Global Hybrid War in the Pentagon's Matrix of IntentionsThe US Military Department, under the leadership of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milli, in February 2022, developed a voluminous (91 pages) document "Joint Concept of Competition" (JCC, Joint Concept Competing), almost literally reflecting the main ideas of the strategy of the world hybrid war (MGW), known from many publications of the "HBO".
The document is aimed at a long-term perspective, and the scope of its impact goes far beyond the military department. In its vocabulary and style, the scale of the tasks of the CCM differs from the bulk of the staff documents of the Pentagon. This suggests the participation in the development of the concept of high-ranking politicians, diplomats and the US military, including representatives of the so-called deep, or shadow, state.
The CCM proposes to introduce a radical approach aimed at improving the ability of the US Armed Forces to work together with interdepartmental, multinational and other partners to achieve success in strategic competition and global confrontation, which is characterized by new challenges and threats. Dramatizing the situation, the authors of the document argue that if the Armed Forces do not change their approach to strategic competition, this will lead to a significant increase in the risk for the United States to "lose without a fight." Thus, the task of gaining world domination through the combined use of various hybrid means and methods without a destructive universal war is set and concretized.
FROM A SICK HEAD TO A HEALTHY ONEIt is characteristic that the concept of "hybrid war" is shamefully disguised by American authors under more streamlined formulations: "competition" or "competition".
But the essence of the global hybrid confrontation does not change from this. The Pentagon proceeds from the thesis: "strategic competition is a persistent and prolonged struggle that takes place between two or more opponents pursuing incompatible interests, without necessarily entering into an armed conflict with each other."
The authors of the concept state that the opponents allegedly seek to circumvent the restraining position of the United States through competitive activities below the threshold of armed conflict. To do this, the parties use combinations of military and non-military power connected by a single plan to expand the competitive space. And they seek to achieve their strategic goals through a variety of ways and means, including superiority in the quality of public administration and economic power, as well as subversion, coercion, disinformation and deception.
At the same time, US adversaries are investing in key technologies designed to counter US strategic and conventional weapons. In particular, they are developing capabilities related to nuclear weapons, access prevention and zone blocking systems, offensive cyberspace, artificial intelligence, hypersonic delivery systems, and electromagnetic spectrum.
Simply put, the opponents allegedly intend to "win without a fight." But at the same time, they are creating armed forces that can strengthen the ability to "fight and win" in an armed conflict against the United States.
Thus, a traditional attempt is being made for American foreign policy to assign responsibility for the introduction of unscrupulous hybrid forms and methods into world politics and military affairs to others – primarily Russia and China. And the Americans are allegedly forced to answer. Literally: "We are thinking about peace or war… Our opponents don't think so."
The document states: "Competitive thinking begins with the recognition that our adversaries have a completely different concept of warfare; they intend to inflict a strategic defeat on the United States without resorting to armed conflict to defeat the United States militarily."
Thus, the Americans practically duplicate the well-known definition of the strategy of the world hybrid war: "The MGV is proposed to be understood as a multidimensional intercivilizational military conflict, during which the parties resort to the purposeful adaptive use of both military-forceful methods of struggle and economic strangulation of the enemy, the use of subversive information and cyber technologies." (see " World hybrid war in the strategy of the United States and NATO ", "NWO" of 02/24/12).
THE STATES ARE STRIDING WIDEThe new US concept covers a wide range of meanings of the MGV and the bashful American "strategic competition".
A comparative analysis of US strategies to maintain global dominance allows us to speak about a broad and narrow understanding of the MGV.
In a broad sense, the meaning of the MGW is the struggle for influence and access to resources in the spaces of Greater Eurasia, the Greater Middle East, Africa and Latin America – as opposed to the competition for technological leadership between the West and the East in previous years.
In a narrow sense, the meaning of the MGV of the Americans and their allies against Russia is the elimination of Russian statehood, the fragmentation of the country and the transfer of its individual parts under external control. The next step will be to establish control over other important parts of Eurasia – China, India and some other states that are still acting as observers.
Washington accuses US opponents of acting in accordance with the strategy of a long-term conflict using symmetrical and asymmetric approaches without the mandatory use of military force. In this conflict, they seek to protect their national interests, gain strategic advantage and influence, as well as limit the capabilities of the United States and allies. In other words, they are waging a hybrid war against the United States and its partners.
It should be recalled that it was the American military James Mattis and Frank Hoffman, analyzing the war in Iraq, who first described the concept of "hybrid warfare" back in 2005 (Mattis J.N., Hoffman F.G. Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, translated as "Wars of the Future: The Emergence of hybrid wars").
