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Global Britain in the grey zone: Between stagecraft and statecraft
Abstract
The United Kingdom’s integrated defense and security review put “grey zone” or “hybrid” challenges at the center of national security and defense strategy. The United Kingdom is not alone: The security and defense policies of NATO, the European Union, and several other countries (including the United States, France, Germany, and Australia) have taken a hybrid-turn in recent years. This article attempts to move the hybrid debate toward more fertile ground for international policymakers and scholars by advocating a simple distinction between threats and warfare. The United Kingdom’s attempts to grapple with its own hybrid policy offer a national case study in closing the gap between rhetoric and practice, or stagecraft and statecraft, before an avenue of moving forward is proposed—informally, through a series of questions, puzzles, and lessons from the British experience—to help international policy and research communities align their efforts to address their own stagecraft-statecraft dichotomies.
... Historical epochs are clearly demarcated and obvious (hence "post-industrial" versus "industrial"), with war necessarily obeying wider macrotrends. Notions of radically altered war, and a new security environment, became not just one scenario among many, but (in the words of one MP) the "whole lens through which influence and counterinfluence must be focused, organized and fought" ( Rauta and Monaghan 2021 ). ...
For two decades, a large body of security practitioners and scholars axiomatically expected “future war” to be ambiguous and hybrid, based on recent cases. The scale and overt form of the Russia–Ukraine war, which begun on February 22, 2022, demonstrates the limits of this orthodoxy. This article asks why informed opinion fell prey to such false expectations. It argues that as well as the pathologies of fashion in military-academic circles, there was an intellectual failure. Those who confidently expected war to remain in the shadows did not take seriously enough war’s political nature, and the possibility that it will intensify as political stakes rise. Either they assumed apolitically that war’s form was determined by the tools of globalization, or that the politics would be of the status quo, whereby the stability of the unipolar era would endure. Paying lip service to Carl von Clausewitz, in fact, they were unwittingly channeling Francis Fukuyama. To demonstrate this failure, I examine three representative texts of the genre and unpack their assumptions, by David Richards, Antoine Bousquet, and Sean McFate.
... A su vez, la salida de Gran Bretaña de la Unión Europea (UE) converge en la transición hacia un paradigma internacional focalizado en lo global por sobre lo europeo por parte del gobierno británico (Zappettini, 2019;Turner, 2019). Si bien el comercio ha representado el principal vector de la nueva gran estrategia británica post Brexit, el paradigma de defensa lanzado en 2021 no es ajeno a esta visión (Ministry of Defence, 2021; Rauta & Monaghan, 2021). ...
El lanzamiento del documento del Comando de Defensa del Reino Unido en marzo de 2021 planteó una redefinición del rol del Reino Unido en dicha área. El nuevo paradigma busca recobrar la influencia global de Gran Bretaña en materia de defensa, adaptándose a las nuevas amenazas y dinámicas del actual sistema internacional. Bajo esta nueva visión del contexto internacional, la relevancia dada por Londres a determinadas regiones se resignificó. Sin embargo, ¿qué factores influyen en la preeminencia de determinadas áreas geográficas por sobre otras dentro de la política exterior?. Este trabajo busca explorar los potenciales ejes de conflicto de la nueva política exterior y doctrina de defensa británica en relación con los intereses nacionales argentinos en el Atlántico Sur, a partir de una perspectiva realista neoclásica y de la conceptualización del área como punto axial.
Palabras clave: Política exterior, Realismo neoclásico, Atlántico Sur, Argentina, Gran Bretaña.
... objectives' after the counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq (DOD 2012, 3) coincided with debates on 'surrogate' (Krieg & Rickli 2018), and 'vicarious' (Waldman 2021) warfare, amongst other concepts. Around the same time, Russia's annexation of Crimea, its interventions under the threshold of open hostilities elsewhere, and Chinese activities in the South China Sea underpinned debates on 'hybrid' (Renz 2016) and 'grey/gray zone' (Hughes 2020;Rauta & Monaghan 2021) warfare. Interest in the indirect intervention of outside powers in the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars (amongst other recent conflicts) has similarly renewed scholarly and practitioner interest in the study of conflict delegation and 'proxy war' (Rauta 2018(Rauta , 2021aKarlén et al 2021). ...
