book chapter
Hybrid warfare: Strategies and countermeasures
Abstract
In modern military science, there are processes of theoretical understanding of the realities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the political, economic, military, virtual, and cognitive sectors, which today have become the theaters of military and non-military actions. In different domains of these sectors, during hybrid operations, the main players fight among themselves for their interests. Such players primarily include the USA, China, and Russia. Regional players also play their role: India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey. After leaving the EU, Great Britain is increasingly active in resuming its role in the struggle to preserve the liberal model of the world order. The search for the essence of war and peace acquires theoretical and practical significance. Russia's full-scale and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the further development of the conflict dramatically changed the perception of the latest war. The question of the nature of the Russian-Ukrainian war and its essence is currently open. Assumptions that the modern war should reduce the role of conventional weapons, and tank battles remained in the past, turned out to be premature. Also, the widespread idea that the latest conflicts are conducted in "radically different ways" and are less and less connected with lethal or kinetic force has also not come true. Conventional warfare is not dead, lethal weapons are in fact decisive for the current phase of warfare. This fact makes some researchers just as quick to dismiss the role of non-kinetic methods in modern warfare, including cyber and information attacks and narrative control. Cybernetic means cannot hold territory but this does not mean that cyber security and information and psychological operations have lost their importance. Attempts to abandon the concept of hybrid conflicts are also hasty. The aggressor country continues to use hybrid techniques one way or another. The Russian military denies attacks on civilian objects, the destruction of hospitals, atrocities against the civilian population, disguises the goals of its war, and tries to shift responsibility for the world food crisis to Ukraine. Non-lethal means of modern warfare, as well as the use of the latest high-precision weapons, contrary to previous assumptions, do not constitute an alternative to traditional weapons. Rather, they are all used together. This is one of the important preliminary lessons of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The goal of the Russian war strategy remains the preservation of control over the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and access to the administrative border of the Donetsk region. Plans to advance deep into the territory of Ukraine in the direction of Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia are being considered. A return to the plan to seize Kyiv and re-deploy hostilities from the territory of the Republic of Belarus is not excluded from the agenda. At the same time, the aggressor country uses the methods of hybrid warfare, namely: - hiding the goals of aggression, - destruction of energy infrastructure facilities of Ukraine, - denial of strikes on civilian objects, destruction of hospitals, residential buildings, terror against the civilian population, - transfer of responsibility for the global food crisis to Ukraine. It is predicted that hybrid warfare will continue beyond 2023. It is possible to talk only about a new stage of the confrontation, of course with other initial data and perspectives, but again - a long conflict, loss of life, consumption of resources, and an uncertain end result [1]. The prospects of a military campaign to liberate the occupied territories of Ukraine and further ensure the military security of Ukraine are considered taking into account such a complex and ambiguous combination of factors of Russian aggression in many areas. Only their full and comprehensive consideration, the achievement of synergistic effects at the intersection of domains, will make it possible to create the prerequisites for Ukraine's task of defeating the armed forces of the aggressor country and ending the destructive war in Europe. © 2023 National Defence University of Ukraine, Ukraine. All rights reserved.
Author keywords
aggressor, counteraction, cyber-attacks, energy infrastructure, hybrid conflict, hybrid warfare, information attacks, lethal weapons, military security, modern warfare, strategy, synergistic effects., russia-ukraine war