Dr. Sascha Hach, Austin Wright
Alongside Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, non-military operations across Europe have also been on the rise, blending methods of espionage, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks and sabotage with other unconventional means of attack. These events have given new impetus to analyses on how to address the issue of ‘hybrid warfare’. The ongoing negotiations on a ceasefire and an end to the war have also raised the question of how Moscow’s employment of hybrid warfare can be curbed, or whether we must prepare for it to continue even after the fighting ends. In this context, it is important to understand the evolution of Russia’s unconventional methods of international interference and the conceptual reasoning behind them.
The Conceptual Rediscovery of Unconventional Warfare.During the Cold War the Soviet Union used “active measures” to pursue its political objectives: covert operations involving everything from disinformation and propaganda to agents of influence, subversion and sabotage, even kidnapping and assassinations. These actions, which coincided with an uptick in internal conflict across the globe, compelled Western strategists to grapple with the blurring of lines between military and civilian entities. Eventually, strategic theorist and defense analyst Frank Hoffman coined the term ‘hybrid warfare’, arguing that nations, not just rebel or terrorist groups, can combine irregular tactics and covert operations to achieve their goals both on and off the battlefield. While not the first to do so, Hoffman conceptually linked unconventional means with conventional practices of warfare in a way that came to dominate Western security conversations. This was especially the case during the War on Terror, when Hoffman’s model seemed to address the fluidity and interweaving of warfighting techniques that characterized political conflict the modern era. Consequently, this framework has been used to contextualize and interrogate Russia’s behavior towards the West with little consideration for Moscow’s own understanding of what can be achieved through covert measures below the threshold of war.
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