Hybrid Warfare

by

John G.L.J. Jacobs, Martijn W.M. Kitzen

• LAST REVIEWED: 11 January 2021
• LAST MODIFIED: 22 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0260

Introduction

Hybrid warfare has been the bandwagon term to describe modern warfare in academic, policy, and journalist accounts. It describes a wide array of warfare techniques that do not correspond with earlier notions of warfare. Yet none of these are really to be called “new” and the military thought associated with them can be traced back as early as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Perhaps it was the shock of being faced with unfamiliar tactics, the breach of morality with hybrid tactics disregarding jus in bello principles, or the rigged black/white understanding of the dichotomy of war and peace—but whatever the reason, it has led to a plethora of terms and monikers to describe the phenomena now labeled hybrid warfare. The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), for example, in discussing the “gray zone,” points out that this topic has had many monikers within the US literature. To name a few: low-intensity conflict or low-intensity operations, small wars (this one did lead to an excellent online journal called Small Wars Journal, or SWJ), irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, and military operations other than war (MOOTW). Hybrid warfare might indeed encompass a low-intensity operations type of conflict. All of these include elements of hybridity and hybrid warfare as this bibliography seeks to demonstrate. In particular, the authors seek to address the perception that hybrid warfare has mainly been conducted by the adversaries of the West. Western governments do use hybrid tactics and hybridity comes to the front in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. (For more on counterinsurgency see the Oxford Bibliographies in Military History article “Counterinsurgency in the Modern World”). For non-state actors hybrid warfare is mostly linked to the insurgencies, with recent insurgencies using elements of terrorism.

Origins

The term hybrid warfare, as currently used, was first introduced by US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Frank G. Hoffman in 2006, though Hoffman states he took the term from a thesis by Robert G Walker in which Walker describes low-intensity operations conducted by the US Marines. Mockaitis 1995 is the earliest modern source we could find using hybrid war. In 2006 Hoffman referred to the phenomena as “complex irregular warfare” (Hoffman 2006), building forward on work he conducted with US Marine Corps General James Mattis in 2005 in an opinion piece in United States Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine (Mattis and Hoffman 2005). In 2007 Hoffman gave the first definition of hybrid warfare in academic published work: “Hybrid wars incorporate a range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder” (Hoffman 2007, p. 14). This definition would be revised several times by Hoffman and others. Noteworthy in this discussion is Bjerregaard 2012, which contests the idea of hybrid warfare being a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Rob de Wijk’s contribution in the Oxford Handbook of War captures the discussion to that point well, while predicting the debates linked to hybrid warfare that play today (De Wijk 2012). By 2015, an excellent overview of the discussion appeared in Tenenbaum 2015 (in French) and in Thornton 2015. The Hybrid Warfare discussion of the past two decades is captured in Johnson 2021, making this book chapter a good starting point for scholars new to the topic of hybrid warfare.

• Bjerregaard, Thomas. “Hybrid Warfare: A Military Revolution or Revolution in Military Affairs?” MA thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 2012.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Thesis that uses the definitions of Military Revolution (MR) and Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) provided by Williamson Murray and McGregor Knox in order to determine if hybrid warfare falls under Military Revolution or Revolution in Military Affairs. Bjerregaard concludes that hybrid warfare is neither Military Revolution nor Revolution in Military Affairs but something different.

  Find this resource:

• De Wijk, Rob. “Hybrid Conflict and the Changing Nature of Actors.” In The Oxford Handbook of War. Edited by Julian Lindley-French and Yves Boyer, 358–372. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A chapter in the Oxford Handbook of War that summarizes the debate up to 2012 and suggests multipolarity, climate change, and the structural weaknesses of coalition warfare as avenues to discuss in more detail.

  Find this resource:

• Hoffman, Frank G. “Complex Irregular Warfare: The Next Revolution in Military Affairs.” Orbis 50.3 (2006): 395–411.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.orbis.2006.04.002Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Original introduction of the term hybrid warfare in its contemporary use while discussing complex irregular warfare. With this article Hoffman was one of the few to properly react to the English translation of Unrestricted Warfare (Qiao and Xiangsui 2007, cited under Hybrid Warfare). A recommended translation is the 2007 edition.

