The Problem with Hybrid Warfare

I suspect the problem is more one of "hybrid Peace" than Hybrid War.

Sure, it is easy to sit about and wring our hands over how the Russians are exploiting opportunity to advance their interests in ways that are designed to not trip clear triggers for war, but that also are clearly beyond the norms of proper competition - but we should not lose sight of the fact that it is the US and Europe who created the conditions Russia exploits.

We have forgotten, or simply ignore, fundamentals of geostrategy. When one has neighbors who might reasonably want what is yours, one must take on the personal responsibility of doing what is necessary to secure those things. When one is faced by a much more powerful neighbor who wants what is yours one must create alliances as well.

Europeans have relied on all alliance, and no personal responsibility. That was foolish. They convinced themselves that war is an obsolete concept. That was foolish. Foolish people usually come to foolish ends.

We live in the real world, and beyond our foolish fantasies reality still exists. Today that reality comes to Eastern Europe in the form of Russian hybrid war - where is it coming next?

Hybrid peace - overly relying upon others for what should do one's self.

I am reminded of the final scene of "unforgiven" when Clint Eastwood's character kills an unarmed man in the pursuit of what he perceives as his interests. "You just killed an unarmed man"! says English Bob. "He should have armed himself..."

The world is indeed changing, but some things are not so different as many would like to think.

Outlaw 09 I agree with one of your comments highlighted below:
"I would like to see far more discussions on how to counter the various elements the Russians have shown us concerning their non linear warfare than the discussions on what is and or is not "hybrid warfare"."

In this comment thread there is an excerpt from an article I just drafted entitled "Grading Gerasimov". I would also like to see discussions involving understanding and identifying non-linear and "ambiguous" approaches to war. I feel the same way that alot of people in the community do with regard to a whole of government and multinational approach to countering unconventional warfare.

The article excerpt is below:

“Wars are not declared but simply begin”, said General Valery Gerasimov during a late 2013 closed speech. General Gerasimov is the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and made this remark at the Russian Academy of Military Sciences. The primary topic of this speech was “The Role of the General Staff in the Organization of the Defense of the Country in Correspondence with the New Statute about the General Staff Confirmed by the President of the Russian Federation.”

This speech was important because it elucidated the strategies that would become Russian military doctrine in 2014. Gerasimov Doctrine codifies the emergence of a new kind of war facilitated by 21st century technologies and multiple actors employing combinations of conventional and unconventional instruments. In short, “the very rules of war have been fundamentally changed”. The current situation in Ukraine and to some extent the Baltic States highlights the application of ambiguous warfare.

Is it working?

The intent of this article is to “grade” specific applications of non-linear warfare in Ukraine, based on military doctrine, strategy and previous conflicts in Europe in order to assess current and future threats to European security and methods to counter them.

21st Century Warfare

“What we see in Russia now in this hybrid approach to war is the use of all the tools that they have to reach into a nation and cause instability.”-General Philip M. Breedlove, Munich Security Report 2015.

New generation, ambiguous, hybrid, non-linear, unrestricted, irregular, unconventional and asymmetric are all terms associated with 21st century warfare. The United States Army currently recognizes two forms of warfare: Traditional and Irregular. Irregular Warfare can be defined as a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations 1 Irregular Warfare favors indirect approaches and asymmetric means. A central component of Irregular Warfare is unconventional warfare, which employs activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government. This application of unconventional warfare relies on external parties aiding indigenous actors against governments. Some examples of aid involve training, equipping, advising and employing kinetic action to seize terrain or increase the advantage of irregular forces. The term “irregular forces” applies to non-state paramilitary forces which include: insurgents, guerillas, extremist groups, mercenaries and criminals. In Ukraine, there is also more ambiguity regarding Russian professional military forces acting in unconventional and asymmetric roles.

Contemporary “Hybrid Warfare” or “Hybrid Aggression” has been used to describe potent and complex variations of warfare in the 21st century. Although Hybrid Warfare is not new, contemporary threat actors are creating a new type of warfare through blurring the traditional lines of war, employing 21st century technologies and combinations of diplomatic, information, military and economic means in various domains to include cyberspace. What complicates this form of warfare further is the persistent fluctuation and manipulation of political and ideological conflict which extends past traditional coercive diplomacy and unconventional war.

