All too frequently, people resort to pithy and catchy buzzwords and phrases to disguise the fact that they really have no idea what to say, but have to say something. We’ve all heard examples: “streamline virtual portals”, “strategize cross-media interfacing“, “maximize enterprise users“, etcetera, etcetera, ad nausea. Sadly – we’re way past ‘alarming’ – militaries, especially in the West, are no different.
For military forces in most parts of the world, sounding trendy is necessary to keep money flowing from their civilian leadership. Thus, at budget time, military leaders tend to appear in front of civilian bureaucrats – most of whom know absolutely nothing practical about anything ‘military’ – with new and scarily indefinable concepts to keep the money spigot turned on. In this, while the military generals and colonels are technically lying, they are doing so because whatever threats their nation may be facing, those threats are not changing very much or very quickly (mostly), but politicians live to be “ahead of the game”, and tossing out buzzwords on the Sunday morning talk show circuit to show how up-to-date they are. And don’t be fooled: the politicians the generals hate the most are not civilians, but those military veterans who go into politics, because they are far less susceptible to Buzzword Bingo.
But, I digress.
Of late, one of the major buzz-terms has been “Hybrid Warfare”. Sounds concerning, right? But what is “hybrid warfare”, exactly? The official NATO definition is, itself, loaded with buzz terms. Simply out, “hybrid warfare” is the combination of “conventional warfare” (i.e., the current war in Ukraine) with all the other stuff: guerrilla warfare, psychological operations and propaganda, “information warfare” (itself, a buzzword), low-level drone warfare, and on and on…essentially, the combination of all the means of waging war, if deployed all at once or even in pieces, is “hybrid warfare”. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is: this term perfectly describes everything from World War Two to the US and French wars with Vietnam, to Desert Shield/Desert Storm and the recent “GWOT” (Global War On Terror).
The reason this is particular buzzword is relevant, however, is because – as was pointed out in 1940 – effective combat technology has migrated down to the level of the common citizen. Knowledge is like that: if you know how to do a thing, getting the tools and materials is not overly difficult…as Western forces have discovered to their regret over the last quarter-century or so: if you’re wondering why the recent series of wars have been inconclusive, this is one of the main reasons.
Key Components of Hybrid Warfare
The basic components of hybrid warfare can be defined by the following:
Conventional military operations
Traditional military force deployments, and/or shows of military strength have formed the basis of recorded warfare throughout history. When the average person thinks of “war“, this is what they think of: serried ranks of troops in uniform, gobs of artillery and armored vehicles, big, fast-moving jets, and all the other “stuff”.
Irregular warfare and insurgency
The use of proxies and non-state actors on a regular basis is a relatively new phenomenon, at least when done with any degree of reasoned planning and execution. Arming rebels, insurgents and guerrillas – or jihadist’s – has been done forever and a day, but today, in the glare of news cameras hungry for bloody story meat, the practice is frequently regularized, and given a sheen of legitimacy…whether it is competently done or not.
Another buzzword feature associated with this idea is that of “asymmetric warfare“. This is a “weasel term“, as it essentially means anything the enemy does that seems irrational, but that works in a combat environment. This can be anything from tunneling under perimeter of a “forward operating base” (FOB), to adding peanut oil to conventional engines, something the British SOE and the American OSS did in Europe during WW2.
Military establishments and their (mostly) civilian masters have come to depend absolutely on computer technologies, including the internet. As a result, cyber attacks and information warfare are now serious problems.
Hacking and disruption of critical infrastructure – who remembers the STUXNET virus? – demonstrated both the terrifying levels of damage that a simple computer virus could wreak on highly dangerous manufacturing processes, but also the equally terrifying scale of the potential response.
In like manner, “disinformation” campaigns and social media manipulation, once laughed at by many people, have proven to be an important component on the new battlefield. The ‘edgy’ memes shared over social media, however, are the equivalent to the paper pamphlets of past decades, the crucial difference being that this kind of media can reach a far wider audience, and do so far faster than conventional radio or television spots. For all that, however, the main impact of disinformation campaigns has actually been to undermine the public perception of government in general, as governing bodies around the world – peopled by many who lack any real understanding of technology – desperately try to restrict both free speech as well as social media access, to the extent of developing “caged” social media platforms which they then restrict their citizens to using exclusively, on penalty of arrest. The end result is a rapidly growing distrust of all forms of government.
Economic pressure and sanctions
Likewise, the old standbys of economic pressure and trade sanctions are beginning to fail, because there is too much money to be made getting around the sanctions. Even targeted economic measures against key sectors within a hostile state can be overcome, if that state either has friendly economic partners willing to either openly ignore the sanctions, or at least are willing to turn a blind eye to the smuggling.
Cases in point, both Russia and Iran, while both suffering economic hardships initially, have both rebounded quickly, to the point that Rosoboronexport – Russia’s state arms dealer – is working three shifts to produce mountains of military vehicles, equipment and ammunition to supply not only the war in Ukraine, but to fulfill export orders to multiple countries (unlike the West), leaving the failures of the West’s total lack of strategic vision laid bare. The brutal government of Iran, too – like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – is doing perfectly well for itself; the welfare of their citizenry is irrelevant, as long as they can limit access to news, and can keep the populace at work.
Communist China, with an economy on life support and teetering on the brink of collapse, has been desperately trying to build an international infrastructure based on their “Belt & Road Initiative” to gain enough clout to create exploitable economic dependencies…which, if the collapse of French dominance in the Sahel region of Africa is indication, is a whole different kind of losing strategy.
Conclusion
The challenges for National Defense in responding to “total warfare“, or “unrestricted warfare” are vast. Far aside from the legal and ethical considerations, are the strains placed on both traditional military and governmental structures, and – most critically – the increasingly negative perception of those institutions, as they flail helplessly, deploying tools and strategies that they do not understand.
And of course, lurking in the background lay the twin threats of A.I. and biotech. As the capabilities of AI increase rapidly, deploying a hostile AI against an “enemy” populace, while likely to be very effective, can easily backfire, sparking a whole host of “science fiction”-like scenarios none of them good.
Far more worrying, is the possibility of very high-tech biological warfare. Conspiracy theories about the recent coronavirus pandemic aside, the potential certainly exists for the truly deranged to deploy a “slate-wiper” virus that they believe will kill just enough people to let them achieve their goals…the problem being, of course, that viruses have a nasty habit of rapidly mutating, rendering vaccines and inoculations against them completely ineffective.
This is not a case of “give peace a chance” – throughout history, there are plenty of madmen, and equally mad states – who take “soft” attitudes as an opportunity to strike.
We can’t tell you what is going to happen. All we can do is try to warn you.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- David Kilcullen (2011), The Accidental Guerrilla
- Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui (2015),Unrestricted Warfare
- Thomas Ricks (2012), The Generals
- James F. Dunnigan (2003), How To Make War, 4th Edition
- James F. Dunnigan (1991), Shooting Blanks