  Find this resource:

• Hoffman, Frank G. Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars. Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The first definition of hybrid warfare is given by Hoffman. The definition encompasses the key elements of hybrid warfare: conventional and non-conventional, blurring of domains, and one that involves elements previously allocated to the unlawful domain.

  Find this resource:

• Johnson, Rob. “Hybrid Warfare and Counter-Coercion.” In The Conduct of War in the 21st Century: Kinetic, Connected and Synthetic. Edited by Rob Johnson, Martijn Kitzen, and Tim Sweijs, 45–57. London: Routledge, 2021.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Short introduction chapter capturing twenty years of development in hybrid warfare (including five years avant la lettre). Johnson highlights the most important events and deduces their meaning and reflects on the military role in counter-coercion, counter-hybrid operations.

  Find this resource:

• Mattis, James N., and Frank G. Hoffman. “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars.” United States Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine 131.11 (2005): 18–19.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article reflecting on the downfall of the fascination with technology (Revolutions in Military Affairs), while predicting future wars would involve more psychological or information operations aspects.

  Find this resource:

• Mockaitis, Thomas R. “A Hybrid War: The Indonesian Confrontation.” In British Counterinsurgency in the Post-imperial Era. Edited by Thomas R. Mockaitis, 14–44. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Makes use of the term hybrid warfare in 1995 that is close to contemporary usage. Because hybrid warfare is used by weaker actors against stronger actors there is overlap in the usage of the term. However, the use of hybrid warfare in counterinsurgency is fundamentally different from Hoffman’s reintroduction of the term, making Mockaitis’s text an important piece of literature for understanding the history of hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Tenenbaum, Elie. “Le piège de la guerre hybride.” Focus Stratégique 63 (October 2015).

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article in French summarizing the debate between 2005 and 2015. Literature in this era focuses on the US and NATO understanding of hybrid warfare; Tenenbaum argues that it should also include the 20th century.

  Find this resource:

• Thornton, Rod. “The Changing Nature of Modern Warfare.” RUSI Journal 160.4 (2015).

  DOI: 10.1080/03071847.2015.1079047Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  RUSI journal article summarizing hybrid warfare and stressing how Western states struggle with the concept while rival Russia employed it efficiently in the war on Crimea.

  Find this resource:

Definitions

The different monikers, each with their own nuanced meaning, have caused the discussion on hybrid warfare to be blurry and often meaningless by repeating what is known, and contesting who has the better definition, without really providing a clear understanding of hybrid warfare or producing academic work leading to new insights. This bibliography provides insight into the different understandings of hybrid warfare, the specific tactics of strategic communications or lawfare, while providing a holistic and historical explanation of how hybrid warfare has developed in various places in the world. In this section the three most common definitions are discussed: Hybrid Warfare, as defined by Hoffman; Unrestricted Warfare, the Chinese variation on hybrid warfare; and Fourth-Generation Warfare, a term popular in military literature. The latter is commonly linked to insurgency warfare. Like insurgency warfare, hybrid warfare is characterized by the ability to shift between kinetic and non-kinetic activities. Additionally, hybrid warfare focuses on the non-kinetic and the battle in the information domain.

Hybrid Warfare through the Ages

As illustrated before, hybrid warfare, in its essence, is nothing new. Two edited volumes provide plenty of historical illustrations and examples of tactics now associated with hybrid warfare that have always been part of war. The most recent is the edited volume by Williamson Murray and Peter R. Mansoor, with examples going as far back as the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens (Murray and Mansoor 2012). Three chapters are worthy of mention: Richard Hart Sinnreich describes the Peninsular War (1807–1804) that led to the introduction of the term guerrilla (Hart Sinnreich 2012), Noboru Yamaguchi describes early Chinese hybrid warfare in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) (Yamaguchi 2012), and Karl Lowe describes the inception of hybrid warfare as counterinsurgency in Vietnam during the second half of the Second Indochina War (1955–1975) (Lowe 2012). The second relevant volume, edited by Thomas M. Huber (Huber 2002), describes a term for hybrid warfare that received little traction: compound warfare. Compound warfare combines irregular troops with regular troops, and again it has plenty of historical examples. In one chapter Huber describes the Peninsular War using the concept of compound warfare, while contributions by Gary J. Bjorge and Robert F. Baumann give insight into the development of hybrid warfare in two key campaigns in Russia and China. The oldest and perhaps best-known historical iteration of hybrid or compound warfare is found in the exploits of Captain T. E. Lawrence in the First World War, as captured in his autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Lawrence 2018 [originally published in 1926]). In the Second World War, proto-elements of hybrid warfare were also evident. Historical accounts of Perry Biddiscombe (Biddiscombe 1997) and Gerhard Weinberg (Weinberg 1994) describe hybrid tactics employed by the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

