HYB0001

Written evidence submitted by Robert Johnson, The Changing Character of War Research Centre, University of Oxford

Hybrid War and its Counter-Measures: A Strategic Approach

Executive Summary:

1. The purpose of this report is to examine the strategic dimensions of Hybrid Warfare, which are too often overlooked because of a focus on its tactical and informational effects. It offers options and counter-measures.

2. The key issue is that whatever the form Hybrid Warfare takes, and whatever combinations of techniques are employed, we must focus on thwarting the adversaries’ strategic intent. Russia uses the technique to deter us, and to counter what they see as threatening ‘colour revolution’ subversion, but they also use the approach to create a screen while they substantially modernise their armed forces, and that constitutes a more serious threat.

3. The central idea for countering this challenge is to compel choice. We have the ability to present options for Russia - to persist and suffer, or to follow a different path. The means to compel choice are to be found across the spectrum of government departments and the private sector, but Defence (as the UK’s ultimate means of coercion) has a key role to play.

4. Hybrid Warfare characterises the current dominant status of the West in military terms: adversaries and rivals use it to diminish and subvert our military strength. The report analyses critically the problems of the concept and the opportunities the counter-measures offers. It concludes that the antidotes to ‘hybridity’ lie not solely in the military-operational sphere but in strategic and policy domains.

Defining Hybrid Warfare and Hybrid/Unconventional Activity

1. Hybrid Warfare entered common parlance in NATO in the early 2000s when Dr Frank Hoffman, who coined the term, described a combination of new technologies and fanatical fighting styles without state structures, identifiable uniforms, or obedience to the laws of armed conflict.[1] After Hoffman, the term was used to describe a blend of conventional and unconventional warfighting.[2] It included, for example, the use of Western air power in support of local military ground forces (who would be better able to differentiate between civilians and insurgents). It is often seen as a concept where norms in war, including the Law of Armed Conflict, are circumvented. [3]
2. Today, a hybrid threat considered to be: ‘protracted forms of warfare, use of proxy forces for coercion and intimidation, terrorism and criminality to manipulate the information environment, or to target energy resources, attack economic vulnerabilities, and exploit diplomatic leverage.’[4] 
3. It is also the pursuit of strategic ends with a degree of force, but not such an overt use that it would cross the threshold of conventional justifications for war, or, in the case of NATO, breach the conditions of Article V and necessitate a military response.
4. In diplomacy, it is the attempt to break up allies and partners; in the social sphere, it is an effort to use media to demoralise, induce doubt, or confuse; in the economic realm, it can include sanctions, the buying up of resources, and interference in prices. It may involve the use of stratagems such as assassination, sabotage, brinkmanship (including overflights of national airspace); the use of proxies and terrorism.
5. The reason for the sudden interest in NATO was the publication of a note by General Gerasimov in Russia where, in an assessment of future operations, he advocated a response to the West’s ability to combine multiple lines of operations, air power, and local forces to achieve strategic effect.[5] In essence, he was in search of a solution to the West’s ‘Comprehensive Approach’. Russia began experimenting with Special Operational Forces in support of separatists in Ukraine, and then with air power in support of Syrian regime troops and their irregular allies.
6. NATO was concerned that Russia appeared to be using military force in support of information operations to mislead and deny its actions, using troops to establish an incontrovertible ground truth. Some specialists noted that Russia was using older methods (which placed greater emphasis on deception than Western doctrine), and KGB-inspired techniques (including ‘active measures’ and ‘reflexive control’). There is now substantial evidence showing Russian use of information for political subversion and agitation, with other illegal actions. Russia tries to win influence over the ‘populations in the conflict zone, on the home front, and in the international community.’[6]
7. Russia is eager to assert their place in international affairs after three decades of humiliating weakness, rolling back Western influence globally. Yet these aspects of Russian Grand Strategy do not necessarily explain the utility of limited, hybrid action against weaker neighbours. Here there are short-term strategic objectives to be realized through hybrid means without the risk of a full-scale NATO military reaction.
8. China also makes use of the techniques in the East and South China Sea. It has fortified islands, including previously uninhabited atolls, and added landing strips, harbours, and shore defences as the means to advance territorial claims and extend national waters. When challenged by nations which dispute claims to the islands and atolls or insist on free navigation of the area, Chinese ‘fishermen’ and ‘coastguards’ conduct aggressive responses, endangering shipping and crews. Officially there is denial of any such actions.[7]
9. Hybrid warfare includes cyber and electromagnetic activity (CEMA). The disruption and sabotage associated with the potential of CEMA, in light of Russian DDOS (deliberate denial of service) attacks against Georgia and Estonia, appeared to achieve a strategic effect far greater than that of traditional fires.
10. At the other end of the spectrum, non-state Islamist fighters in Iraq and Syria made considerable use of social media to recruit fighters, discredit governments, transmit instructions to terrorists in Europe, and broadcast its attacks to induce psychological effects. The use of human shields and execution of large numbers of prisoners and civilians has somewhat erroneously been brought under the heading of hybrid warfare.
11. Both state and non-state actors pretend that their own operations, which incur civilian losses, have been caused by Western intervention. There is a long-established tactic for hostile actors to try to demoralize the public at home, rather than the more resilient fighting forces, to compel a change of policy. The narratives of blame for civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, for example, is designed to create doubt in the minds of the Western public and media in order to deter a policy of intervention, or to force a government to withdraw an unpopular mission. The technique is known as ‘fourth generation warfare’ (4GW).[8] Today, Russia makes widespread claims that the West does not fight Daesh, but fosters it.
12. All wars in the past have contained elements of ‘hybridity’ and most have been characterized by episodes of illegality and ‘unconventional’ methods. We tend to assume will adhere to international law and norms. There has been a shock realization that the West’s expectations about regulated warfare were being shattered by the challenges of its rivals.
13. In our own information age, it is the power of media, influence, and access, with the disorientation that has produced, that tends to dominate interpretative frameworks. In the near future, it is likely that the points of reference of the synthetic age will come to shape our thinking, including the structure of human-machine interface, and AI-enabled decisions. The reason this matters is that the way we think influences how we respond to what we perceive as change, and how we manage the hybrid activity challenge.

