Hybrid warfare has been an integral part of the historical landscape since the ancient world, but only recently have analysts - incorrectly - categorised these conflicts as unique. Great powers throughout history have confronted opponents who used a combination of regular and irregular forces to negate the advantage of the great powers' superior conventional military strength. As this study shows, hybrid wars are labour-intensive and long-term affairs; they are difficult struggles that defy the domestic logic of opinion polls and election cycles. Hybrid wars are also the most likely conflicts of the twenty-first century, as competitors use hybrid forces to wear down America's military capabilities in extended campaigns of exhaustion. Nine historical examples of hybrid warfare, from ancient Rome to the modern world, provide readers with context by clarifying the various aspects of conflicts and examining how great powers have dealt with them in the past.

During the last decade, 'Hybrid Warfare' has become a novel yet controversial term in academic, political and professional military lexicons, intended to suggest some sort of mix between different military and non-military means and methods of confrontation. Enthusiastic discussion of the notion has been undermined by conceptual vagueness and political manipulation, particularly since the onset of the Ukrainian Crisis in early 2014, as ideas about Hybrid Warfare engulf Russia and the West, especially in the media. Western defense and political specialists analyzing Russian responses to the crisis have been quick to confirm that Hybrid Warfare is the Kremlin's main strategy in the twenty-first century. But many respected Russian strategists and political observers contend that it is the West that has been waging Hybrid War, Gibridnaya Voyna, since the end of the Cold War. In this highly topical book, Ofer Fridman offers a clear delineation of the conceptual debates about Hybrid Warfare. What leads Russian experts to say that the West is conducting a Gibridnaya Voyna against Russia, and what do they mean by it? Why do Western observers claim that the Kremlin engages in Hybrid Warfare? And, beyond terminology, is this something genuinely new?

Hybrid warfare is becoming a long-term strategic challenge for NATO and the EU. This book examines its conceptual foundations, actors and technologies from a holistic, systemic perspective. In particular, new, disruptive technologies have a catalytic effect on hybrid methods and tools. 19 Technologies prove to be particularly relevant. They improve the initial conditions for hybrid action, expand the arsenal of hybrid actors and improve the scope and prospects for success of their activities.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Hybrid Warfare refers to a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, so-called 'irregular warfare' and cyber-attacks with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy and foreign political intervention. As Hybrid Warfare becomes increasingly commonplace, there is an imminent need for research bringing attention to how these challenges can be addressed in order to develop a comprehensive approach towards Hybrid Threats and Hybrid Warfare. This volume supports the development of such an approach by bringing together practitioners and scholarly perspectives on the topic and by covering the threats themselves, as well as the tools and means to counter them, together with a number of real-world case studies. The book covers numerous aspects of current Hybrid Warfare discourses including a discussion of the perspectives of key western actors such as NATO, the US and the EU; an analysis of Russia and China's Hybrid Warfare capabilities; and the growing threat of cyberwarfare. A range of global case studies - featuring specific examples from the Baltics, Taiwan, Ukraine, Iran and Catalonia - are drawn upon to demonstrate the employment of Hybrid Warfare tactics and how they have been countered in practice. Finally, the editors propose a new method through which to understand the dynamics of Hybrid Threats, Warfare and their countermeasures, termed the 'Hybridity Blizzard Model'. With a focus on practitioner insight and practicable International Relations theory, this volume is an essential guide to identifying, analysing and countering Hybrid Threats and Warfare.

This volume of collected papers takes stock of what has become known about the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donets Basin (Donbas) between April 2014 and mid-2020. It provides an introduction to the conflict and illustrates the key point of contention in the academic debate surrounding it—the question whether this war is primarily an internal Ukrainian phenomenon or the result of a covert Russian invasion. The contributions by recognized specialists from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and Japan offer multifaceted views and insights into this long-lasting conflict for both expert readers and those who are new to the topic. The volume’s contributors are Tymofii Brik, Jakob Hauter, Sanshiro Hosaka, Yuriy Matsiyevsky, Nikolay Mitrokhin, Maximilian Kranich, and Ulrich Schneckener.

Hybrid conflicts are characterized by multi-layered efforts to undermine the functioning of the State or polarize society.This book presents results, recommendations and best practices from the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) "Critical Infrastructure Protection Against Hybrid Warfare Security Related Challenges", held in Stockholm, Sweden, in May 2016. The main objective of this workshop was to help and support NATO in the field of hybrid conflicts by developing a set of tools to deter and defend against adversaries mounting a hybrid offensive. Addressing the current state of critical infrastructure protection (CIP) and the challenges evolving in the region due to non-traditional threats which often transcend national borders - such as cyber attacks, terrorism, and attacks on energy supply - the widely ranging group of international experts who convened for this workshop provided solutions from a number of perspectives to counter the new and emerging challenges affecting the security of modern infrastructure. Opportunities for public-private partnerships in NATO member and partner countries were also identified.The book provides a highly topical resource which identifies common solutions for combating major hazards and challenges - namely cyber attacks, terrorist attacks on energy supply, man-made disasters, information warfare and maritime security risks - and will be of interest to all those striving to maintain stability and avoid adverse effects on the safety and well-being of society.

Western academics, politicians, and military leaders alike have labelled Russia's actions in Crimea and its follow-on operations in Eastern Ukraine as a new form of “Hybrid Warfare.” In this book, Kent DeBenedictis argues that, despite these claims, the 2014 Crimean operation is more accurately to be seen as the Russian Federation's modern application of historic Soviet political warfare practices-the overt and covert informational, political, and military tools used to influence the actions of foreign governments and foreign populations. DeBenedictis links the use of Soviet practices, such as the use of propaganda, disinformation, front organizations, and forged political processes, in the Crimea in 2014 to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (the “Prague Spring”) and the earliest stages of the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Through an in-depth case study analysis of these conflicts, featuring original interviews, government documents and Russian and Ukrainian sources, this book demonstrates that the operation, which inspired discussions about Russian “Hybrid Warfare,” is in fact the modern adaptation of Soviet political warfare tools and not the invention of a new type of warfare.

"What is hybrid warfare? And what role does information play in today's conflicts? In the context of the technological/information revolution of the last two decades—which has greatly amplified the danger posed by nonmilitary means of political struggle—Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare addresses these questions from the perspectives of both Western and Russian experts. Incorporating both theory and contemporary realities, including the case of the Islamic State, the authors offer a unique dialogue on the nature of conflict in the second decade of the twenty-first century."--Publisher's description.

Humankind has always sought out innovative and new ways of waging war, establishing new forms of warfare. Set against a background of global strategic instability this process of innovation has, over the last two decades, produced a new and complex phenomenon, hybrid warfare. Distinct from other forms of modern warfare in several key aspects, it presents a unique challenge that appears to baffle policymakers and security experts, while giving the actors that employ it a new way of achieving their goals in the face of long-standing Western conventional, doctrinal, and strategic superiority. The Hybrid Age analyses the phenomenon of hybrid warfare through theoretical frameworks and a range global case studies from the 2006 Lebanon War to the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014. This book aims to establish a unified theory of hybrid warfare, which not only outlines what the term means, but also places it in its context, and provides the tools which enable an observer to identify and react to a future instance of hybrid warfare.