• Baumann, Robert F. “Compound War Case Study: The Soviets in Afghanistan.” In Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot. Edited by Thomas M. Huber, 285–306. Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2002.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Describes compound and hybrid tactics employed by the Soviets during the 1979 invasion in Afghanistan against the mujahedeen. The experience proved fruitful for the development of hybrid tactics on both sides, and the conceptualization of hybrid warfare as counterinsurgency, later employed against jihadists in Chechnya and against both the Taliban and NATO allies in Afghanistan.

  Find this resource:

• Biddiscombe, Perry. Werewolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book describing the use of hybrid tactics by Nazi SS special forces against Russian guerrillas.

  Find this resource:

• Bjorge, Gary J. “Compound Warfare in the Military Thought and Practice of Mao Zedong and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Huai Hai Campaign.” In Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot. Edited by Thomas M. Huber, 169–220. Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2002.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book chapter describing compound tactics in the Huai Hai Campaign. The chapter gives relevant insights into Mao Zedong’s thinking. Hybrid warfare developed to a great extent in East Asia and it can be directly or indirectly attributed to Mao Zedong.

  Find this resource:

• Hart Sinnreich, Richard. “That Accursed Spanish War: The Peninsular War, 1807–1814.” In Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present. Edited by Williamson Murray and Peter R. Mansoor, 104–150. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139199254.005Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Chapter in Murray and Mansoor 2012 that describes the emergence of the word guerrilla in the Peninsular War, describing how the Spanish resisted Napoleon using hybrid tactics.

  Find this resource:

• Huber, Thomas M., ed. Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot. Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2002.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This book describes the combination of employing regular and irregular arms through use of the term compound warfare. The combination of regularity and irregularity is a key element in hybrid warfare, though this book focusses purely on the military aspect.

  Find this resource:

• Lawrence, Thomas Edward. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2018.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Originally published in 1926 (Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions). Describes the exploits of T. E. Lawrence in an early version of compound warfare in which Lawrence’s Arab raiding band assisted General Edmund Allenby’s thrusts with the British Expeditionary Force against Jerusalem and Damascus.

  Find this resource:

• Lowe, Karl. “Hybrid War in Vietnam.” In Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present. Edited by Williamson Murray and Peter R. Mansoor, 254–288. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139199254.010Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book chapter that describes hybrid war as it occurred in Vietnam during the Second Indochina War. The war in Vietnam was a key experience for US officers and scholars leading to the rise of the COINdinistas in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Find this resource:

• McCulloh, Timothy, and Richard Johnson. Hybrid Warfare. MacDill Air Force Base, FL: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2013.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Examines the Soviet Partisan Network in the Second World War through the lens of hybrid warfare. The authors compare a case study of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, the initial introduction of hybrid warfare by Hoffman, with the Soviet use of similar tactics when fighting Nazi Germany.

  Find this resource:

• Murray, Williamson, and Peter R. Mansoor, eds. Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Edited volume arguing hybrid warfare has existed throughout the ages. Criticizes the perception that hybrid conflicts are unique with nine historical examples.

  Find this resource:

• Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book describing the creation of the British Special Operations Executive that carried out a mixture of hybrid warfare and covert operations.

  Find this resource:

• Yamaguchi, Noboru. “An Unexpected Encounter with Hybrid Warfare: The Japanese Experience in North China, 1937–1945.” In Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present. Edited by Williamson Murray and Peter R. Mansoor, 225–253. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139199254.009Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book chapter focusing on an early use of ideology as a weapon. Describes a possible influential experience for Mao that furthered the development of his ideas on warfare.