Theatre art is a fundamental component of modern culture and requires a detailed analysis of the problems of a set of interrelated concepts, which will reflect the key substantive and functional aspects concerning theatre art. The research relevance is determined by the description of the problems of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of theatrical art for the first time is subjected to a complex structural and semantic analysis, which is necessary to determine the study of ways of forming new terms, which will make it possible to present the system of modern theatrical terminology in a holistic form. The study aims to analyse and describe the contemporary problems of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of theatrical art. General scientific methods of art history were used: method of analysis, comparative analysis, synthesis, analogy, and classification. The article investigates the whole stage space as one of the components in the context of the conceptual categorical apparatus of modern art history. Contemporary theatre art is undergoing an active evolution, with artists striving for innovation, using interactive elements, multimedia technology and art installations to create a deep and rich experience for the audience. An important aspect is to involve the viewer in the experience, where the traditional boundaries between actors and audience are blurred and the viewer becomes an active participant. Theatres also emphasise diversity, aiming to reflect different cultures and identities on stage. However, there are problems with the conceptual and categorical apparatus, requiring the development of new terms to accurately describe contemporary phenomena in theatre. Sarcasm and irony prevail, artists seek new directions, and all this happens in the context of the diversity of theatre traditions, creating challenges in the exchange of experiences between cultures. The materials discussed in this article can be applied by both theorists and practitioners of contemporary art history in their writings and as material for teaching in the educational process when training specialists in the field of contemporary art
Theatre art is a fundamental component of modern culture and requires a detailed analysis of the problems of a set of interrelated concepts, which will reflect the key substantive and functional aspects concerning theatre art. The research relevance is determined by the description of the problems of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of theatrical art for the first time is subjected to a complex structural and semantic analysis, which is necessary to determine the study of ways of forming new terms, which will make it possible to present the system of modern theatrical terminology in a holistic form. The study aims to analyse and describe the contemporary problems of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of theatrical art. General scientific methods of art history were used: method of analysis, comparative analysis, synthesis, analogy, and classification. The article investigates the whole stage space as one of the components in the context of the conceptual categorical apparatus of modern art history. Contemporary theatre art is undergoing an active evolution, with artists striving for innovation, using interactive elements, multimedia technology and art installations to create a deep and rich experience for the audience. An important aspect is to involve the viewer in the experience, where the traditional boundaries between actors and audience are blurred and the viewer becomes an active participant. Theatres also emphasise diversity, aiming to reflect different cultures and identities on stage. However, there are problems with the conceptual and categorical apparatus, requiring the development of new terms to accurately describe contemporary phenomena in theatre. Sarcasm and irony prevail, artists seek new directions, and all this happens in the context of the diversity of theatre traditions, creating challenges in the exchange of experiences between cultures. The materials discussed in this article can be applied by both theorists and practitioners of contemporary art history in their writings and as material for teaching in the educational process when training specialists in the field of contemporary art
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.
This article presents the study of ambiguity as the essence of hybrid warfare to reconcile it with the international political context. It addresses the gaps in the literature in an effort to elucidate the essence of hybrid warfare not as a separate concept, but rather as the symptom of a changing political environment. The analysis of the literature is reinforced by two case studies: the war in eastern Ukraine of 2014 and the South China Sea dispute. Both these case studies express ambiguity in the combination of kinetic and non-kinetic means used to achieve political objectives. The article rests on three pillars that constitute the architecture of the central argument. The first pillar will address the gap in the current literature on hybrid warfare and how the current debate is too concerned with conflict dynamics rather than its political nature. The second pillar will delineate the essence, characteristics, and value of ambiguity in hybrid warfare. The third pillar will address the practice of hybrid warfare as the conduct of war by great powers.
This paper analyses the current status of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons on the eve of the Tenth Review Conference, scheduled for 2020 and postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Analyzing its structure, content and enforcement mechanisms makes it possible to assess the state of the NPT and to conclude what are the main challenges it faces today, more than half a century after its adoption. While the nuclear regime's reference treaty continues to face several of the challenges that have marked the debates surrounding it in its first 50 years - the criticism of its undemocratic character, the lack of compliance with disarmament commitments by the nuclear-weapon states or the vagueness of certain treaty provisions- it must also face new and complex obstacles - mainly marked by the current and evolving international nuclear landscape. Although tensions have worsened since the previous Review Conference in 2015, the next one, scheduled for January 2022, could be a catalyst for bridging positions, highlighting what has been achieved, unify positions, and fully legitimizing, once again, the structure, objectives, and content of which is still considered the cornerstone of the international nuclear regime.
