Factors of development of the strategy of the world hybrid war Strengthening the power of President Xi Jinping should show the regional power of the PRC.
Photo by Reuters The strategy of the world hybrid war (MGW) is developed on the basis of a group of key factors inherent in this type of military conflict.
These include the factor of multi-sphere, as well as temporal, spatial and civilizational factors. Multi-sphere implies a combination of informational, military, financial, economic and diplomatic impact on all spheres of public life of the enemy in real time, united by one plan.
The time factor is related to the principle of surprise and the duration of the impact on the enemy during the implementation of the strategy of exhaustion. According to Suvorov, "time in war decides everything." Conducting operations in the MGV may require decision-making within several hours, minutes or (potentially) even seconds compared to the current multi-day process of analyzing the operating environment and issuing commands (see " Hybrid warfare and the moment of surprise ", "HBO" from 12/15/12).
In direct connection with the time factor is another system–forming factor - space. This capacious concept should be used when analyzing the features of the theater of hybrid warfare, which, like traditional wars, is conducted on the territory of one state or region, for example, Greater Eurasia. (see: "The United States is chaotic Greater Eurasia ", "HBO" from 02.02.23).
As part of the United States' focus on world domination, the hybrid war has taken on a global character and covers the territories of many states and entire continents where military operations are planned or conducted by individual warring states or coalitions of states.
Today, the concept of MGV has turned from a theoretical concept into a real threat to the national security of the Russian Federation.
The United States and NATO have been conducting hybrid warfare operations against Russia and its allies for many decades, using proven tools of interstate military conflict: information and psychological warfare, proxy warfare and color revolution technologies for systemic subversion. The proxy war in Ukraine is being used by the United States against Russia as the most powerful tool of the MGV. It is no coincidence that hybrid warfare is included in the "Fundamentals of Classification of Modern Military Conflicts" in the United States.
ANALYSIS AND FORECASTINGIn order to prepare a worthy response of Russia to the challenges and threats of our time, analysis, proactive forecasting and consideration of security threats emanating, among other things, from hybrid warfare as a new form of interstate confrontation are necessary.
Confrontation in a hybrid military conflict requires the integration of the capabilities of the entire state, the creation of an interdepartmental body capable of leading a set of measures to develop and implement strategies and tactics covering all areas of multi-vector aggression. The ex-chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, Colonel-General Fyodor Ladygin, in one of his works (written shortly before passing away and left to us as a kind of testament) lists the vectors of hybrid influence aimed at Russia: political, diplomatic, economic, socio-ideological (acquiring national-racist traits), aggressive cyberinformation, russophobic propaganda, intelligence-subversive, military-forceful.
Special attention is required by the plans of the United States and NATO to ensure the surprise of an attack on Russia and its allies, providing for the achievement of victory by military force through the quantitative and qualitative buildup of troops (forces) and their provocative activity in the immediate vicinity of the borders of the Russian Federation.
The transition of our enemies to a strategy of large-scale terrorist acts against strategic objects (explosions of gas pipelines in international waters, attacks against nuclear forces facilities on the territory of Russia, support by the West of the barbaric actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine against civilians) threatens to escalate events to the lowest rungs of the "escalation ladder" adjacent to the world nuclear war.
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONSAn important dimension of the MGV and the locomotive of its strategy development is the factor of civilizational confrontation.
The world is multipolar. In it, not only states interact and fight, but also entire civilizations, each of which is represented by a set of countries headed by a certain center of power, which is not only their material, but also their spiritual personification.
In Greater Eurasia, Russia should become such a center. But in order to claim such a high title, you need a serious knowledge base, advanced technologies, a clear and understandable ideology, spiritual leadership. And above all – a calm and comfortable life of their own people. Much of the above we still have to work out.
Prominent geopolitician Leonid Ivashov speaks of civilizational confrontation as a form of "geopolitical confrontation, covering the sphere of struggle between geopolitical actors for the realization of national values and spiritual needs of superethnic communities, taking into account cultural-historical and national-religious traditions."