  Find this resource:

Weapons of the Weak

Hybrid tactics have historically been attributed to non-state actors, such as rebel groups and militias, that were not able to fight a militarily superior adversary in a conventional way. Throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries Communist Revolutionaries and Islamic Jihadists have been considered the two main categories of actors resorting to irregular tactics to challenge the major powers.

US-Led Development of Hybrid Warfare, 2006–2012

Part of the hybrid warfare discussion is the question whether hybrid warfare is new or not. A series of articles by Frank G. Hoffman (Mattis and Hoffman 2005, Hoffman 2006, Hoffman 2007) in the first decade of the 21st century put hybrid warfare on the map, leading to a buzz in academic spheres about hybrid warfare. Hoffman’s writings were quickly linked to the counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, thereby blurring the use of the term hybrid warfare in the counterinsurgency context (as was done in the 1990s) and its then future use in describing conflict in the information domain. The articles produced by Hoffman influenced writing between 2006 and 2012, and they serve an important steppingstones in understanding hybrid warfare.

• Hoffman, Frank G. “Complex Irregular Warfare: The Next Revolution in Military Affairs.” Orbis 50.3 (2006): 395–411.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.orbis.2006.04.002Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Original introduction of the term hybrid warfare in its contemporary use while discussing complex irregular warfare. With this article Hoffman was one of the few to properly react to the English translation of Unrestricted Warfare by Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsue (see Qiao and Xiangsui 2007, cited under Hybrid Warfare).

  Find this resource:

• Hoffman, Frank G. Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars. Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The first definition of hybrid warfare is given by Hoffman. The definition encompasses the key elements of hybrid warfare: conventional and non-conventional, blurring of domains, and one involving elements previously allocated to the unlawful domain.

  Find this resource:

• Mattis, James N., and Frank G. Hoffman. “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars.” United States Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine 131.11 (2005): 18–19.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article reintroducing the term hybrid warfare after it was used a decade earlier in counterinsurgency literature. The article is the first in a series of articles by Frank G. Hoffman giving traction to the discussion of hybrid warfare. While not as influential as Hoffman 2006, “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars” is the first article in the US-led development of hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

Reinterpretation of Hybrid Warfare by NATO/EU, 2014–Present

The Western reaction to hybrid warfare has in recent years been marked as passive or reactive. As Boot and Doran 2013 critiques, Western states have largely forgotten how to wage hybrid war (no matter which moniker you use). Only after the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014 did hybrid warfare come to be associated with Russia. The NATO-EU European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, which opened in Helsinki in 2017, is both a good starting point as well as a sad reminder of the loss of collective understanding of hybrid warfare—apparently such a center is necessary to obtain a renewed understanding of this phenomenon Meanwhile China’s unrestricted warfare and lawfare abuses have remained largely ignored. Nevertheless, leading scholars and institutions see a role for NATO in dealing with the hybrid challenge. Aaronson, et al. 2012 argues for the need for NATO to empower the private sector while retaining intellectual ownership. The sentiment for the private sector is echoed in Limnell 2018. Lindley-French 2015 is one of the first works to argue for a full spectrum approach to face the Russian threat. Kramer and Speranza 2017 provides five critical steps to follow in confronting Russia’s challenge. All of these examples embrace the idea of a comprehensive government approach to hybrid warfare, indicating a consensus on the need for a conceptualization of hybrid defense mimicking the Finnish approach. Such hybrid defense efforts can be achieved only through more regional cooperation, as argued in Cederberg, et al. 2017. Rühle 2021 offers insights into NATO’s current response to Hybrid Threats.

• Aaronson, Michael, Sverre Dissen, Yves de Kermabon, Mary Beth Long, and Michael Miklaucic. “NATO Countering the Hybrid Threat.” PRISM: The Journal of Complex Operations 2.4 (2012): 111–124.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article by high-ranking officials suggesting approaches for NATO against the non-state version of hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Boot, Max, and Michael S. Doran. “Political Warfare.” Policy Innovation Memorandum 33 (28 June 2013). New York: Council on Foreign Relations.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article criticizing the apparent reactive stance to hybrid warfare, while having a rich history of similar tactics during the cold war.

