Without a conceptual apparatus, the theory of hybrid warfare cannot be formed
One of the most important conditions for achieving success in a global hybrid war is the precise definition of the initial concepts that provide preliminary basic information for the development of strategies and tactics in the confrontation.
The conceptual apparatus is intended to serve as a solution to this problem – a logically constructed system of terms that allows to uniformly interpret and understand the relationships and processes formed in politics and in military affairs, to comprehend military-political phenomena as factors of transition of a new model of the architecture of the world.
Hybrid warfare as a new type of interstate confrontation has given rise to a unique sphere of terms, the development, comprehension and application of which requires a systematic approach and a generally accepted understanding.
In the absence of coordination between Russia, its allies and partners of the conceptual apparatus, attempts to form the theory of civil defense and to include this phenomenon in the practice of political and military administration resemble the biblical legend about the unsuccessful construction of the Tower of Babel by peoples who spoke different languages.
GENERAL AND SPECIAL
To date, a significant layer of works has been created in domestic and foreign studies of the phenomenon of GW, highlighting the use of its tools: information and psychological warfare, color revolution and proxy war.
The authors of most works, in the presence of a close understanding of the meaning and goals of hybrid military conflicts, often come up with their own vision of each of the tools of the GW, not really caring about bringing the basic concepts to a "common denominator". As a result, a disordered, chaotic mixture of formulations, conclusions and recommendations falls on the state bodies involved in ensuring Russia's national and international security and preparing strategic planning documents, which seriously complicates the development of a systematic approach to the formation of strategies and counter-strategies of the Civil Defense.
This state of affairs reduces Russia's ability to consciously choose priority areas for preparing the country and its armed forces for confrontation in a rapidly changing political and military operational environment.
TRANSFORMATION OF MILITARY CONFLICTS
The introduction of new definitions into professional discourse related to the transformation of modern military conflicts is not only a matter of terminology and not so much. Thoughtful formulations of the most important concepts will reveal the content of the wars of the present and the future and provide measures and means for comprehensive preparation for them. As well as for successful conduct or, on the contrary, to prevent aggression and deter a potential enemy.
The purpose of this article is to attempt to formulate some basic concepts related to hybrid military conflicts for their possible use in political and military contexts.
An attempt to combine the heterogeneous definitions of modern military conflicts has led to the emergence of the concept of "hybrid war", which is used by different authors, often putting different meanings into it.
Such a diversity of definitions, on the one hand, gives the concept of GW a high degree of instability, which complicates the task of including it in the existing classification of wars and conflicts. And on the other hand, it makes it theoretically attractive precisely because this concept can contain a large number of meanings.
At the same time, there is nothing fundamentally new in the concept of GW. Hybridity is a property of any war, which, due to the use by the belligerents of all the forces, means and methods of warfare at their disposal, necessarily acquires hybrid features.
The inclusion of hybridity properties in the spectrum of military conflict strategies only partially affects the main content of the war (the state of armed struggle) as a factor exerting a decisive influence on the development of interstate confrontation (not only in the military sphere) and setting goals for ensuring the country's defense. At the same time, the factor of armed struggle continues to play a key role in the development of national security strategies and other conceptual documents of States regulating the processes of military construction and other military-political processes both in peacetime and in wartime.
The theoretical issues of GW are reflected in the works of Russian specialists Andrey Kokoshin and his colleagues, Fedor Ladygin, Sergey Glazyev, Konstantin Sivkov, Vladimir Suvorov, Vladimir Vinokurov, Igor Bocharnikov, Andrey Ilnitsky, Anna Vilovatykh, etc. Attempts at philosophical understanding of the problem are being made by Marina Krivko, a Chinese graduate student at Moscow State University Guo Fenli.
In the domestic military-political discourse, the following definition received some support: "GW should be understood as the coordinated use by the aggressor country of numerous types (tools) of violence aimed at the vulnerable places of the target country, covering the entire spectrum of social functions in order to achieve a synergistic effect and subjugate the enemy to his will."
A successful example of an innovative approach to the study of the information and psychological aspects of GW is the collective monograph edited by the famous geopolitician and philosopher Igor Kefeli "Prolegomena of cognitive security". The authors' team focused on a comprehensive study of the problems of cognitive security in the context of an introduction to cognitology – an area of interdisciplinary research that unites the creative search of philosophers and psychologists, neuroscientists and philologists, social anthropologists and representatives of technical and physical and mathematical sciences. Another motive for writing this work was the need to respond to NATO's actions in the conceptual justification of conducting cognitive warfare (the alliance openly declares that it should be carried out against Russia and other "totalitarian states"), aimed at manipulating and restructuring human consciousness.