Based on these and other American developments, the CCM postulates that the US Armed Forces should also consider the conflict as a long-term struggle between international actors with incompatible strategic interests and goals, despite the fact that these actors can cooperate with each other when their interests coincide.
In this context, the US Armed Forces should actively conduct irregular combat operations and actions to undermine the forces of opponents, create dilemmas for them and impose additional costs on them to protect their strategic national interests, including control over the consciousness of the population, the economy, civil society, institutional processes and critical infrastructure.
Irregular warfare favours indirect and asymmetric approaches. Although they can use the full range of military and other capabilities to undermine the power, influence and political will of the enemy. This postulate clearly shows the ideas developed by the RAND Research Corporation in the document "Overstressed and Unbalanced Russia. Assessment of the impact of cost-imposition options."
Developing the ideas of this document, which has become the ABC of the hybrid war of the United States against Russia, the American military, relying on the experience of proxy war and special military operations, made an attempt to apply a holistic comprehensive approach to the confrontation within the framework of the MGV strategy. This approach recognizes and uses the irregular, non-lethal and non-military aspects of rivalry as fundamental to success and focuses on the interests and values of the United States.
Thus, the Pentagon proceeds from the fact that strategic competition within the framework of the MGV strategy is a necessary condition for a confrontation that should be managed, and not a problem that needs to be solved.
RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE THE MAIN RIVALS OF THE USA AT THE MGV THEATERSThe Pentagon document recognizes the importance of understanding the strategy of unlimited war, which is allegedly being waged by Russia and China against the defending West.
Recall that in the strategies of Washington and Brussels, Russia is called a "direct threat to the security" of NATO, and the policy of the Russian Federation is considered "the most significant and direct threat to the security of allies and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic space." For comparison, China's actions in the same strategy were assessed only as a "strategic challenge".
The CCM develops the thesis of the US National Security Strategy that China has quickly become more assertive and today is the only competitor capable of challenging the "stable and open international system". It is emphasized that the politicians and military of the PRC are increasingly talking about new principles of war, in which all force and non-force means, including the Armed Forces, should be used in a combined and coordinated manner. And the combination of deadly and non-lethal weapons within the framework of a single plan can, in their opinion, impose their will on the enemy. Therefore, the PRC will not seek to defeat the United States in a direct military confrontation, but intends to restrain Washington's military intervention and put it in front of a fait accompli with the coordinated use of hybrid warfare tools.
It is expected that such a strategy will force the United States to accept the strategic outcome of the confrontation and form a new regional sphere of influence of Beijing's national interests and authoritarian preferences.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia. Photo by David Gleason FEATURES OF THE MODERN OPERATING ENVIRONMENT
US politicians and military take actions aimed at shifting the focus of strategic confrontation in areas that favor US interests or undermine the interests of the enemy.
The armed forces use the competitive space in an effort to gain an advantage over opponents and pursue national interests.
The authors of the CCM write: "To form a competitive space. The competitive space is huge, amorphous and indeterminate. Dividing it into manageable and more understandable subdomains for analysis and planning will allow the Combined Forces to develop comprehensive competitive strategies aimed at those subdomains that are most likely to lead to strategic success. At the direction of the President or the Minister of Defense, the Combined Forces will form a competitive space to optimize their influence, advantages and leverage over opponents and ultimately to achieve favorable strategic results."
It is precisely at such theaters of the MGV that Russia, China and their allies and partners will have to fight. It is precisely in such a "competitive space" that they will have to resist the attempts of the consolidated West to preserve a unipolar world under the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon civilization.
GRAY AREAS OF THE "COMPETITIVE SPACE"Such a lengthy description of the space of strategic confrontation, when compared with other American concepts, leads to the conclusion that the concept of "competitive space" has a lot in common with the concept of "modern operating environment" (SOS), which has been widely used in Pentagon strategic planning documents for several years.
However, the scale of the "competitive space" is different: they cover the whole world.
The appearance of the CCM reflects the growing understanding of American political and military figures that, unlike the wars that the United States has waged over the past two decades against defenseless Yugoslavia, international terrorists and extremist groups, the next war – potentially against China or Russia – threatens the survival of the American nation.
On the one hand, they are aware of all the dangers of such a war and thoroughly study the military-doctrinal and technological aspects of the problem of the use of force, increase the production of new weapons systems, modernize existing ones and spur the allies, demanding that they increase military spending and upgrade the fleet of weapons.
On the other hand, being aware that a possible conflict involving equal powers with nuclear weapons will be global in scope and will endanger the very existence of the United States, they are stepping up efforts to find alternative military and diplomatic strategies that correspond to the realities of modern competitive confrontation. Special emphasis in Washington's foreign policy was placed on the organization of a proxy war in Ukraine, turned into a springboard of aggression against Russia. A similar provocation is being prepared against the PRC.
