What is Hybrid Warfare?

Introduction:

The term Hybrid War or Warfare (HW) rose to prominence in defense and policy circles as well as in the media after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. It was dragged out from the relative obscurity of military theory circles to become a mainstream term used to describe a myriad of seemingly different security and defense challenges to the West. The invention of new terms (or the adaptation of old ones) to describe and explain the challenges we face is a common tendency among security and defense analysts and practitioners.

And like many new terms that become widely used, HW has received a substantial amount of criticism. Largely because the concept was deduced from looking at the enemy, thus shifting its definition and meaning according to the subject of analysis, HW lacks conceptual clarity. It has been attacked for being a catch-all phrase or a buzzword with limited analytical value that does not contain anything distinctly new. It is also criticized for distorting the traditional distinctions between peace, conflict, and war, and for being stretched so broad as to become conceptually synonymous with grand strategy itself. Just how far to extend the concept of HW to include the full spectrum of conflict without denuding it of its utility – or breaking the meaning of war by slipping into a broader discussion of coercion and competition—is still an open and heated question debate. While these criticisms remain valid, it is also clear that the literature on HW, as well as its critics, provide fertile grounds for discussing the future of war and warfare as well as broader security and defense challenges to which the West currently lack responses.