The answer of Russian science and technology to such a challenge should be, first of all, the theoretical and methodological justification of cognitive and cultural security, the development of technologies to ensure them.
WORLD HYBRID WAR
A further expansion of the concept of GW was the introduction of the definition of the world hybrid war (MGW): "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" ( "MGV in the strategy of the United States and NATO", "NWO", dated 02/26/12).
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 MGW conducted by the United States and its 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 parts of Eurasia – China, India and other states that are still acting as observers.
The tools of the MGV are a triad: information and psychological warfare, color revolution and proxy war.
WESTERN DEFINITIONS
Foreign military experts put a fairly broad meaning into the concept of GW. According to analysts from the Netherlands Institute "Klingendahl", the conflict is considered not only between states, but also between political actors (countries, coalitions, regional organizations, terrorist and extremist groups, etc.), which its participants seek to keep below the threshold of open armed conflict with the integrated use of tools and forms of confrontation used in the framework of a unified strategy covering diplomacy, military affairs, economic and informational-psychological impact on the enemy.
There is also another interpretation of the phenomenon of GW – as a military conflict combining regular ("symmetrical") hostilities with elements of asymmetric wars. American military theorist Jack McQueen defines hybrid warfare as "a combination of symmetric and asymmetric warfare." Within this approach, all wars can be considered as potentially hybrid.
Back in 2005, former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and his colleague Frank Hoffman predicted the growing threat of such conflicts in their work "Future War: the Rise of the GW". Hoffman clarified: in the GW, the asymmetric component is of crucial operational importance on the battlefield, unlike conventional wars, where the role of asymmetric players (for example, partisans) is to divert enemy forces to maintain security away from the theater of operations (Theater of operations). But with this perspective, the conduct of military operations in peacetime falls out of the analysis.
Based on the results of a long-term discussion, the London International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2015 proposed the definition of GW: "The use of military and non-military tools in an integrated campaign aimed at achieving surprise, seizing the initiative and obtaining psychological advantages used in diplomatic actions; large-scale and rapid information, electronic and cyber operations; cover-up and concealment of military and intelligence actions combined with economic pressure."
Among the top military leaders who are experts in methods and practices of conducting armed conflicts of a new type, Western experts single out the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov. Photo by Vladimir Karnozov
COMMON ELEMENTS
Despite all the discrepancies in the interpretations of the GW and its tools, both many domestic researchers and foreign analysts agree that the essence of the hybridization of military conflicts is the involvement of regular and irregular power elements, as well as non-forceful forms and methods of confrontation (in financial, economic, administrative, political, cultural and ideological spheres) with the ultimate goal undermining the authority of the legitimate government of any state.
A comparative analysis of the terminology of GW allows us to identify significant common elements:
– the use of military and non-military tools in an integrated campaign, combined with information warfare activities;
– increasing importance of asymmetric and indirect actions;
– the use of covert force measures in combination with the actions of special operations forces and the use of the protest potential of the population.
In general, despite extensive military-theoretical discussions on the problem of GW and the long-term application of hybrid strategies in practice, the scientific community has not yet managed to develop a unified understanding of the phenomenon. This once again highlights the complexity and uncertainty of this type of conflict.
TOOLS AND STRATEGIES
Information and psychological warfare (IPV) is a set of forms and methods of influencing the consciousness of all segments of the population of the target state of the GW carried out according to a single plan and plan to distort the perception of the world, destroy the foundations of national identity and the type of life in order to disorganize measures to counter aggression.
The IPV strategy is the core, fundamental component of the GW strategy and its other tools: color revolution and proxy war.
Proxy war (proxy war: proxy war, proxy war, proxy war) is an international conflict between two countries that are trying to achieve their goals through military actions taking place on the territory and using the resources of a third country, under the guise of resolving an internal conflict in this third country. ("Proxy war as a determining factor of military conflicts of the XXI century", "Military Thought" 2023, No. 5).
The use of this concept has become widespread in determining the type of military conflict when, in the conditions of the existence of nuclear weapons, world leaders prefer to fight not directly, but by proxy through their agents. Proxy agents can have a traditional format (nation-states, their alliances and coalitions, international organizations).
Another, non-classical group of proxy agents is formed by private military companies (PMCs), armed formations of political parties, national liberation movements, transnational corporations (TNCs), militias based on national or confessional principles, armed formations of unrecognized state entities, mercenaries, etc. ("Serbia in anticipation of a proxy war", "NWO", dated 22.06.23).
The color revolution is a technology of organizing a coup d'etat and putting the country under external control in conditions of artificially created political instability, when the influence on the government is carried out in the form of political blackmail, and its main tool is a specially organized protest movement.