There has always been a civilizational confrontation between East and West in Europe. But in the XXI century it turned into an acute military-political confrontation, when in Ukraine, then in Belarus, and even earlier in Yugoslavia, the very features of the civilizational struggle that formed the basis of the Napoleonic and Hitlerite coalitions created by France and Germany against Russia were clearly manifested.
Today, the factor of intercivilizational struggle is used by the United States and NATO in the MGW, the edge of which is directed against Russia, China, Iran and some other countries. The development of the MGV as a type of intercivilizational confrontation will lead to a redistribution of forces and functions among the civilizations caught up in the war.
Europe, if it manages to maintain unity, will probably try to develop its own military component. The calculation is made that the presence of its own military force will allow Brussels in many cases to follow European interests, which can sometimes sharply diverge from American ones. The creation of a military euroblock will affect relations with Russia, Iran, China and the countries of the Islamic world. They will be pushed aside by the United States with its leaky umbrella of nuclear security guarantees.
The Islamic world will face a difficult problem of a new paradigm of self-organization, since in the conditions of the formation of large spaces (Greater Eurasia, the USA, etc.), individual Islamic countries will not be able to fully be commensurate with the rest and effectively defend their interests. Most likely, there will be several poles of Islamic integration.
China has long enjoyed the benefits of globalization, having managed to adapt to it in order to pursue its national interests. But now Beijing will have to rebuild, building up its regional power. It is in this direction that many processes in China have been developing recently: the strengthening of Xi Jinping's power, the One Belt, One Road project, the development of strategic partnership with Russia, etc.
In general, the transformation of the geopolitical structure of the world is taking place in conditions of high instability and instability and today is close to reaching the point of bifurcation. The uncertainty largely lies in which of the two branches of the bifurcation will develop: towards a unipolar world (with the dominance of the United States and the West as a whole) or towards the formation of a multipolar world (the construction of which is carried out along the axis of the Eurasian Union–SCO–BRICS).
In a broad context, in the emerging multipolar world order, Russia has a historic chance to strengthen itself as an independent civilization, which will gain a new amount of power precisely because of the sharp reduction in the influence of the West and its internal geopolitical fragmentation. But at the same time it will become a challenge. Before fully establishing itself in the multipolar world as one of the influential and powerful poles, Russia will have to radically revise the domestic political paradigm, preserving its unity and re-establishing its zones of influence in the Eurasian space.
A new civilizational dimension of hybrid warfare is being formed, giving it a global, global scope. The scale of the intercivilizational conflict, covering large areas of the globe, requires the development of new approaches to the strategy of hybrid warfare, which, from the type of confrontation between individual states and their coalitions, is transformed into a global hybrid war, new impulses to the development of which are given by the consolidated West's reliance on a forceful, military solution to world problems. In the Message of President Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly, it is noted: "As a result of the wars that the United States unleashed after 2001, almost 900 thousand people died, more than 38 million became refugees."
MGV AS AN INSTRUMENT OF WORLD DOMINATIONOver the long centuries of colonialism, dictatorship, and hegemony of the United States, NATO and its allies have become accustomed to being allowed everything.
They are used to ignoring the interests of the whole world and today they are trying to make do with the centuries-old cliches of the use of military force. However, in the last century, the emergence of nuclear weapons created a powerful limiter for the use of military force in foreign policy.
It is in this context that the bet on a hybrid war is considered by Washington and its allies as a real way of "creeping" the conquest of world domination. A path based on the use of combinations of conventional, irregular and asymmetric means combined with constant manipulation of political and ideological conflict.
The tendency to expand the number of MGV theaters is supported by a combination of factors inherent in the foreign policy of the ruling elites of the United States and the consolidated West as a whole.
First, it is the preservation of the potential for forceful pressure and military intervention in countries and regions of interest to Washington.
