilio (1997) prefers to describe this new state of things in armed conflicts as “meta-political war”. A parallel situation could be observed by the absolution of the technology by developed countries through the extraordinary improvements in their military industry which creates a state of “complete release”, again in Virilio’s terms. In this post-modern practice of hybrid war, politics is losing its role as arbiter of armed conflicts and war becomes an act without any political aim for both the states and non-state actors.
At the new combat environment of hybrid war, success could not be ensured by partial and temporal changes in the equipment, organization and doctrine of armed forces. Similarly, we have not easy solutions to confront the new types of assaults by global terrorist groups, such as increasing the human resources of special troops or making get more air power operations. In addition, all states ought to be careful by employing proxies in the field to avoid human or material losses or legal risks. Modern Eurasian military history teaches us that the employment of foreign or local irregulars by regional states and global superpowers in on rough Eurasian geography as operational proxies will remain as short-run tactical moves containing political and juristic risks.
To overcome regional conflicts and ensure sustainable peace and prosperity, we need to analyze the causes of hybridization of war in reference to the social life and human existence of the post-modern age and form in this light a new political language. Force must be used as the last instrument of conflict resolution. In this case, however, political and military decision-makers have to be aware of the fact from a military point view, decision makers must be aware of the fact, that new organizational and doctrinal mindsets are needed in military which transcend the conventional frameworks such as ‘joint services’ and/ or ‘combined arms’.
In Milan Kundera’s words, ‘to live means continuous disruption of order. Passion for having order is passion for the death.’ What we immediately have to learn is to live with the chaotic and unpredictable postmodern world, and hybrid warfare is nothing more than a byproduct of the post-modern human condition.
One of Sun Tzu’s greatest contributions was his focus not simply on defeating an adversary’s army, but rather on defeating his strategy, using unconventional (ch’l) as well as conventional (cheng) forces.
In recommending attacks on the enemy’s vulnerabilities, he advocated indirect approaches to warfare, and recognized early the tactical and strategic value of guerrilla war. The indirect approaches he espoused allowed for warfare between belligerents with markedly different conventional warfare capabilities, did not assume that the more powerful conventional force would win, and provided a foundation for what we now call asymmetric or hybrid warfare.
The use of language is what separates us from other species, and is fundamental to sociological analysis. Different languages signal cultural and subcultural differences as well. Within cultures, language affects our behavior. For example, whether we regard acts of terrorism as criminal acts or acts of war helps shape how we prepare for them and respond to them. Criminal acts trigger responses by law enforcement, while acts of war elicit military deployments. When the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in Yemen in October 2000, for which al Qaeda claimed responsibility, it was declared a criminal act, and although Marines were sent to secure the ship, the United States sent the FBI and NCIS to investigate, and the government of Yemen was found culpable in a civilian federal court.
A year later, on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda hijacked four civilian airliners and crashed three of them into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the west side of the Pentagon in Washington DC, the attacks were initially labeled criminal acts, but the Bush administration quickly called them acts of war, and launched the Global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan militarily toward the goal of deposing the Taliban, which supported al Qaeda. I believe that one of the principles of waging hybrid wars is that acts of war and criminal acts converge in the activities of the adversary, and that therefore both military forces and police forces must be used to confront them. We see trends in modern nations of a convergence of these forces as well, with militaries frequently acting more like police, e.g., in peacekeeping operations (which they tend to resist), while police forces are increasingly militarized, in terms of their technology and formations (e.g., SWAT teams). Moreover, we must recognize that what is terrorism to one culture is heroism to another. Cross-cultural understanding of those with whom we share the battle space -both allies and adversaries- is crucial to avoid misinterpreting actions and intent.
Analyses of war during the first half of the twentieth century focused on conventional war, waged by the armed forces of nations, and exemplified by the two World Wars and the Korean War. Major nations subsequently planned and trained for major future engagements between the formally organized conventional armed forces of nations. However, in the 1970s, the Vietnam War led us to speak of “low intensity conflict” (LIC) as opposed to conventional war, as though we had no experience with guerrilla warfare. The term came to cover counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, nation-building, and peacekeeping, among other activities. The Vietnam War covered the spectrum of conflict, from guerilla combat and the growth of special operations to military aviation, heavy artillery, and armor. Andrew Mack (1975), writing about small wars, introduced the concept of asymmetric wars to characterize conflict between unevenly matched belligerents, but it was not embraced by the analytic community for another two decades.