HYBRID THREATS AND COUNTERING THEM
The GW includes the implementation of a complex of hybrid threats within the framework of a flexible strategy with long-term goals. The use of a complex of hybrid threats is based on the use of diplomatic, informational, military and economic means to destabilize the enemy. Hybrid threats combine regular and irregular opportunities to inflict damage to the enemy and allow them to concentrate on the right directions and objects to create the effect of strategic surprise
GW tools are hybrid threats that combine a wide range of hostile actions and intentions. Such as cyberwar, scenarios of asymmetric low-intensity military conflicts, global terrorism, piracy, illegal migration, corruption, ethnic and religious conflicts, threats to the security of resources, demographic challenges, transnational organized crime, problems of globalization and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Hybrid threats are a combination of diplomatic, military, economic and information and communication methods of influence that can be used by a State or non–State actor to achieve special goals, without reaching a formal declaration of war.
The hybrid threat is characterized not only by the scale, but also by the dynamics of changes in the qualitative and quantitative state of potential and real danger factors that determine the choice of a country as a gray zone – the theater of hybrid warfare, as well as the strategy used.
Hybrid threats, along with some other factors, determine the key problems of human survival and ensuring global security. The main of these factors, according to Konstantin Kolin, are the following:
– prevention of nuclear war and the death of mankind as a result of a global climate catastrophe;
– restoration of vital ecosystems of the planet;
– preservation of the human appearance of humans and the biological species Homo sapienc.
The priority task is to stop wars and regional military conflicts with the subsequent demilitarization of the world economy and the release of resources to counter environmental, climatic and humanitarian threats of the XXI century.
The high dynamics of the transition of hybrid threats from the category of potential to actual ones require careful preliminary study at the state and allied level of counteraction measures. Such measures should include:
– prevention of strategic surprise of the use of a complex of modern disruptive technologies;
– development of indicators that allow to quickly determine the degree of threat of destabilization of the country's political and military administration system, its socio-economic structures, cultural and ideological sphere;
– timely opening of places vulnerable to hybrid threats, as well as determining the possible composition of hybrid threats that can be formed to influence;
– defining within the framework of the regulatory framework of existing collective security organizations (for example, the CSTO) and in national legislation provisions that allow to quickly determine the very fact of aggression carried out using modern subversive technologies, and providing the object of such aggression with the necessary assistance;
– development of a state concept for countering color revolutions and civil wars, both in Russia and in the CIS;
– training of personnel capable of effectively countering threats of a new type;
– taking the necessary measures in the general direction of preparing the country and its armed forces for the entire spectrum of possible wars and conflicts of our time.
The author's drawing
GREY AREA
The modern operating environment (SOS, Contemporary operating environment, COE) is a general operating environment, the range of threats in which extends from small, not so technologically advanced opponents using adaptive asymmetric methods to larger modernized forces capable of attacking deployed US forces in traditional and symmetrical ways (A.A. Bartosh, "Gray Zones" as a key element of the modern operational space of the GW", "Military Thought" 2021, No. 5).
Trends in the formation of SOS:
opponents dispute 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 nation states to impose their will in a politically, culturally, technologically and strategically complex environment;
A number of States are skillfully competing below the level of armed conflict, which makes deterrence difficult.
The properties of non-linearity and uncertainty of the SOS are highly inherent in the "gray zone", which is a political strategic space within which the international system, balancing on the brink of war and peace, is reformatted under the rules of the new world order. The NW also has a spatial dimension determined by the geographical boundaries of the theater of the GW.
Legal regulations, institutions, national interests and priorities of States are subject to change in the NW. Operations in the NW embody one of the versions of the American strategy of forced deterrence, built on the technologies of the GW.
Such operations make it possible to compete with States, being below the threshold of a conventional war and actions that can cause an international reaction. Hence the term SZ as an intermediate medium between black and white, war and peace.
The peculiar red lines limiting the goals, scope and tools used in the operation are preventing the escalation of events to a level at which UN intervention is possible on the basis of the resolution "On Aggression" of 12/14/1974, the entry into force of article 4 of the CSTO Collective Security Treaty or Article 5 of the NATO Collective Defense Treaty, as well as the development of the conflict, capable of triggering harsh response measures – such as tougher economic sanctions.
Historically, one of the first examples of the creation of the SZ was the actions of the United States in the Balkans in the early 1990s, when federal Yugoslavia was destroyed, and the territories of its former republics turned into objects of military and political manipulation in the interests of the United States and the consolidated West.
A more recent example is an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same goal in Belarus.