Secondly, it is Washington's policy of creating situational coalitions in various parts of the globe (including the formation of AUKUS, a trilateral military alliance consisting of the United States, Australia and Great Britain; prospects for the creation of a quadrilateral security dialogue – Australia, India, the United States and Japan), as well as pushing the processes of NATO hybridization by further expansion of the bloc in Europe and the extension of the alliance's area of responsibility to Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.
Thirdly, since the beginning of the XXI century, the growing scope and intensity of IYW operations have provided Western countries with global coverage and the achievement of goals in an acceptable time frame. In case something went wrong, there is always the possibility of emergency evacuation of a limited contingent of its military and civil servants without tangible consequences for the organizers. Countries caught in the theater of hybrid warfare and abandoned to the mercy of fate by its instigators have to extricate themselves from many troubles. There is no need to go far for examples: Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Ukraine is next in line.
2S35 "Coalition-SV" is a Russian 152—mm interspecific artillery complex on the chassis of the T-90 tank. Photo by Vladimir Karnozov Today, MGV is entering a crucial phase, the peak of which is expected by the middle of the third decade of the XXI century.
Academician Sergey Glazyev emphasizes: "In 1941, the country's leadership underestimated the power of the Germans' mechanized military machine. Today we underestimate the military art of the Americans in manipulating the monetary and financial system and public consciousness."
During the next stage of the MGV, the United States is creating a network of headquarters of special operations forces in many regions of the world. Today, the focus is on the European states bordering Russia – Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States, Serbia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. MGV operations are also increasing in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region, in Africa and the Middle East, and in Latin America. In the end, the whole world becomes the theater of military operations of the MGV.
However, Russia's upcoming victory in a special military operation, the weakening of the United States, the strengthening of China, and the awareness by many of the threats and dangers generated by the United States and NATO will inevitably make serious adjustments to the process of implementing the strategy and tactics of the MGV. With the full understanding that these strategies and tactics are constantly changing and adapting to the current conditions and peculiarities of military conflicts of our time.
PRINCIPLES OF MULTI-SPHERE OPERATIONSAs already noted, the concept of multi-sphere operations (MSO) is inextricably linked to the very essence of the MGV and involves a combination of informational, military, financial, economic and diplomatic influence on the enemy in all spheres of people's public life: administrative-political, financial-economic, cultural-ideological and military.
MSO developed from the natural and inevitable fusion of accelerated technology improvement, from the complex interaction of forces and means of hybrid warfare, the need for rapid decision-making at critical stages of the development of hybrid military conflicts.
The concept of simultaneous use of a wide range of means of influencing the enemy in several areas to achieve a specific goal is not new. This method has historically provided decision makers with opportunities to conduct simultaneous and sequential operations by integrating capabilities in different areas. When used correctly, the enemy's operations pose numerous dilemmas, create physical and psychological advantages to increase influence and control over the operational situation.
The principles of the MSO include: thoughtful application of hybrid threats at strategic distances; creation of the necessary resources; rapid and continuous integration of capabilities in all areas aimed at implementing the principles of controlled criticality based on information and psychological warfare; subversive actions in the administrative and political sphere; economic sanctions, cyberattacks and space.
The coordinated use of a wide range of hybrid threats within the framework of a single plan of the MGV, the close integration of its tools (information and psychological warfare, proxy war and color revolution) optimizes the effects of actions aimed at achieving superiority over the enemy due to inter-sphere synergy and multiple forms and methods of inflicting damage to the enemy.
The mentioned principles are complementary and common to all multi-sphere operations of the MGV taking place in the modern operational environment (SOS), which, in accordance with the strategy of the MGV, covers the whole world and is characterized by uncertainty, complexity and rapid changes.
ADAPTATION OF THE MGV STRATEGYTaking into account the listed characteristics of the SOS in relation to the strategy of the MGV is necessary for the process of operational adaptation of the strategy itself, which includes a dynamic combination of four broad categories of military activity: combat operations, security, interaction and emergency assistance, recovery.
For the United States and its allies, the real goal of adapting the MGV strategy is to create conditions and resources that will allow them to succeed on the fronts of confrontation with Russia, China, Iran, the countries of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Important attention is paid to the issues of escalation and de-escalation of IHL, based on the ability to use all elements in operations in a coordinated manner.