In the 1980s, the concepts of the 1970s morphed into “fourth generation war,” in which the lines between soldiers and civilians and between military operations and politics became blurred. In the 1990s we spoke about “military operations other than war” (MOOTW), which referred to activities such as humanitarian missions and international peacekeeping, although “first generation peacekeeping ”which generally involved interposition of military forces between conflicting parties that wanted to disengage, itself evolved into more militarily robust strategic peacekeeping. In the 1990s, van Creveld (1991) argued for a fundamental shift in the dynamics of war that was the basis for his rejection of the relevance of Clausewitz. Kaldor (1999) coined the term “new wars” and argued that recent patterns of globalization have led to a transformation in the tactics, goals and financing of conflict; new war is characterized by a breakdown of categories and the erosion of boundaries, particularly regarding battle lines, territory, belligerents and victims, and political and ideological aims. Marine General Charles Krulack (1999) introduced the notion of a Three Block War, suggesting that in the space of three blocks, a military force might find itself engaged in peacekeeping, humanitarian missions, and counterinsurgency combat. While each of these concepts focused on a limited range of the spectrum of operations, they all recognized that military operations may occur simultaneously at more than one point in this spectrum. This was acknowledge more explicitly in the twenty-first century when we began to speak of modern wars as hybrid, potentially involving simultaneously different points in the spectrum of conflict, from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to more conventional larger unit engagements. The basic point is that the recent term hybrid war is a truer and more descriptive term for conceiving of the way that wars have long been fought, with simultaneous engagements at multiple points on the spectrum of conflict, and is nothing new, although modern nations have tended to prepare for the last wars and battles that they liked, which have tended to be conventional operations, and have only recently been willing to relearn the lessons of past unconventional conflicts. Indeed, accepting the “new wars” assumption of discontinuity from the past increases the likelihood that the lessons of the past will be forgotten.
In the American case, our war of national liberation from the British began with guerrilla operations outside Boston in the late eighteenth century. However, while General George Washington used unconventional operations with great success during our insurrection, he wanted his Continental Army to look as much as possible like conventional European armies (where much guerrilla warfare took place), and established an historical precedent of selectively remembering primarily the conventional battles. While the U.S. has historical experience as being an insurrection, in confronting insurrection both internally and externally, and as a conventional power, our doctrine has been influenced primarily by the latter. Older colonial powers have lessons upon which to draw from their imperial experiences, but one wonders how much they have done so. Have lessons from the Arab Revolt of the early twentieth century been captured in contemporary doctrine?
The sociological analysis of any institution or social process must attend to the important domains of People and Organization. The military is a central social institution in most modern societies and war in unquestionably a social process. I will focus on these domains, expand a bit on what they mean, and apply them to the study of armed forces and war. Population: All armed forces are composed of a variety of people who are stakeholders, whether they are directly in the battle space, using remotely operated instruments of war from afar, providing support to combatants, are the families of military personnel, or constitute the population from which the armed forces are drawn, and whose support (or at least acquiescence) is required for successful military operations in a modern democratic state. This population may also constitute the target for unconventional operations such as terrorism. Central concerns regarding the population are how homogeneous it is, and what the social definitions are of who will serve, what roles they will play, and the degree to which the military population is distinguished from the civilian population. Also of great import is understanding of the population base on which the adversary draws, and its support of that adversary.
In early human societies, the military frequently did not exist as a separate occupation. Rather, military roles were filled through the mobilization of culturally appropriate segments of the general population (most commonly young men), who took up arms and became warriors when the need arose, and returned to other pursuits such as hunting or agriculture in times of peace. This low level division of labor has characterized recent and current conflicts as well, as reflected in the Viet Cong and al Qaeda, and requires an understanding of the culture of the enemy.
Through the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the American military-relevant population was regarded as young, heterosexual Caucasian men, and elements of the population that did not meet these criteria were excluded, segregated, limited in the units and jobs in which they could serve, and otherwise discriminated against . The major instrument for managing the military population was one of exclusion. This strategy limited the human capital—skills and knowledge—upon which the armed forces could draw. Starting with the mid-twentieth century, however, the military became more inclusive, and, like American corporations, has been learning that it is enriched by the human capital that diversity brings. This is especially true of hybrid operations. Indeed, increasing tolerance for diversity within the force contributes to external cross-cultural understanding . Leadership, in turn, is important in developing both internal diversity and cross-cultural competence. Frequently the military role has been reserved for members of the dominant population group. In the United States for example there have been restrictions on whether African-Americans could serve, in what units they could serve, what military occupations they could enter, and what military ranks they could hold. The U.S. Army became the first major social institution to integrate racially, but that was not accomplished organizationally until the 1950s, and racial tensions persisted through the Vietnam War period. Greater acceptance of diversity within the force might have led to greater cultural sensitivity in Viet Nam. Historically the military population has been defined in most nations in terms of gender: military service has been regarded as a male role. Western nations have seen the progressive incorporation of women into the armed forces. However, women have long been involved in unconventional military operations, e.g., in the American Revolution and Civil War, in the resistance and the OSS in World War II, in the Viet Cong, and recently as jihadist suicide bombers and combatants. In the United States gender integration has been an ongoing process, recently reflected by the opening of ground combat occupations and units formerly closed to women. The process of gender integration initially was influenced in part by the increased participation of women at the low end of the spectrum of military operations. Following the Vietnam War, the United States increasingly participated in humanitarian and peacekeeping mission, and women demonstrated their competence and ability in these missions . More recent changes in women’s positions in the battle space and the spectrum of military operations were influenced by the useful contributions of military women attached to male combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. In these conflicts, there is no clear distinction between front and rear areas in the battle space. Women in support jobs are routinely exposed to risk.
Perhaps more importantly, a mission that requires “winning the hearts and minds” of the local population requires cultural sensitivity to gender norms and requires women soldiers be available to interact with (and sometimes search) local women. This necessitated military women going out on missions with combat units. Although policy prohibited women being “assigned to” combat units, the pragmatics of the situation resulted in women being ”attached to” combat units. The reevaluation of the policy in light of the reality led to a recognition of the essential function of women in these situation, and the formal establishment of new jobs. These included Female Engagement Teams in the Army and the Marine Corps who accompanied combat units in Afghanistan and worked with local women, serving as important sources of information about the local population, and contributing to the delivery of medical and social services to them.
There are ongoing discussions of diversity in military forces. During the twenty-first century, Britain has had a debate on minority representation in their army that as Dandeker & Mason (2001) suggest, requires a reassessment of what it means to be British. In particular, in the light of contemporary operations in the Middle East, there has been concern with the role of Muslims in the British Army.
There has been a similar concern in the U.S. The events of September 11, 2001 activated stereotypes in the American population that saw Muslims as different from other groups. It is difficult to know the number of Muslims in the U.S. armed forces: estimates range from 3,000 to 15,000, with about 5,000 being the most cited figure. Those who serve are fully integrated into the force and have deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Some Muslim personnel perceive an increasing Islamophobia in the United States (Gibbons-Neff, 2015), reflected in part in some of the rhetoric coming out of our 2016 presidential election campaign: a sentiment that has been reinforced by the new administration’s attempt to ban people from certain Muslim countries from entering the United States. By contrast, Sandhoff’s (2013) research, based on interviews with Muslim personnel, suggested that while they saw the societal definition of Muslims as “the other” reflected in the military as well, their experiences as soldiers were generally positive, with some variation based on the degree to which their leaders supported them.
The social capital that Muslim soldiers have to contribute to military operations in the Middle East should be obvious. However, while there has long been an acknowledged shortage of Arabic linguists in the American armed services and in other federal agencies, the Defense Language Institute and the army were discharging dozens of students and speakers of Middle Eastern languages for allegedly violating the Department of Defense “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on sexual orientation: a policy that was rescinded a decade after the Global War on Terror began, with no negative impact on military effectiveness. The military’s need for cultural and linguistic resources was offset by homophobia, and resistance to diversity bore significant costs. Organization: The model for most modern armed forces, and indeed most modern organizations, is the Prussian Army of the nineteenth century, described by the sociologist Max Weber (1947) and widely adopted by twentieth century organizations. Thus, modern armies tend to look very much like each other. Organizations are most comfortable doing business with other organizations that look like them, even when “doing business” means waging war. Bureaucratic armies are most comfortable when their allies and adversaries are also bureaucracies. During the Cold War, the war plans of the bureaucratic forces of both NATO and Warsaw Pact countries assumed that the forces of the other side were also bureaucratic, which made their doctrine and organization understandable. The major element of ground warfare was the army division, and while divisional formations varied among nations, the basic format was similar. The success of American forces in the first Gulf War can largely be attributed to the fact that Iraq, as a former Soviet client state, fought the war on the basis of Soviet doctrine, organization, and equipment. The United States and its allies were fighting the Cold War battles for which they had trained. The lessons of the twenty-first century have shown that this does not work across the spectrum of contemporary military operations. Large infantry and armor divisions are not very effective against terrorist or guerrilla adversaries. Small wars are largely small unit wars, where the senior leaders on the ground may be very low in rank, but have to be prepared to make decisions that literally have life and death consequences. The basic ground combat maneuver element in the U.S. Army today is the Brigade Combat Team (BCT), which organically contains the elements it needs to go to war. The division has largely become an administrative vestige. And these units have learned to operate against adversaries that are organized as social networks based on family, tribal, regional or religious ties, rather than bureaucracies. Indeed, our counter-insurgency field manual included an appendix on social network organization. Special Operations Forces such as Rangers and Seals, which during the Vietnam War gained visibility in relatively small numbers as the Green Berets, have proven their small unit effectiveness to the point where former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that he wanted more of the army to be like our Special Operations Forces, although he did not like their unconventional appearance.
There are a few basic points that I would like to emphasize in closing. Wars that involve multiple points on the spectrum of military operations are nothing new. What has changed is the vocabulary we use to discuss them. If we focus only on the conventional military operations of the past, we lose the lessons we should have learned at the low end of the spectrum of operations. This is costly. Modern military forces must be prepared to function across the spectrum of military operations. As we move from more exclusive to more inclusive definitions of military personnel, the human capital that we gain from diversity enhances military effectiveness and performance. A diverse military population also increases the cultural sensitivity that is important in hybrid operations. Thinking of irregular adversaries in terms of bureaucratic models of organization is counterproductive. We should instead think in terms of social networks, which are building blocks at every point in the spectrum of military operations.
|
