Abstract
This chapter provides a conceptual introduction to Hybrid warfare as a framework for comprehensive analysis. It conceptualises hybrid warfare as a specific style of warfare, strategic in nature and in contrast to ‘military-centric warfare' as its counterpart. Hybrid warfare extends the battlespace by making use of different domains and dimensions, operates in the grey zones of various interfaces and creatively combines the use of force with a broad spectrum of non-military instruments and vectors of power. Based on these three key characteristics it can be defined as follows: Hybrid warfare is a creative act of force combining a broad spectrum of military and non-military instruments and vectors of power on an extended multi-domain battlespace while ambiguously operating in the shadow/grey-zones of blurred interfaces (particularly between war and peace, friend and foe, internal and external security) with the ultimate goal to enable an own decision of a confrontation primarily on non-military centers of gravity while preventing being militarily overthrown or compelled by the enemy.
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Notes
- 1.
The speech was published in the ‘Military-Industrial Courier’ (VPK), a Russian-language military specialist journal, on 27 February 2013 (Gerasimov, 2013, pp. 3). The journalist Robert Coalson created a rough translation of the article in English and initially published it on his Facebook page on 21 June 2014 and later in the Huffington Post (Coalson, 2014). Gerasimov updated his views on 2 March 2019, again speaking at the Academy of Military Science in a conference on future wars, armed conflict and other issues in the sphere of defense. He highlighted the need to prepare to fight different types of battles while using military and non-military means. In particular, he emphasized the need for achieving technical, technological and organizational supremacy over any potential adversary (Felgenhauer, 2019).
- 2.
To be understood as the form of warfare with its centre of gravity primarily focused on an overall military decision of a war/conflict and with a military decision on the military battlefield being able to decide the entire war. E.g., along the lines of the Falklands War (1982), the Gulf War (1991), big portions of the Napoleonic Wars or both world wars. A bias in such thinking makes it at the same time more difficult to understand the specific logic of hybrid forms of warfare. As ‘conventional’ is a relative term the concept ‘military centric warfare’ is used to describe the counterpart of hybrid warfare more precisely. Compare (Schmid, 2020).
- 3.
Conversely, this does not, however, mean that each case in which the military has a supportive role and is employed in other fields is already a case of hybrid warfare.
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Schmid, J. (2021). Introduction to Hybrid Warfare – A Framework for comprehensive Analysis. In: Thiele, R. (eds) Hybrid Warfare. Edition ZfAS. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35109-0_2
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