Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict Andrew Dunn-Lobban

Submitted to School of Humanities & Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of The Bachelor of Arts with Honours in International

& Political Studies 2016

UNSW @ Canberra School of Humanities and Social Sciences

October 2016

Word Count: 17,771 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 6

2. The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare 7

3.1 Origins 8

3.2 The Boundaries Between Conventional and Irregular Warfare 10

3.5 Convergence of Regular and Irregular Warfare 13

3.5 Defining Criminality and Terrorism 14

3.6 Terrorism 16

3.7 Blurring of Traditional Distinctions and Boundaries of Strategy 18

3.8 Hybrid Campaigns 19

3.8 Responses to Hybrid Warfare 22

4. Hybrid threats: An Analysis of the 2006 Lebanon War 25

4.1 Background to the 2006 Conflict 25

4.2 Lebanon Conflict and Hybrid Warfare 26

4.3 Hezbollah’s Sophisticated Irregular Strategy 28

4.4 The 2006 Lebanon War in Context 31

4.5 Conceptual Clarity and Hybrid Threats 34

5. Hybrid Campaigns: An Analysis of Russian Campaign in Ukraine 37

5.1 Russia’s Improvised Response 38

5.2 The Little Green Men and Coercive Diplomacy 39

5.3 Donbass, Luhansk and Limited War 42

5.4 Applicability of Hybrid Campaigns to Russia’s Future Conduct 44

5.5 Explaining the Popularity of Hybrid Warfare 45

5.6 Conclusion 48

6. Hybrid Warfare and the Demarcation of Conflict 50

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6.1 The Necessary Imprecision of Conflict Typology 52

6.2 Conflating War with General Strategic Behaviour 54

7. Conclusion 59

8. Bibliography 61

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Dr Deane Peter Baker for his time, support and advice despite my tardiness.

I would also like to thank Lyn Dunn and Esme Murphy for the proof-reading and critique they have provided.

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Page !5 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of meaning….. we we cannot avoid this kind of activity if we intend to survive on our own terms. John Boyd1

Introduction At the heart of this thesis is a discussion about how categories and their delineation shape our understanding of warfare. Categories are fundamental to the process of describing, studying and - perhaps most importantly - organising knowledge. War is itself a boundary between competition in peace and the employment of violence for political gain.2 Military and security studies further divide war using a multitude of categories such as conventional and irregular, limited and total, industrial and pre-industrial, and so on. These categories, while necessary, control and shape our understanding by demarcating the boundaries of subjects and concepts, and in doing so restrict our knowledge. Hybrid warfare, a term which emerged in 2005, is a concept that attempts to reshape these traditional boundaries of conflict and focus upon actors or strategies that are effective because they straddle the lines between categorisations. For instance, one prominent definition of hybrid warfare describes a form of warfare that combines regular, irregular and terrorist as well as criminal elements which can, through this hybridity, challenge a conventionally superior force.3 This concept has become increasingly popular within Western military and security thought. The capstone doctrine of the US Army declares that “The most likely security threats that Army forces will encounter are best described as hybrid threats”4, a proposition echoed by Australian and British

1 J. Boyd, ‘Destruction and creation’, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, 1987, p.1.

2 C Smith, ‘Design and Planning of Campaigns and Operations in the Twenty-First Century’, Land Warfare Studies Centre, Canberra, 2011, p. 6.

3 J. Mattis and F. Hoffman ‘Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars’, Proceedings Magazine, vol. 132:11, 2005, pp. 1-5 @ p. 1.

4 US Army, ‘ADP 3-0: Unified Land Operations’, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Leavenworth, 2011, p. 4.

Page !6 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict doctrine.5 Western political leaders also comment on the need to “counter hybrid threats”6 and on the growing importance of hybrid warfare in the contemporary security environment.7 I will argue that this concept is flawed because it is conceptually amorphous and misconstrues the conflicts it is applied to. I will first seek to outline the development of the concept of hybrid warfare, creating a framework to understand it. I will argue that hybrid warfare has grown to encompass both a narrow vision of a tactical and operational hybrid threat and a broader strategic vision of a hybrid campaign. I will then examine two of the most commonly cited examples of hybrid warfare, the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2014 Russian Campaign. I will show that in the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the supposed hybridity of Hezbollah was fundamentally irrelevant to the outcome. Instead, the inconclusive nature of the conflict arose from a combination of poor performance by Israel and a sophisticated irregular strategy by Hezbollah. Similarly, I will show that attempting to apply the concept of hybrid warfare to Russia’s campaign in Ukraine has led to an unfounded perception of the coherence and success of Russia’s actions, and of its broader applicability. I will contend that Russia’s actions within Ukraine are far more appropriately and effectively understood through the traditional framework of warfare and strategy. I will further argue that hybrid warfare is an example of the structural incentives within the military and security community to exaggerate the impact of events and create new concepts to explain them rather than utilising established concepts. I will finally argue that, instead of employing terms such as hybrid warfare, we should seek to employ the existing conceptual framework and categories of conflict to explain contemporary conflict. I will further argue that this traditional conceptual framework should be employed with the awareness of the danger of overemphasis the precision of conflict categories and the problems of conflating the concept of war with general strategic behaviour.

The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare

5 British Army, ‘Operations’, The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Swindon, 2010, p. 71. and Australian Army, ‘LWD 3-0 OPERATIONS’, Headquarters Forces Command, Canberra, 2015, p. 42

6 NATO Media Office, ‘Joint declaration by the President of the European Council, the President of the European Commission, and the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’, NATO Website, 2016, viewed on the 12 Aug 16, .

7 ibid.

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Origin The origin of the idea of Hybrid Warfare can be tentatively traced to an article published by Lieutenant General James Mattis and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman in 2005. Seeking to predict the future of warfare, Mattis and Hoffman framed the concept as in deliberate contrast to the technology-centric vision of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in which precision strike combined with intelligence and surveillance technology would transform warfare.8 Instead, Mattis and Hoffman proposed that future conflict would be defined by the presence of hybrid warfare, an extension of General Charles Krulak's notion of the ‘Three Block War’. The Three Block War is a concept which emphasises the varied character of contemporary conflict, drawing its name from an illustrative scenario described by Krulak in which US ground forces find themselves simultaneously engaged in traditional urban combat, peacekeeping and delivery of humanitarian aid – all within three urban blocks.9 Mattis and Hoffman argued that this diversity would come to define not just the operating environment but also the strategy and tactics of potential adversaries seeking to defeat US power. These adversaries would employ complex combinations of irregular, regular and other capabilities in a synthesis capable of overcoming and neutralising US conventional superiority.10 Mattis and Hoffman further emphasised the extent to which these adversaries would leverage information warfare to “weaken U.S. resolve.”11 This information domain was thus the ‘fourth block’ of the Three Block War in which US forces must compete with opponents in a competition of ‘messaging.’ Mattis and Hoffman consequently proposed that US force development focus upon training and development for the complexity of hybrid warfare.12 Mattis and Hoffman were, unsurprisingly, not the first to identify a blend or combination of regular and irregular forces as a significant concept. For example, General Bruce Palmer Jr, Vernal William Westmoreland's deputy during the Vietnam War, argued that the US failed in Vietnam because:

8 J. Mattis and F. Hoffman ‘Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars’, Proceedings Magazine, vol. 132:11, 2005, pp. 1-5 @ p. 1. and S. Biddle, ‘Military Power’, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2004, p. 4.

9 A. Dorn and M. Varey ‘The Rise and Demise of the “Three Block War’, Canadian Military Journal, vol. 10:1, 2009, pp. 38-45 @ pp. 38-39.

10 J. Mattis and F. Hoffman ‘Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars’, pp. 2-5.

11 ibid.

12 ibid.

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Few Americans understood the true nature of the war – the devilishly clever mixture of conventional warfare fought somewhat unconventionally and guerrilla warfare fought in a classical manner.13

Similarly, Thomas Huber’s concept of Compound War, expounded upon in the 2002 edited collection Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot, argued that a distinguishable pattern within history is the effectiveness of the “simultaneous use of a regular or main force and an irregular or guerrilla force against an enemy.”14 They compound their effects, as was demonstrated in the Iberian Peninsula campaign in the Napoleonic wars and in the North Vietnamese campaign in the Vietnam War.15 Despite the similarities between hybrid warfare and Compound War, however, Hoffman argued for the distinctiveness of Hybrid Warfare. For Hoffman, hybrid warfare is distinguished by its blurring of regular and irregular forces along with terrorist and criminal tactics, while in Compound War irregular forces are employed separately as a “distraction or economy of force measure in a separate theater or adjacent operating area including the rear echelon.”16 The concept of Hybrid Warfare is thus not entirely novel; rather it has evolved from early observations and concepts. What distinguishes hybrid warfare from related concepts is its popularity among both Western military thinkers and practitioners. In part this is because of the perceived applicability of the concept to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, with authors employing the concept as an alternative to terms such as insurgency and unconventional warfare, terms which they argue have failed to capture the complexity of these conflicts.17 The concept of hybrid warfare gained further currency as a means of understanding the outcome of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. The 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict saw the vastly superior – in conventional terms – armed forces of Israel fail to achieve their objectives in the face of unexpectedly stiff resistance from the irregular forces of Hezbollah. A popular explanation of this unexpected outcome focuses on Hezbollah’s integration of conventional and unconventional

13 B. Palmer, ‘The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam’, University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 2002, p. 176.

14 T. Huber, ‘Compund Warfare: That Fatal Knot’’, in ‘Compund Warfare: That Fatal Knot’, T. Huber, US Army Command and General Staff College Press, Fort Leavenworth, 2002, p.1.

15 ibid. p. 3.

16 F. Hoffman, ‘Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars’, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, 2007, p. 37.

17 See for example D. Killcullen, ‘The Accidental Guerrilla’, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p. 148-152 and J. Mattis and F. Hoffman ‘Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars’.

Page !9 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict capabilities. Hybrid warfare proponents then argued that this conflict was evidence of the validity of hybrid warfare, with Hezbollah viewed as a paradigmatic hybrid adversary.18 As a consequence of this popularity, a vast range of competing understandings and usages of the term have emerged. For some analysts, this contested definition renders the concept useless.19 Before assessing whether hybrid warfare has utility, it is therefore important to first assess whether hybrid warfare is a sufficiently coherent concept to be analysed.

The Boundaries Between Conventional and Irregular Warfare At the core of hybrid warfare is the categorical distinction between regular and irregular warfare and the significance of actors who blend these forms of warfare, though, as will be discussed later, terrorism and criminal behaviour also represents a popular component of hybrid warfare. Nevertheless, the most important feature of hybrid warfare is the coalescing of regular and irregular warfare. The distinction between regular and irregular conflict is less clear than is often assumed. Some analysts, most notably Colin S. Gray, argue that the distinction itself is dangerous and problematic.20 In part this is because thinkers often take an ambiguous and confusing approach to differentiating between conventional and irregular. For example, Hoffman distinguishes between conventional and unconventional on the basis of broadly subjective characteristics. Broadly, in Hoffman’s usage, ’conventional’ refers to the realm of inter-state conflict, while ‘irregular’ refers to the actions of non-state actors.21 This reflects the 2010 US Army Training Circular Hybrid Threats which was designed to enable planners to create training exercises against hybrid threats. Here again ‘conventional’ is defined by its characteristics such as “anti-armor weapons, rockets, and command and control networks”22 or “sophisticated weapons, command and control, and combined arms tactics.”23 The problem with this demarcation is that it is by nature ambiguous. Hybrid Threats argues that Hezbollah’s use of information warfare is an indication of its use of irregular tactics,24 yet US

18 F. Freedman, ‘Hybrid Warfare and Challenges’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 52:1, 2009, pp. 34-39 @ p. 34.

19 D. Puyvelde, ‘Hybrid war – does it even exist?’, NATO Website, 2015, viewed on the 12 Aug 16, < http://www.nato.int/docu/ review/2015/Also-in-2015/hybrid-modern-future-warfare-russia-ukraine/ EN/>.

20 C. Gray, ‘Categorical Confusion? The Strategic Implications of Recognizing Challenges Either as Irregular or Traditional’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2012.

21 F. Hoffman, ‘Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007, p. 7.

22 US Army, ‘TC 7-100 Hybrid Threats’, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Leavenworth, 2010, p. 1.

23 ibid. p. V.

24 ibid. p. 1.

Page !10 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict doctrine also understands information operations and warfare as the purview of conventional formations.25 Without clearly defining the boundary between conventional and unconventional, it becomes difficult to reasonably define hybrid threats because it is unclear what hybrid warfare is blending when it combines conventional and irregular warfare. The other most commonly used definition of conventional warfare (as opposed to irregular) in the hybrid warfare debate focuses on its the conformity with laws of armed conflict, especially the wearing of uniforms. For example, a publication by the Joint Special Operations University defines regular (‘conventional’) forces as “military organizations whose behavior conforms to national or international laws…. and whose weapon systems and equipment conform to a commonly accepted standard of capabilities”26 while “irregular force or unconventional force involve a military type organization that does not conform to commonly accepted standards in either equipment or behavior.”27 Again it is difficult to determine what an “accepted standard of capabilities” is, such that the definition remains confused and ill-defined. A more useful and coherent means of distinguishing between conventional and irregular warfare is to define each according to how parties employing either approach seek to achieve victory. Regular or conventional warfare is defined by the employment of military technology and organisations structured with the purpose of seeking battle with, and the destruction of, the opposing enemy’s military forces. A critical component of this conventional warfare is therefore the ability to seize and hold territory or ground.28 While other measures may be employed, such as strategic bombing of industrial capability, these measures are almost always employed to facilitate or support the destruction of an opposing enemy’s military force and the capture of its territory through conventional military means.29 This is reflected in Clausewitz’s famous understanding of war as a duel in which both sides seek to impose their will on each other through the battle.30 Irregular warfare, on the other hand, takes place when a party, by virtue of their conventional weakness, avoids decisive battle and instead seeks to defeat opponents through political exhaustion or other means.

25 Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘JP 3-13 Information Operations’, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington D.C., 2014, pp. 1-5.

26 T. McCulloh and R. Johnson, ‘Hybrid Warfare’, Joint Special Operations University, MacDill Base, 2013, pp. 2-3.

27 ibid.

28 S. Biddle, ‘Military Power’, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2004, pp. 5-7.

29 ibid. p. 8

30 C. Smith, ‘Design and Planning of Campaigns and Operations in the Twenty-First Century’, pp. 7-8.

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A good articulation of this difference is provided by Mao Zedong’s in his influential work On Guerrilla Warfare. For Mao, irregular forces are a distinct phase of a ‘revolutionary campaign’, employed to reduce the resolve of an opponent while enabling the development of a political and economic organisation. In Mao’s conception, regular forces would be employed once these irregular forces have altered the political and economic balance such that the revolutionary force possesses the wherewithal to ‘seek decision’ through the employment of conventional forces. This is because conventional forces “are alone capable of producing the decision.”31 The distinction therefore lies in the purpose of employment. Mao’s conceptualisation is useful because it clearly and effectively demonstrates that the core difference between irregular and regular is the ability to create or impose decision. Focussing upon the characteristics of a conventional or irregular force, such as whether it is state based or hierarchical or possesses advanced arms, is confusing the ‘how’ of actor with the ‘what.’ These traits are associated with conventional force because they support the creation of combat power required to contest ground and defeat the opposing military force. Lacking these traits usually implies a conventional weakness that drives the actor into a irregular strategy. As an illustration of this difference, the Islamic State in Iraq, when facing the American military, adopted a strategy that sought to avoid decisive battle and instead politically exhaust the American and Iraqi government while seeking to advance their political cause, in essence they acted as an insurgency. To do this they blended in with the population, utilised light weapons, operated mainly at night and used hit and run tactics.32 After the American military left in 2010 and the Islamic state recuperated in Syria, the Islamic State turned this insurgency into a conventional force capable of taking major Iraqi cities. To do this they employed tanks, vehicles and heavy weaponry in ‘blitzkreig’ like tactics that overrun the Iraqi army defences.33 The characteristics differ because they are employed for different approaches to success and generate varying levels of combat power. The characteristics themselves mean very little without the context of the approach which they are associated with. The difference between conventional and irregular warfare lies in the willingness and ability to directly contest and seek the decisive defeat of the opposing military force.

31 M. Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare, Dover Books on History, Political and Social Science, Dover, 2005, p. 57.

32 D. Kilcullen, ‘ISIS in Iraq (part 1): remaining and expanding’, ASPI Strategist, 2015, viewed on the 28 Oct 16, .

33 ibid.

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Convergence of Regular and Irregular Warfare The first coherent vision of hybrid warfare is therefore focused on the tactical and operational convergence of irregular and conventional warfare. This form of hybrid warfare is defined by the advent of a new and more sophisticated adversary. The idea of a sophisticated irregular adversary is reflected in British military doctrine which defines hybrid warfare as a specific component of irregular warfare:

Hybrid warfare is conducted by irregular forces that have access to the more sophisticated weapons and systems normally fielded by regular forces. … It is anticipated that irregular groups will continue to acquire sophisticated weapons and technologies and that intervention forces will need to confront a variety of threats that have in the past been associated primarily with the regular Armed Forces of states.34

This understanding of hybrid warfare is seen in British capstone doctrine which uses the word ‘hybrid’ to describe the multitude of threats and methods within the international environment, while stopping short of portraying this as indicative of a distinct blending of forms of warfare.35 A similar view is put in Frank Hoffman’s development of his 2005 article in his 2009 article ‘Hybrid Warfare and Challenges’ in which he argues that “hybrid wars blend the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.”36 A hybrid threat is therefore reflected in an actor that maintains the strategy or characteristics of irregular warfare while adopting the sophisticated capabilities of a conventional force. The problem here is that there have been few actors who have possessed the wherewithal to directly contest the conventional superiority of an enemy – the essence of conventional capability – while maintaining an irregular strategy. As I will discuss later, Hezbollah – widely perceived to be the quintessential hybrid threat – fundamentally lacked the conventional capability to directly challenge Israel’s forces, instead utilising its capability to create a sophisticated irregular strategy. Similarly, when Russian-backed rebels in Donbas and Luhansk obtained sophisticated capabilities, they quickly abandoned their irregular approach and instead sought to utilise this conventional capability to seize and control territory, and

34 Ministry of Defense, ‘Joint Doctrinal Note 2/07 Countering Irregular Activity Within A Comprehensive Approach’, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham, 2007, p. 10.

35 British Army, ‘Operations’, The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Swindon, 2010, p. 71.

36 F. Freedman, ‘Hybrid Warfare and Challenges’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 52:1, 2009, pp. 34-39 @ p. 37.

Page !13 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict were contested conventionally by the Ukrainian government. The synthesis of conventional and irregular approaches to warfare therefore is a nebulous concept, mainly due to the contrasting motivations for employment of each approach that can be made to apply only awkwardly to most contemporary conflicts.

Defining Criminality and Terrorism While the coalescing of conventional and irregular warfare is by far the most dominant feature of hybrid warfare, it is also important to examine the concepts of criminality and terrorism and the notion that hybrid threats or actors utilise and combine these activities. While not as readily discussed or analysed as conventional and irregular warfare, they are nevertheless central components of the most common definitions of hybrid warfare.37 For example, a publication by the Joint Special Operations University defines hybrid warfare as warfare that will “build upon the construct of compound warfare to include a synergistic fusion of the elements with the inclusion of terrorism and criminal behaviour.”38 The problem, once again, is defining these concepts with clarity and determining their relevance to the concept of hybrid warfare. While criminality can be coherently defined, the essential contestability of terrorism as a concept makes the definition largely superfluous to hybrid warfare. In practice, the importance of these concepts is their emphasis on the adaptability and variety of hybrid actors rather than to define a specific function or aspect of hybrid warfare. Organised Crime generally describes the actions of groups that possess some manner of structure or organisation and whose objective is to obtain money through illegal activities.39 These illegal activities usually include counterfeiting or laundering of money, fraud, drug sale and trafficking, prostitution, and human trafficking.40 This criminal behaviour is generally conceptualised in hybrid warfare as important for two reasons. First, it is a source of revenue to fund the activities of hybrid actors. Organised crime is generally understood to view the acquisition of money through illicit activities as its primary goal, though it may gain social status or control

37 B. Fleming, ‘The Hybrid Threat Concept: Contemporary War, Military Planning and the Advent of Unrestricted Operational Art’, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2011, pp. 2-3

38 T. McCulloh and R. Johnson, ‘Hybrid Warfare’, Joint Special Operations University, MacDill Base, 2013, p. 9.

39 Federal Bureau of Investigation, ‘Organized Crime’, Federal Bureau of Investigation Website, 2011, viewed on the 13 Oct 16, .

40 ibid.

Page !14 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict through its pursuits.41 Its players may employ violence and other measures, but these are means to the obtaining of money. In hybrid warfare, generating income through illicit activities is understood as a means to an end, a source of revenue to fund the activities of the hybrid actor.42 A criminal enterprise may become a hybrid actor if it seeks a political objective beyond mere profit. This further objective is often to supplant or radically undermine the governance of a state, akin to an insurgency. This can be seen in the categorisation of the Mexican drug cartels as hybrid threats; they conduct illegal activities but also seek political control through the disruption of the governance of the Mexican state.43 Criminal behaviour within hybrid warfare is thus primarily a means of furthering its other goals. Secondly, Criminal behaviour, beyond the income it provides, is seen by hybrid warfare thinkers as important as a means by which hybrid threats undermine the governance of a state. Crime is conceived as a weapon system44 that undermines or destabilises the government.45 Furthermore, criminal behaviour adds to the complexity and adaptability of a hybrid threat by disguising the hybrid threat as a criminal organisation. Criminals are often categorised as a different type of problem - and approached therefore from a different perspective and organisational framework - by states seeking to address national security threats. Criminal behaviour is seen by hybrid warfare thinkers as another area of behaviour in which the hybrid actor can present multiple ‘dilemmas’ to more conventional organisations.46 It is important to note that the concept of criminal behaviour implies a characterisation of normative legitimacy or illegitimacy of the criminal behaviour of the hybrid actor. For example, while the Islamic State, often referred to as a hybrid actor47, may be characterised as funding its activities through illegal activities48, its claim to statehood means that these actions are legal under its jurisprudence. This normative legitimacy

41 ibid.

42 J. Davis, ‘Defeating Future Hybrid Threats: The Greatest Challenge to the Army Profession of 2020 and Beyond’, Military Review, September-October 2013, 2013, pp. 21-29 @ p. 22.

43 S. Cardash, F. Cilluffo and B. Tussing, ‘HPSI Issue Brief: Mexico and the Triple Threat’, ‘The Hybrid Threat: Crime, Terrorism and Insurgency in Mexico’, George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute and the Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College, Washington DC, 2011, pp. 11-15.

44 R. Smith, ‘Preparing the Brigade Combat Team for the Hybrid Threat’, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2012, p. 12.

45 F. Freedman, ‘Hybrid Warfare and Challenges’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 52:1, 2009, pp. 34-39 @ p. 35.

46 J. Davis, ‘The Hybrid Mindset and Operationalizing Innovation: Toward a Theory of Hybrid’, US Army School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2014, p. 9.

47 S. Jasper and S. Moreland, ‘The Islamic State is a Hybrid Threat: Why Does That Matter?’, Small Wars Journal, vol. 10:12, 2014, pp. 1-12 @ pp. 1-2.

48 ibid.

Page !15 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict complicates the idea of criminal behaviour as a part of hybrid warfare, leading some authors to deliberately avoid incorporating criminality as a component of the definition of hybrid warfare.49

Terrorism While criminal behaviour can be defined with some clarity, terrorism is a far more contested and highly debated term. Very broadly, terrorism is understood to be an act or campaign of violence committed against non-combatants by an actor to inspire terror, intimidation or fear in a large audience.50 The problem is the wide range of actions that can fit within such a definition. Strategic bombing, for example, can fit within the given definition.51 Furthermore, specifically within hybrid warfare, drawing a distinction between irregular warfare and terrorism is fraught with conceptual difficulties.52 Insurgents and guerrilla groups almost always employ tactics characteristic of terrorism in their campaigns. Moreover, as Lawrence Freedman stated, terrorism is conceptually a primitive form of irregular warfare, one which seeks only limited effects.53 It is therefore difficult to distinguish the implication of a hybrid actor that employs both the tools of irregular warfare as well as terrorism, given the similarities between both approaches. Thus terrorism is usually treated by hybrid warfare thinkers as a means of differentiating between the irregular warfare of a hybrid actor in its immediate geographic area and its actions that target the ‘rear’ of an opponent. For example, The US doctrinal aid Hybrid Threats sees terrorism as part of the ability of a hybrid threat to “attack the enemy anywhere and everywhere.”54 Similarly, when Andrea Manciulli wrote about the Islamic State through the lens of terrorism, he wrote that [The] terrorist threat is one of the weapons used by [the Islamic state] in order to take the conflict beyond the confines of their territory, bring it directly into our home and create an atmosphere of terror in our communities.55

49 R. Johnson, ‘Built to Outlast: Operational Approaches to Hybrid Warfare’, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2012, pp 13-14.

50 I. Primoratz ‘Terrorism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015, viewed on the 13 Oct 16, .

51 ibid.

52 ibid.

53 L. Freedman, ‘The Counterrevolution in Strategic Affairs’, Dædalus, vol. 140:3, 2011, pp. 16-32 @ p. 26.

54 D. Kulcullen, ‘The Accidental Guerrilla’, Oxford University press, Oxford, 2009, pp. 22-27.

55 Andrea Manciulli, ‘Introduction’, ‘Daesh and the terrorist threat: from the Middle East to Europe’, Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Brussels, 2015, pp. 10.

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Terrorism, like criminal behaviour, is therefore mostly employed by proponents of the concept of hybrid warfare to emphasise the variety of tools and behaviours employed by hybrid actors, rather than to emphasise a specific tactic or tool of a hybrid threat. This is seen in the two case studies canvassed in this paper. While Hezbollah’s rocket campaign was designed to intimidate the Israeli population, and could in that sense be characterized as terrorism, the tactic is seen by many writers as part of Hezbollah’s irregular warfare campaign, likened by one author to a strategic bombing campaign of the World War Two allies.56 Similarly, in Ukraine, while the Kiev government called its operation against Russian-backed secessionists an anti-terrorist operation’, the conflict was viewed through the lens of irregular as well as conventional warfare, with little discussion of a specific ‘terrorist’ aspect of the conflict.57 Terrorism is only rarely addressed directly by hybrid warfare thinkers. This paper deals with terrorism and criminality only to a small degree in its critique of hybrid warfare. While some criminality can be seen in Hezbollah’s international funding and money laundering,58 the majority of its funding came from donations in Lebanon and support from Iran. It did not engage in criminal behaviour in Israeli territory to destabilise Israeli governance. Furthermore, while Russia made use of criminal connections in its campaign in Ukraine, both in its seizure of Crimea and in inciting rebellion in Donbas and Luhansk, these connections were of minimal importance to the outcome of the campaign.59 In sum, criminality and terrorism are important parts of hybrid warfare because they highlight the diverse nature of hybrid warfare, not because of the specific actions that criminal behaviour or terrorism encompass. “Criminality” and “terrorism” are used by writers to underscore the fact that actors who use hybrid warfare combine not just regular and irregular warfare, but also different strategic tools, both military and non- military.

56 S. Biddle and J. Friedman, ‘2006 Lebanon campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2008, p. xiii.

57 I. Katchanovski, ‘The Separatist War in Donbas: A Violent Break-up of Ukraine?’, European Politics and Society, vol. 17:4, 2016, pp. 473-489 @ pp. 473-479.

58 BBC News, ‘US seizes $150m 'linked to Hezbollah money-laundering'’, BBC News, 2012, viewed on the 13 Oct 16, < http:// www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19327919>.

59 M. Galeotti, ‘Crime And Crimea: Criminals As Allies And Agents’, Radio Liberty, 2014, viewed on the 13 Oct 16, < http:// www.rferl.org/a/crimea-crime-criminals-as-agents-allies/26671923.html>.

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Blurring of Traditional Distinctions and Boundaries of Strategy This aspect of hybrid warfare, which emphasises the importance of the blurring of traditional distinctions and boundaries of not just war but also of strategy, traces its origins to the influential 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui.60 Liang and Xiangsui argued that the conventional superiority of the United States could be overcome by attacking the US not through physical military means but by using alternative means such as economic, legal, and informational warfare.61 The authors were, in effect, arguing for the removal of the distinction between physical military power and other forms of power, contending that this blurring would enable a superior and comprehensive approach capable of defeating a conventionally stronger force, such as the US. Also influencing the idea of hybrid warfare as a blurring of traditional distinctions is the concept of fourth generation warfare. Originating in 1989, proponents of this concept argued that the future character of war would be defined by a blurring of the lines between war and peace, as well as between civilian and combatant.62 The authors argued that fourth generation warfare is characterised by non-state actors competing with and challenging states. Further, these non-state actors would accomplish their goals through ensuring their survival while simultaneously developing an information campaign, built by leveraging globalisation and information technology, the combined effect of which would be designed to convince enemy decision-makers that their goals were too costly or impossible to achieve. The information campaign directed at enemy decision makers is thus the ultimate tool of victory for non-state actors.63 The influence of this notion can be seen in the evolution of the concept of hybrid warfare. Some authors argue that the importance of hybrid warfare lies in its ability to present multiple ‘dilemmas’ to opponents.64 Others argue that hybrid warfare represents a force’s capacity to embrace complexity and the ability to reshape and morph its operations faster than other combatants.65 Frank Hoffman’s writing has even developed the notion of blending or convergence,

60 J. Messel, Unrestricted Warfare: A Chinese doctrine for future warfare?, United States Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting, Quantico, 2005, pp. 10-13.

61 Q. Liang and W. Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, Beijing, 1999, pp. 34-59.

62 W. Lind, et al, ‘The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation’, Marine Corps Gazette, vol. 73:10, 1989, pp. 22-26 @ p. 26.

63 ibid. pp. 10-11.

64 N. Barber, ‘A Warning from the Crimea: hybrid warfare and the challenge for the ADF’, Australian Defence Journal, vol. 198, 2015, pp. 11-22 @ p. 14.

65 J. Davis, ‘The Hybrid Mindset and Operationalizing Innovation: Toward a Theory of Hybrid’, US Army School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2014, p. 12.

Page !18 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict writing that “…the evolving character of conflict ….is best characterized by convergence. This includes the convergence of the physical and psychological, the kinetic and nonkinetic, and combatants and noncombatants.”66 A similar view is proposed by David Kilcullen, who in 2009 argued that the Iraq war should be understood through a hybrid warfare paradigm. For Kilcullen this paradigm was less about the blending of irregular and regular forms of warfare and more about the creation of complex problems that crossed multiple domains. Furthermore, Kilcullen warned that contemporary conflict was developing a “…tendency toward hybrid forms of warfare combining terrorism, insurgency, propaganda, and economic warfare to sidestep Western conventional capability….”67 The importance of hybrid warfare, in this view, is thus not about the acquisition of conventional capabilities by irregular actors, but rather rests in the broader ability of actors to operate across the military and non-military spectrum and blur the traditional distinctions between forms of power into a comprehensive approach. It is this conception that came to dominate the idea of hybrid warfare and grew into what I refer to as hybrid campaigns.

Hybrid Campaigns The idea of hybrid warfare as the convergence of both conventional and unconventional forms of warfare and also military and non-military modes of competition was invigorated and shaped by the Ukrainian crisis of 2013 and the resulting Russian campaign. The use of the notion of hybrid warfare to describe the Russian strategy has led to the emergence of the concept of what I call hybrid campaigns. This term is used to distinguish the concept from hybrid threats in which opponents blend tactical and operational forms of warfare. In contrast, the term hybrid campaigns denotes the concept of campaign that blends military and non-military means to achieve a strategic goal. It should be noted that in the broader literature the term hybrid campaign is rarely utilised by authors and is employed here for the purposes of differentiation.68 While the concept of hybrid campaigns is drawn primarily from analysis of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, it has since been applied

66 F. Freedman, ‘Hybrid Warfare and Challenges’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 52:1, 2009, pp. 34-39 @ p. 34.

67 D. Kulcullen, ‘The Accidental Guerrilla’, Oxford University press, Oxford, 2009, p. 25.

68 For example of hybrid campaigns being used see: K. Giles, ‘Russia’s ‘New’ Tools for Confronting the West: Continuity and Innovation in Moscow’s Exercise of Power’, Chatham House, London, 2016, p. 55.

Page !19 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict to a variety of conflicts or areas of competition, for example to China’s actions in Tibet and Xinjiang69 and in the South China Sea.70 Newer applications of the concept aside, the emergence of the idea of what I’m here calling hybrid campaigns is inextricably linked with the Russian campaign in Ukraine. While this campaign will be discussed in detail later, it is important here to establish some key features of that campaign. The crisis was sparked by the protests of pro-Western opposition groups against the decision by the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to suspend an association agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Russia. The resulting protests saw the ousting of Yanukovych’s administration on 23 February 2014.71 After that administration’s replacement by a pro-Western government, the Russian military sent covert military forces – since nicknamed ‘little green men’ – to seize the Crimean peninsula and secure critical Russian naval infrastructure.72 Following the annexation of Crimea, widespread protests in the Russian-speaking Donbas and Luhansk regions morphed into an armed rebellion against the pro-Western government in Kiev. This rebellion agitated for the secession of these regions from Ukraine and their annexation by Russia.73 Russia provided both clandestine material support and soldiers to aid the separatists.74 The rebellion resulted in an armed confrontation between the Ukrainian military and Donbas and Luhansk rebels. Key to the Western debate over how to interpret Russia’s actions in Ukraine is a 2013 article by the Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gerasimov, entitled ‘Value of Science.’75 In the article Gerasimov calls for renewed debate among Russia thinkers about the future of war, offering an outline of his thinking. He first argues that non-military methods now surpass the effectiveness of military actions by a ratio of four to one, making it critical to combine non-military methods with military methods.76 While keen to stress the uniqueness of each war, Gerasimov argues that future

69 B. Baker, ‘Hybrid Warfare With Chinese Characteristics’, The Diplomat, 2015, viewed on the 10 Oct 16, .

70 E. Graham, ‘South China Sea History Lesson: Parallels from the Paracels?’, The Lowy Interpreter, 2016, viewed on the 10 Oct 16, < http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2016/03/31/ South-China-Sea-History-Lesson-Parallels-from-the-Paracels.aspx>.

71 L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Crisis Management’, Survival, vol. 56:3, 2014, pp. 7-42 @ pp. 7-11.

72 ibid.

73 ibid.

74 ibid.

75 V. Gerasimov, ‘The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations’, Military Review, January-February, 2016, pp. 23-29 @ pp. 6-7.

76 T. Thomas, ‘Thinking like a Russian Officer: Basic Factors And Contemporary Thinking On The Nature Of War’, The Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth , p. 16.

Page !20 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict military methods will be non-linear, or without a conventional front. Gerasimov emphasises the future significance of special operations forces, reinforced by the effects of information operations, which together should create a “continually operating front over the entire territory of the opposing state”, designed to disrupt the ability of the state to function.77 Gerasimov’s article has had a widespread impact upon the Western security community. The US Army military review published a translation of the article and The US Marine Commandant admitted to reading the article three times.78 The article has been widely quoted as explaining Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, while Gerasimov’s comments on the blurring and mixing of non- military and military methods have had a considerable impact on the hybrid warfare debate. For example, a 2015 draft report by the NATO General Rapporteur defined hybrid warfare as follows:

Hybrid warfare exploits domestic weaknesses via non-military means (such as political, informational, and economic intimidation and manipulation), but is backed by the threat of conventional military means.79

Analysts have interpreted Gerasimov’s article as indicative of a long term strategy by Russian forces to conduct these hybrid campaigns, with Ukraine seen as a trial of the strategy.80 Foremost among the techniques identified in this strategy is the use of information operations. These information operations are designed to create ambiguity about Russia’s actions, undermine the coherence and will of opposing forces, and reinforce support for Russia’s actions. Authors point to Russia’s continual denial of its actions in Ukraine and its information campaign against the Kiev government (such as its disinformation campaign around the downing of MH17 and the Russian internal media campaign) as being indicative of this new hybrid approach. Critical to this information strategy is the ability to remain below the threshold of response.81 Through a sophisticated misinformation campaign, Russia has prevented opponents such as NATO from responding effectively because they are unsure of the extent of Russia’s actions or are unable to

77 ibid.

78 Center for Strategic & International Studies, ‘The Future of Expeditionary Warfare with General Robert Neller’, Youtube, 2016, viewed on the 10 Oct 16, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V- Bot5eoPXQ>.

79 J. Calha, ‘Hybrid Warfare: NATO’s New Strategic Challenge?’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Geneva, p. 1.

80 B. Perry, ‘Non-Linear Warfare in Ukraine: The Critical Role of Information Operations and Special Operations’, Small Wars Journal, vol. 11:8, 2015, pp. 1-30 @ pp. 6-7.

81 J. Calha, ‘HYBRID WARFARE: NATO'S NEW STRATEGIC CHALLENGE?’, p. 3.

Page !21 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict build political unity around an ambiguous threat.82 This misinformation campaign is reinforced by the employment of special operations forces and domestic proxy forces to remove the need for the use of overt conventional forces, thus remaining below the threshold of response by outside powers. Compounding these military means are extensive cyber and economic measures designed to undermine the target country, thus underscoring Gerasimov’s belief in the importance of non- military means to military means.83

Responses to Hybrid Warfare We can therefore conclude that while hybrid warfare is a broad concept, describing two related but distinguishable ideas, it is nevertheless coherent enough of a concept to criticise. Within the broader literature two prominent criticisms stand out. First, some thinkers object to the idea that hybrid warfare is a ‘new’ idea, contending instead that the concept simply adds a label that is of limited utility to describe an approach that has been present throughout history. The second main objection is grounded in the observation that all warfare is in some way ‘hybrid’, and therefore the term is essentially useless. The first criticism, that hybrid warfare lacks historical perspective, misses the essential argument of hybrid warfare proponents. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these accounts is Hybrid Warfare : Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present by Williamson Murray and Peter Mansoor.84 As Murray and Mansoor demonstrate in great detail, the concept of hybrid warfare can be used to analyse a variety of conflicts - for example, the Roman campaign in Germania, the U.S. Civil War, and the Anglo-Boer War.85 While these conflicts could arguably be better described as compound wars, involving the use of distinct irregular and regular military formations, they nevertheless demonstrate the extent to which hybrid warfare as a concept can as easily be applied to historical conflicts as to contemporary or future wars. What this criticism ignores is that proponents of the hybrid warfare concept rarely argue for the historical uniqueness of hybrid warfare; instead they argue that this concept is growing increasingly important because of

82 ibid.

83 . Goure, ‘Russia: The Hybrid State As Adversary’, The National Interest, 2016, viewed on the 23 Aug 16, < http:// nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-the-hybrid-state-adversary-17103>.

84 W. Murray and P. Mansoor, ‘Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 1-15.

85 ibid.

Page !22 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict technology86 and the evolving nature of the strategic environment.87 These factors, proponents contend, mean that the hybrid approach will be increasingly prevalent and potent. The historical applicability of hybrid warfare does not mean that it won’t be an increasingly important factor in the future character of war. The broader and more prevalent criticism of hybrid warfare is that all warfare is in some way hybrid. As Australia’s Chief of Army put it:

I am, on occasions, [left] distraught by the jargon that we confuse ourselves with. I don’t think, for example, that there is ‘hybrid warfare’. I think there is warfare and there are interesting tactics being applied by various countries in operations at the moment.88

Even the paradigmatic conventional conflict of the Eastern Front in World War Two89 had a guerrilla front of Soviet Partisans. Perhaps, following this line of thought, hybrid warfare is therefore an empty concept, one which describes almost all conflict, as most conflicts have some blending of different forms of warfare. This again misconstrues the concept of hybrid warfare. It is a concept that focuses on specific instances in which the blending of different categories is crucial to understanding a conflict or actor. Hybrid warfare writers still believe in the need for concepts of irregular warfare and conventional warfare, but that there is a space in between these categories filled by hybrid warfare. This criticism, that hybrid warfare describers all warfare, in some sense, partially correct, but misses the critical problem of hybrid warfare. As this thesis will now argue, the flaw of hybrid warfare is not that it describes all warfare, but rather that it fails to explain and conceptualises the conflicts which it is meant to describe. In the two most prominent applications of hybrid warfare, the 2006 Lebanon war and Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, Hybrid warfare’s focus upon the coalescing of different forms of warfare creates an amorphous model that explains little and

86 J. Blaxland, ‘Australia must heed the lessons of ‘hybrid warfare’ to avoid falling behind on the battlefield’, The Conversation, 2016, viewed on the 10 Oct 16, .

87 D. Goure, ‘Russia: The Hybrid State As Adversary’, The National Interest, 2016, viewed on the 23 Aug 16, < http:// nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-the-hybrid-state-adversary-17103>.

88 A. Campbell, ‘Chief of Army address to the United Services Institute of the ACT’, Australian Army Online, 2016, viewed on the 15 Sep 16, .

89 J. Shy and T. Collier, ‘Revolutionary War’, in ‘Makers of Modern Strategy: Fromt Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1986, pp. 817-21.

Page !23 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict misconstrues the dynamics of the conflicts it is applied to. Hybrid warfare thus instead of describing all conflict fails to effectively describe any conflict, even the ones held to be paradigmatic examples. Furthermore, the focus upon blurred boundaries has led to the abandonment of an effective, traditional, conceptual framework that is better placed to conceptually frame conflict.

Page !24 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Hybrid Threats: An Analysis of the 2006 Lebanon War The first prominent conceptualisation of hybrid warfare describes an actor whose tactical and operational character combines regular, irregular, terrorist and criminal means to produce a cohesive whole that is capable of exploiting weaknesses or gaps in a conventionally superior enemy. The often touted example of this approach being applied is in the 2006 Lebanon War. “Hybrid warfare” would at first glance seem highly applicable in understanding that conflict. A conventionally accomplished military was frustrated by an adversary that conducted a campaign distinct from a classic guerrilla campaign, one which utilised a variety of sophisticated capabilities usually employed by conventional militaries. Viewing this conflict through the lens of the hybrid warfare concept has confused rather than clarified the picture of what actually took place. As I will show, there are a number of factors that were more influential in the outcome than the fact that Hezbollah utilized a hybrid approach. First, the inconclusive result for Israel was predominantly a result of poor strategic planning and execution, combined with Israel’satrophy in conventional operations, a reality validated by Israeli performance in later conflicts. Furthermore, Hezbollah's success was based upon a terrain- dependent, sophisticated irregular strategy which taxed the combat power of Israel. This strategy, while distinct from classical guerrilla operations, is far from a blending of conventional and unconventional means. Focusing on Hezbollah’s supposed convergence of methods is thus a poor way of understanding its success.

Background to the 2006 Conflict The 2006 Lebanon conflict was sparked by a variety of factors. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia political organisation that emerged in the 1980s, had always held its primary goal to be the destruction of Israel.90 Similarly, Israel had maintained its opposition to Hezbollah, using both military and political means to undermine Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon.91 The 2006 conflict was triggered by a cross-border operation conducted by Hezbollah on 12 July 2006 in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two abducted. This event, coupled with a preceding campaign of sporadic rocket attacks on Northern Israel, prompted Israel to launch a 33 day combined air and ground campaign in which Israel aimed to decisively defeat and disarm Hezbollah, end rocket attacks on Northern Israel, and secure the return of its hostages. During the conflict, Israel found

90 BBC News, ‘Profile: Lebanon's Hezbollah movement’, BBC News Online, 2016, viewed on the 03 Sep 16, .

91 ibid.

Page !25 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict that its use of airpower, while successful in destroying 70-80% of Hezbollah’s long range launchers and 50% of their short range rocket system,92 was largely ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s rocket attacks. Subsequent attempts at ground manoeuvres were largely ineffective, facing far stiffer resistance than expected and forcing Israel to resort to a diplomatic solution after 33 days in order to end the conflict.93

Following the ceasefire on the 14th of August,94 many commentators saw the conflict as a failure for Israel. Prime Minister Olmert admitted to mistakes in the war; there were protests calling for his resignation.95 Similarly, high ranking Israeli military officials characterised the conflict as a defeat.96 Western publications also characterised the conflict as a political or strategic victory for Hezbollah, though qualified this by pointing out that the victory stemmed from Hezbollah’s survival in the face of Israel’s overwhelming military superiority, rather than from Hezbollah’s own battlefield successes.97 Similarly, while publicly quick to claim victory, Hezbollah was also aware of the very conditional nature of its success, with Iran expressing frustration with Hezbollah over the extensive destruction wrought upon its 4-6 billion US dollar investment in Hezbollah’s military capabilities.98

Lebanon Conflict and Hybrid Warfare The unexpected result of the conflict, the first inconclusive military outcome for Israel in its six decade history,99 invigorated the hybrid warfare debate. A renowned military had been checked by a far smaller and conventionally less capable non-state actor, which appeared to combine regular, irregular, and, in some respects, terrorist means to seemingly great effect. Frank Hoffman wrote that

92 W. Arkin, ‘Divine Victory for Whom? Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War’, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Winter, 2007, pp. 98-141 @ p. 103.

93 ibid.

94 Associated Press in Jerusalem, ‘Rerservists heckle PM and demand resignation’, The Guardian Online, 2006, viewed on the 16 Sep 16, .

95 The Guardian, ‘Profile: Lebanon's Hezbollah movement’, The Guardian Online, 2006, viewed on the 03 Sep 16, < https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/21/ israelandthepalestinians.lebanon>.

96 A, Harel, ‘IDF General Urges Army Chief to Quit His Post Over 'Failure' of War ’, The Guardian Online, 2006, viewed on the 03 Sep 16, .

97 The Economist, ‘Nasrallah wins the war’, Economist Magazine, 2006, viewed on the 03 Sep 16, < http://www.economist.com/ node/7796790>.

98 B. Lambeth, ‘Israel’s Second Lebanon War Reconsidered’, DIANE Publishing, Collingdale, 2010, p. 51.

99 ibid. p. 58.

Page !26 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict in the 2006 war: “[Hezbollah’s] combat cells were a hybrid of guerrillas and regular troops—a form of opponent that U.S. forces are apt to encounter with increasing frequency.”100 He also claimed that “[Hezbollah] clearly demonstrated the ability of nonstate actors to study and deconstruct the vulnerabilities of Western-style militaries and devise appropriate countermeasures”, reflecting the dominant view of the importance of hybrid warfare to explaining the outcome.101 As John Davis commented:

Hezbollah’s tactics rapidly transitioned … from conventional warfare to hybrid warfare, effectively negating the IDF’s technological advancements. Hezbollah developed a strategy that combined conventional warfare tactics and capabilities with guerrilla warfare operations. In one sense, Hezbollah’s actions departed from historical asymmetric, irregular operations and shifted toward conventional tactics. These tactics included defending terrain from fortified defensive positions and maneuvering in formations with conventional warfare weapons and equipment.102

The reality of the conflict was that the outcome was much more a result of a failing on the part of Israel than a consequence of the proficiency of Hezbollah. The Israeli independent investigation, the Winograd Commission, which produced the most thorough report of the conflict,103 attributed the outcome primarily to poor strategic decision making by senior Israel policymakers. It characterised the decision to mount the campaign, especially the ground component, as haphazard and lacking in preparation. Further, the Commission found that the goals of the campaign were ill- defined and overly ambitious104 and that the Israeli government displayed an ingrained inability to connect its military actions with its political and diplomatic goals:

100 F. Freedman, ‘Hybrid Warfare and Challenges’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 52:1, 2009, pp. 34-39 @ p. 37.

101 M. Piotrowski, ‘Hezbollah: The Model of a Hybrid Threat’, Polish Institute of International Affairs Warsaw, 2015, pp. 1-2. AND D. Tho, ‘A glimpse of hybrid warfare’, Vietnamese National Defence Journal, 2015, viewed on the 16 Sep 16, < http://tapchiqptd.vn/ en/events-and-comments/a-glimpse-of-hybrid-warfare/ 7636.html>. AND T. Owens, ‘Reflections on Future War’, Naval War College Review vol. 61:3, 2008, pp. 61-76 @ p. 69.

102 J. Davis, ‘Defeating Future Hybrid Threats: The Greatest Challenge to the Army Profession of 2020 and Beyond’, Military Review, September-October 2013, 2013, pp. 21-29 @ p. 22.

103 Council on Foreign Relations, ‘Winograd Commission Final Report’, Council on Foreign Relations, 2008, viewed on the 03 Sep 16, < http://www.cfr.org/israel/winograd-commission-final- report/p15385>.

104 ibid.

Page !27 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

At the end of the day, Israel did not gain a political achievement because of military successes; rather, it relied on a political agreement, which included positive elements for Israel, which permitted it to stop a war which it had failed to win.105

These strategic shortcomings were also accompanied by tactical and operational deficiencies. Foremost among these was the atrophy of Israel’s combined-arms fire and manoeuvre capability. This capability is primarily the ability to amass combat power to defeat an enemy and capture as well as occupy territory.106 This atrophy was largely the result of the Israeli ground force’s preoccupation with its quasi-policing role in the West Bank and Gaza. This security role constituted the central focus of training for combat units; for example, training often focused primarily on platoon-level security operations.107 Moreover, the Israeli army saw a conventional or high-intensity challenge from its surrounding Arab states as increasingly unlikely. This preoccupation meant that some battalion commanders’ first exposure to a live-fire event involving their entire battalion was the 2006 Lebanon war.108 Further, the Israeli military had neglected to integrate its air campaign into its ground campaign, with the Israeli Air Force signing an agreement with the Israeli Army that completely removed Israeli fixed wing aircraft from the role of close air support and left the operational integration between the Israeli air force and ground forces virtually non-existent.109 Finally, as Avi Kober argued in his influential critique of Israel’s performance, Israeli doctrine, by focusing on ‘Effects Based Operations’ (a Revolution in Military Affairs influenced idea), had fundamentally confused Israeli planners and led to an overreliance on systems thinking and airpower at the expense of effective ground manoeuvre.110

Hezbollah’s Sophisticated Irregular Strategy The dominant factor in the outcome of the 2006 Lebanon conflict was Israel’s poor performance. Nevertheless, Hezbollah’s sophisticated irregular approach was an important component. It would

105 ibid.

106 US Army, ‘ADP 3-0: Unified Land Operations’, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Leavenworth, 2011, p. 6.

107 A. Marrero, ‘The Tactics of Operation CAST LEAD’’, in ‘Back to Basics: A Study of the Second Lebanon War and Operation CAST LEAD’, DIANE Publishing, Collingdale, 2010, p. 85.

108 ibid.

109 L. Benjamin, ‘Forging Jointness under Fire: Air-Ground Integration in Israel's Lebanon and Gaza Wars’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 66:1, 2012, pp. 48-53 @ pp. 48-49.

110 A. Kober, ‘The Israel Defense Forces in the Second Lebanon War: Why the Poor Performance?’, Joint Force Quarterly, vol. 31:1, 2008, pp. 3-40 @ pp. 8-10.

Page !28 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict be a mistake to characterise this approach as ‘hybrid’, as has often been done. Instead, it was an irregular approach that leveraged Hezbollah’s access to sophisticated capabilities such as stand-off weaponry. Furthermore, through effective planning and preparation of terrain Hezbollah was able to tax Israel’s ability to produce combat power rather than directly confront Israel. Hezbollah only made minor attempts to directly contest ground with Israel’s forces, and in these instances demonstrated its own inadequacies.111 Perhaps most important was Hezbollah's thorough preparation, particularly the construction of a sophisticated network of hardened bunkers and defences following Israeli’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. These defences leveraged the terrain of Southern Lebanon, already favourable to restricting and channelling offensive manoeuvre, to provide both a defence against ground manoeuvre and concealment from Israel’s air platforms.112 Hezbollah favoured the use of small, well-trained and disciplined teams employed in a dispersed cellular structure. These well-trained teams of fighters (estimated to be approximately 3000 soldiers113) were supplemented by militia- like units of ‘village guards’ raised by local fighters to fight within their communities, thereby using their knowledge of the local terrain.114 The inner core of well trained fighters employed Hezbollah’s sophisticated weapons and technology. This technology ranged from anti-tank guided missiles - such as the modern Kornet (focused in 150 well-concealed silos of anti-tank weaponry)115 - and various rocket systems, such as the Chinese C-802 anti-ship missile that struck the Israeli INS Hanit.116 This attack was imitated by Yemeni Houthi Rebels a decade later when they used a C-802 to severely damage a UAE naval ship off the coast of Yemen.117 Hezbollah further relied upon fibre- optic lines, resistant to Israel’s electric warfare capabilities, for communications, while its small

111 S. Biddle and J. Friedman, ‘2006 Lebanon campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2008, p. 37.

112 J. Sharp et al, ‘Lebanon: The Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah Conflict’, Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, p. 10.

113 S. Erlanger and R. Oppel, ‘A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons’, New York Times, 2006, viewed on the 11 Sep 16, < http://www.nytimes.com/ 2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07hezbollah.html>.

114 A. Cordesman, W. Sullivan, ‘Lessons of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, 2007, p. 135.

115 ibid.

116 K. Spencer and T. Telenko, ‘An Analysis of the Hezbollah Anti-Ship Missile Strike: The Attack on INS Ahi-Hanit’, Israel Resource Review, 2006, viewed on the 16 Sep 16, .

117 A. Toumaj, ‘Yemeni Houthis fire at ship with Iranian-supplied missile’, Israel Resource Review, 2016, viewed on the 11 Oct 16, .

Page !29 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict teams relied upon unencrypted Motorola radios with code words.118 Hezbollah’s effectiveness was thus predicated upon its preparation of the battlefield, coupled with its well trained fighters who leveraged Hezbollah’s access to sophisticated stand-off weaponry and communications. In this way, Hezbollah’s force was qualitatively different from a classical guerrilla force. It used prepared positions and urban terrain for concealment rather than using the local population, and it sought to delay Israeli forces far more than would a standard Guerrilla force, at times with delaying actions of up to 12 hours.119 Hezbollah was still fundamentally irregular in nature; it did not and could not seek to decisively defeat or halt either Israel’s advance or its air campaign in South Lebanon. It was however capable of producing a level of combat power that attrited Israel forces to a significant degree - such as damaging or destroying some 65 tanks during the fighting120 - and ensuring its own survival. It was therefore fundamentally a sophisticated irregular force that leveraged capabilities that are commonly associated with conventional forces, but it did not and could not adopt the characteristics of a conventional force. For example, Hezbollah struggled to conduct conventional operations to contest or seize ground. When it attempted to deploy up to platoon-sized attacks or to stage counter attacks on Israeli positions, it always failed to outmatch the Israeli forces.121 This offensive manoeuvre capability is comparable to other contemporary irregular forces such as the Afghanistan Taliban, the quintessential contemporary guerrilla force., Like Hezbollah, the Taliban in 2008 staged a deliberate attack utilising 200 fighters upon an American position.122 Hezbollah’s ability to offensively contest ground was thus comparable to other irregular forces. Similarly, Hezbollah showed little ability to coordinate the manoeuvre of formations over platoon size, and rarely employed combined arms cooperation against a single target.123 To conclude, if we return to the understanding of hybrid warfare or hybrid threats as a blending of different lines of operation, we find that this idea does not satisfactorily capture the lessons of the 2006 Lebanon War. Firstly, that conflict was essentially lost by Israel rather than won by Hezbollah. Secondly, Hezbollah’s success was not a result of its blending of different forms of

118 J. Dankski,, ‘ROUND 2 IN LEBANON: How the IDF Focused Exclusively on COIN and Lost the Ability to Fight Manuever War’, Infantry Magazine, September-October, 2007, pp. 33-35 @ p. 33.

119 S. Biddle and J. Friedman, ‘2006 Lebanon campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2008, p. 37.

120 D. Makovsky and J. White, ‘Lessons and Implications of the Israel-Hizballah War: A Preliminary Assessment’, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy Carlisle, 2006, p. 46.

121 S. Biddle and J. Friedman, ‘2006 Lebanon campaign and the Future of Warfare,’ p. 41.

122 R. Steeb et al, ‘Perspectives on the Battle of Wanat: Challenges Facing small Unit Operations in Afghanistan’, RAND Corperation, Santa Monica, 2011, pp. 1-2.

123 S. Biddle and J. Friedman, ‘2006 Lebanon campaign and the Future of Warfare,’ p. 41.

Page !30 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

conflict; rather it merely became more sophisticated in its irregular approach, with prepared positions, stand-off weaponry, and, especially, rocket weaponry. Furthermore, Hezbollah’s approach was fundamentally dependent upon terrain and its ability to prepare defences. As analysts have pointed out, it is likely that Israel would have performed much better against a more conventional Arab army.124 Hezbollah thus adopted a sophisticated irregular approach that leveraged Hezbollah’s prepared positions and urban terrain to frustrate the manoeuvre of the Israeli Army. This approach nonetheless lacked the conventional characteristics that hybrid warfare proponents often describe Hezbollah as possessing.

The 2006 Lebanon War in Context The Israeli army responded to its poor performance in the 2006 Lebanon War with a vigorous review and reform process. Central to this reform was a return to a template of conventional manoeuvre and combined arms. There was no significant attempt to adapt its force structure or tactics to deal with the new hybrid threat of Hezbollah.125 The Israeli Army instead placed renewed emphasis upon heavy ground forces, such as increasing its inventory of Merkava IV and dramatically increasing the focus upon high intensity conflict and combined arms manoeuvre in its training curriculum. The effects of this focus upon conventional competence were evident in the IDF’s next armed confrontation, with Hamas in Gaza and on the West Bank in 2008 and 2014. It is important to note the disparity in capability between Hamas and Hezbollah. This is reflected primarily in Hezbollah’s access to sophisticated ATGMs, anti-air weaponry and regional training.126 Furthermore, the terrain in Gaza was more favourable to Israeli manoeuvre than was the terrain of Lebanon.127 Nonetheless, Hamas did employ a similar combination of irregular tactics and more sophisticated tactics and technology to that of Hezbollah in 2006.128 Israel proved to be far more successful in these conflicts than in the inconclusive 2006 Lebanon war. In large part this was due to more limited strategic goals and execution than in 2006, with the Israeli government ensuring its aims were limited to the relative degradation of Hamas’s capability rather than

124 See, e.g., D. Johnson, ‘Hard Fighting: Israel in Lebanon and Gaza’, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2011, pp. 145-148.

125 ibid. pp. 97-102

126 ibid. pp. 140-144

127 ibid.

128 B. Berti, ’Organizational Change within Hamas: What Lies Ahead?’, in ‘The Lessons of Operation Protective Edge’, A. Kurz and S. Brom, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv, 2015, p. 109.

Page !31 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict persisting with the more ambitious goals of 2006.129 Israel’s renowned focus upon conventional manoeuvre also assisted it in overcoming Hamas. Heavy ground forces centred on the Merkava tank proved decisive, while the integration of fires to facilitate manoeuvre (a cornerstone of conventional warfare) was also critical. This demonstrates the nebulous nature of hybrid warfare as a concept. Faced with the irregular approach of Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel relied upon the fundamentals of conventional warfare to enable a more successful campaign. Hybrid warfare neither effectively encapsulates Hamas and Hezbollah’s irregular approach nor Israel’s fundamentally conventional response. Its straddling of the boundaries leaves the concept explaining little. This point is reinforced in a monograph by Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Smith (USA) who argued that hybrid threats required the US Army to be competent in:

Combined Arms Maneuver—Offensive Operation in an Urban Environment — Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance that can collect on a broad array of information— Precision fires —Mission Command on the move.130

Smith argued that the critical competencies required by a military facing the prospect of so-called hybrid warfare were characteristics associated with conventional capability. In essence, the confusing and indistinct nature of hybrid warfare offers little in the way of guidance on how to effectively confront hybrid warfare. The Israeli military strengthening its conventional capability to overcome the sophisticated irregular strategies of Hezbollah and Hamas serves as an illustration of this. The central idea of hybrid warfare as a convergence of methods is problematic. Both Hezbollah and Hamas were fundamentally irregular in nature, even though their tactics were different from classical guerrilla tactics and operations. Far from adopting a conventional strategy, both actors merely adopted technology that suited this irregular approach and relied upon their terrain to enable this approach. Israel’s solution to this problem was to return to its core fundamentals of conventional warfare, showing little resolve to radically combat a hybrid threat. The idea of ‘hybrid’ as a new or important standard of capability in warfare, or of its character, is not borne out in the 2006 Lebanon Conflict.

129 D. Johnson, ‘Hard Fighting: Israel in Lebanon and Gaza’, pp. 123-124.

130 R. Smith, ‘Preparing the Brigade Combat Team for the Hybrid Threat, in ‘The Lessons of Operation Protective Edge’, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, 2012, pp. 32-33.

Page !32 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

This is shown in how Hezbollah has developed and changed following the 2006 conflict. It has had to radically shift the structure and character of its military wing. In becoming involved in the Syrian Civil War, it shifted from its usual strategy of defending against a conventionally superior force from prepared urban terrain to assisting the Syrian Government in conflict against various rebel groups, both in a direct way and in an advisory role.131 This has seen Hezbollah take on even more characteristics associated with the combat power of a conventional force. For example, in May 2013 Hezbollah captured Al-Qusayr with between 1,300 to 1,700 fighters against a rebel group employing the same defensive tactics Hezbollah had used to frustrate Israel in 2006.132 Offensive actions like Al-Qusayr have been coupled with an expansion of sophisticated capabilities, such as in the acquisition of unmanned aircraft capable of dropping ordnance.133 As an Israeli military offical commented:

[Hezbollah] is gaining experience in Syria where it is initiating assaults in built-up areas and attacking cities. They are learning about controlling hundreds of fighters, coordinating intelligence, firepower and command and control.134

This conventional experience is however viewed by both Israel and Hezbollah as inapplicable to Hezbollah’s ability to confront Israel.135 Both sides understand the extent to which Hezbollah relies upon an irregular strategy to confront Israel’s conventional military power. Attempting to understand the outcome of the 2006 Lebanon Conflict through the prism of hybrid warfare is, in essence, counterproductive. Attempting to apply a conceptual framework that focuses on the intersection of conventional and irregular warfare led to writers overlooking the extent to which Hezbollah wasn’t fighting with a conventional strategy. Moreover, Hezbollah was substantially outmatched by Israel its ability to both capture and hold ground - the fundamental feature of what is considered conventional capability. Faced with a somewhat novel approach of a

131 A. Alfoneh, ‘Hezbollah Fatalities in the Syrian War’, The Washington Institute, 2016, viewed on the 11 Oct 16, .

132 Institute for Understanding War, ‘SYRIA UPDATE: THE FALL OF AL-QUSAYR’, Institute for Understanding War, 2013, viewed on the 11 Oct 16, .

133 Hezbollah Media Centre, ‘See ... march of resistance planes targeted by terrorists in the southern countryside of Aleppo’, Youtube, 2016, viewed on the 11 Oct 16, .

134 N. Blanford, ‘Hezbollah acquiring new tactics in Syria’, The Daily Star Online, 2015, viewed on the 03 Sep 16, < https:// www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/May-29/299699- hezbollah-acquiring-new-tactics-in-syria.ashx>.

135 D. Daoud, ‘Hezbollah’s Strategy in Syria Won’t Help Against Israel’, Foundation for the Defence of Democracy, 2016, viewed on the 10 Oct 16, < http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/david- daoud-hezbollahs-strategy-in-syria-wont-help-against-israel/>.

Page !33 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict terrain-dependent strategy that leveraged standoff capabilities rarely seen in non-state actors, analysts sought to overturn the conceptual framework offered by the distinction between irregular and conventional warfare. In its place, these analysts created a new concept that regrettably lacked the clarity of the previous framework, a lack of clarity that is seen in how hybrid threats are portrayed in US Doctrinal Aid TC 100-7 Hybrid Threats.

Conceptual Clarity and Hybrid Threats By abandoning the conceptual framework offered through traditional categories, hybrid warfare produces a vision of a threat that is largely amorphous in nature. This hybrid threat is vague in what exactly it constitutes, its definition of victory, and in the advantages it acquires through straddling the line between conventional and irregular. This is demonstrated in the US army Doctrinal aid 2010 TC 100-7 Hybrid Threats. Hybrid Threats is important because it is an attempt to distil hybrid warfare into a plausible and usable conceptual model. Hybrid Threats conceptualises the enemy facing a US force as a Hybrid Threat (HT). The essential characteristic of this HT is its pragmatic and adaptive strategy:

The most challenging attribute of our adversaries will be their ability to adapt and transition. Their speed, agility, versatility, and changeability are the keys to success in a fight against a larger, more powerful opponent.136

It should be first noted that an essential characteristic of all elements of warfare is adaptability. Clausewitz, for instance, characterised war as a duel, with both sides dynamically attempting to overcome the other.137 While Hybrid Threats is keen to stress the existence of an apparently universal trait in organisations engaged in war, it offers little clarity about how a HT is more adaptable than other less 'hybrid’ actors. For instance, a key trait of a HT is what Hybrid Threats entitles ‘function tactics’ in which

It determines the functions that need to be performed as part of an action to bring about its success. Then it allocates appropriate actors to each function and synchronizes the effort.”138

136 US Army, ‘TC 7-100: Hybrid Threat’, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Leavenworth, 2010, p. 10.

137

138 ibid. p. 37.

Page !34 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

This is the process that almost all actors in conflicts engage in to achieve their goals. Identify a strategy for success then allocate means to achieving this goal. This doctrine claims further that HT will “disaggregate enemy combat power by destroying or neutralizing vulnerable single points of failure in enemy warfighting functions.”139 Again, this is applying pragmatism to the strategy of HT, who seeks an effective way to overcome US force by aiming its resources at a critical point, usually called the the principle of Centre of Gravity within military planning.140 Further, Hybrid Threats claims that the HT will “hide and disperse its forces to avoid detection”141, which, as Stephen Biddle argues, is one of the most fundamental aspects of a modern conventional force.142 The essential problem of HT is that is fails to identify what makes HT different from other forces. The HT exists across the spectrum of not just warfare, but also political and criminal means and employs this resources with pragmatic intent. This range and pragmatism means there is nothing discernibly unique about the HT which can be employed to focus the conceptual model. Hybrid Threats is thus also imprecise about what advantage is gained by the hybrid threat through its combination of conventional and irregular forces. Tellingly, within the specific training examples, designed to apply the concept of HT to training blueprints; the HT either adopts a conceptional posture or a ‘stabiltiy’ or irregular posture and Hybrid Threats struggles to show how the disparate parts of the HT can be combined to good effective. For example, when the HY attempts to attack or delay US forces, guerrilla forces are merely conventionally employed as a screening or The disruption force143 of light infantry. When the HT isn’t attacking or delaying US force as Hybrid Threats lays out “none of the countertasks chosen include conduct of combat operations by conventional, regular military forces. Therefore, the [HT] [Course of Action] focuses on guerrilla operations.” When the HT is conducting a conventional operation, it attacks like a conventional force, when it is not acting like a conventional force it focuses upon guerrilla operations. Moreover, It sees the HT as both an offensive and defensive force for instance. This is despite that fact that the the real world example of Hezbollah,144 Hezbollah being an organisation

139 ibid. p. 36

140 C. Beutel, ‘Centre of Gravity: Not such a CoG in the system’, Land Power Forum, 2016, viewed on the 10 Oct 16, < http:// www.army.gov.au/Our-future/Blog/Articles/2016/03/Not-such-a-CoG-in-the-system>.

141 US Army, ‘TC 7-100: Hybrid Threat’, p. 33.

142 S. Biddle, ‘Military Power’, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2004, pp. 35-37.

143 US Army, ‘TC 7-100: Hybrid Threat’, p. 60.

144 ibid. p. 35.

Page !35 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict that Hybrid Threats saw as the paradigmatic HT145, demonstrates an approach fundamentally limited to defensive operations. Hybrid threats is a theoretically coherent concept of an actor that blurs the boundary between regular and irregular warfare, among other characteristics, such as terrorism and criminal behaviour in their approach to warfare. The problem here is that, regardless of its theoretical coherence, understanding an actor’s essential character as straddling categories makes the concept inappropriate and awkward to apply both to real life conflicts such as the 2006 Lebanon war and abstract conflicts like US doctrine Hybrid Threats. In the 2006 Lebanon war, the concept of hybrid threats obscures the essential irregular, though sophisticated, strategy of Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s lack of conventional characteristics. Similarly, when constructed into an abstract framework like TC 100-7 Hybrid Threats, the hybrid threat is merely a pragmatic force that can alternate between conventional battle and irregular, guerrilla operations, the specifics of its integration of both these approaches is unclear. Thus the idea of a ‘hybrid threat’ is a poor concept that doesn’t add to the utility of the traditional framework of irregular and regular warfare. The concept of hybrid warfare has broadened its approach from the tactical operational focus of hybrid threat to a more strategic focus upon ‘hybrid campaigns’ primary as a concept to understand Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. Here again the concept of hybrid warfare is unhelpful in understanding the dynamics of the conflict.

145 ibid. p. 9.

Page !36 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Hybrid Campaigns: An Analysis of the Russian Campaign in Ukraine The Ukrainian Crisis was a watershed moment for the Western security community, seen by many as the return of great power competition and, by some, as the collapse of post Cold War order and consensus.146 The significance of the crisis has sparked a wide-reaching debate about how to conceptualise the crisis and how to frame Russia’s actions in order to understand its future behaviour.147 Hybrid warfare has once again been at the forefront of this debate. For instance, the EU adopted a joint framework with NATO to cooperate to counter ‘hybrid threats’ in light of the Ukrainian Crisis, defining hybrid warfare as:

The mixture of coercive and subversive activity, conventional and unconventional methods (i.e. diplomatic, military, economic, technological), which can be used in a coordinated manner by state or non-state actors to achieve specific objectives while remaining below the threshold of formally declared warfare.148

Both organisations accordingly created an institutional structure to better counter this threat. While not officially stating that this initiative was in response to Russia’s actions, the media and unofficial debate around the joint framework showed that there is little doubt about both NATO’s and the EU’s motivation in creating the framework.149 The concept of Russia’s hybrid campaigns is built upon a simple line of reasoning: firstly, Russia instituted an organised and coherent blending of different forms of both military and non- military power in response to the overthrow of President Yanukovych; secondly, this campaign was a success, with this success predicated upon its hybridity; and thirdly, this campaign is an indication of the future conduct of Russia. All three of these points are contradicted by the events in Ukraine. Russia was improvising its response to the overthrow of Yanukovych and to Ukraine’s turn to the West. Its actions in Crimea are an example of coercive diplomacy that succeeded due to Ukrainian weakness and Western apathy, rather than any tactical or operational innovation. When Russia

146 D Trenin, ‘The Ukraine Crisis and the Resumption of Great-Power Rivalry’, Carnegie Moscow Center, Moscow, 2014, pp. 2-3.

147 D. Goure, ‘NATO vs. Russia: How to Counter the Hybrid Warfare Challenge’, The National Interest, 2016, viewed on the 02 Oct 16, .

148 High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, ‘Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats: a European Union response’, European Commission, Brussels, 2016, p. 2.

149 BBC News, ‘Nato to counter 'hybrid warfare' from Russia’, BBC News, 2015, viewed on the 02 Oct 16, .

Page !37 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict attempted the same ‘hybrid’ tactics in Donbass and Luhansk, it struggled to come to grips with Ukraine’s willingness to use force, as well as to deal with the conventional superiority of Ukraine’s forces. Russia had to use conventional interventionary methods and military force to prevent the defeat of its local allies. Their mediocre success was achieved despite the substantial advances eastern Ukraine offered to Russia, casting doubt on the claimed utility of hybrid tactics. Finally, it is difficult to see how or why Russia could apply its ‘hybrid’ model to other operations on its periphery.

Russia’s Improvised Response The trigger for Russia’s actions in Ukraine was the overthrow of Ukrainian President Yanukovych and Ukraine’s turning to the West following the Euromaiden protests, predominantly in Kiev. While influenced by foreign actors such as the US and Russia, the Euromaiden protests were fundamentally a result of domestic forces which opposed Russian influence within Ukraine.150 The protests were spurred by Yanukovych’s turn towards Russia and inflamed by Yanukovych’s poor handling of the protests.151 The starting point of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine was its ability to influence Ukraine and to keep the country within its orbit. Russia’s seizure of Crimea was thus a reaction to its failure to ensure the political survival of Yanukovych.152 It is therefore difficult to ascribe to Russia the level of forethought and exercise of control that is often assumed in the practice of hybrid warfare. For instance, Captain Nicolas Barber’s analysis of Russia’s hybrid campaign in Crimea asserted that:

It was Western debate and disagreement that allowed Russia to install a political alternative and gather political legitimacy. Russia achieved this effect through a focus on two temporal considerations: ‘timing’ and ‘time’. ‘Timing’ simply refers to the ‘when’ for the hybrid actor.153

150 N. Diuk, ‘Euromaiden: Ukraine’s Self-Organizing Revolution’, World Affairs vol. 176:6, 2014, pp. 9-16 @ pp. 9-11.

151 ibid.

152 J. .Mearsheimer, ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin’, Foreign Affairs vol. 93:5, 2014, pp. 77-89 @ pp. 77-80.

153 N. Barber, ‘A Warning from the Crimea: hybrid warfare and the challenge for the ADF’, Australian Defence Journal, vol. 198, 2015, pp. 11-22 @ p. 15.

Page !38 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Barber is keen to emphasise the extent to which Russia was able to control the ‘when’ of Crimea in order to leverage Western weakness154; however, the ‘timing’ of Russia’s actions was determined by larger Ukrainian events, and its conduct was largely improvised as a response. The speed of Russia’s actions in Crimea, with the overthrow of Yanukovych on February 21th 2014 and the seizure of Ukranian government buildings by armed men on the 27th, demonstrates some level of preparation155, yet the conduct of the intervention demonstrates the extent to which Russia was improvising its intervention. For example, when Belaventsev, a key Russian figure in the seizure, arrived in Crimea on 22 February, he attempted to replace the incumbent Prime Minister with a Communist figure, Leonid Grach. This displayed a startling lack of understanding of the local situation given the extent to which Grach was deeply unpopular with local power brokers; as a result, Russia had to change course and appoint Sergei Aksyonov instead.156 Further, as Daniel Treisman describes, the confusion of Crimean decision-makers in relation to what Russia wanted from the intervention, coupled with their vacillation between demands for greater autonomy and outright annexation, exemplifies the chaotic nature of Russian intervention.157 It may seem a somewhat trivial point that Russia’s campaign was fundamentally one of improvisation. Just as conventional military force is often improvised in its deployment by states, and is still effective, so hybrid warfare could be an example of an effective response by Russia. The point being made here is that use of the term hybrid warfare in this instance ascribes to Russia a greater level of coherence, orchestration and success in execution than is warranted. This conceptual trap is further evident in the way Russia’s seizure of Crimea has been explained as constituting an outcome of its tactical and operational performance, rather than as a result of the far more important role played by Russia’s coercion of a weak Ukraine.

The Little Green Men and Coercive Diplomacy At the core of hybrid campaigns is the image of ‘little green men.’ This image refers to Russia’s ambiguous, insignia-lacking troops who annexed Crimea and who fomented rebellion within

154 ibid.

155 BC News, ‘Ukraine: Gunmen seize Crimea government buildings’, BBC News, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

156 D. Treisman, ‘Why Putin Took Crimea: The Gambler in the Kremlin’, Foreign Affairs vol. 95:3, 2016, pp. 47-54 @ pp. 52-53.

157 ibid pp. 53-54

Page !39 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Donbass and Luhansk.158 These ‘little green men’ are said to have operated in tandem with other forms of power, such as cyber and economic power, to lay the foundation for Russia’s successful hybrid campaign in Crimea. However, this narrative disregards the fact that the ‘little green men’ were successful because of Russia’s successful coercive diplomacy, rather than as a result of other factors. Tellingly, when the strategy was attempted again in Donbass and Luhansk, Russia struggled to achieve its goals. It is worth reviewing the timeline of events in Crimea: five days after President Yanukovych fled Kiev, on 26 February 2014, a combination of local troops and almost certainly anonymous Russian troops established checkpoints along the roads to Sevastopol, the capital of Crimea.159 On 27 February 2014, anonymous gunmen seized the Crimean parliament, raising Russian flags160 and seizing the airport the following day. On 4 March 2014, President Vladimir Putin denied that Russian troops were in Crimea.161 On 6 March 2014, the Supreme Council of Crimea declared their intention to hold a referendum on March 16 regarding the question of whether Crimea should join Russia (afterwards, on February 27 2014, declaring the referendum was to be about greater autonomy within Ukraine)162, a referendum which delivered a “yes” vote.163 While denying involvement during the initial stages of the operation, on 28 March Putin congratulated Russian officers on a successful operation, awarding medals for the operation; he subsequently admitted that it had been Russian troops in Crimea.164 Later analysis suggested the core units of the operation were drawn from the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade and similar units.165 Barber argues that Russia was successful because it combined several different, coordinated, but de-centralised lines of operations, including economic coercion, severing communication lines,

158 J. Haines, ‘How, Why, and When Russia Will Deploy Little Green Men – and Why the US Cannot’, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2016, viewed on the 02 Oct 16, < http://www.fpri.org/ article/2016/03/how-why-and-when-russia-will-deploy-little-green- men-and-why-the-us-cannot/>.

159 M. Mackinnon, ‘Globe in Ukraine: Russian-backed fighters restrict access to Crimean city’, The Globe and Mail, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

160 BBC News, ‘Ukraine: Gunmen seize Crimea government buildings’, BBC News, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

161 B. Chappell, ‘Putin Says Those Aren't Russian Forces In Crimea’, National Public Radio, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < http:// www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/03/04/285653335/putin- says-those-arent-russian-forces-in-crimea>.

162 D. Treisman, ‘Why Putin Took Crimea’, pp. 52-54.

163 ibid.

164 S. Pifer, ‘Watch Out for Little Green Men’, Spiegel Online, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

165 M. Eckel, ‘Evidence Suggests Key Russian Brigade In Crimea Seizure Deploying To Syria, RadioFreeEurope, 2015, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

Page !40 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict direct coercion of Ukrainian units, large-scale military posturing, along with the ambiguous ‘little green men’, in its attempt to undermine Western and Ukrainian decision-makers in “identifying and understanding the threat; and [subsequently] deciding and executing a plan.”166 In reality however there was little appetite, or even capacity within the Ukrainian government to resist Russia’s actions. Ethnic Russians make up the majority of the Crimean population, Crimea having been transferred to Ukraine as recently as 1954. Russia also possessed substantial military infrastructure and political influence within the area, despite its missteps during its operation.167 The Ukrainian government, while confused by Russia’s various actions, was more preoccupied with stabilising the country following the overthrow of Yanukovych and avoiding war with Russia, so had little appetite - or capacity - to employ military force to resist Russia’s actions.168 In fact, the Ukrainian National Security Council was informed during the crisis that the country only had 5,000 effective troops, despite a notional army of 130,000; deploying these troops to Crimea would have left the country defenceless.169 Tellingly, Ukraine decided to withdraw from the peninsula rather than escalate an impossible situation.170 Western policymakers were likewise more concerned with deterring further Russian action than with actually responding to Russia’s actions in Crimea; they were therefore satisfied with economic sanctions as a response. Russia’s covert and ambiguous operation was thus effective in sidestepping the issue of the legality of its annexation, while playing its part in confusing the Ukrainian government. Nevertheless, the overall utility of its ‘hybrid approach' was minimal given Ukrainian weakness and Western apathy. It is difficult to imagine, even if the Russians had directly communicated with Ukrainian authorities about their intentions in Crimea, that Ukrainian authorities would have contemplated using force to escalate the situation given their military weakness and the perceived credibility of Russia’s threats. The seizure of Crimea is mainly a demonstration of coercive diplomacy against a weak opponent rather than a tactical innovation, as it is often described. Coercive diplomacy is the use of

166 N. Barber, ‘A Warning from the Crimea: hybrid warfare and the challenge for the ADF’, Australian Defence Journal, vol. 198, 2015, pp. 11-22 @ p. 16.

167 R. Allison, ‘Russian ‘deniable’ intervention in Ukraine: how and why Russia broke the rules’, International Affairs vol. 90:6, 2014, pp. 1255-1297 @ pp. 1277-1282.

168 Stratfor, ‘Ukraine Turns From Revolution to Recovery’, Stratfor, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < https://www.stratfor.com/ weekly/ukraine-turns-revolution-recovery>.

169 M. Cohen, ‘Ukraine’s Battle at Ilovaisk, August 2014: The Tyranny of Means’, Army Press Online Journal , vol. 16:25, 2016, pp. 1-11 @ p. 1.

170 BBC News, ‘Ukrainian forces withdraw from Crimea’, BBC News Online, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < http://www.bbc.com/ news/world-europe-26713727>.

Page !41 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict threats to persuade an opponent to change policy.171 The essence of coercive diplomacy is the construction of threats, both in action and messaging, which are convincing enough to compel an opponent to change policy. Russia declared its intention to use force over the issue of Crimea through a law passed in the Russian parliament172, and conducted snap military drills on its border with Ukraine.173 Russia was able to rise above the improvised nature of its campaign not because of its combination of ambiguous strategies but because it convinced Ukrainian and Western policymakers that Crimea was not worth military escalation. Using the term hybrid warfare misconstrues the annexation as a warlike event; yet, as has often been stated, Putin took Crimea without a shot being fired.174 The seizure of Crimea was thus based upon the threat of force rather than the use of force itself; even when Ukraine was willing to use force against Russia’s ‘little green men’, Russia’s success was mediocre.

Donbass, Luhansk and Limited War In early April 2014, in scenes similar to those in Crimea, unmarked Russian forces began working with local militants to capture Government buildings in Donbass and Luhansk; they easily overcame local Ukrainian security forces.175 Russia’s motivation seemed to be limited to preventing the pro-western Ukrainian government from restoring control over these areas; Russia wished to use the secessionist areas as leverage for broader concessions from the Ukranian government.176 This time, however, the Ukrainian government was willing to militarily resist Russian efforts. After President Poroshenko’s election at the end of May 2014, Ukraine began a largely conventional military campaign to retake the secessionist Donbass and Luhansk provinces.177 Ukraine’s campaign consisted of a mix of regular army units, supplemented by volunteer militia and supported by wealthy benefactors. This combination arose by virtue of necessity; it was a

171 P. Jakobsen, ‘Coercive Diplomacy: Theory and Practice’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < http://web.mit.edu/ssp/seminars/wed_archives06fall/ jakobsen.htm>.

172 K. Lally, W. Englund and W. Booth, ‘Russian parliament approves use of troops in Ukraine’, Washington Post, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

173 J. Norberg, ‘The Use of Russia’s Military in the Crimean Crisis’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

174 T. Burridge, ‘Crimea crisis: Ukraine-Russia tensions spill on to the beach, BBC News Online, 2016, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

175 L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Limited War’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy,, vol. 56:6, 2014, pp. 7-38 @ pp. 15-16.

176 S. Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 57:6, 2015, pp. 51-58 @ pp. 53-54.

177 L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Limited War’, Survival, p. 15.

Page !42 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict combination that military commanders found cumbersome to effectively control. For example, militia units such as the Donbas or Avoz battalion would often refuse orders given to them by Ukrainian commanders.178 Ukraine’s forces were however far more coherent, better organised, and in possession of superior firepower compared with Russia’s combination of special forces and local militants.179 Russia found this combination difficult to control, disappointing in its battlefield performance despite Russian artillery support180, and largely overmatched by Ukraine’s military.181 Russia and its local allies struggled to halt Ukraine’s opening advance into the secessionist areas of Donbass and Luhansk, its difficulties in controlling its local allies becoming apparent when its rebel supporters shot down MH17, exciting international furore and further isolating Russia.182 Russia’s blending of irregular and regular elements of warfare into a unified whole seems to have been outclassed by Ukraine’s better conventional organisation and corresponding ability to generate combat power. As a result of its effective military power - based upon its superior organisation and firepower183 - the Ukrainian military, by August 2014, had almost defeated the Russian-backed rebels in Donbass and Luhansk. This was despite Russia’s special forces, cyber operations, propaganda support, and other ‘hybrid' measures.184 Eventually, Russia resorted to deploying eight185 or six186 combined-arms battalion tactical groups in the Battle of Ilovaisk to stop Ukrainian forces from isolating Donbass and Luhansk from each other. The resultant mediocre success of Russia’s ‘hybrid approach’ and its reliance upon conventional intervention came about despite Eastern Ukraine being favourable to its operations. As pointed out by Samuel Charap, Eastern Ukraine shared the same language as the Russian forces. Russian business, military and intelligence networks were familiar with and well embedded within the region, while Ukraine’s pro-western

178 A. Taub, ‘Pro-Kiev militias are fighting Putin, but has Ukraine created a monster it can't control?’, Vox News, 2015, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

179 L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Limited War’, Survival, p. 16.

180 R. Scales, ‘Russia’s superior new weapons’, Washington Post, 2016, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < https:// www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russias-superior-new-weapons/ 2016/08/05/e86334ec-08c5-11e6- bdcb-0133da18418d_story.html?utm_term=.6f8b87d86bf6>

181 M. Cohen, ‘Ukraine’s Battle at Ilovaisk, August 2014: The Tyranny of Means’, pp. 2-4.

182 L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Limited War’, Survival, p. 14.

183 ibid. pp. 14-16.

184 S. Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’, pp. 54-56.

185 M. Cohen, ‘Ukraine’s Battle at Ilovaisk, August 2014: The Tyranny of Means’, pp. 5-6.

186 C. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Battle of Ilovaisk: A Turning Point in Russia’s War on Ukraine’, Interpreter Magazine, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16,

Page !43 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict government was unpopular and weak within the region. Ukraine’s military was also dilapidated, forced to employ volunteer units. The region was therefore ripe for the creation of an insurgency.187 Despite this permissive environment, Russia’s hybrid campaign was no answer to Ukraine’s conventional superiority until Russia deployed conventional forces. The other components of its hybrid warfare approach - ambiguity, denial of Russian involvement, and widespread misinformation - were far more costly to Russia than is often suggested by proponents of the hybrid warfare concept. Firstly, the campaign had little acclamation beyond Russian internal audiences, the Russian narrative finding little purchase among Western governments. Secondly, Russia had - and continues to go to great lengths to maintain - its narrative of non-involvement which included covering up military casualties and obscuring its involvement within Ukraine.188 Russian ambiguity and misinformation have also complicated diplomacy, with Russia finding it difficult to negotiate in that context given its continual reliance upon its illusory narrative and the consequent mistrust within Western and Ukrainian governments of Russian pronouncements.189 This ambiguity complicated its original intention of leveraging its control of Eastern Ukraine to gain broader concessions from the Ukrainian government. As Lawrence Freedman posits, Russia is now stuck between an unwillingness to conventionally escalate and an inability to diplomatically end the conflict on acceptable terms, leaving it in a war of exhaustion with Ukraine.190

Applicability of Hybrid Campaigns to Russia’s Future Conduct The relevance of hybrid warfare to Russia’s future conduct in warfare relies upon the belief that Russia’s conduct within Ukraine is an indication of its future behaviour and that the concept of a hybrid campaign can be further applied to the behaviour of other states191, yet it is difficult to see how Russia or other states could or would repeat the type of campaign conducted in Ukraine. As has been previously stated, Russia’s coercive diplomacy in Crimea was dependent upon Ukrainian weakness, Western apathy and Russian advantage in the region. Further, the advantages that Russia

187 S. Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’, pp. 54-56.

188 L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Exhaustion’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy,, vol. 57:5, 2014, pp. 77-106 @ pp. 85-87.

189 ibid.

190 ibid. pp. 77-78.

191 B. Baker, ‘Hybrid Warfare With Chinese Characteristics’, The Diplomat, 2015, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < http:// thediplomat.com/2015/09/hybrid-warfare-with-chinese-characteristics/>.

Page !44 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict accrued in conducting its campaign of ‘little green men’ in Eastern Ukraine were situationally dependent and achieved only mediocre success. Writers have argued that Russia could conduct a similar ‘hybrid campaign’ in the Baltic countries. This idea has gained purchase within the states themselves, with Lithuania conducting exercises against a campaign that combined agitation of its local Russian population with special forces and conventional manoeuvre.192 The benefits to Russia of such a campaign are disputed however by RAND war-game of a Russian campaign against the Baltics.193 As RAND points out, Russia’s primary advantage lies in its local superiority of forces across the Baltics and its ability to rapidly overrun (taking up to 60 hours) NATO defences within the Baltics. This rapid defeat of NATO would therefore leave NATO with: a limited number of options, all bad: a bloody counteroffensive, fraught with escalatory risk, to liberate the Baltics; to escalate itself, as it threatened to do to avert defeat during the Cold War; or to concede at least temporary defeat, with uncertain but predictably disastrous consequences for the Alliance and, not incidentally, the people of the Baltics.194 Conducting a type of Ukrainian campaign would sacrifice the paramount advantage of speed that Russia holds in the Baltics: sending ‘little green men’ into Narva, the Russian-speaking Estonian border town, would give NATO and, more importantly, US policymakers a critical amount of time to respond to Russia’s action.195 This is especially true given the fact that little actual confusion about Russia’s hybrid tactics was generated among Ukrainian and Western policymakers during its Donbas and Luhansk operations. It is therefore difficult to see why Russia would sacrifice its central advantage of speed and time in return for a strategy that is naturally slow and achieved only mediocre success in Ukraine.

Explaining the Popularity of Hybrid Warfare Given the extent to which the concept of hybrid warfare or hybrid campaigns fails to capture the essential elements of Russia’s behaviour, it is important to understand why the idea has proven popular within the Western security community. This popularity can perhaps be explained by three

192 Vice News, ‘The Russians Are Coming: Lithuania's Operation Lightning Strike’ Vice News, 2015, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

193 D Trenin, ‘Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank: Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 2016, pp. 1-3.

194 ibid.

195 S. Charap, ‘The Ghost of Hybrid War’, pp. 55-58.

Page !45 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict factors: the attraction of using new concepts to explain contemporary occurrences; a widespread misunderstanding of and extrapolation from Russian discussion on the future of warfare; and the political potency of buzzwords as a means to describe threats. The nature of strategic and military studies favours the creation of theories that are both novel and have far-reaching consequences. For example, a study by British evolutionary anthropologists, using both empirical evidence and computational modelling, demonstrated how the structural incentives within scientific communities encourage the publication of findings with greater impact and novelty. Because publication is key to both career advancement and scientific prestige, and because publication is more likely if studies demonstrate significant relationships or show novel understanding of phenomena, researchers are incentivised to publish these types of papers.196 Research methodologies and concepts that lead to more significant findings are therefore encouraged; as time passes, these research methods are more likely to spread, culminating in a process of methodological deterioration. They contrast with more rigorous methodologies.197 While the aforementioned study was concerned with scientific research, thesame methodological deterioration can be seen in strategic and military studies. As Colin S. Grey points out, strategic debate, especially within the United States, is a large marketplace where theorists and thinkers compete for advancement and prestige in an analogous manner.198 The same processes that incentivise research in scientific communities incentivise the creation of significant strategic and military theories that are novel and have wide-ranging impact. The view that Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine was coercive diplomacy that morphed into a lacklustre limited war is not as attractive or as publishable as the view that Russia’s behaviour is a demonstration of an entirely new kind of warfare or of a strategy that will enable Russia to challenge NATO.199 Further, the nature of security and military debate is to employ new concepts as a means of furthering debate and enabling publication of new ideas. Even if the author disagrees with the concept of hybrid warfare, because of the popularity of hybrid warfare that author is encouraged to use the term when packaging or clarifying their own ideas. Understanding Russia’s actions through the lens of hybrid warfare therefore reflects an impulse among participants in the Western

196 P. Smaldino and R. McElreath, ‘The natural selection of bad science’, Royal Society Open Science , vol. 3:1, 2016, pp. 2-17 @ pp. 1-5.

197 ibid.

198 C. Gray, ‘Categorical Confusion? The Strategic Implications of Recognizing Challenges Either as Irregular or Traditional’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2012, p. 7.

199 See for example: A. Lanoszka, ‘Russian hybrid warfare and extended deterrence in eastern Europe’, International Affairs vol. 92:1, 2016, pp. 175-195.

Page !46 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict security debate to argue for a greater significance in Russia’s actions than is warranted by actual events. Another contributing factor to hybrid warfare’s popularity is the tendency to draw simplified lessons from the Russian discussion on the future of warfare. As mentioned in the first chapter of this paper, influential in the idea of hybrid campaigns is the 2013 article by General Gerasimov which is quoted as evidence of the Russian thinking that drove its actions in Ukraine.200 As several writers have pointed out, Gerasimov’s article was contextual201; its purpose was to stimulate discussion among Russian thinkers regarding the future character of war – a purpose substantially different from that assumed in Western discussion. Gerasimov was not actually seeking to propose a new form of warfare, but was instead providing some discussion points to create debate. In fact, when Gerasimov does discuss hybrid warfare in his broader writing, he claims that it is a Western tool which combines military and non-military resources. This reflects a common view within the Russian security community that the West has adopted a new, hybrid form of war. Russian authors argue that the US and its Western allies begin by creating domestic opposition through non-government organisations and media and then use these organisations to generate conflict and chaos which provide the pretext for Western intervention. Writers point to the interventions in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, the Colour Revolutions of Eastern Europe and the 2012 Arab Spring as evidence of this approach. Gerasimov argued in 2014 that US-funded social and political movements, together with US antiballistic missile technology, are the greatest military threats to Russia.202 This situation is somewhat ironic. Both the West and Russia view the other as conducting a hybrid war or campaign against them, and both view themselves as responding to this campaign. It is therefore difficult to argue that Gerasimov’s writing is a template for Russia’s actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. In fact, it helps to explain why Russian policymakers saw the Euromaiden protests and the overthrow of Yanukovych as a threat and why responded they way they did; they viewed the events as a Western hybrid war against Russia. The final reason why hybrid warfare has had such success and generated such popularity in framing and explaining Russian actions is the political expediency of utilising the term. As has been

200 ibid.

201 R. McDermott, ‘Does Russia Have a Gerasimov Doctrine’, Parameters, vol. 46:1, 2016, pp. 97-105 AND C. Bartles, ‘Getting Gerasimov Right’, Military Review, 2016, pp. 30-38

202 C. Bartles, ‘Getting Gerasimov Right’, Military Review, 2016, pp. 30-38 @ p. 37

Page !47 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict mentioned before, NATO and the EU specifically adopted hybrid terminology in responding to Russia’s actions. Similarly, when the British Army wrote a report detailing the lessons of Ukraine and Russia’s high end capability overmatch of the British army, it entitled the report Insights to "Training Smarter" Against a Hybrid Adversary.203 Just as there is apparent utility in employing new and expansive terms in security debate and in academic communities, calling a threat “hybrid” enables policymakers and politicians to buttress their message and generate action. Rather than painting the seizure of Crimea as a result of Western inaction and apathy, it makes more political sense for NATO to paint Russia as possessing a new and important method of warfare. Such a threat can generate new agreements between allied countries and serve as impetus for new action.204 The structural incentives favouring hybrid warfare extend beyond the security and military academic community.

Conclusion This paper is not claiming that important insights cannot be derived from the Ukrainian conflict. Looking at the role of information technology in Russia’s coercive diplomacy of Ukraine is important205, just as the implications of Russia’s combination of electronic warfare, unmanned aerial vehicles, mass artillery fire and special forces are significant.206 What this paper is arguing is that the framing of the Ukrainian campaign as hybrid warfare is distorting how the Western security community may be perceiving Russian actions. This framing confuses the important debate about why Russia acted as it did, how it was successful, and how it will act in the future. These questions are inadequately answered by focusing upon Russia’s hybridity. The focus on hybrid warfare portrays Russia’s actions in Ukraine as an amorphous, calculated campaign that stretched from its seizure of Crimea to the Minsk II Agreement, ignoring the difference between Russia’s threat of force in Crimea and its actual use of force in Eastern Ukraine. Applying the term hybrid warfare also overemphasises the success of Russia’s actions in Donbas, claiming its success as being a result of its combination of warfare methods rather than its willingness to use

203 Telegraph, ‘Russia can outgun British troops, leaked report suggests’, Telegraph, 2016, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/09/russia-can-outgun-british-troops- leaked-report-suggests/>.

204 See for Example: J. Barnes, ‘NATO Defense Ministers to Discuss New Hybrid Warfare Playbook’, Atlantic Council, 2016, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

205 D. Talbot, ‘Watching for a Crimean Cyberwar Crisis’, MIT Technology Review, 2014, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, < https:// www.technologyreview.com/s/525336/watching-for-a-crimean-cyberwar- crisis/>.

206 M. Ryan, ‘The Lessons of Ukraine for the Australian Army’, Australian Army Land Power Forum, 2016, viewed on the 01 Oct 16, .

Page !48 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict conventional superiority to intervene. Perhaps most importantly, the attribution “Russia’s hybrid campaign” obscures the extent to which Russia’s actions were highly situational, while clouding the debate about how Russia and other powers will act in the future. A broader point can also be made in relation to the success of explaining Russia’s actions as hybrid campaigns. The structural incentives within the security and military professional debate environment, as well as among policymakers, encourage inflating of the significance of warfare events, and the creation of new concepts to explain them. The continuity and accuracy of security debate is lost in the process; as old concepts and research are abandoned in favour of new concepts such as hybrid warfare, the debate ignores more coherent and applicable concepts. For example, as has been already argued, coercive diplomacy is a far more applicable framework for Russia’s action in Crimea. Similarly, “limited war”207 and the Cold War concept of “salami tactics”208 also offer well-constructed frameworks that do not contain the same conceptual flaws as “hybrid campaigns”. In essence, using hybrid warfare to explain Russia’s actions is an example of the proclivity of Western security professionals for generating new concepts and, in so doing, to abandon an already adequate conceptual framework.

207 See for Example: L. Freedman, ‘Ukraine and the Art of Limited War’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 56:6, 2014, pp. 7-38 @ pp. 15-16.

208 See for example: S. Cimbala, ‘Sun Tzu and Salami Tactics? Vladimir Putin and Military Persuasion in Ukraine, 21 February–18 March 2014’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies vol. 27, 2014, pp. 359-379

Page !49 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Hybrid Warfare and the Demarcation of Conflict This paper has so far asserted that the traditional framework of conflict and strategy, with a typology built upon irregular and regular warfare, together with other orthodox strategic concepts such as coercive diplomacy and limited war, remains a far better way to describe and explain contemporary and future conflict than using the concept “hybrid warfare”. The addition of a further category of warfare or actor that spans the categories of warfare creates needless conceptual confusion and introduces a category that inadequately explains modern conflicts. This assertion is nevertheless made with an understanding of the valid reasoning behind use of the term hybrid warfare. The existing categorical dichotomy of irregular and regular creates a tendency to view conflicts within neat intellectual packages. The existence of a contrasting conceptual structure leads to a focus upon the characteristics of a conflict which match its categorisation, while overlooking characteristics that are at odds with its classification. For example, understanding Afghanistan as an irregular conflict ignores the extent to which the 2001 invasion209 and the 2015 seizure of Kunduz were largely characteristic of conventional conflict.210 Similarly, while the 2014 Ukrainian campaign against the secessionists in Donbas and Luhansk may comfortably fit within the boundaries of conventional conflict, that conflict nevertheless included elements intrinsic to irregular warfare.211 Attempting to apply simplistic categories can lead to a disregard of the complexity and nuances within each conflict. Avoidance of these conceptual pitfalls forms part of the intention in creating the concept of hybrid warfare. This concept, in part, is an attempt to overcome the limitations of a traditional framework by creating a space between regular and irregular into which conflicts or actors can fit. As Hoffman wrote in 2009: If at the end of the day we drop the “hybrid” term and simply gain a better understanding of the large gray space between our idealized bins and pristine Western categorizations, we will have made progress. If we educate ourselves about how to better prepare for that messy gray

209 S. Biddle, ‘Military Power’, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2004, p. 7.

210 D. DePetris, ‘The Taliban's Takeover of Kunduz Tests America in Afghanistan’, National Interest, 2016, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, < http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-talibans-takeover-kunduz-tests-america-afghanistan-14117>.

211 J. Carroll, ‘Conceptualizing the War in Donbas’, Krytyka, 2015, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, < http://krytyka.com/en/community/ blogs/conceptualizing-war-donbas>.

Page !50 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

phenomenon and avoid the Groznys, Mogadishus and Bint Jbeils of our future, we will have taken great strides forward.212 Nonetheless, as this paper has shown, by being a blend of the traditional frameworks hybrid warfare confuses and misconstrues the conflicts or actors it tries to explain. Creating a category that is by definition the coalescing of other concepts is awkward due to the amorphous model it creates. While the concept of hybrid warfare attempts to rectify the limitations of categorical stratification by creating a new category, another possibility is to abandon the use of categories entirely. Colin S. Grey in his 2012 monograph argued that all of war should be seen as part of the same holistic strategic theory: …the question ought to be, “Should we categorize strategic challenges at all?” The most persuasive answer is that we should not conceptually categorize challenges and threats beyond their generic identification as menaces (and some opportunities). The general theory of strategy provides the high-level conceptual guidance that we need in order to tailor our strategic behavior to the specific case at issue.213 The utility of this approach is attractive. Instead of attempting to simplify conflicts into intellectual categories, the enduring theory of strategy, such as is demonstrated in Clausewitz’s trinity214, should be applied to guide analysis while enabling recognition and understanding of the distinctiveness of each conflict. The problem with Grey’s approach, however, is that by abandoning the organisation offered by categorical distinction it becomes difficult to organise knowledge and draw parallels with similar circumstances. For instance, it is difficult to imagine the study of literature without the use of categories such as comedy or romance. These categories enable the study of similar works by classifying them based upon shared characteristics. Perception, and the systematic organisation of knowledge, is dependent upon categories.215 This is true for both literature and war. While general strategic theory may be applicable, as Grey argues, the study of conflict, especially the analysis of patterns across conflicts, depends upon a systematic framework to distinguish different forms of

212 F. Hoffman, ‘Hybrid vs. compound war’, Armed Forces Journal, 2009, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, .

213 C. Gray, ‘Categorical Confusion? The Strategic Implications of Recognizing Challenges Either as Irregular or Traditional’, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle, 2012, p. viii.

214 ibid. p. 39

215 K. Livingston, ‘Concepts, Categories, and Epistemology’, Epistemology and Cognitive Science vol. 19: 265, 2014, pp. 359-379 @ p 278-280.

Page !51 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict conflict. While the dichotomy of conventional and irregular creates problems of simplification and the overlooking of characteristics of the conflict that do not match its supposed categorisation, the systematic distinction between conflicts is still necessary. If we therefore accept that a conceptual system is both problematic and also indispensable, is it essential that we identify how categories can be utilised while minimising the difficulties that they create. A successful demarcation of conflict is impeded by two tendencies within strategic policy and analysis: firstly, a disregard of the necessary imprecision of typologies of conflict and conceptualisation of conflicts as existing on a spectrum; and secondly, the conflating of ‘war’ with other forms of strategic behaviour.

The Necessary Imprecision of Conflict Typology Regular and irregular warfare are distinguished by their contrasting methods and purposes of employment. It is important to consider that they form two abstract notions that conflicts rarely match. The common method of dealing with the imperfection of the concepts is to conceptualise them as distinct poles on a spectrum of conflict216 with ‘low-intensity’ irregular warfare or stability operations at one end and high intensity, traditional conflicts at the other end. It is important to consider the purpose and benefit of concepts such as regular and irregular war. These concepts cannot encapsulate the entirety of a conflict or approach of an actor. Their purpose is to collect similar conflicts or actors together into subsets to enable analysis of patterns or creation of theories that exist across conflicts or approaches. Further, these categories enable the application of theory to contemporary or future conflicts or actors to create insights or predictions. This purpose means that categories represent a guide or yardstick that can be usefully applied, with varying degree of relevance. Conceptualising the use of categories as a spectrum leads to an overemphasis on the precision in decision-making that categories permit when they are applied, falling into traps similar to those of hybrid warfare proponents. A spectrum creates the impression that categories can be usefully employed if the right mixture of irregular and regular warfare can be conceived. As hybrid warfare shows, however, mixing different forms of warfare creates conceptual confusion. Further, the spectrum is often seen as being based upon the effort that is required by the conflicts; hence the terms ‘low-intensity conflict’ at one end and ‘high-intensity conflict’ at the other. This paradigm of

216 P. Scharre, ‘Spectrum of What?’, Military Review, November-December, 2012, pp. 73-79 @ pp. 73-75.

Page !52 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict effort is unhelpful.217 As an example, low-intensity or irregular conflicts such as the American occupation of Iraq took substantially more resources than a conventional invasion.218 This spectrum thus obscures the intrinsic imprecision of conflict typology by creating an impression that a conflict will naturally fall somewhere within a linear range between the two poles of regular and irregular warfare. It should therefore be understood that while these concepts are helpful archetypes to understand conflict, they are always imprecise in application - and applying them will not always illuminate the conduct of a war. This paper argues that the 2006 Lebanon war was an irregular conflict due to the fact that Hezbollah avoided decisive battles and employed a sophisticated irregular strategy. Similarly, it characterises the 2014 Russian campaign, after the annexation of Crimea, as largely conventional in nature due to the importance of both decisive battles and conventional conflict to the outcome of that campaign. These categorisations, however, provide little direct insight into each conflict. In practice, the most productive analysis comes from suggesting that Hezbollah was unusually sophisticated for an irregular actor, and from examining how its strategy matched or differed from other irregular actors. Similarly, the conceptualisation of the 2014 use of military force by Russia as conventional is only given substance by comparing it with other supposed conventional conflicts and by considering the difference made by the deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles when compared to other conflicts.219 Categories are therefore effective because they facilitate the comparison of conflicts. Categories without these juxtapositions provide little insight. This is the problem with the way in which concepts of conflict demarcation are often employed. Policymakers state that defence planning or strategy will have a renewed focus upon ‘conventional deterrence’220 or strike a balance between ‘conventional and unconventional threats’221; yet this policy language ignores the imprecision of conflict categories. The Israeli response to the sophisticated irregular threat of Hezbollah and Hamas was to re-train and re-equip components of its army traditionally associated with conventional conflicts. Categories of warfare

217 ibid.