The debates around remote warfare have grown significantly over the last decade, leading to the term acquiring a certain buzz in the media, think-tank, and policy discourse. The lack of any serious attempt to reflect and take stock of this body of scholarship informs the scope of this special issue, in general, and of this article in particular. This paper addresses this former gap and, in doing so, serves a threefold purpose. First, to provide a state-of-the-art review of this emerging debate. Second, to both categorise what properties make a buzzword and to make the case for why existing remote warfare scholarship should be approached in this way. Third, to introduce how the various contributions to this special issue extend the debate’s conceptual, theoretical, and empirical parameters.
In the past six years, proxy wars have subtly assumed a position of dominance in contemporary war. Yet, as proxy wars have voraciously marched into the future it has become apparent that they are not well understood, which is the byproduct of insufficient strategic theory on the subject.
Within this dynamic, five basic relationship models exist – exploitative, transactional, cultural, coerced, and contractual. Proxy wars will remain relevant for years to come. Understanding the contours of strategic relationships amongst partners is important for the policymaker and practitioner because it allows them to better navigate the waters of proxy war. Understanding the type of relationship that exists between a proxy and its partner is the first step.
Hybridity' is in vogue these days. Yet, the utility of the hybrid label is often contested in security studies. A problem relates to how the concept of hybrid warfare has been extended to cases that have little in common with the cases from which the concept was originally derived. This article suggests making a conceptual distinction between hybrid warfare and hybrid interference. For the most part, the article is devoted to developing this latter, new strategic concept. In essence, hybrid interference is conceptualized as a 'wedge strategy', namely a policy of dividing a target country, and thereby weakening its counterbalancing potential. By drawing on recent practices by China and Russia, the article shows how hybrid interference uses a panoply of state-controlled, non-kinetic means, which are more or less concealed in order to provide the divider with official deniability and to control targeted actors without elevating their threat perceptions. Three main bundles of means are central to hybrid interference: 1) clandestine diplomacy; 2) geoeconomics; and 3) disinformation. The article shows how western democracies are vulnerable to hybrid interference. Hybrid interference makes use of the liberal values that characterize western democracy, exploiting them as opportunities to drive wedges through democratic societies and undermine governability. The article argues that this sort of external interference has been overlooked in the debate on democratic deconsolidation, that it is becoming more common, and discusses some countermeasures to defend against it.
Concerns over disinformation have intensified in recent years. Policy-makers, pundits, and observers worry that countries like Russia are spreading false narratives and disseminating rumours in order to shape international opinion and, by extension, government policies to their liking. Despite the importance of this topic, mainstream theories in international relations offer contradictory guidance on how to think about disinformation. I argue that disinformation is ineffective in terms of changing the policies of a target as regards to its foreign policy alignments and armaments—that is, the balance of power. To be strategically effective, disinformation must somehow overcome three powerful obstacles: first, the fundamental uncertainty that international anarchy generates over any information broadcasted by adversaries; second, the pre-existing prejudices of foreign policy elites and ordinary citizens; and third, the countermeasures that are available even amid political polarisation. I examine the most likely case of there seemingly being a conscious and effective strategy that emphasises disinformation: the Russian campaign that has targeted the Baltic states, especially since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. The available evidence strongly suggests that the strategic effects of disinformation are exaggerated.
For generations scholars have defined covert action as plausibly deniable interventions in the affairs of others; the sponsor’s hand is neither apparent nor acknowledged. We challenge this orthodoxy. Turning the spotlight away from covert action and onto plausible deniability itself, we argue that even in its supposed heyday, the concept was deeply problematic. Changes in technology and the media, combined with the rise of special forces and private military companies, gives it even less credibility today. We live in an era of implausible deniability and ambiguous warfare. Paradoxically, this does not spell the end of covert action. Instead, leaders are embracing implausible deniability and the ambiguity it creates. We advance a new conception of covert action, historically grounded but fit for the twenty-first century: unacknowledged interference in the affairs of others.