  Find this resource:

• Cederberg, Aapo, Pasi Eronen, and Juha Mustonen. Regional Cooperation to Support National Hybrid Defence Efforts. Hybrid CoE Working Paper 1. Helsinki: European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), 2017.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Report based on the proceedings of a high-level workshop on hybrid risk assessment in the Baltic Sea region. The report identifies the need for regional cooperation to defend against hybrid threats.

  Find this resource:

• Kramer, Franklin D., and Lauren M. Speranza. Meeting the Russian Hybrid Challenge: A Comprehensive Strategic Framework. Washington, DC: Atlantic Council, 2017.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Atlantic Council report suggesting steps for NATO to employ against Russian hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Limnell, Jarno. Countering Hybrid Threats: Role of Private Sector Increasingly Important— Shared Responsibility Needed. Helsinki: European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), 2018.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Hybrid CoE report on the (potential) role of the private sector in resisting hybrid threats.

  Find this resource:

• Lindley-French, Julian. NATO and the New Ways of Warfare: Defeating Hybrid Threats. Rome: NATO Defense College, Research Division, 2015.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Proceedings of a high-level NATO conference in Rome with concrete steps on ways for NATO to react to Russian hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Luman, Ronald R., ed. Unrestricted Warfare Symposium: Proceedings on Strategy, Analysis, and Technology, 14–15 March 2006. Laurel, MD: John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 2006.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  First of a series of four proceedings of the Unrestricted Warfare Symposium. Displaying the common misunderstanding of unrestricted warfare in favor of counterinsurgency tactics be employed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Find this resource:

• Rühle, Michael. NATO’s Unified Response to Hybrid Threats. Washington, DC: Center for European Policy Analysis [CEPA], 2021.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Short article by the head of NATO’s Hybrid Challenges and Energy Security Section, Emerging Security Challenges Division explaining NATO’s Counter-Hybrid toolbox.

  Find this resource:

Variations on Russian Hybrid Warfare

In the discussion on hybrid warfare many writers and policymakers focus on the recent resurgence of Russian aggressiveness and the use by the Russians of information as a weapon to influence adversaries. In layman discussions and panels the Russian approach is often used synonymously with hybrid warfare. A more detailed investigation in the Russian use of hybrid warfare reveals three distinct variations being used: information warfare, non-linear warfare, and new generation warfare.

Related Concepts

Many monikers and related concepts are attached to the discussions on hybrid warfare. The three most important is the discussion on Political Warfare, and the two more recent discussions on Gray Zone, and the use of (international) law as a weapon under the portmanteau of the words law and warfare (Lawfare).

Political Warfare

Political warfare is the use of political means to compel an opponent to do another party’s will, based on hostile intent. A key element of political warfare is the perception of the enemy. Perceptions can be influenced using propaganda, psychological operations (PsyOps), and other activities. Such an approach requires a thorough understanding of the opponent and of relevant populations. This fundamental aspect of war can be traced back to Sun Tzu’s Art of War, in which the most desired outcome is a surrender of the enemy because he perceives the battle as already lost. Hybrid warfare focuses greatly on perception and does this through strategic communication. A historical analysis of the linkage between hybrid warfare and strategic communication is given in Andersson 2015, while we already established Russia and China as being more advanced in the use of this tool in the hybrid warfare toolbox. Within political warfare, hybrid warfare’s shift from kinetic to non-kinetic is made apparent, as argued, for example, by Sir David Omand on the 2018 chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) attack on UK soil as a hybrid tactic (Omand 2018). The fact that the adversaries of the West are more familiar with the enhancement of effects through strategic communication does not mean that Western states are not familiar with it. During the Cold War, the use of political warfare was conceptualized by George Kennan, who after his famous Mr. X. article (Kennan 1948) became US secretary of state. Unpublished memoranda now released give insights into American ideas on political warfare. Boot and Doran 2013 finds that the United States has “gotten out of the habit” of political warfare. Similarly, Hoffman 2014 argues that political warfare and hybrid warfare are not unlike one another.

• Andersson, Jan Joel. Hybrid Operations: Lessons from the Past. Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies, 2015.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article from European Union Institute for Security Studies illustrating the importance of disinformation and strategic communication in hybrid warfare tactics.