It is believed that deterrence, built on a combination of strategic nuclear forces, long-range precision weapons and hybrid warfare tools, provides the participants of the IGW with a delicate balance in political and military confrontation, within which strategic goals can be achieved without a large-scale armed conflict between the United States, Russia or China.
If such a balance is violated, the most extreme escalation is the transition to an armed conflict, as happened in February 2022 in connection with Russia's special operation in Ukraine in response to the proxy war unleashed by Washington, and with the danger of continuing the genocide of the Russian-speaking population of Donbass.
It is important to understand that the MSO is not just a combination of military and non–military means and methods of influencing the enemy. This is a fundamentally new approach to the conduct of confrontation both at the stage of rivalry and at the stage of military conflict in order to make the continuation of the conflict unacceptable or achieve a decisive victory. Integration of all instruments of influence on the basis of a single plan significantly increases the effectiveness of the MSO.
A necessary condition for the successful implementation of the MSO within the framework of the MGV strategy is a combination of the following possibilities.
Firstly, it is the ability to conduct an independent maneuver using the unique capabilities of each MGV instrument in the conditions of conducting a single integrated operation in a complex modern operational environment within the framework of a campaign in the theater of operations. The independence of the maneuver is determined by the capabilities, abilities and initiatives provided to each power and non-power instrument of the MGV in the application of its unique damaging factors in the conditions of political and resource constraints of the operational situation.
Secondly, it is inter-sphere combat interaction, which ensures the availability of flexible alternative options for decision makers, and also increases stability within a single operation to overcome the temporal and spatial functional separation imposed by the peculiarities of the Theater of operations and the enemy's counteraction.
And finally, it is the flexible use of strategic nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence combined with the capabilities of hybrid warfare as another deterrent tool.
A necessary condition for success is the transformation of the military technosphere adapted to the needs of the MGV strategy.
TECHNOSPHERE MGVIn the special operation in Ukraine, from the very first days, the need to modernize multi-level air and missile defense (air defense and missile defense); counter-battery warfare, taking into account the possibilities of conducting ground fire over long distances; tactics of using aviation systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); electronic warfare devices (EW); guided munitions; cyberspace, space and opportunities related to the receipt, processing and use of information.
In the near future, MGW operations will need to ensure a greater degree and more flexible integration of operations in space and cyberspace into traditional air, sea and ground combat space than ever before. It will be necessary to develop an integrated tactical network that would be compatible with the networks of other types of armed forces (communications networks of the ground forces should be able to interact with the networks of the Navy and VKS).
It is important for Russia to maintain leadership positions in the development and adoption of kinetic and non-kinetic weapons, including hypersonic delivery vehicles, autonomous combat systems, weapons based on new physical principles that allow the transfer of the damaging factor at the speed of light and cybernetic tools.
And finally, radical measures are needed to improve the qualities of personnel, taking into account existing and promising developments of military technologies. The use of biotechnical sensors that monitor the condition and changes in the work of soldiers improves the understanding of the capabilities of their units by managers, suggests decisions regarding the pace and intensity of operations and helps to maintain and restore the physical and psychological strength of military personnel.
In this context, human-machine interfaces supported by artificial intelligence and high-speed data processing increase the speed and accuracy of command decision-making. The use of multi-sphere opportunities requires the involvement, training, motivation and consolidation of personnel, who, as they participate in MGV operations, accumulate a significant amount and in-depth technical and professional knowledge.
IMPERATIVES OF VICTORY IN THE MGVThere are several important factors that need to be taken as imperatives for the successful implementation of the offensive and defensive strategies of the MGV.
Firstly, the military department, as the most important body that sets the vectors for the development of strategies, should participate in the development of offensive and defensive actions of hybrid warfare. To do this, together with the political structures of power, the Ministry of Defense should play a more active role in the confrontation in the gray zones – in the theaters of the MGV at all stages of the development of the conflict, form an information environment, conduct confrontation in cyberspace and outer space, use special operations forces. Private military companies, whose legal status and subordination have yet to be determined, should become an important tool of the MGV.