MULTI-LAYERED CONTAINMENT MODEL
The phenomenon of GW and the practice of SVO have significantly changed approaches to strategic nuclear and strategic non-nuclear deterrence through the use of high-precision long-range means. At the same time, the doctrines of deterrence by coercion and by denial have found wide application.
In determining the strategy and tactics of types of deterrence, a significant role belongs to strategic culture, as "a set of stereotypes of sustainable behavior of the relevant subject in the large-scale use of military force for its political objectives and military purposes, including in the preparation, adoption and implementation of strategic decisions. According to academician Andrei Kokoshin, "strategic culture is an attribute not only of the armed forces or even of the state machine, but of the entire people as a whole."
Coercion (or political violence) is violence used by State or non–State actors in order to achieve certain political motives. In the strategy of the GW, coercion is considered as an active offensive doctrine designed for a long period of application of hybrid threats, including measures of political and military pressure, economic sanctions, ideological subversive measures.
Deterrence by denial is designed to create physical obstacles to the enemy, to make it difficult for him to achieve the goal. The effectiveness of this form of deterrence depends on the fear of the costs that will be incurred by the enemy during an act of aggression.
Thus, a kind of "matryoshka", or a multi-layered model of deterrence is formed, the elements or layers of which are doctrines:
strategic nuclear deterrence;
strategic non-nuclear deterrence;
deterrence through denial;
coercion.
The multilayered deterrence model reflects the complex capabilities of doctrines based on the threat of the use of strategic nuclear and high-precision long-range non-nuclear weapons, as well as complementary doctrines of coercion and deterrence through denial ( "Deterrence acquires various shades", "HBO", dated 07/06-23).
ESCALATION AND DE-ESCALATION
The concepts of escalation and de-escalation of military conflicts occupy an important place in the development of GW tools.
In the work "Issues of escalation and de-escalation of crisis situations, armed conflicts and wars" Andrei Kokoshin and his co-authors Yuri Baluyevsky, Viktor Esin and Alexander Shlyakhturov proposed an "escalation ladder" of 17 steps.
One of the initial stages, providing for the conduct of military operations, is located between the situation of a political crisis and the unleashing of a local "conventional" war. The authors also write about the possibility of horizontal escalation along with vertical escalation during conflict and crisis situations.
It should be noted that within the GW stage highlighted by the authors, we can talk about an expanded independent application of the escalation model of hybrid military conflict tools: information and psychological warfare, color revolution and proxy war.
Political scientists Fyodor Lukyanov and Konstantin Bogdanov argue that somewhere in the depths of the minds of politicians, military and diplomats, there is still the idea that an exchange of nuclear strikes is likely to increase in order to contain escalation, and express a sound idea: "The best way to control nuclear escalation is simply not to start it."
As a result, the conclusion matures about the extreme danger of assuming that escalation has an allegedly wide range of controllability, that it is possible to dose the use of nuclear weapons, achieve escalatory dominance and equalize the stakes at each stage of escalation. In fact, there are no such mechanisms – they are purely psychological.
conclusions
Here are listed only some basic new concepts that should be reflected in the understanding of the MGV as a new sociopolitical phenomenon.
The use of these and some other concepts in scientific research and practice leads to a broader (systemic) level of generalization, taking into account the variability (transformation) of phenomena as a priority factor.
The combination of traditional and hybrid types of wars and conflicts is a determining factor for modern military strategies. If the use of hybrid methods makes it possible to achieve the goal without open military intervention (for example, in the color revolution), then traditional conflicts necessarily include hybrid technologies.
The property of GW to act as an integrator of conventional, irregular and asymmetric means in combination with constant manipulation of political and ideological components is actively used in the strategies of our geopolitical opponents.
With the fundamental role of the Armed Forces for a successful confrontation in the Civil War, Russia and friendly states should combine the efforts of their governments, armies and intelligence services within the framework of an interdepartmental, intergovernmental and international strategy and use methods of political, economic, military and psychological pressure and coercion as effectively as possible.
This implies the need for in–depth study of the features of the conflicts of the XXI century, the formation of new knowledge about challenges and threats - and the development on this basis of effective measures to ensure the national security of Russia.
The President of the Academy of Military Sciences, Mahmut Gareev, hatched the idea of creating a section "Hybrid Wars" at the RAS for this purpose.
The implementation of this idea would make it possible to bring the country's ability to counteract new types of aggression into line with military and political realities, to create an adequate conceptual base of the political and military thesaurus. What would serve as an aid in the preparation of strategic planning documents of the Russian Federation, application in military scientific research, in national and international discourse.
Alexander Bartosh
Alexander Alexandrovich Bartosh is a corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences, an expert of the League of Military Diplomats.
