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ABSTRACT
The ‘hybrid warfare’ concept had been coined years earlier, but became fashionable only when it was adopted and adapted by NATO in 2014, after which academic interest suddenly sky-rocketed. Academics often adopted NATO’s understanding of the concept, took for granted its fit for Russian actions, and imported its political assumptions into the academic debate. The fashionability of the term also led to bandwagoning and thus superficial engagement with both the concept and the phenomenon it was applied to. This article outlines this process and its implications for the field of Strategic Studies.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Joe Maiolo, Jeff Michaels, Samuel Zilincik, and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The literature tends to use the terms ‘hybrid warfare’, ‘hybrid war’, and ‘hybrid threats’ largely synonymously. In order to not overwhelm the reader, I will stick to ‘hybrid warfare’ as umbrella term to refer to the concept captured by these labels. There are different definitions of this concept, but these do not correlate with the use of different labels. Hence, I take a semasiological approach to tracing the concept; cf. Jan Ifversen, ‘About Key Concepts and How to Study Them’, Contributions to the History of Concepts 6/1 (2011), 70.
2 See, for example, Guilong Yan, ‘The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Hybrid Warfare’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 31/4 (2020), 898–917; Katri Pynnöniemi and Minna Jokela, ‘Perceptions of Hybrid War in Russia: Means, Targets and Objectives Identified in the Russian Debate’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 33/6 (2020), 828–845; Vladimir Rauta and Sean Monaghan, ‘Global Britain in the Grey Zone: Between Stagecraft and Statecraft’, Contemporary Security Policy 42/4 (2021), 475–497.
3 See, for example, Samuel Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’, Survival 57/6 (2015), 51–58; Mark Galeotti, ‘Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear? How New is Russia’s “New Way of War”?’ Small Wars & Insurgencies 27/2 (2016), 282–301; Bettina Renz, ‘Russia and “Hybrid Warfare”’, Contemporary Politics 22/3 (2016), 283–300; Robert Johnson, ‘Hybrid War and its Countermeasures: A Critique of the Literature’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 29/1 (2018), 141–163; Stephen Biddle, ‘The Determinants of Nonstate Military Methods’, The Pacific Review 31/6 (2018), 714–739; Paul B. Rich, ‘The Snowball Phenomenon: The US Marine Corps, Military Mythology and the Spread of Hybrid Warfare Theory’, Defense & Security Analysis 35/4 (2019), 430–446; Murat Caliskan, ‘Hybrid Warfare through the Lens of Strategic Theory’, Defense and Security Analysis 35/1 (2019), 40–58.
4 Renz, ‘Russia and “Hybrid Warfare”’.
5 See, for example, Richard D. Hooker Jr., ‘Operation Baltic Fortress, 2016’, The RUSI Journal 160/3 (2015), 26–36; Kristian Åtland, ‘North European Security After the Ukraine Conflict’, Defense & Security Analysis 32/2 (2016), 163–176; Gary Schaub Jr., Martin Murphy, and Frank G. Hoffman, ‘Hybrid Maritime Warfare’, The RUSI Journal 162/1 (2017), 32–40; Viljar Veebel, ‘NATO Options and Dilemmas for Deterring Russia in the Baltic States’, Defence Studies 18/2 (2018), 229–251.
6 Felix Berenskoetter, ‘Unpacking Concepts’, in ibid. (ed.), Concepts in World Politics (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications 2016), 1.
7 Giovanni Sartori, ‘Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics’, American Political Science Review 64/4 (1970), 1041.
8 George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1987), 6.
9 Cf. John Gerring, ‘What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences’, Polity 31/3 (Spring, 1999), 357–393.
10 Colin S. Gray, Categorical Confusion? The Strategic Implications of Recognizing Challenges either as Irregular or Traditional (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute 2012), vii.
11 Cf. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press 1980), 10.
12 Garry Goertz, Social Science Concepts: A User’s Guide (Princeton: Princeton UP 2006), 27.
13 Stephen M. Walt, ‘The Renaissance of Security Studies’, International Studies Quarterly 35/2 (1991), 212.
14 Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (London: Frank Cass Publishers 2002), 17.
