I submit that “hybrid war” is a new theory in old folders. Warfare has always made its way into every aspect of human life eventually, but the Russians have gone into cyber warfare faster and more successfully.
Over 18 months into Russia’s not-so-very-proxy, proxy war in Ukraine, there remains a thriving and fascinating debate over the tools of conflict that Russia uses, how one describes those tools and where Russia’s next ‘target’ may be.
I was asked to respond to Rod Thornton’s recent blog on Russia. In his excellent piece, Rod argued that Russia’s wars have focused attention on the concept of ‘hybrid’ war’, defining it as forms of attack generally used by one state actor against another. He argued that hybrid war achieves its effect by the totality of the tools used, rather than any specific one. He also said that hybrid war’s objective is to collapse a state from within, and that the Russian state’s autocratic structures enable control over a myriad of levers. He finished by arguing that the Baltic will be Russia’s next target.
Whilst there is much in Rod’s…
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