The malaise that the United States, and the West, have experienced in recent campaigns stems in large part from unclear thinking about war, its political essence, and the strategies needed to join the two. Instead, analysis and response are predicated on entrenched theoretical concepts with limited practical utility. The inadequacy of understanding has spawned new, and not so new, terms to capture unanticipated trends, starting with the re-discovery of “insurgency” and “counterinsurgency” and leading to discussion of “hybrid threats” and “gray-zone” operations. New terminology can help, but the change must go deeper. Challenging analytical orthodoxy, this article sets out a unifying approach for the study of political violence, or more accurately: violent politics. It provides a conceptual foundation that helps to make sense of recent shifts in warfare. In effect, it offers sorely needed theoretical insights into the nature of strategy and guides the process of responding to nontraditional threats.
Russia's use of force against Ukraine since early 2014 has prompted some observers to remark that it is engaging in 'hybrid warfare'. This form of military statecraft has made other former Soviet republics, such as the Baltic countries, fear that Russia would use subversion rather than pursue a conventional military engagement against them. Despite this concern about Russian hybrid war, existing descriptions of this form of war suffer from conceptual weaknesses. In this article hybrid warfare is conceived as a strategy that marries conventional deterrence and insurgency tactics. That is, the belligerent uses insurgent tactics against its target while using its conventional military power to deter a strong military response. The article then outlines why some former Soviet republics are susceptible to Russian hybrid warfare, allowing it to postulate inductively the conditions under which hybrid warfare might be used in general. The analysis yields two policy implications. First, military solutions are not wholly appropriate against hybrid warfare since it exploits latent ethnic grievances and weak civil societies. Second, only under narrow circumstances would belligerents resort to hybrid warfare. Belligerents need to be revisionist and militarily stronger than their targets, but they also need to have ethnic or linguistic ties with the target society to leverage in waging hybrid warfare.
Whichever party or parties form the next UK government, a Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) is expected to begin soon after the general election in May. The review might be a ‘light touch’ exercise—little more than a reaffirmation of the SDSR produced by the coalition government in 2010. It seems more likely, however, that the review will be a lengthier, more deliberate exercise and one which might even last into 2016. For those most closely engaged in the process the challenge is more complex than that confronted by their predecessors in 2010. The international security context is more confused and contradictory; the UK's financial predicament is still grave; security threats and challenges will emerge that cannot be ignored; the population's appetite for foreign military engagement appears nevertheless to be restricted; and prevailing conditions suggest that the risk-based approach to national strategy might be proving difficult to sustain. Two key questions should be asked of the review. First, in the light of recent military experiences, what is the purpose of the United Kingdom's armed forces? Second, will SDSR 2015–16 sustain the risk-based approach to national strategy set out in 2010, and if so how convincingly? Beginning with a review of the background against which SDSR 2015–16 will be prepared, this article examines both enduring and immediate challenges to the national strategic process in the United Kingdom and concludes by arguing for strategic latency as a conceptual device which can complement, if not reinvigorate, the risk-based approach to national strategy and defence.
Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, hybrid warfare has become a widely used yet ambiguous term to describe Russia's hostile activities. In academic publications and policy documents, there have been a plethora of different definitions and concepts to make sense of hybrid warfare. This article takes a bottom-up approach and analyzes the discourse of political and military representatives in the United Kingdom to explore how they understand hybrid warfare by Russia and what the implications are for defense policy. Using qualitative content analysis with quantitative aspects, the results show not only a range of different terms used to describe Russia's hostile activities, but also that the discussed topics do not reflect one particular definition of hybrid warfare. The analysis further reveals that representatives highlight non-military aspects of hybrid warfare over the military ones and consider the role of defense policy dependent on the nature of a particular hybrid threat.
This article presents a definitional structure for the notion of 'proxy war' organised around three components: (1) a material-constitutive feature, (2) a processual feature and (3) a relational feature. First, the article evaluates the multiple usages of the term of 'proxy war' in light of its contested character. Second, it proposes a way of making sense of the literature's conceptual turmoil by analysing the different attempts at defining the notion. To this end, it adds an important link to the methodology of concept analysis, namely the 'semantic field', which it reintroduces as a heuristic to identify 'military intervention' as a root concept for defining proxy wars. The article does so by identifying a type of semantic relationship between 'proxy war' and 'military intervention', namely sub-type inclusion.