15 Sandy Edward Green Jr., ‘A Rhetorical Theory of Diffusion’, The Academy of Management Review 29/4 (2004), 653–669.
16 Cf. Eric Abrahamson and Lori Rosenkopf, ‘Institutional and Competitive Bandwagons: Using Mathematical Modeling as a Tool to Explore Innovation Diffusion’, The Academy of Management Review 18/3 (1993), 488.
17 Hélène Giroux, ‘“It Was Such a Handy Term”: Management Fashions and Pragmatic Ambiguity’, Journal of Management Studies 43/6 (2006), 1227–1260.
18 Cf. Jeffrey H. Michaels, The Discourse Trap and the US Military: From the War on Terror to the Surge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013), 10.
19 William J. Nemeth, Future War and Chechnya: A Case for Hybrid Warfare (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School 2002).
20 Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies 2007), 14; italics in original.
21 Ibid., 29.
22 Ibid., 27.
23 Michael S. Swetnam, ‘Foreword’ in Hoffman, War in the 21st Century, 5.
24 It is worth noting that in this debate the concept was most often understood to refer to war waged by non-state actors, even though this was not Hoffman’s intention. See, for example, David E. Johnson, Hard Fighting: Israel in Lebanon and Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation 2011); John J. McCuen, ‘Hybrid Wars’, Military Review (March-April 2008), 107–113.
25 For example, James T. Conway et al., ‘A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower’, Naval War College Review 61/1 (2008); Department of the Army, ADP 3–0 Unified Land Operations, October 2011; US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 2010).
26 Michèle A. Flournoy and Shawn Brimley, ‘The Defense Inheritance: Challenges and Choices for the Next Pentagon Team’, Washington Quarterly 31/4 (2008), 59–76; Robert M. Gates, ‘A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age’, Foreign Affairs 88/1 (2009), 28–40.
27 Indeed, Hoffman used ‘hybrid war’, ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘hybrid threat’ essentially synonymously in his 2007 publication.
28 James N. Mattis and Frank Hoffman, ‘Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars’, Proceedings Magazine 131/11/1,233 (2005).
29 NATO Allied Command Transformation, Multiple Futures Project: Navigating towards 2030, Final Report (April 2009); SACEUR and SACT, Bi-SC Input to a New NATO Capstone Concept for the Military Contribution to Countering Hybrid Threats, 2010.
30 Ofer Fridman, Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’: Resurgence and Politicisation (Oxford: Oxford UP 2018), 101.
31 Guillaume Lasconjarias and Jeffrey A. Larsen, ‘Introduction: A New Way of Warfare’, in ibid. (eds.), NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats (Rome: NATO Defense College 2015), 7.
32 NATO, Active Engagement, Modern Defence: Strategic Concept for the Defence and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2010), 10.
33 NATO, Wales Summit Declaration, para 2.
34 Ibid.; European Commission, ‘Joint Framework on Countering Hybrid Threats: A European Union Response’, Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council, 2016.
35 NATO, Wales Summit Declaration, para 13.
36 Lasconjarias and Larsen, ‘Introduction’, 3.
37 Sorin Dumitru Ducaru, ‘Framing NATO’S Approach to Hybrid Warfare’, in N. Iancu et al. (eds.), Countering Hybrid Threats: Lessons Learned from Ukraine (IOS Press, Incorporated 2016), 4.
38 Ibid.
39 Heidi Reisinger and Alexandr Golts, ‘Russia’s Hybrid Warfare: Waging War Below the Radar of Traditional Collective Defence’, Research Paper, NATO Defense College, November 2014.
40 Ibid., 3.
41 Frank Hoffman, ‘On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare vs Hybrid Threats’, War on the Rocks, 28 July 2014.
42 Murat Caliskan and Michel Liégeois, ‘The Concept of “Hybrid Warfare” Undermines NATO’s Strategic Thinking: Insights from Interviews with NATO Officials’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 32/2 (2021), 295–319.
43 Ibid., 307.
44 See respectively Tomasz Paszewski, ‘Can Poland Defend Itself?’, Survival 58/2 (2016), 119, and Maria Mälksoo, ‘Countering Hybrid Warfare as Ontological Security Management: The Emerging Practices of the EU and NATO’, European Security 27/3 (2018), 382.
45 See Fridman, Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’, Chapter 6, for a more detailed discussion of NATO and the EU.
46 This search was carried out on the Web of Science database and the Taylor & Francis website. Since many relevant journals are published by the latter, I consulted this website directly.
48 For example, Ian Bowers, ‘The Use and Utility of Hybrid Warfare on the Korean Peninsula’, The Pacific Review 31/6 (2018), 764; Alessio Patalano, ‘When Strategy is “Hybrid” and not “Grey”: Reviewing Chinese Military and Constabulary Coercion at Sea’, The Pacific Review 31/6 (2018), 811–839.
49 See, for example, Rod Thornton, ‘The Changing Nature of Modern Warfare’, The RUSI Journal 160/4 (2015), 42; Hooker, ‘Operation Baltic Fortress, 2016’, 27; James Stavridis, ‘VI. The United States, the North Atlantic and Maritime Hybrid Warfare’, Whitehall Papers 87/1 (2016), 93.
50 Alexander Lanoszka, ‘Russian Hybrid Warfare and Extended Deterrence in Eastern Europe’, International Affairs 92/1 (2016), 175–195.
51 Stavridis, ‘VI. The United States’.
52 Mälksoo, ‘Countering Hybrid Warfare’, 378.
53 Renz, ‘Russia and “Hybrid Warfare”’, 284.
54 Stavridis, ‘VI. The United States’, 95.
55 See, for example, Rod Thornton and Manos Karagiannis, ‘The Russian Threat to the Baltic States: The Problems of Shaping Local Defense Mechanisms’, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 29/3 (2016), 331–351; Schaub et al. ‘Hybrid Maritime Warfare’; Clive Blount, ‘Useful for the Next Hundred Years? Maintaining the Future Utility of Airpower’, The RUSI Journal 163/3 (2018), 44–51; Mihail Naydenov, ‘The Subversion of the Bulgarian Defence System – the Russian Way’, Defense and Security Analysis 34/1 (2018), 93–112; Veebel ‘NATO Options and Dilemmas’, 291.
56 Renz, ‘Russia and “Hybrid Warfare”’; Galeotti, ‘Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear?’
57 For example, Lawrence Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Crisis Management’, Survival 56/3 (2014), 7–42; idem., ‘Ukraine and the Art of Limited War’, Survival 56/6 (2014), 7–38. Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’; Galeotti, ‘Hybrid, Ambiguous, and Non-Linear?’; Renz, ‘Russia and “Hybrid Warfare”’; Robert Seely, ‘Defining Contemporary Russian Warfare’, The RUSI Journal 162/1 (2017), 50–59; Andrea Beccaro, ‘Russia, Syria and Hybrid Warfare: A Critical Assessment’, Comparative Strategy 40/5 (2021), 482–498.
58 See Samuel Zilincik and Isabelle Duyvesteyn, ‘Strategic Studies and Cyber Warfare’ in this issue.
59 NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, Strategic Communications Hybrid Threats Toolkit: Applying the Principles of NATO Strategic Communications to Understand and Counter Grey-Zone Threats (2021), 9.
60 Cf. Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’, 52.
61 Lyle J. Morris et al., Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Gray Zone: Response Options for Coercive Aggression Below the Threshold of Major War (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation 2019), iii.
