"Hybrid Threats": What Can We Learn From Russia

2018

CICERO FOUNDATION GREAT DEBATE PAPER, 2017

During the last decade, Hybrid Warfare has become a much-evoked, yet controversial, term in the academic, military and political discourses. This paper argues that from a military tactical-operational concept intended to describe the evolving reality of the battlefield in the 21st century, the idea of ‘Russian Hybrid War’ has been become a panacea to the identity crisis that the West (especially NATO, as its military alliance) has experienced since the end of the Cold War. This paper aims to trace the development of the contemporary definition of the so-called ‘Russian Hybrid Warfare’ focusing on several important aspects that have been shaping the conceptual understanding of this term and its political usage.

Irregular Warfare Center, 2023

Over 18 months into Russia’s not-so-very-proxy, proxy war in Ukraine, there remains a thriving and fascinating debate over the tools of conflict that Russia uses, how one describes those tools and where Russia’s next ‘target’ may be. ... The composition of Russia’s hybrid war tools change with the political terrain. Perhaps the best example of that is in the Baltic Sea area, the most complex, interesting and possibly dangerous area of confrontation, with the possible exception now of Syria. Here the different variants of Russian hybrid war overlap as Russia applies different tools, and different rules, to its relations with different states.

2018

The security policy of the Russian Federation has long involved elements of threat to neighbouring countries and forcing the hand of its political partners. In the last decade, Russia has used hybrid modes of warfare to instigate conflicts and instability in its neighbouring countries, while remaining below a certain threshold of violence, allowing it to dodge retaliatory consequences. The authors of the article indicate that the objective of the use of hybrid modes of warfare in Ukraine consists in blurring motives and actors in order to obfuscate a decisive and efficient response. This article argues further that these tactics, if used against a member of the Atlantic Alliance, would effectively allow such an attack to remain below the Article 5 applicability threshold, thereby making it difficult for alliance members to reach consensus on the characterisation of the attack. Even though the member states of NATO and the EU have not been direct targets of Russian actions, former republics of the Soviet Union can be considered to be in the danger zone, based on Russian political statements and its hybrid activities in these countries.

Estonian National Defence College, ENDC Occasional Papers, 2017

The “hybrid warfare” is one of important topics of security related military thinkers and academics being an outcome of conflicts in Europe, Middle East and growing threat coming not only from military but mainly from non-military sources. It has been widely discussed also in the context of military developments in Russia. The paper is discussing the official approach to that term including NATO and Russian thinkers. It is touching also military developments of Russian Federation and non-military aspects of security based on perception of internal and external security threats.

NIDS International Symposium, January 30, 2019 "A New Strategic Environment and Roles of Ground Forces", 2018

"Hybrid warfare" lacks a commonly agreed definition among Russia's adversaries, and the potential for confusion is even greater when including Russia's own understanding of the phrase. So when considering Russia and "hybrid", the first task is to define or discard the term. While widespread use of hybrid terminology has been linked in foreign writing to Russian doctrine, critics point out that it does not adequately or appropriately reflect Russian thinking about the nature of conflict, and hence the full range of options available to Russian planners. Occasional doctrinal references to asymmetric tactics and non-military means for reaching strategic goals do not mean that Russia has a preconceived hybrid-war doctrine or that this would account for the totality of Russian strategic planning. In fact, Russian strategists use the concept of "hybrid war" to describe alleged Western efforts to destabilise adversaries such as Russia itself. Overall, current development of Russian conventional military organisation, equipment and doctrine is influenced by practical lessons from operations in Syria where these capabilities are employed, developed and tested, rather than by foreign notions of "hybrid warfare". Examining assessments of lessons learned from Russia's operations in Syria demonstrates clearly how exaggerating the centrality of hybrid warfare in Russian strategy is a distraction from continued Russian emphasis on preparing its regular forces for high-end, high-intensity conflict. Nevertheless Russia also effectively leverages interaction between conventional military forces and other implements of power.

Hybrid warfare, or whichever nomenclature one chooses to use, has emerged as one of the most innovative and popular instruments in contemporary international politics and is in no way limited to post-Soviet spaces. This special issue offers a multi-layered account of interstate and intrastate dynamics with respect to insurgent violence in the former Soviet Union over an extended period of time. The contributors explore both internal dynamics with respect to insurgencies and civil wars and the roles of external constituencies – whether through the use of hard power (for example in directly supporting insurgent groups) or soft power (through the power of international aid and strategic communications). Most importantly, however, they provide an insight into the complicated and diverse range of conflict-related situations and experiences relevant to Russia’s ‘near abroad’. This collection also offers nuance to accounts that seek to explain complicated dynamics in the former Soviet space with a single overarching realist or neorealist metanarrative that can occlude important insights to be derived from more multi-layered perspectives.

2018

This article addresses a series of difficulties raised by the concept of hybrid warfare. The central tenet is to demonstrate that hybrid warfare as an expression has less academic than political validity. In other words, it is more often used as a normative denunciation for Russian actions than as a term grasping the relevant experience of contemporary warfare. The article sets out to demonstrate that hybrid warfare as set out by Russia should rather be understood as a tool of integral statecraft. The article outlines the main determinants of Russian security policy and puts hybrid warfare into perspective with the main technological disruptors affect the nature of contemporary warfare. The article finally advocates for a clearer division of work between NATO and the EU in countering hybrid threats.

Online Journal 'Modeling the New Europe', 2017

The term " hybrid warfare " has been used to refer to the combined usage of unconventional military tactics such as conventional warfare with irregular warfare and cyberwarfare, as well as the employment of other instruments and tactics (subversive elements), to achieve a double goal: first to avoid responsibility and retribution, and second to weaken and destabilize the enemy without direct involvement. The rigidity of the current international system pertaining to the usage of non-peaceful methods of solving an international dispute and/or furthering state interests, have made it increasing difficulty, without the support of the international community (humanitarian interventions and UN-sanctioned interventions) to employ the 'classical methods' which pre-date the provisions of the UN Charter, relevant to what we now consider as " acts of aggression ". Discussing the resurgence of the Russian Federation as a great power, we argue that because of the innate historical and traditional factors of Russian geopolitics, it was only a matter of time until the Kremlin's military doctrine pivoted from the defensive phase it entered after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the pro-active involvement at the limit of international law: Georgia in 2008, East Ukraine in 2013, Crimea in 2014, and Syria in 2015. Therefore, in this article we will contend, firstly, by discussing the example of the perception of the so-called Russian " Gerasimov doctrine " , that hybrid war can have two different connotations: " war during peace " and " neo-imperial ambitions ". Secondly, we will try to argue that the NATO military doctrine of deterrence has become obsolete, still envisaging the possible threats posed by a future Russian involvement in the Baltic and Eastern Europe in cold-war terms and not in terms relevant to the shifting international security environment.