The rapid expansion of the proxy war literature invites an examination of its advances and developments. This article’s aims are threefold. First, to assess proxy war literature with a view to understand how it has progressed knowledge. Second, to map the field’s effort to cumulate knowledge. Third, to think creatively about the future directions of this research agenda as it addresses a problem no longer at the periphery of contemporary security debates. This article proposes a novel categorization of the evolution of our thinking about proxy wars across three “generations”: founders, framers, and reformers. Following on from this, it provides an assessment of the literature’s assumptions in order to show what remains, or not, under-studied. In doing so, it makes a case for a historiography of the idea of “proxy war,” and one for embedding strategy in analyses of wars by proxy.
Democratic powers like the US and the UK have extensive experience of operating within the grey zone, and states that practise grey-zone warfare can be countered.
Studies of conflicts involving the use of surrogates focus largely on states, viewing the relationship between sponsors and proxies primarily as one in which states utilize nonstate actors as proxies. They have devoted far less attention to sponsor-proxy arrangements in which nonstate actors play super-ordinate roles as sponsors in their own right. Why and how do nonstate actors sponsor proxies? Unlike state sponsors, which value proxies primarily for their military utility, nonstate sponsors select and utilize proxies mainly for their perceived political value. Simply put, states tend to sponsor military surrogates, whereas nonstate actors sponsor political ancillaries. Both endogenous actor-based traits and exogenous structural constraints account for these different approaches. An analysis of three case studies of nonstate sponsors that differ in terms of ideology and capacity—al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the People's Protection Units in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—confirms this argument, but also suggests that the ability and desire to control proxies varies with the sponsor's capacity. High-capacity nonstate sponsors such as Hezbollah behave similarly to state sponsors, but remain exceptional. Most nonstate sponsors are less dominant, rendering the relationships to their proxies more transactional and pragmatic, and ultimately less enduring than those of state sponsors and their clients.
While proxy wars have been around since time immemorial, the last decade of conflict has seen a rise in their strategic appeal. In the same way that sub-state violence captured the attention of policymakers and academics at the end of the Cold War, proxy wars are now a core feature of the contemporary and future strategic and security environment. Vladimir Rauta argues for a relocation of proxy wars by conceptualising them as strategic bargains waged on more complex grounds than risk avoidance, cost efficiency and deniability. He identifies two types of strategic goals sought through the employment of proxies: coercing and coping with an adversary, the differences of which are presented by contrasting the rationale for the US decision to support Syrian rebels against President Bashar Al-Assad with the Iranian strategy of proxy war in Syria.
This book applies concepts from evolutionary science and military innovation to explore how state and nonstate adversaries of the Western powers have learned to defeat (or render irrelevant) the model of high-tech, expensive, precision warfare pioneered by the United States in 1991 and globally dominant since. The book begins with a historical overview of the period since the Cold War, framed by CIA Director James Woolsey’s 1993 comment that “we have slain a large dragon” (the Soviet Union) “but now we find ourselves in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes, and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of.” The book describes the selective pressures acting on adversaries as a result of the evolutionary fitness landscape created by western military dominance. It then explores ideas from social and evolutionary science—including social learning, natural selection, artificial selection, predator effects, and the distinction between concept-led peacetime innovation and wartime coevolution —to explain how adversaries adapt. It presents a series of case studies on nonstate actors (including Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Islamic State), Russia, and China, as well as sections on North Korea and Iran. The book concludes by considering how western powers can respond to the increasing ineffectiveness of their military model and examines likely strategic futures.
Even an anonymous belligerent cannot avoid identifying its interests, which those seeking deterrence can then hold at risk.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has forced the greatest a re-appraisal of European security since the end of the Cold War. In the Nordic region, this has led to preparations for great power armed conflict in the region after a long period of strategic neglect. All three of the Nordic states examined here, Finland, Sweden and Norway, have adopted so called total defence policies. Total defence combines the armed forces and civil society in a comprehensive whole of society approach to security intended to deter an attack by making a target state a very challenging prospect for an aggressor. Finland retained a total defence policy after the Cold War, but has had to re-examine its utility for the contemporary threat environment. For Norway and Sweden, total defence means significant challenges reviving Cold War era planning in a very different security and societal context. This study examines current Nordic security concepts through the critical, elements of total defence policies: national resilience and territorial defence. It also addresses the role that alliances and partnerships play in contemporary Nordic total defence planning. An important question is the extent to which these total defence concepts effectively address the perceived political and military threat from Russia.
This article presents a typology of armed non-state actors in hybrid warfare: proxy, auxiliary, surrogate and affiliated forces. By focusing on the kinetic domain of hybrid warfare, the article offers a corrective to a debate that has so far ignored variation in roles and functions of non-state actors and their relationships with states and their regular forces. As a denominator, ‘hybrid’ identifies a combination of battlespaces, types of operations—military or non-kinetic—and a blurring of actors with the scope of achieving strategic objectives by creating exploitable ambiguity. However, there has been a disproportionate focus on what hybrid war supposedly combines across battlespaces and domains (socio-political, economic, informational), at the expense of who and how. Using the Ukrainian crisis as a theory-building exercise, the article suggests a four-category schema that identifies non-state actor functions as a tool to better represent the complex franchise of violence that is found nested next to non-military operations in hybrid activity. In so doing, the article speaks to a call for better conceptualization the role of non-state violent actors in civil war, in general, and in hybrid warfare, in particular.
For much of the post-Soviet era there was a widespread belief that improving capabilities required for dealing with local small wars and insurgencies was the central focus of Russian military reforms. As a result, Moscow's military assertiveness and return to geopolitical rivalries since 2014 came as a surprise to many in the West. The article argues that small wars were never the major focus of Russian military transformation and reforms. Tracing the country's experience of war and conflict regionally and internationally since the end of the Cold War, and the impact this had on Moscow's views on what kind of armed forces it required, the article shows that the Kremlin's military ambitions started to diverge dramatically from western expectations as early as the mid-1990s. Russia never really saw armed forces geared towards small and ‘new war’-type scenarios as sufficient for upholding its regional and international status ambitions. Moreover, the Kremlin's growing preoccupation with internal order and regime stability has increasingly reinforced the rhetoric of a hostile West, which is used to justify the increasing centralization of domestic politics. Russia's military revival has been long in the making and poses serious challenges to its neighbours and to the West.
During the last decade, 'Hybrid Warfare' has become a novel yet controversial term in academic, political and professional military lexicons, intended to suggest some sort of mix between different military and non-military means and methods of confrontation. Enthusiastic discussion of the notion has been undermined by conceptual vagueness and political manipulation, particularly since the onset of the Ukrainian crisis in early 2014, as ideas about Hybrid Warfare engulf Russia and the West, especially in the media. Western defense and political specialists analyzing Russian responses to the crisis have been quick to confirm that Hybrid Warfare is the Kremlin's main strategy in the twenty-first century. But many respected Russian strategists and political observers contend that it is the West that has been waging Hybrid War, Gibridnaya Voyna, since the end of the Cold War. In this highly topical book, Ofer Fridman offers a clear delineation of the conceptual debates about Hybrid Warfare. What leads Russian experts to say that the West is conducting a Gibridnaya Voyna against Russia, and what do they mean by it? Why do Western observers claim that the Kremlin engages in Hybrid Warfare? And, beyond terminology, is this something genuinely new?
When compared to advancements in conceptualising deterrence in other domains, cyber deterrence is still in it messy infancy. In some ways cyber deterrence practice outpaces cyber deterrence theory. Tactics, strategy, doctrine, and policy are developed and put to use even before corresponding theories are properly understood. This article analyses how American cyber deterrence has been implemented over the past two decades in order to inform ongoing debates within the academic study of deterrence, and to provide insights from practice for how cyber deterrence theory can be better conceived and refined.