Russian road to hybrid war: 1989-Present

“Unrestricted war is a war that surpasses all boundaries and restrictions. It takes nonmilitary forms and military forms and creates a war on many fronts. It is the war of the future.”-Colonel Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted War, Beijing, 1998.

Gerasimov Doctrine has some concise similarities to the Chinese doctrine outlined in Unrestricted Warfare published in 1999 and historical roots in Maskirovka doctrine. Both strategies intrinsically involve using proxies or surrogates to exploit vulnerabilities in low intensity conflict to prepare for future operations which may involve high intensity conflict. Other strategic themes involve applications of low and high tech asymmetrical means and engagement in many forms of war. Unrestricted Warfare describes 13 forms of "total war" and methods to consciously mix “cocktails” on the battlefield or apply combinations of forms to find innovative and effective approaches. In Ukraine, the notion of consciously “mixing cocktails” highlights the unpredictable effects, in the same way that alcohol affects individuals differently. The end result is still the same with regard to de-stabilizing results. The effective application of combinations in four categories to reach the desired political outcomes acts as the assessment tool for this article.

Excerpt End

The four categories referenced in the excerpt are: supra-national, supra-domain, supra-means and supra-tier from the book Unrestricted Warfare. Those categories are directly applied to the current conflict in Ukraine.

I keep going back and reminding myself that to fully understand the current Russian form of fascism which has been developing since 1991 we really do need to go back and reread Orwell's 1984 which was a condemnation of fascism.

The words he uses ie the concept doublespeak and a number of his comments in 1984 match perfectly to the current Putin lead Russia and Putin's inner circle of advisors as well as to a number of recent remarks made by religious leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Let's see what "X," and his interviewer Thomas Friedman, thought, in 1998, of the idea of NATO expansion -- the matter that, arguably, has us now discussing such things as "hybrid warfare," "defense-in-depth," "frontier warfare," etc.:

"His voice is a bit frail now, but the mind, even at age 94, is as sharp as ever. So when I reached George Kennan by phone to get his reaction to the Senate's ratification of NATO expansion it was no surprise to find that the man who was the architect of America's successful containment of the Soviet Union and one of the great American statesmen of the 20th century was ready with an answer."

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

''What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.''

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''

"One only wonders what future historians will say."

"If we are lucky they will say that NATO expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic simply didn't matter, because the vacuum it was supposed to fill had already been filled, only the Clinton team couldn't see it. They will say that the forces of globalization integrating Europe, coupled with the new arms control agreements, proved to be so powerful that Russia, despite NATO expansion, moved ahead with democratization and Westernization, and was gradually drawn into a loosely unified Europe."

"If we are unlucky they will say, as Mr. Kennan predicts, that NATO expansion set up a situation in which NATO now has to either expand all the way to Russia's border, triggering a new cold war, or stop expanding after these three new countries and create a new dividing line through Europe."

"But there is one thing future historians will surely remark upon, and that is the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990's. They will note that one of the seminal events of this century took place between 1989 and 1992 -- the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which had the capability, imperial intentions and ideology to truly threaten the entire free world."

"Thanks to Western resolve and the courage of Russian democrats, that Soviet Empire collapsed without a shot, spawning a democratic Russia, setting free the former Soviet republics and leading to unprecedented arms control agreements with the U.S."

"And what was America's response? It was to expand the NATO cold-war alliance against Russia and bring it closer to Russia's borders."

"Yes, tell your children, and your children's children, that you lived in the age of Bill Clinton and William Cohen, the age of Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, the age of Trent Lott and Joe Lieberman, and you too were present at the creation of the post-cold-war order, when these foreign policy Titans put their heads together and produced . . . a mouse."

"We are in the age of midgets. The only good news is that we got here in one piece because there was another age -- one of great statesmen who had both imagination and courage."

