TLDR: Despite its growing popularity, the term ‘hybrid warfare’ doesn’t describe a significantly different kind of war than in the past. War requires violence, the imposition of will, and reciprocation; absent that, it’s rivalry, hostilities, or peace, not war. The combination of regular and irregular tactics isn’t new, no matter the proportion.
I was recently pushed to revisit ‘hybrid warfare,’ now a wildcard in security studies for describing a newer, more sophisticated kind of war. It combines disinformation, political violence, cyber operations, and electoral interference with the conventional, kinetic kind. My question is: hybrid, as opposed to what?
Most, if not every, great power in history has mixed conventional warfare with some extent of propaganda, bribery, blockades, or proxies. Byzantium bought off invaders it couldn’t beat and married its children into dynasties it couldn’t buy [1]. The British fought the French not only with muskets, but also with subsidies to allies [2]. War was never purely military. ‘Hybrid’ doesn’t explain anything new. Knud Bartels, former chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, rightfully said that “hybrid warfare is a fancy term to name what we have always known as ‘war’” [3].
If we eliminate the term ‘hybrid,’ does this mean that we are constantly at war? Not necessarily. War, as defined by Libiseller and Milevski (who introduced me to hybrid warfare scepticism) [4], requires physical violence, the imposition of one’s will over an adversary, and the reciprocation of that violence. Absent that, there can be peace, hostilities, rivalry, but not war. This distinction matters. If disinformation, cyber intrusions, and sanctions are placed within ‘hybrid warfare’ simply because they are coercive or strategically coordinated, we are left with a choice between accepting that every state has secretly been at war with every other for decades, or admitting that ‘war’ is being used abstractly, like in ‘war on drugs.’
It can be argued that today’s ‘hybrid warfare’ fuses regular and irregular means in an unprecedented proportion. But that doesn’t require a new term. A car counts as hybrid the moment it has an electric motor alongside a combustion engine, no matter how small that battery is. The mix doesn’t create a new category once the ratio shifts. The problem is not that states combine different instruments of power; it is that the combination itself is being treated as evidence of a distinct form of warfare. By that standard, almost no conflict in history counts as ‘non-hybrid.’
Russia’s ‘hybrid’ approach in Donbas between 2014 and 2015 was backed by heavy armour, massed artillery, and rocket strikes, which won them battles in Debaltsevo, Donetsk airport, and Ilovaisk, among others [5]. In Syria, they relied far more on long-range bombers and cruise missiles than on disinformation [5]. And when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine came in 2022, the war looked less like a futuristic cyber war than a WWI artillery duel [6].
None of this underestimates the relevance and impact of below-the-threshold activity. It already sits inside better-suited categories, such as subversion, covert action, and statecraft. Calling it ‘hybrid warfare’ might be catchier, but it doesn’t sharpen the analysis.
[1] Echebarria, D. (2013). Byzantine Sorrow and Venetian Joy: The Failure of Byzantine Diplomacy and the Expansion of Trade in the Mediterranean, 700-1200. University of Nevada, Reno.
[2] CPH. (1931). War Loans versus Subsidies: A Note on Great Britain’s Advances to Her Continental Allies during the Napoleonic Wars. Foreign Affairs, 683-685.
[3] Caliskan, M. (2019). Hybrid Warfare through the Lens of Strategic Theory. Defense & Security Analysis, 35(1), 40-58.
[4] Libiseller, C., & Milevski, L. (2021). War and Peace: Reaffirming the Distinction. Survival, 63(1), 101-112.
[5] Monaghan, A. (2015). The ‘war’ in Russia’s ‘hybrid warfare’. The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters, 45(4), 65-74.
[6] Porter, P. (2023). Out of the Shadows: Ukraine and the Shock of Non-Hybrid War. Journal of Global Security Studies, 8(3), ogad014.
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