  Find this resource:

• Boot, Max, and Michael S. Doran. “Political Warfare.” Policy Innovation Memorandum 33 (28 June 2013). New York: Council on Foreign Relations.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Critical article claiming that the United States has lost its way when it comes to political warfare. Draws on historical examples of political warfare and suggests looking at the counterterrorism apparatus created in the wake of 9/11 as a source of inspiration.

  Find this resource:

• Hoffman, Frank G. “On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare vs Hybrid Threats.” War on the Rocks, 28 July 2014.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Reaction to Boot and Doran 2013. Generally a critique against the (re)invention of monikers and terms to describe hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Kennan, George. Policy Planning Staff Memorandum. Washington, DC: Office of the Historian, 1948.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Memorandum from a meeting in 1948 in which Kennan describes the European Recovery Programme (ERP) and the Marshall Plan as useful tools in political warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Omand, David. “From Nudge to Novichok: The Response to the Skripal Nerve Agent Attack Holds Lessons for Countering Hybrid Threats.” Hybrid CoE Working Paper 2. Helsinki: European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), 2018.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Working paper describing the possible intended motivations behind the Skripal attack and how the Western reaction was perfectly in line with Russian political warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Smith, Paul. On Political War. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book on political warfare covering historical examples reaching back to Antiquity.

  Find this resource:

• Valaskivi, Katja. “Beyond Fake News: Content Confusion and Understanding the Dynamics of the Contemporary Media Environment.” Hybrid CoE Strategic Analysis 5. Helsinki: European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), 2018.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Hybrid CoE report describing the dynamics of modern (social) media and its enhancing effects in modern-day strategic communication and political warfare.

  Find this resource:

Gray Zone

The gray zone, or alternatively named gray wars, is a concept that has gained more traction within the broader US strategic studies community and, in particular, in the official and unofficial documents from the US government and intelligence agencies, although the American spelling of the word “gray” is used. Some analysts identified gray zone conflict as the phenomenon that will shape the international system in the decades to come (Brands 2016). Brands defines the gray zone as the area “deliberately designed to remain below the threshold of conventional military conflict” (p. 1). Others combine the gray zone with hybrid warfare (Chambers 2016b). Again others have argued that the concept is a hype, the result of static and bandwagon jumping (Elkus 2015), while the US Army Special Operation Command indicates it is one of the monikers of modern warfare (US Army Special Operation Command 2015). Nora Bensahel combines the work of Brands and Schadlow to describe the non-kinetic conflicts in the post-Soviet and Chinese spheres of influence (Bensahel 2017). Hoffman 2018 links the discussion on the Gray Zone with the author’s earlier work on hybrid challenges from the past decade. Stoker and Whiteside 2020 argues for moving away from the distortion that the concept of gray zone (and by extension hybrid warfare) causes. A new angle on deterrence within the gray zone is provided in Sweijs and Zilincik 2021.

• Bensahel, Nora. “Darker Shades of Gray: Why Gray Zone Conflicts Will Become More Frequent and Complex Interact.” Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 13 February, 2017.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article consulting the works of Brands and Schadlow in describing the non-kinetic nature of hybrid warfare and links back to the Chinese idea of unrestricted warfare that triggered the definition of hybrid warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Brands, Hal. “Paradoxes of the Gray Zone.” Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 5 February 2016.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Encompasses an explanation of the gray zone. Highlighting gray zone approaches are meant to achieve political gains without escalating to overt warfare, crossing red lines, or exposing the practitioner of the covert action. Brands argues that such a limited approach minimalizes the consequences of escalating.

  Find this resource:

• Chambers, John. Countering Gray-Zone Hybrid Threats: An Analysis of Russia’s “New Generation Warfare” and Implications for the US Army. West Point, NY: Modern War Institute at West Point, 2016a.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Report analyzing Russia’s new generation warfare, an alternative term for non-linear warfare, using the lens of the US-coined gray zone. The article combines both the Russian and US lenses and analyzes the implications for the US Army.

  Find this resource:

• Chambers, John. “Owning the ‘Gray Zone.’” Army Times (6 November 2016b).

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Links gray zone as the “socio-geographic domain “in which gray wars or hybrid warfare take place.