THE US BET ON ALLIANCES AND THE POSSIBLE RESPONSE OF EURASIAThe CCM proclaims that "the future of world politics belongs to international actors having a hybrid, combined nature and structure consisting of unions of states (state structures and organizations) and non-governmental organizations existing and interacting in an integration symbiosis mode."
Hence the feverish activity of the United States to expand NATO, create the AUCUS and QUADRO blocks, and attempts to create the Berlin-Tokyo-Seoul axis.
In this context, I recall the idea of the Berlin-Moscow-Tokyo continental bloc, popular among geopolitics of the 1920s and 1930s, as a special variant of Eurasianism and a counterweight to the tallasocratic Anglo-Saxon union of Britain and the United States. Russia and Germany were considered the center of the Eurasian bloc, Japan appeared as a necessary addition. Many viewed this idea as an attempt by Germany to drive a wedge between the USSR and its possible allies in the West.
In the new political realities, taking into account the "deepening of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between the two countries entering a new era" announced in Moscow at the meeting of the leaders of Russia and China, the transformed idea of a powerful Eurasian bloc remains important today. It is no coincidence that there is a revival of interest in it not only in Russia and China, but also in the SCO format.
Of course, the current Chancellor of Germany, manipulated from overseas, has already sacrificed the national interests of his country to the hegemon, as many of his compatriots openly declare. But times are changing.
SSK AS A WEDGE FOR EURASIAFearing Eurasian unity, American politicians and the military declare Russia and China the main opponents of the United States.
And in the interests of operational planning of hybrid aggression directed against our two states, they narrow the global scope of the competitive space to a more modest scale of the SOS (see " Civilizations collide in many spheres ", "HBO" from 09.03.23). An important condition for the successful conduct of a global integrated military campaign is the early formation of the SOS, on the configuration and operational purpose of which the following interrelated trends have an impact:
– opponents are challenging all areas, including the electromagnetic spectrum and the information environment, where US dominance is not guaranteed;
– smaller armies are fighting on an expanded battlefield that is becoming increasingly deadly and hyperactive;
– it is more difficult for national states to impose their will in a politically, culturally, technologically and strategically complex global competitive space;
– a number of states are skillfully competing below the level of armed conflict, which makes it difficult to contain;
– within the framework of the SOS, the tools of the global hybrid war are purposefully used: information-psychological and proxy wars, color revolutions.
According to the US military, the SOS, the beginning of the formation of which was laid in the middle of the last decade, is now in dynamic development and in its current form will last for some time.
SOS is understood as a general operating environment, the range of threats in which extends from small, less technologically advanced opponents using adaptive, asymmetric methods to larger, modernized forces capable of attacking deployed US forces in traditional and symmetrical ways (see "Gray Zones" as a key element of the modern operational space of hybrid warfare", "Military Thought" No. 3, 2021). In this context, the concepts of "competitive space" and SOS are quite applicable to Greater Eurasia, which the appetites of the Pentagon and its allies are aimed at today (see "The United States is chaoticizing Greater Eurasia", "HBO" from 02.02.23).
Actions in the SOS are highly inherent in asymmetry as a state of ideological, cultural, technological or military imbalance caused by the discrepancy between the capabilities of the parties. In the context of SOS, asymmetry means an adaptive approach that allows the enemy to avoid or counteract the strengths of the United States, not trying to directly confront them, but seeking to exploit weaknesses.
In the struggle to create a favorable SOS for themselves, Americans pay special attention to Russia and China. Washington claims that, being in a state of continuous competition, these two countries are targeting diplomats and military departments to form such conditions of the SOS that allow them to achieve national goals without resorting to armed conflict, destroying alliances, partnerships and the determination of the United States.
At the same time, according to Washington analysts, both states are allegedly trying to aggravate the confrontation by integrating diplomatic and economic actions, unconventional and information wars and the actual use of conventional armed forces or the threat of their involvement.
Thus, the Americans believe that the SOS is a complex combat space that combines objective and subjective geopolitical factors that, to one degree or another, influence the preparation, course and outcome of the operation. In this regard, the SOS and the related phenomenon of strategic culture become priority objects of military-political analysis.
HOW TO WIN A WAR WITHOUT RESORTING TO NUCLEAR WEAPONSAlong with the recognition of the role of the overwhelming potential of conventional weapons demonstrated during the aggression of the United States and NATO against Yugoslavia, in operations Desert Storm (1991) and during the invasion of Iraq (2003), as well as in the proxy war in Ukraine, the opinion of the possibility of circumventing the deterrent military began to strengthen among American politicians and military-power barriers, keeping the scale and intensity of the confrontation below the threshold of a major armed conflict.