Counter-Hybrid Options

14. Countering hybrid warfare causes something of a hiatus. Anxiety about hybrid techniques exploit Western media appetites for ‘news-worthy’ narratives, subvert established norms, create disorientation, and fuel the desire for urgent remedies. The result is that we search for rapid, tactical solution that may not prove effective.
15. Real solutions lie in the strategic domain. It has been far more effective to assert strategic penalties through sanctions, diplomatic condemnation, isolation, and strategic positioning alongside allies and partners, from Finland to Saudi Arabia. There are good historical grounds for this approach. If incremental breaches of jus cogens carry more significant penalties, which are not necessarily ‘kinetic’, then, deterred, contained and encouraged, both state and non-state actors can be compelled to desist. The perfection of strategy is ‘to produce a decision without any fighting.’[9]
16. In the operational dimension, it is still necessary to identify, through a centre of gravity analysis, the critical points; it remains vital to initiate shaping operations (to disrupt, delay, mislead and otherwise impose friction); to manoeuvre (including interference with enemy communications); to deploy fires (including ‘information’); and to consider the most efficient systems of command and communication, including the neutralization of an enemy’s command, control and communications; the protection of operational security; and confidence-building of one’s own forces and public.
17. The ability of the West to project power across the globe, and its effective mobile, heavily-armed and ‘decisive battle’-orientated forces have forced rivals to seek out points of vulnerability. Hybrid methods try to weaken NATO and the UK-US Transatlantic alliance. We can deny them this advantage through co-operation.
18. The integration of sophisticated robotic and automated tools may increase the differential between advanced Western forces and their challengers, which, in turn, will push state and non-state armed actors to develop more clandestine, unconventional, and illegal methods. Critics refuse to accept the term, believing that peace has to be preserved, missing the point made decades ago by Sir Michael Howard that peace was an invented instrument, just as conventional war was a man-made phenomenon.[10] One has to fight for the peace, just as assuredly as one must fight in war.
19. Some critics maintain that the West’s military culture is predicated on preparing almost exclusively for ‘conventional’ or industrial era warfare, and they argue this is seriously impairing the ability to counter or conduct the new type of warfare. Equally, peacetime rules applied in hybrid warfare situations can jeopardise success and increase risk, while purporting to reduce it. Regardless of scale, hybrid methods will appear alongside ‘conventional’ warfare, just as they did in previous conflicts, and Western states will need to anticipate them. It is for this reason we cannot convert our armed forces solely for unconventional warfare.
20. The goals of war are always political. Attempts to hermetically-seal definitions of war or try to emphasise constraint and ‘limited’ options are artificial creations.
21. Hybrid Warfare is the synchronized application of political, economic, informational, CEMA and military effort, for strategic objectives, that minimizes the risks that accompany conventional war. It follows that countering these techniques must also either embrace a full-spectrum set of responses or be so effective and overwhelming in one particular sphere that hybrid methods are abandoned by an enemy as ineffective or inefficient. In other words, that we compel the adversary to make a choice.
22. A strategic approach to counter-hybrid warfare offers greater clarity than attempts to tackle each of the blended ways and means by which it is waged. While the technologies and character of the methods change, the ‘ends’ of hybrid war and political intentions are discernible and can be challenged. The purpose of strategy is to deny the fulfilment of an adversaries’ ends.
23. Containment is clearly an option, but it is by no means the only one. There are far more opportunities. Political, diplomatic, social, economic and informational options ought to be given as much prominence as military ones.
24. It follows therefore that a counter-strategy might include:

a)      In the physical realm, there may be disruptive measures, countering techniques that tilt, tip, and off-balance, and the very strength of the adversary against him. Large-scale Russian deployments, for example, impose significant costs on the Russian state.

b)     Investment for supremacy in a broad-spectrum CEMA is essential.

c)      A highly developed civil affairs programme, with deployable sub-units of specialists, might also be critical in overseas deployments or in MACP situations.

d)     In the psychological and cognitive domains, the emphasis might be of reassurance and instilling confidence in partners; the establishment of clear lines in diplomacy; the pro-active (not reactive) exposure of the adversary’s propaganda and hypocrisy, thereby steadily discrediting their narratives. Much more should be made of Western values, their benefits, and the responsibilities of statehood.

e)      Well-rehearsed information operations, based on swift, planned, massed and multiple axes, and conducted in depth, seem to be another critical requirement.

25. The unifying theme, however, is to find the measures that compel choice: the adversary can persist and face greater economic pain, diplomatic isolation, and political instability; or they can desist.
26. Analysts are mindful that hybrid activities can act as a screen for far more serious threats. Russian military modernisation continues apace, and it is clear that Russia has set itself on a path to challenge the West and replace its influence in the globe. China too is prepared to subvert and ignore international conventions that do not suit its interests.
27. A strategic approach to hybrid warfare would suggest that the priority is to ascertain the adversaries’ ends in order to fulfil a rational calculus of one’s own ways and means.

A Summary of Hybrid Activities Counter-measures.

Strategic Hybrid Counter-Measures Designed to Compel Choice

14 December 2018