  Find this resource:

• Elkus, Adam. “50 Shades of Gray: Why the Gray Wars Concept Lacks Strategic Sense.” War on the Rocks, 2015.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  A critique on an earlier version of the gray zone, arguing that the span of the gray zone would be so large that no two conflicts would ever have the same level of ambiguity. Elkus argues that because of this the concept is useless, as it does not allow for comparative studies of hybrid conflicts.

  Find this resource:

• Hoffman, Frank G. “Examining Complex Forms of Conflict: Gray Zone and Hybrid Challenges.” PRISM: The Journal of Complex Operations 7.4 (8 November 2018).

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Reflecting on the past fifteen years since first introducing the term, this article builds forward on the heuristic construct for conflict model Hoffman created. Hoffman places the “gray zone” within this spectrum and advocates moving beyond definitions and focusing on the “so what?”

  Find this resource:

• Stoker, Donald, and Craig Whiteside. “Blurred Lines: Gray-Zone Conflict and Hybrid War—Two Failures of American Strategic Thinking.” Naval War College Review 73.1 (Winter 2020): Article 4.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Article comparing the concepts of gray zone and hybrid warfare. Stoker and Whiteside argue that both should be removed from the (US) strategic lexicon as the problematic terms distort the concepts of war, peace, and geopolitical competition.

  Find this resource:

• Sweijs, Tim, and Samuel Zilincik. “The Essence of Cross-Domain Deterrence.” In NL ARMS Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies 2020: Deterrence in the 21st Century; Insights from Theory and Practice. Edited by Frans P. B. Osinga and Tim Sweijs, 129–158. The Hague: T. M. C. Asser, 2021.

  DOI: 10.1007/978-94-6265-419-8_8Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book chapter discussing cross-domain deterrence (CDD) in the context of “hybrid” or “gray zone” strategies that feature the simultaneous employment of military and non-military instruments, typically below the conventional military threshold. Sweijs and Zilincik argue for refining our understanding of deterrence and instead argue for a more specific form of dissuasion.

  Find this resource:

• US Army Special Operation Command. The Gray Zone. Washington, DC: Army Publishing Directorate, 2015.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Introduced the gray zone in official US government documentation in an attempt to break the war-and-peace duality in our understanding of conflict.

  Find this resource:

Lawfare

The term lawfare was coined by US Air Force Colonel Charles Dunlap in November 2001 in recognition of law’s increasing utility as a weapon of war. Dunlap defined “lawfare” as the strategy of “using, or misusing, law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective” (Dunlap 2008, p. 146). At first strongly opposing the abuse of law, Dunlap evolved his thinking and argumentation over the span of nearly twenty years, leading to an appreciation of lawfare as a tool in the military’s toolbox—in this bibliography we have selected three of Dunlap’s texts. The word lawfare originates from a 1975 paper on mediation by John Carlson and Neville Yeomans in The Way Out: Radical Alternatives in Australia (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press), who expressed concern about the adversarial nature that the Western legal system appeared to embrace, arguing that “[l]awfare replaces warfare and the duel is with words rather than swords.” (Carlson and Yeomans 1975, p. 155). Kittrie 2016 finds that the term originates from a discussion on the Western legal system. The author remarks that he is surprised that the US government has only sporadically engaged with the concept of lawfare, especially because the term has been vaulted into the mainstream legal and international relations literature by an US government official. Kittrie provides many examples of legal warfare by state and non-state actors alike. Simons and Chifu 2017 and Cheng 2012 (cited under Unrestricted Warfare) focus on lawfare conducted by China, without going into depth on unrestricted warfare. Sitaraman 2012 draws parallels between lawfare and counterinsurgency. Recently, lawfare has been linked with hybrid warfare directly (Sari 2019) and in research conducted by the joint EU/NATO Hybrid Centre of Excellence in Helsinki (Ferm 2017). A fresh contribution is made by de Jongh and Kitzen 2021, using the civil war in Yemen as a case study that can serve to advance understanding the utility of lawfare.

