By Benjamin David Baker
From Sun Tzu to Xi Jinping: Russia isn’t the only one who knows hybrid warfare.
The Ukraine Crisis has caused a renewed interest in the concept known as hybrid warfare (HW). There has been much speculation around hybrid warfare, and the concept has so far been notoriously hard to define. The description that seems to be most commonly accepted is that HW is a type of warfare which entails the use of a combination of different types of warfare by an adversary. This primarily entails employing a mixture of conventional and irregular troops in order for a specific actor to achieve its political goals. Furthermore, it also includes the widespread use of intelligence, propaganda and diplomatic means in order to persuade the adversary to surrender. The goal of an actor employing hybrid warfare is not merely the control of a piece of territory, nor the destruction of an opponent’s military force. According to Col. John J. McCuen:
Hybrid conflicts therefore are full spectrum wars with both physical and conceptual dimensions: the former, a struggle against an armed enemy and the latter, a wider struggle for control and support of the combat zone’s indigenous population, the support of the home fronts of the intervening nations, and the support of the international community… To secure and stabilize the indigenous population, the intervening forces must immediately rebuild or restore security, essential services, local government, self-defense forces and essential elements of the economy.
This paradigm was to a large degree followed by Russia in its highly successful operation in Crimea, and to a lesser degree in the Donbass. (Unofficially, this strategy has been nicknamed the Gerasimov-doctrine, after the retired Russian General Valeri Gerasimov who developed some of its key components.) Ukraine might have caused a recent renewal of interest in the relevance of hybrid warfare, but its basic, underlying thinking isn’t new. Actors as diverse as the Mongols, American Revolutionaries, and the Vietminh all employed strategies and tactics which we today characterize as hybrid warfare. (For a great introduction to the two latter actor’s uses of hybrid warfare, Max Boot’s Invisible Armies is a great place to start.)
Read the full story at The Diplomat