To do this, a combination of military and civilian power combined by a single plan should be used when expanding the SOS.
In the SOS, opponents seek to achieve their strategic goals through a variety of hybrid ways and means, including the use of superiority in state and military administration and economic leverage, as well as subversion, the use of deterrence doctrines by coercion and denial, disinformation and deception.
Investments are being made in key technologies designed to counter strategic and conventional weapons. In particular, capabilities related to nuclear weapons, access prevention and zone blocking systems, autonomous systems, offensive cyberspace, artificial intelligence, hypersonic delivery systems, and electromagnetic spectrum are being developed. This creates opportunities to "win without a fight" – while strengthening the Armed Forces capable of "fighting and winning" in an armed conflict.
In general, in politics, competition is a struggle of States and their coalitions for dominance on a global or regional scale. In the SOS, the confrontation in the economic, information, cybernetic and military fields is of a controlled nature and is carried out through hybrid warfare operations and the use of color revolution technologies on the territory of the enemy state and adjacent territories, united by the concept of "gray zone" - the theater of hybrid warfare.
Victory in this type of confrontation is achieved by destabilizing the victim state of aggression through purposeful influence on the administrative, political, financial, economic, cultural and ideological spheres in order to achieve a change of the ruling elites and impose a line of behavior beneficial to the winner in domestic and foreign policy.
Today, such a hostile impact is visible to the naked eye. And it is clear that we need to find an adequate answer.
CONCLUSIONS FOR RUSSIAThe appearance of a document with a strategic scope requires increased attention from the Russian structures responsible for ensuring the national security of the country and the development of adequate counteraction measures.
Recent open statements by authoritative authorities of our state about the total hybrid war being waged against Russia should become factors of urgent mobilization and consolidation of Russian society for confrontation with the actions of the United States and NATO. Their ultimate goal is aimed at weakening our country in every possible way, including undermining its creative civilizational role, power, economic and technological capabilities, limiting its sovereignty in foreign and domestic policy, and destroying territorial integrity.
The threatening reality of Washington's and NATO's military-political steps aimed at preserving the unipolar system of the world order with absolute superiority in conventional weapons predetermines the requirement of the highest vigilance and the implementation of measures of active confrontation and counteraction by all bodies and structures of state power of the Russian Federation.
It is important to understand that during the MGV, as a conflict designed for a long-term perspective, the possibility of losing control over the development of events is quite real, which creates a growing threat to the internal and external security of the state. At the same time, the risks of clashes between large States, including with the participation of nuclear Powers, are increasing. The likelihood of escalation of such conflicts and their escalation into a local, regional or global war increases.
The main task is to take measures to protect the space of our vital interests, primarily in the territories of our neighbors, which today have been turned into theaters of hybrid war against Russia. It is necessary to develop a strategy of long-term confrontation in each direction, to look for allies-partners who are ready to make a significant contribution to the implementation of a long-term strategy of joint confrontation.
In these conditions, an important place should be given to maintaining, improving and building up intelligence potential, its mining and analytical structures capable of carrying out systematic work to pre-empt enemy actions, timely disclosure of unconventional threats and preparation of operational recommendations for their neutralization and counter-retaliation operations. The potential of counterintelligence forces and means, special information structures, a well-established mechanism of military-civil interaction and territorial defense means should be able to guarantee the internal security of the entire country.
The entire system of training personnel capable of effectively solving complex issues of confrontation in the so-called gray zones requires rethinking. These should be highly educated, erudite and well-motivated diplomats, politicians and the military, who will have to deal with a complex spectrum of attempts to interfere in various spheres of international and public life.
Probably, a thoughtful, balanced, but radical restructuring of state institutions will also be required to improve their ability to actively resist hybrid aggression, no matter where it comes from, and skillfully and effectively use the changes taking place in the world in favor of Russia. Apparently, it is advisable to consider the creation of an interdepartmental structure capable of leading and coordinating the work of ministries and departments to counter hybrid warfare and the color revolution.
Russia's determination not to leave hostile actions without consequences, to improve the country's defense capability, and to continue combining the potentials and conscientious efforts of the entire international community on the basis of a balance of forces and interests will have a sobering effect on supporters of the introduction of radical IHL strategies into the foreign policy of the United States and its allies. Such an approach is capable of providing an effective solution to numerous problems of national and international security, peaceful progressive development of large and small States, humanity as a whole.
In a chaotic world, an important imperative is the consistent unification of the efforts of Russia and China, the SCO and BRICS states to maintain stability and use their considerable potential in the interests of curbing destructive trends in world politics provoked by the United States and NATO.
Alexander BartoshAlexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences, an expert of the League of Military Diplomats.