• Carlson, John, and Neville Yeomans. “Whither Goeth the Law—Humanity or Barbarity.” In The Way Out – Radical Alternatives in Australia. Edited by M. Smith and D. Crossley, 155. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1975.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Carlson and Yeomans were one of the first to use the term “lawfare” in a discussion of the development of law and mediation. It is however the work of Charles Dunlap (2001) that brought the term to modern debate and popularized the usage of the neologism.

  Find this resource:

• De Jongh, Sandra, and Martijn Kitzen. “The Conduct of Lawfare: The Case of the Houthi Insurgency in the Yemeni Civil War.” In The Conduct of War in the 21st Century: Kinetic, Connected and Synthetic. Edited by Robert Johnson, Martijn Kitzen, and Tim Sweijs, 249–263. London: Routledge, 2021.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The author uses the Yemeni civil war as a case study to advance understanding of the utility of lawfare in the conduct of modern war and as an event that offers an avenue for further research.

  Find this resource:

• Dunlap, Charles J., Jr. “Law and Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in 21st Conflicts.” Paper Prepared for the Humanitarian Challenges in Military Intervention Conference, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Washington, DC, 29 November 2001.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The first of the three selected Dunlap texts. This essay, presented at the Humanitarian Challenges in Military Intervention Conference, introduced the term lawfare in the academic debate.

  Find this resource:

• Dunlap, Charles J., Jr. “Lawfare Today: A Perspective.” Yale Journal of International Affairs 3.1 (Winter 2008): 146–154.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  In the second text Dunlap acknowledges that lawfare is to be seen as a weapon, and, as such, it can be used for both good and bad purposes.

  Find this resource:

• Dunlap, Charles J., Jr. “Lawfare 101: A Primer.” Military Review 97 (May–June 2017): 8–17.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Having settled on the idea that lawfare is neutral by nature, this article gives examples of US, Chinese, and Russian uses of lawfare. The article concludes with the recommendation to military commanders to integrate lawfare into warfare.

  Find this resource:

• Ferm, Tiina. “Laws in the Era of Hybrid Threats.” Hybrid CoE Strategic Analysis 3. Helsinki: Helsinki: European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), 2017.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Provides four examples of recent measures taken by the Finnish government to make the nation’s law system less vulnerable to hybrid threats in the form of lawfare.

  Find this resource:

• Kittrie, Orde F. Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

  DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263577.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book explaining how factors, including the increased reach of international law and tribunals and the rise of economic globalization and information technology, have fueled lawfare’s increasing power and prevalence. Includes case studies of recent offensive and defensive lawfare by the United States, China, and all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

  Find this resource:

• Sari, Aurel. “Blurred Lines: Hybrid Threats and the Politics of International Law.” Hybrid CoE Strategic Analysis 4. Helsinki: European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), 2018

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Hybrid Centre of Excellence report suggesting three legal measures Western states can adopt to prepare against hybrid threats.

  Find this resource:

• Sari, Aurel. “Hybrid Warfare, Law, and the Fulda Gap.” In Complex Battlespaces: The Law of Armed Conflict and the Dynamics of Modern Warfare. Edited by Michael Schmitt, Shane R. Reeves, Christopher M. Ford, and Winston S. Williams, 161–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

  DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190915360.003.0006Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book chapter positioning law as a domain of warfare and advising the clarification of laws so that they may not be abused by lawfare. An early version of the chapter is available online under the same name.

  Find this resource:

• Schmitt, Michael, Shane R. Reeves, Christopher M. Ford, and Winston S. Williams, eds. Complex Battlespaces: The Law of Armed Conflict and the Dynamics of Modern Warfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

  Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book describing a variety of legal challenges, including (uncovered) new technologies and the (legal) implications of moving conflict to urbanized areas and hybrid threats affecting infrastructure.

  Find this resource:

• Simons, Greg, and Iulian Chifu. The Changing Face of Warfare in the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2017.

  DOI: 10.4324/9781315614441Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book that draws examples from contemporary conflicts related to Russia and the Near East to demonstrate the combination of information warfare, offensive diplomacy, and international law to obtain political and military goals.

  Find this resource:

• Sitaraman, Ganesh. The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

  DOI: 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199930319.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Book tackling lawfare from a counterinsurgency point of view. The author argues that fostering the rule of law in (post) conflict areas is not only morally right, but also strategically beneficial.

  Find this resource: