Introduction ‘hybrid warfare in Asia: its meaning and shape’

Abstract

This special issue explores how and to what extent ‘hybridity’ informs national policy, doctrines, and military transformation in Asia. The introduction engages with three preliminary issues as a way to set the broader analytical context. It reviews the concept of ‘hybrid warfare’ to make the case that versions of this notion have long been a feature of regional strategic thinking and practice. It similarly argues that maritime geography has had an impact on how ‘hybrid’ courses of actions in the region have been conceptualised, notably in regards to ‘grey zone’ operations. Lastly, it reviews the question of how to engage with the issue of the effectiveness of such strategies.

Keywords:

• Hybrid warfare
• hybrid strategy
• maritime security
• military effectiveness

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 ‘Asia Defence Spending to Overtake Europe’, Financial Times, 07 March 2012.

2 Hoffman defines the notion rather broadly as: “Hybrid Wars can be conducted by both states and a variety of non-state actors. Hybrid Wars incorporate a range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder.” (p. 4)

3 The oft-cited article by the Russian Chief of General Staff, Valerii Gerasimov (2013) has been wrongly attributed as the sources of Russian approach to hybrid war. See Renz (2016), p. 286. See also Giles (2016), p 10.

4 On a related consideration of asymmetric strategies for major powers, see Breen M. and J. A. Geltzer (2011), 41–55.

5 Recent research reveals a clearer picture of Chinese command system over its maritime militia, where the command authority is divided between PLA and local governments, for example, See Kennedy and Erickson, (2017).

6 A slightly expanded and more updated version of NATO defeinition is as follows: a broad, complex and adaptive and often highly integrated combination of conventional and unconventional means, overt and covert activities, by military, paramilitary, irregular and civilian actors, which are targeted to achieve (geo)political and strategic objectives.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chiyuki Aoi

Chiyuki Aoi, Ph.D, is Professor of International Security at the Graduate School of Public Policy, the University of Tokyo. Aoi was educated at Sophia University (BA), the University of Tokyo, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS), and Columbia University (PhD). From 2008 to 2009, she was Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. Her main research interest is counterinsurgency history and theory (British and American), use of force in the post-Cold War era, and the transformation of warfare, especially with regard to technology and information. For five years she held professional positions at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations University (UNU). Her main publications include “Japanese Strategic Communication: Its Significance as a Political Tool,” Defence Strategic Communications: the Official Journal of the NATO Strategic Centre of Excellence, Volume 3 (Autumn 2017); Legitimacy and the Use of Armed Force: Stability Missions in the Post-Cold War Era, Routledge (Contemporary Security Studies Series), 2011; UN Peacekeeping Doctrine Towards the Post-Brahimi Era?: Adapting to Stabilization, Protection & New Threats (Co-editor with Cedric de Coning and John Karlsrud), Routledge (Global Institutions Series), 2017.

Madoka Futamura

Madoka Futamura is Associate Professor at Hosei University, Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from King's College London. She was a Visiting Research Fellow with the War Crimes Research Group at King's College London (2006-2008), and was Academic Programme Officer at Institute for Sustainability and Peace, United Nations University (2008-2014). She was also a Global Ethics Fellow at Carnegie Council (2012-2015). Her research interests include transitional justice, peacebuilding, international peace and security. Her works include: War Crimes Tribunals and Transitional Justice: The Tokyo Trial and the Nuremberg Legacy (London: Routledge, 2008); The Politics of the Death Penalty in Countries in Transition [Co-eds with Nadia Belnatz] (Routledge, 2013); and ‘Reexamining the Development of the Field of Transitional Justice: From the Perspective of Peace-Justice Relation’, Journal of International Law and Diplomacy, Vol.114, No.4 (2016) [Japanese].

Alessio Patalano

Dr Patalano is Reader in East Asian Warfare and Security at the Department of War Studies, King's College London (KCL), and specialises in maritime strategy and doctrine, Japanese military history and strategy, East Asian Security, and Italian defence policy. From 2006 to 2015, he was visiting professor in Strategy at the Italian Naval War College (ISMM), Venice. In Japan, Dr Patalano has been a visiting professor at Aoyama Gakuin University and at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), both in Tokyo, and currently is Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and Visiting Professor at the Japan Maritime Command and Staff College (JMCSC). Dr Patalano's monograph Post-war Japan as a Seapower: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience, and the Making of a Navy (Bloomsbury 2015) received international recognition and is currently being translated in Chinese language. Dr Patalano's current research focuses on maritime strategy, Chinese hybrid strategy and maritime coercion theory, Sino-Japanese maritime territorial disputes, NATO-Japan security cooperation, and the relationship between military power and statecraft in Japan.