62 See, for example, Chiyuki Aoi, Madoka Futamura and Alessio Patalano, ‘Hybrid Warfare in Asia: Its Meaning and Shape’, The Pacific Review 31/6 (2018), 693–713; Jan Almäng, ‘War, Vagueness and Hybrid War’, Defence Studies 19/2 (2019), 189–204; Scott H. Englund, ‘A Dangerous Middle-Ground: Terrorists, Counter-Terrorists, and Gray-Zone Conflict’, Global Affairs 5/4–5 (2019), 389–404; Wendell B. Leimbach, Jr. and Susan D. Levine, ‘Winning the Gray Zone: The Importance of Intermediate Force Capabilities in Implementing the National Defense Strategy’, Comparative Strategy 40/3 (2021), 223–234; Rauta and Monaghan, ‘Global Britain in the Grey Zone’.
63 Chiara Libiseller and Lukas Milevski, ‘War and Peace: Reaffirming the Distinction’, Survival 61/1 (2021), 101–112.
64 Michael Carl Haas and Sophie-Charlotte Fischer, ‘The Evolution of Targeted Killing Practices: Autonomous Weapons, Future Conflict, and the International Order’, Contemporary Security Policy 38/2 (2017), 294.
65 John Mecklin, ‘Introduction: The Evolving Threat of Hybrid War’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73/5 (2017), 298.
66 Blount, ‘Useful for the Next Hundred Years?’ 48.
67 Fridman, Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’; Galeotti, ‘Hybrid, Ambiguous, Non-linear?’
68 See footnote 3.
69 Green, ‘A Rhetorical Theory of Diffusion’.
70 See, for example, Jan Daniel and Jakub Eberle, ‘Speaking of Hybrid Warfare: Multiple Narratives and Differing Expertise in the “Hybrid Warfare” Debate in Czechia’, Cooperation and Conflict 56/4 (2021), 432–453; Caliskan and Liégeois, ‘The Concept of “Hybrid Warfare”’; Silvie Janičatová and Petra Mlejnková, ‘The Ambiguity of Hybrid Warfare: A Qualitative Content Analysis of the United Kingdom’s Political-Military Discourse on Russia’s Hostile Activities’, Contemporary Security Policy 42/3 (2021), 312–344.
71 Cf. Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2009).
72 Ibid., 46.
73 For a critical discussion see Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Jeffrey H. Michaels. ‘Revitalizing Strategic Studies in an Age of Perpetual Conflict’, Orbis 60/1 (2016), 23–35.
74 Department of the Army, TRADOC Regulation 71–20: Concept Development, Capabilities Determination, and Capabilities Integration, 28 June 2013, 1–4 a (1).
75 Greg Fontenot and Kevin Benson, ‘Way of War or the Latest “Fad”? A Critique of AirSea Battle’, Infinity Journal 2/4 (Fall 2012), 23.
76 Jan Angstrom, ‘Escalation, Emulation, and the Failure of Hybrid Warfare in Afghanistan’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40/10 (2017), 841.
77 Ibid.
78 Elié Tenenbaum, ‘Hybrid Warfare in the Strategic Spectrum: An Historical Assessment’, in NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats, 95.
79 Jan Willem Honig, ‘The Tyranny of Doctrine and Modern Strategy: Small (and Large) States in a Double Bind’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/2 (2016), 268.
80 Vladimir Rauta, ‘A Conceptual Critique of Remote Warfare’, Defence Studies 21/4 (2021), 545–572.
81 Lawrence Freedman, ‘Academics and Policy-making: Rules of Engagement’, Journal of Strategic Studies 40/1–2, (2017), 264.
82 Libiseller and Milevski, ‘War and Peace’.
83 Cf. Lukas Milevski, ‘Conceptual Resilience Versus Social Utility in Strategic Thinking’, The RUSI Journal 167/2, (2022), 62–70.
84 Caliskan, ‘Hybrid Warfare through the Lens of Strategic Theory’.
85 See also Renz, ‘Russia and “Hybrid Warfare”’.
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Chiara Libiseller
Chiara Libiseller has recently graduated with a PhD from the War Studies Department at King’s College London. Her thesis, entitled ‘Reconceptualising War: The Rise and Fall of Fashionable Concepts in Strategic Studies’, has investigated the underlying processes and assumptions of reoccurring conceptual fashions in the field. She is currently a lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands.