(HYB0013)

Written evidence submitted by Dr Ofer Fridman

King’s College London

Executive summary:

1. The terms hybrid threats/wars/warfare suffer from pure conceptualisation. Generally used to describe a combination of military and non-military means and methods employed by an adversary, these terms put every adversary’s hostile activity into one conceptual basket of hybridity.
2. War (as military activity) has always been hybrid and included all possible military and non-military (information, economic, diplomatic, subversive, etc.) means and methods that help to achieve the political goals of war.
3. (Hostile) International Relations (as non-military competition) have always been hybrid and included all possible non-military (information, economic, diplomatic, subversive, etc.) means and methods that help to achieve political goals without escalating to war.
4. Since military threats and adversary’s actions should be addressed by the military, and non-military threats and adversary’s actions should be addressed by civilian political leadership, their combination under a blanket term of hybridity only complicates any attempt to properly address any of these threats.
5. From military perspective, the hybrid threats/wars/warfare discourse is more confusing than helpful, preventing NATO (including the UK military) from identifying the changes in the character of contemporary conflicts (as demonstrated by Russia and other actors) and taking required measures in terms of adaptation of doctrines, capabilities and training.

UK Response to Hybrid Threats

1. An analysis of the discourse on hybrid warfare since the mid-2000s shows that, in fact, there are three completely different political phenomena that all are described as hybrid threats.[i] The first one is the original conceptualisation.[ii] Heavily based on the example of the Second Lebanon War, the theory of hybrid warfare/threats described the changing nature of contemporary conflicts focusing on tactical and operational levels, in an attempt to “better prepare for that messy grey phenomenon and avoid the Groznys, Mogadishus and Bint-Jbeils.”[iii] The second one is NATO’s reconceptualization of hybrid warfare/threats in the context of Russian actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. In an attempt to understand the Kremlin’s surprisingly effective actions, NATO defined hybrid warfare as “a continuum of threat, including unconventional and conventional methods,” [iv] that “bridges the divide between the hard and soft power.”[v] The third definition is given by the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats that defined hybrid threats as set of mainly non-military activities directed “to influence different forms of decision making at the local (regional), state, or institutional level to favour and/or gain the agent’s strategic goals while undermining and/or hurting the target.”[vi] 

Following the fundamental differences between these three approaches, it seems that the idea of hybrid threats/war/warfare reminds more of conceptual salad, in which any ingredient is welcomed, rather than a concept that helps to understand and interpret the complex reality of contemporary confrontations.

2. A closer examination of history suggests that during a war, adversaries have always employed a combination of military and non-military means and methods, because “anything that might eat away at the enemy is considered worth trying.”[vii] In other words, any war is hybrid by its nature, as non-military (information, economic, diplomatic, subversive, etc.) means and methods have always accompanied (before, during and sometimes after) military efforts to achieve the political aims of the campaign.

3. The same conclusion applies on the history of hostile international relations short of war. There are many historical examples of states and non-states actors employing a combination different non-military means and methods against their political adversaries, because they could not (or did not want to) wage a war. These usually included economic sanctions, espionage, information campaigns, subversion, etc., after all – a manipulation of words, images, and ideas, as well as propaganda and psychological warfare have being used as a part of inter-state relations since antiquity.[viii]  In other words, any hostile international relations are hybrid by their nature and are based on a combination of non-military means and methods that allow to achieve political goals without escalating to a state of war.

4. The idea of hybrid threats/war/warfare places all possible military and non-military actions conducted by an adversary into one conceptual basket. On the one hand, this practise is useful for political reasons, as it helps to create a unified political message and allow different internal political players to close the ranks against this adversary. On the other, due to its vagueness and ambiguousness, the idea of hybridity creates confusion between military and civilian leadership regarding the nature of the threats and who is responsible to address them. As war is hybrid by its nature, military should be ready to address all possible means and methods (military and non-military) employed by an enemy in times of war. However, as far as an international competition between actors is short of war, it is the responsibility of the civilian political leadership (with secret serves and other agencies) to address the hybrid of non-military means and methods (information, economic, diplomatic, subversive, etc.) employed by an adversary.

5. Moreover, in addition to the confusion regarding the responsibility, it seems that the current obsession with hybrid threats/war/warfare prevents NATO (including the UK military) from identifying the changes in the character of contemporary conflicts and taking required measures in terms of adaptation of doctrines, capabilities and training. For example, since the beginning of the Ukrainian Crisis, the NATO conceptual discourse on Russian contemporary military thinking mainly focused on the role of information operations (the so-called ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’).[ix] It is important to state, however, that ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ was neither Gerasimov’s, nor a doctrine, and Gerasimov’s article that served as a basis for this idea, was significantly misinterpret.[x] Since 2014, NATO experts have been mesmerized focusing on the role of information, cyber, propaganda activities in Russian military thought and performance on the ground (in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere).[xi] A deeper analysis, however, shows that the main change in the character of war conceptualised and implemented by the Kremlin has been its ability to mobilise and coordinate civilians for performing activities previously reserved for the military.

The notion of the blending line between civilians and combatants on the battlefield is not new.[xii] This idea has been in the centre of the Western military theoretical discourse since the rise of the concept of the Fourth Generation Warfare in early 1990.[xiii] If there is anything new demonstrated by the Russian military in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine (and to some degree in Syria) is their ability to utilise the contemporary interconnected, information-technology based world to mobile civilians for active participation in conflicts. Describing the realities during the Spanish Crisis in 2017, one senior politician in Madrid stated: “force alone does not work in the internet age … one knitting old lady can stop a whole line of tanks.”[xiv] Interestingly, Russians demonstrated exactly that three years before in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

If there is something that NATO and the UK military have to learn from what they misleadingly call as hybrid warfare, is that on the future battlefield (against any adversary) they will be met by a complicated hybrid of regular and irregular forces, as well as mobilised violent civilians.

The conflicts of the past decade (involving Russia or not) demonstrated that in modern geopolitical, technological and informational interconnected environment it is possible to achieve clearly defined goals by mobilising civilian population for non-violent or semi-violent actions that can counter regular forces as effectively, or even more effectively, as traditional actions of regular or irregular forces. Instead of focusing on Russian propaganda and information operations in the West (which have to be addressed by civilian political leadership) NATO and the UK military should  be preparing themselves to meet an angry ‘knitting old lady’ (mobilised by adversary political minorities and other anti-establishment groups) storming military installation, blocking logistics and facing the troops on the battlefield.

22 May 2019

Ofer Fridman is Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London and the Director of Operations at the King's Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC). His recent publications are Enemy Civilian Casualties: Politics, Culture, and Technology (Lexington Books, 2019); Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’: Resurgence and Politicisation (Oxford UP, 2018); and Hybrid Conflicts and Information Warfare: New Titles, Old Politics co-edited with Vitaly Kabernik and James C. Pearce (Lynne Rienner, 2018).