Hybrid Threats and Warfare, Are we Really Facing Something New?

Abstract

Since 2014 the term hybrid warfare and threats has become catchword. This term (hybrid warfare) was introduced to academic discourse by William J. Nemeth in 2002 in relation to the wars in Chechnya and popularised in 2006 by Frank G. Hoffman in relation, among other things, to the second Intifada. In 2014 after the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the terms hybrid war and hybrid threats were transferred from scholarly discussion to politics and official documents. The author seeks to answer the following question: is the invention of so called hybrid warfare and hybrid threats something new, or rather a confused reaction to European Union and NATO astonishment at Russian activity in the eastern and southern frontiers of Ukraine. The fact that armed conflict includes mixed elements of regular and irregular forms of armed combat, guerillas and terrorists, criminal acts, use of new technologies to conduct armed, information, psychological or economic warfare is not new. Scholars who investigate hybrid conflicts give examples of historic wars starting from the war between Rome and the Germans ( Publius Quinctilius Varus campaign in 9 AD against German tribes led by Arminius), through the war of independence in the USA, to the Chechen wars. Nowadays, greater and greater dependence on technology, information delivered in almost real time and the creation of more elaborate and complicated procedures and decisive processes in Western countries have increased the vulnerability to hostile actions other than military ones and ones that use military force.