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Abstract
This article examines critically the literature of hybrid war and evaluates the countermeasures often proposed. It explains the concept of hybrid warfare and its varied interpretations, illustrating how it is a manifestation of current anxieties in armed conflict. The selection of the literature is based on works that are referenced, that offer a scientific approach, and which review either the phenomenon of hybrid warfare or its countermeasures empirically. Unscientific works have been omitted. The analysis of the literature presented here shows that the antidotes to ‘hybridity’ lie not in the operational or tactical sphere but in strategic and political domains.
Notes
1. Hoffman, “Hybrid Warfare and Challenges”. See also: Hoffman, “Hybrid versus Compound War,” 15.
2. Murray and Mansoor, eds., Hybrid Warfare.
3. McDermott, “Does Russia Have a Gerasimov Doctrine?”; and Bartles, “Getting Gerasimov Right”.
4. Glaser, “Armed Clash in the South China Sea”.
5. Jacobs and Lasconjarias, “NATO’s Hybrid Flanks,” 259.
6. de Landa, War in an Age.
7. Howard, The Invention of Peace.
8. Gates, Quadrennial Defense Review Report.
9. Ibid.
10. McFate and Jackson, “The Object Beyond War”.
11. D’Agostino, Hybrid Warfare. In response to a request from Congress to define Hybrid Warfare, the Government Accountability Office surveyed the services and came away with various answers. Several services had definitions within service doctrine, but there is no Joint definition, nor was there a plan to write one. The consensus was that whatever ‘Hybrid Warfare’ is, it is covered within the defined spectrum of conflict and there is no reason to add a new definition; Owen, ‘The War of New Words: Why Military History Trumps Buzzwords.’ Armed Forces Journal (Citation2009).
12. Gray, Recognizing and Understanding Revolutionary Change, 4.
13. Mansoor, “Hybrid Warfare in History”.
14. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, TRADOC G-2, “Operational Environments to 2028,” 5.
15. Clausewitz, On War. Clausewitz described the exclusivity of military force to the conduct of war since very few elements were available in the early nineteenth century to defeat, wear down or coerce an enemy, or create strategic effects.
16. McCulloh and Johnson, “Hybrid Warfare”; and Freier, Strategic Competition and Resistance.
17. McCuen, “Strategy of Hybrid War”.
18. Liang and Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, xxi-xxii.
19. Ibid., 16–17.
20. Freier, Strategic Competition and Resistance in the 21st Century, 38. Freier calls this ‘purposeful irregular resistance’ where containment of the United States is the primary objective for rival states.
21. Schadlow, “The Problem with Hybrid Warfare”.
22. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 2–3.
23. Freier, Known Unknowns, 34.
24. Nye, Soft Power.
25. Hammes, “Modern Warfare Evolves”.
26. Ibid., 65.
27. Hoffman, “The Hybrid Character of Modern Conflict,” 38.
28. McCulloh and Johnson, “Hybrid Warfare”.
29. Hoffman, “The Hybrid Character of Modern Conflict,” 37–8.
30. Ibid., 38. Hoffman highlights ‘how’ the adversary plans to fight, or the strategic ‘ways’ that the ‘means’ will be employed, and his definitions are a blend of these in terms of conventional, irregular (ways and means), terrorism (ways and means), and criminal activity (ways).
31. Johnson, “The Changing Character of War”.
32. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century, 7.
33. Ibid., 14.
34. Hoffman, “The Hybrid Character of Modern,” 40.
35. Buchanan, “Justifying Preventive War”; and in the same volume, Henry Shue, “What would a Justified Preventive Attack,” 222–46.
36. Kennan, The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare.
37. Brister, “Revisiting the Gordian Knot,” 51.
38. Luman, “Introduction,” 2.
39. Ibid., 2.
40. Murray and Mansoor, eds., Hybrid Warfare.
41. Winnerstig, Tools of Destabilization, 4.
42. Johnson, Oil, Islam and Conflict, 221.
43. Moberg, Mashiri, and Salonius-Pasternak, “What if Russia Demands”. Finnish military officers war-gamed three different scenarios where Russian hybrid warfare techniques might circumvent Finland’s national defensive measures by not presenting the conditions required to trigger domestic emergency laws or defensive alliance responses. Their three scenarios involve plausible threats to their national strategic access to open transit of the Baltic Sea. Finland has responded with a model of ‘Total Defence’, where all assets in the national government and economy, including the private sector, examine measures that could be taken to defend lives, property and profits in the event of Russian attack or other sovereignty violations. The measures have been studied by Sweden and Norway.
44. Lasconjaris and Larsen, eds., NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats.
45. Scharre, Spectrum of What?, 76; Deep, “Hybrid War”; and Simon-Tov and Schweitzer, “Israel against Hizbollah”.
46. Deep, “Hybrid War”.
47. Mitchell, “Myths and Facts”.
48. Nemeth, “Future War and Chechnya”.
49. Jasper and Moreland, “The Islamic State”.
50. Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla, 5–6.
51. Ibid., 6.
52. Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains, 105.
53. Clausewitz, On War, 606–7.