Abstract
Proxy wars are still under-represented in conflict research and a key cause for this is the lack of conceptual and terminological care. This article seeks to demonstrate that minimising terminological diffusion increases overall analytical stability by maximising conceptual rigour. The argument opens with a discussion on the terminological ambivalence resulting from the haphazard employment of labels referencing the parties involved in proxy wars. Here, the article introduces an analytical framework with a two-fold aim: to reduce label heterogeneity, and to argue in favour of understanding proxy war dynamics as overlapping dyads between a Beneficiary, a Proxy, and a Target. This is then applied to the issues of defining and theorising party dynamics in proxy wars. It does so by providing a structural-relational analysis of the interactions between the above- mentioned parties based on strategic interaction. It presents a tentative explanation of the proxy relationship by correlating the Beneficiary’s goal towards the Target with the Proxy’s preference for the Beneficiary. In adding the goal-preference relational heuristic, the article advances the recent focus on strategic interaction with a novel variant to explanations based on interest, power, cost–benefit considerations or ideology.
Keywords
conceptual analysis, external support, proxy war, strategic interaction, terminology
What are the ethical pitfalls of countering hybrid warfare? This article proposes an ontological security-inspired reading of the EU and NATO’s engagement with hybrid threats. It illustrates how hybrid threat management collapses their daily security struggles into ontological security management exercise. This has major consequences for defining the threshold of an Article 5 attack and the related response for NATO, and the maintenance of a particular symbolic order and identity narrative for the EU. The institutionalisation of hybrid threat counteraction emerges as a routinisation strategy to cope with the “known unknowns”. Fostering resilience points at the problematic prospect of compromising the fuzzy distinction between politics and war: the logic of hybrid conflicts presumes that all politics could be reduced to a potential build-up phase for a full-blown confrontation. Efficient hybrid threat management faces the central paradox of militant democracy whereby the very attempt to defend democracy might harm it.
This article examines critically the literature of hybrid war and evaluates the countermeasures often proposed. It explains the concept of hybrid warfare and its varied interpretations, illustrating how it is a manifestation of current anxieties in armed conflict. The selection of the literature is based on works that are referenced, that offer a scientific approach, and which review either the phenomenon of hybrid warfare or its countermeasures empirically. Unscientific works have been omitted. The analysis of the literature presented here shows that the antidotes to ‘hybridity’ lie not in the operational or tactical sphere but in strategic and political domains.
In the aftermath of the Crimea annexation in March 2014, the idea of ‘hybrid warfare’ quickly gained prominence as a concept that could help to explain the success of Russian military operations in this conflict. Although the concept continues to enjoy widespread popularity in both scholarly and policy circles, its utility as an analytical tool is also heavily contested. This article adds to the literature critical of the ‘hybrid warfare’ concept. It argues that in addition to the fact that what is now described as a ‘hybrid’ approach to war is nothing new, the problems pertaining to its utility for the study of contemporary Russia go deeper than this. ‘Hybrid warfare’ inadequately reflects the direction of Russian military modernisation and as such has led to a skewed understanding of Russian military capabilities. Moreover, the tendency to use ‘hybrid warfare’ not only to conceptualise developments in the Russian military, but in the country’s foreign policy in general, can lead to serious unintended consequences.
Russia’s recent operations in Ukraine, especially the integrated use of militias, gangsters, information operations, intelligence, and special forces, have created a concern in the West about a ‘new way of war’, sometimes described as ‘hybrid’. However, not only are many of the tactics used familiar from Western operations, they also have their roots in Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian practice. They are distinctive in terms of the degree to which they are willing to give primacy to ‘non-kinetic’ means, the scale of integration of non-state actors, and tight linkage between political and military command structures. However, this is all largely a question of degree rather than true qualitative novelty. Instead, what is new is the contemporary political, military, technological, and social context in which new wars are being fought.
Hybrid threats have now joined a growing suite of alternative concepts about the ever evolving character of modern conflict. Here and abroad, the hybrid threat construct has found traction in official policy circles despite its relative novelty. It has been cited by the U.S. Secretary of Defense in articles and speeches, and by policymakers now serving in the Pentagon. Heretofore, the rapidly growing hybrid threat literature has focused on the land warfare aspects of the threat. Modern hybrid threats, including Hezbollah and Iran, have demonstrated the ability to employ irregular tactics and advanced naval capabilities along with illegal or terrorist activity. Thus, the hybrid threat is applicable to naval forces and the U.S. Navy needs to dust off lessons learned from its last experience in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s to better prepare for an even more challenging future.
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