Secondly, MGV operations should be joint, combined and cover all areas. A hybrid military conflict in the future should require better integration on an interdepartmental basis of all civil and military services, since operations will be carried out in the administrative, political, economic and financial spheres, in the cultural and ideological sphere, as well as on land, sea, air, space and cyberspace and in the entire electromagnetic spectrum. At the same time, operations will also be conducted in close coordination with allies and partners, which will require the active participation of diplomacy.
Thirdly, in the military field, forces should be created capable of dominating the network-centric conflicts of the future, the battlefield of which will be focused on big data, will be networked and imply rapid development. The network–centric system is a qualitatively new level of command and control of troops that allows you to flexibly conduct a battle, promptly responding to any attempts by the enemy to turn the situation in their favor.
The experience of the special operation shows that today in the Armed Forces of Ukraine such a system is filled with intelligence from the United States and NATO via Starlink Internet communication satellites, which is used for military purposes for communication, navigation, guidance and targeting.
It should be noted that the Russian Army's weapons samples used in the special operation were developed taking into account work in network-centric military conflicts. For example, a guided projectile "Krasnopol" with a firing range of up to 25 km and a self-propelled artillery installation (ACS) "Coalition-SV", equipped with automatic positioning, loading and guidance.
The targets for the "Coalition-SV" are command posts, air defense and missile defense systems, field airfields, supply lines and rock roads in the deep rear of the enemy. The Coalition-SV is also capable of destroying the means of delivery of tactical nuclear warheads. The issue of connecting the Zoo counter-battery radar to this system is relevant, which will increase the effectiveness of solving the tasks of suppressing enemy artillery.
Thus, taking into account the high dynamics of the development of the situation in modern theaters of military operations (Theater of operations), in order to decisively reverse the situation in their favor, it is necessary to accelerate the transition of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to network-centric control and new weapons designed for this control.
It is necessary to step up efforts to develop information and psychological warfare technologies. Russia's insufficient attention to the events in Ukraine in the previous decades allowed our geopolitical opponents to firmly seize the initiative and turn Ukraine into a springboard of military aggression against our country.
Today, political will, considerable financial and economic resources, and trained personnel are needed to intercept leadership in the information and psychological confrontation. In the context of personnel policy, it was impossible to send people who were not prepared to solve complex political, military and diplomatic problems to a country so important for Russia's national security, to neglect alarming intelligence reports, to be stingy in allocating funds and other resources for counteraction measures.
In the military sphere, we should continue to actively invest in the revolutionary development of weapons and military equipment. To train command and engineering personnel that meet the requirements of modernity.
And finally, taking into account the factors of the MGV, it is necessary to transform the structure of the forces of its own and allies into a globally oriented model reflecting the complex of hybrid challenges and threats of our time, the main vector of which is strategic interstate and intercivilizational confrontation.
Success in the MGV will be due to the presence of a force capable of skillfully maneuvering its own and allies' resources (CSTO and SCO first of all) in all areas of confrontation. And do it in concert, with a speed that the enemy cannot match.
conclusionsThe transformation of the geopolitical structure of the world is taking place in conditions of high instability and instability and today is close to reaching the bifurcation point.
The uncertainty largely lies in which of the two branches of bifurcation will develop – towards a unipolar world or towards the formation of a multipolar world.
If retaining the technological leadership of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is a fairly routine issue of ensuring defense capability, which depends on new types of weapons, training of scientific and engineering personnel and financing, then the geopolitical emphasis on choosing the "center of gravity" in the face of possible theaters of military operations of the MGV and future opponents is a political choice. It is the factors of technological leadership and the geopolitical orientation of the state that should reflect the documents of Russia's strategic planning, which determine all the work on the transfer of the country and its armed forces to prepare for future tests.
Alexander BartoshAlexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences, an expert of the League of Military Diplomats.