"As he said goodbye to me on the phone, Mr. Kennan added just one more thing: ''This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-affairs-now-a-word-fr…

Note: You can't say this guy Kennan is not able to "smell the wind." He was right in 1947 and he appears to have been right again in 1998 -- 17 years before we were to find ourselves in this contemporary delimma of, as Mr. Kennan and Mr. Friedman make clear, our own making.

P.S. and for Bill M's consideration:

If I have counted correctly, Mr. Kennan and Mr. Friedman together made nine (9) references to some version of the word "expansion" in this short article. Herein, refering exclusively to actions taken by the West -- not actions taken by Russia.

The article is interesting for the simple reason--I have raised often in my comments on the hybrid warfare thread the single question---will NATO trigger Article V for a group of ethnics of any language who are demonstrating for more civil and equal rights ---even if they occasionally run around with AKs and take a few administration buildings OR will they view it as an internal issue for the member nation to handle?

My answer based on the current actions taken by western civilian leaders as well as NATO--no they will not trigger Article 5.

What if the Russian military moves out their garrisons and inside two days occupies territorial areas of a member state that reflects the ethnic language areas inside that member nation--will then the entire NATO go to war over two day old land grab using military force---not really regardless of what NATO is saying today.

By the way it appears Putin is actually leaning in that direction if one actually watches his actions.

Look at the recent NATO statement on cyber attacks--does it trigger Article 5 and the NATO response--it could if the member nation calls for it--but NATO needs 28 members all voting for war and I doubt that would happen over a cyber attack that did not impact the other member nations.

I literally hate the use of the term hybrid warfare as it does not accurately reflect the actual Russian use of their own term non linear warfare and if we are going to discuss Russian doctrine then their terms should be always used and creating just another term causes a smokescreen and multiple different conversations.

I would like to see far more discussions on how to counter the various elements the Russians have shown us concerning their non linear warfare than the discussions on what is and or is not "hybrid warfare".

While some elements of their non linear warfare have been successful other elements have shown themselves to be single points of failure if pushed back on far earlier than we have seen say done by the Ukrainians and even they are holding back in reacting as they should have reacted.

In some aspects the Baltics together with Poland and Sweden seem to be far better at understanding what the Russians are doing than Obama, his entire NSC and the entire US IC.

QUOTE:
Hybrid tactics are not a random sequence of improvisations but reflect an order behind the spectrum of tools used. That makes it incumbent upon political leaders and strategic thinkers (not always one and the same) to fit such activities squarely within the political objectives discussed by Carl von Clausewitz, who explained that war was an extension of politics by other means. In thinking through the ongoing competition with Russia, we must keep in mind that “hybrid” refers to the means, not to the principles, goals, or nature of war. There is nothing inherent about the concept that prevents this. Indeed, the Russians have it down. We do not.

Re: NATO and hybrid warfare, which appear as central matters in this thread, I found the following analysis to be interesting:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/02/a-preclusive-strategy-t…

What I found especially interesting here was the fact that this strategic analysis was undertaken based on the idea that (1) the Russian borderlands are, in fact, (2) "NATO's frontier."

(Thus, the title of the article as "Preclusive Strategy to Defend Nato's Frontier.")

If this depiction is accurate -- for not only OUR Russian fronts/frontiers but OUR Middle Eastern and OUR Asian fronts/frontiers also -- then might we, instead of studying "hybrid warfare," be better served by studying "frontier/border warfare?

(Hybrid warfare, herein, being only seen as an element/aspect of the broader, more correct and more accurate concept of "frontier/border war.")

In this way, to better understand how we actually view these territories (as our "frontier") and, thus, how we might deal with those that stand in our way, and deal with those that seek to defend/re-assimilate territories/populations/interests that they feel -- geographically, ethically, culturally and/or resource-wise -- belong more to them than us.

Herein:

a. "We" being seen -- by the indigenous people herein -- more as aliens, interlopers and aggressors.

b. And "they" being seen more in terms of being the true, historic and natural owners and defenders of these lands? (China's, Russia's and the Islamists' argument exactly?)

Thus, and accordingly, frontier/borderland warfare (not hybrid warfare) as our strategic, etc., focus?