218 ibid.

219 P. Karber, ‘“Lessons Learned” from the Russo-Ukrainian War’, The Potomac Foundation, Virginia, 2015, pp. 1-5.

220 H. Breitenbauchapril, ‘NATO: Conventional Deterrence is the New Black’, War on the Rocks, 2015, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, < http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/nato-conventional-deterrence-is-the-new-black/>

221 A. Carter, ‘Remarks by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in Plenary Session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland’, US Department of Defence, 2016, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, .

Page !53 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict are only given validity through application to actual threats or conflict dynamics. As abstract notions, they provide little guidance and are prone to provoke formulaic responses, such as when assumptions are made that heavy armour or kinetic air power is inappropriate for irregular conflicts.222 Categories of conflict are needed to help systematise, draw comparisons and apply theories that extend across warfare. Nonetheless, they are also imprecise concepts that are given substance through application and comparison with, or contrasts between, conflicts or strategies. Categories create confusion and lead to oversimplification when they are imagined as a spectrum of conflict or employed as an abstract ideal. At the heart of effective use of conflict typology is thus recognition of the intrinsic imprecision of categories.

Conflating War with Broader Strategic Behaviour The second principle to ensure a comprehensible demarcation of conflict is respect for the definitional boundaries of war. These definitional boundaries are eroded with the use of terms like hybrid warfare or hybrid campaigns that conflate general strategic behaviour, specifically non- violent forms of power, with the construct of warfare. Military and security studies benefit from having an accepted definition of war stemming from the work of Clausewitz. As CR Smith neatly summarises: War exists when a state or other armed group decides to use violence and risks shedding its own blood to achieve its policy objective and encounters another state or armed group that decides to resist with violence.223 This idea that war is an act of force or violence and primarily a political instrument, provides a robust framework in which to understand and analyse conflict.224 Attempting to understand the entirety of Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a form of ‘war’ expands this boundary and creates conceptual poverty by challenging the relative clarity of the concept of war. Hybrid warfare is currently dominated by the idea of the combining of military and non- military means into a unitary concept of ‘warfare.’ This conflates Russia’s coercive diplomacy or its

222 C. Gray, ‘Categorical Confusion’, Strategic Studies Institute, p. 38. and D. Johnson, M. Markel, B. Shannon, ‘The 2008 Battle of Sadr City: Reimagining Urban Combat’, RAND Corperation, Santa Monica, 2013, pp. xvi-xvii.

223 C Smith, ‘Design and Planning of Campaigns and Operations in the Twenty-First Century’, Land Warfare Studies Centre, Canberra, 2011, p. 10.

224 L. Freedman, ‘Strategy’, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, p. 86.

Page !54 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict disinformation campaign225 with its deployment of conventional battalions to defeat Ukrainian forces. This is unfortunate because Russia’s coercive diplomacy was applied before Ukraine was prepared to violently resist Russian activity. As an analogy, Nazi Germany’s coercion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 was distinct from its use of force in its invasion of Poland in 1939.226 While both were part of a coordinated, overarching, strategic campaign, they are rightfully understood as distinct and separate instruments of policy. Utilising the designation hybrid ‘warfare’ for both actions removes this necessary distinction. This is a lamentable degradation of the definitional clarity attached to war as an instrument of power. It would be foolish to ignore Russia’s political influence or use of disinformation or its emphasis on certain media narratives as critical components of its strategic policy. Nevertheless, expanding the definition of warfare to include activities which clearly do not fall within the boundaries of the use of organised violence creates a concept of war that includes a plethora of strategic activities, while the actual use of the term warfare means very little. It is this definitional breadth that makes hybrid warfare so pernicious. It is not just hybrid warfare that represents the expansion of war beyond its robust definitional framework. As mentioned previously, concepts of unrestricted warfare, or the Russian version of non-linear warfare, expand war to include a range of violent strategic measures. Another example is the idea of “political warfare” which is the “the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.”227 A similar example can be found in the concept of economic war, in which economic sanctions or trade restrictions are used to coerce an actor. Another example is the idea or notion that migration can become ‘weaponised.’228 The idea that warfare can include political or economic measures that challenge the traditional understanding of war are examples of the conflating of definitions of war to include measures that exist outside the definitional confines of the concept. When warfare can be used to describe all forms of antagonistic policy or behaviour, the term itself comes to mean very little.

225 M. Trudolyubov, ‘Russia’s Hybrid War’, NY Times, 2016, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, .

226 L Warshauer, ‘The Munich Pact of 1938: ADR Strategies for our time?’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 5:247, 2004, pp. , 247–278 @ pp. 247-250.

227 M. Boot, ‘Political Warfare’, Council on Foreign Relations, 2013, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, .

228 BBC News ‘Migrant crisis: Russia and Syria 'weaponising' migration’, BBC News, 2016, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, .

Page !55 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

Part of the impetus for expanding the conceptual boundaries of war is to accommodate the growing partiality for integrating forms of power. The idea of ‘smart power’ is prevalent among Western policymakers and policy advisors.229 The essential idea of the concept is that successful foreign policy must ensure a coordination and integration of both hard power (coercive power, such as military or economic) and soft power (ability to attract, such as information campaigns). A similar concept is the importance of whole-of-government or comprehensive approaches to challenges.230 The effect of these concepts is to encourage the view that challenges can only be considered holistically.231 Proponents of ideas such as political warfare or hybrid warfare base part of their argument on the premise that only through an expansive concept that integrates military and non-military means into a whole can this compressive approach be justified.232 Another factor in the prevalence of attempts to expand the boundaries of war in Western security discourse is the uncritical adoption of Russian and Chinese analysis. As this paper has discussed, Chinese writings such as Unrestricted Warfare, or Russian works like the Value of Science, have had a significant influence upon concepts such as hybrid warfare. An important and influential argument in these works is that ‘warfare’ is increasingly driven by non-violent means. For example, Russian writers point to the Arab spring as an example of Western ‘hybrid’ warfare. Chinese writers similarly talk about the emergence of the Three Warfares of legal warfare, media warfare and psychological warfare as being explicitly distinct from a warfare defined by violence. Western writers then adopt these ideas as evidence for the need for new concepts of warfare, arguing that non-western actors like Russia and China are gaining an advantage through their unitary understanding of warfare.233 To give an example, a 2016 book, entitled War by Other Means

229 E. Wildon, ‘Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power’, American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 615:110, 2008, pp. 110-124 @ pp. 6-7.

230 M. Smith, ‘No better friend, no worse enemy: How different organisational cultures impede and enhance Australia’s whole-of- government approach’, Australian Civil Military Centre, Canberra, 2016, p. 1.

231 A. Chong, ‘Smart Power and Military Force: An Introduction’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 38:3, 2015, pp. , 233–244 @ pp. 233-240.

232 N. Kumar, ‘Changing Face of Conflict: Need to Reshape Military Philosophy’, CLAWS Journal, vol. Winter, 2013, pp. 115–131 @ pp. 115-120.

233 P. Pomerantsev, ‘How Putin Is Reinventing Warfare’, Foreign Policy, 2014, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, < http://foreignpolicy.com/ 2014/05/05/how-putin-is-reinventing-warfare/>> and M. Raska, ‘China and the 'Three Warfares’, The Diplomat, 2015, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, < http://thediplomat.com/2015/12/hybrid- warfare-with-chinese-characteristics-2/>. and P. Navarro, ‘China’s Non-Kinetic 'Three Warfares' Against America’, The National Interest, 2016, viewed on the 18 Oct 16, .

Page !56 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict and concerned with US economic power and statecraft, argued that rising powers like Russia and China are outpacing the US in their use of “geoeconomic warfare” and that US statecraft needed to adopt this form of warfare into its policy. 234 The problem with uncritically adopting these ideas, or using them as part of the definitional basis for other concepts such as hybrid warfare, is that they ignore the political and cultural context from which these ideas originate. These Chinese and Russian authors employ the term “war” to describe situations that are explicitly non-violent, and that would, in Western discourse, describe non-violent strategic competition. For example, Chinese writings that focus on unrestricted warfare, or the broader concept of Three Warfares, use a blended concept of war to describe both statecrafts in peacetime competition, as well as in violent conflict.235 As Charles K. Bartles points out in his article on Gerasimov, “... the Russian military is seeing war as being something much more than military conflict.” Clausewitz explicitly rejected the idea of non-violent war, defining war as the boundary between peacetime statecraft and the act of organised violence. Overlaying Chinese and Russian ideas on Western discourse ignores the substantial definitional differences between each cultural canon. This is not to say that analysing Chinese and Russian thinkers or works is not important or insightful; it is simply being pointed out here that these works, just like Western works, fall into the trap of conflating war with broader strategic behaviour, and that, because of their foreign origin, they are often uncritically accepted or employed as evidence. The attraction to these ideas is understandable; strategic behaviour or power is intrinsically multifaceted. War never exists in a vacuum and is contextualised in relation to the political, strategic and diplomatic framework within which it exists. The imposition of a political objective through force depends upon a political framework to authorise force and to serve as a negotiating context.236 The use of force will also be accompanied by a variety of non-violent strategies.237 Nonetheless, the danger of seeing conflicts or challenges in an overly holistic manner is encapsulated by C.R. Smith who writes: Confusion and misunderstanding about the nature of war and its conduct are likely to contribute to flawed assessments as to the utility of force in international policy, flawed

234 R. Blackwill J. Harris, ‘War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft’, Harvard University Press, Boston, 2016, pp. 1-5.

235 S. Halper, ‘China: The Three Warfares’, Office of New Assessment, Washington DC, 2013, p. 263.

236 C Smith, ‘Design and Planning of Campaigns and Operations in the Twenty-First Century’, Land Warfare Studies Centre, Canberra, 2011, pp. 1-6.

237 ibid.

Page !57 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict

strategy to realise a better peace, and unnecessary internal friction within and between agencies prosecuting a war because they do not understand each other and their roles.238 Policy and the study of strategic policy, depend upon understandable and clear concepts to provide a framework on which to base analysis. This thesis is not arguing that war should only be understood as one that is declared, or as solely the realm of state activity, or that the distinction between peacetime and wartime has become increasingly blurred. It is simply arguing that war should be understood as an instrument of violent policy; attempting to expand the definition beyond organised violence will impede a clear demarcation of conflict and the development of effective policy. In fact, the often cited intention of expanding the concept of war, that is, to enable the integration and coordination of policy and thus the creation of ‘smart power’, is undermined by the expansion of the definition of war to include general strategic behaviour. Without definitionally limited concepts like war to delineate policy or behaviour, policy becomes fuzzy and lacks the coherence demanded of state behaviour. Claiming Russia’s or China’s aggressive political and diplomatic campaigns in Crimea or the South China sea as indicative of forms of warfare is a dangerous precedent, misconstruing the realities of those campaigns. In claiming this, the strategic response and analysis of these actions becomes muddled. Take for example the declaration by NATO and EU policymakers that they will coordinate a ‘hybrid defence.’239 What constitutes this ‘hybrid defence’ is left unclear because of the open-ended nature of hybrid warfare. This ‘hybrid defence’ could consist of countering Russian media operations, conventional deterrence or the maintenance of internal political stability, to name just a few possible policy options contained within the concept of ‘hybrid defence.’ Without a coherent conceptual framework, built upon clear demarcation, strategic policy and analysis become obscured and unfathomable. This thesis has argued stridently against the use of hybrid warfare as a means of understanding contemporary and future conflict. This argument is made with an understanding that the traditional framework that it has attempted to justify is not without faults. Traditional categories of warfare oversimplify as well as discourage nuance in military debate, but they are nevertheless indispensable to the study of warfare and conflict. To effectively utilise these categories, two principles emerging from a study of the problems of hybrid warfare may be applied: firstly, the

238 ibid. p. 38.

239 D. Herzenhorn, ‘NATO and EU close ranks in bid to halt migrants, counter Russia’, Politico, 2016, viewed on the 25 Oct 16, .

Page !58 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict typology of warfare that draws a distinction between irregular and conventional warfare is intrinsically imprecise and given meaning only through its ability to create comparisons. Attempts to describe this distinction as a spectrum or as an abstract are therefore deeply flawed. Secondly, redrawing the boundaries of the concept of ‘war’ to include general non-violent strategic behaviour leaves the term meaningless. The consequences of these tendencies, with their degradation of the conceptual demarcation of conflict, is poorer strategic policy and analysis, with the language of policy becoming more contested, confusing and increasingly useless.

Conclusion This thesis is based on the premise that the language we utilise to understand conflict is immensely important. The concepts we employ to assign meaning and demarcate boundaries are the building blocks of our understanding of our environment. Flawed concepts can have serious consequences, leading to a mismatch between our conceptual frameworks and the reality which we are trying to understand and influence. Employing the concept of hybrid warfare to understand conflicts or strategic behaviour is exactly this type of flawed conceptualisation. The tactically and operationally focused hybrid threats creates an amorphous model and misconstrues the dynamics of the conflicts it is applied to. Contrary to the concept of hybrid warfare in one of its most prominent application, Hezbollah’s success in the 2006 Lebanon war was predicated upon Israel’s poor execution and Hezbollah’s own sophisticated irregular strategy. Hybrid warfare poorly conceptualised conflicts and actors when applied in the form of hybrid threats. Understanding Russia’s campaign in Ukraine as form of hybrid warfare is similarly problematic. Its response was improvised, far from the coordinated and planned campaign envisioned by hybrid warfare proponents. Its ambiguity was of small importance in comparison to its coercive diplomacy and this ambiguity has often been a handicap to Russia’s campaign. Its combination of special forces and local militants were outclassed by the Ukrainian military and required Russia to respond with conventional force. Furthermore, the applicability of this hybrid model to future Russian activity is highly contestable. The argument that Russia’s success was built upon its hybridity of military as well as non-military means in cooperation with an ambiguous information campaign therefore fails to match the reality of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. Given the extent to which hybrid warfare both in its operational and strategic conceptions fails to explain and aid our understand of war or strategic policy is important to examine why it has

Page !59 Hybrid Warfare, Hybrid Threats and the Demarcation of Conflict had the popularity it has. One possible explanation is structural incentives both politically and academically within Western security and military debate to create new concepts to explain events rather than employ traditional ideas. A proclivity compounded by the often misreading of foreign discussion on the future of war. Given the flawed nature of hybrid warfare but the nevertheless indispensable nature of categories to understand and analyse conflict we are reliant upon the traditional framework of war divided between conventional and irregular. Two tendencies standout as particularly harmful to the effective employment of this framework. First, the overemphasis of the accuracy of conflict categories, through the use of ideas of a spectrum of conflict or use of categories as an abstract ideal. Categories of conflict are necessary because they enable categorisation and comparison and it through this comparison that they gain meaning, they are intrinsically imprecise. Similarly, expanding the concept of war to contain non-violent strategic behaviour degrades the clarity of our language and leads to poorer policy debate and analysis. A common refrain is that semantic arguments are less important than than more tangible or factual arguments. This notion ignores the fundamental influence semantics and theory have on our thinking. When we rely upon poor or flawed concepts we are handicapping ourselves from the very outset of any undertaking. The more we rely upon the concept of hybrid warfare or poorly demarcate conflict or strategic behaviour the harder we make the task of understanding war or strategic policy and studying their dynamics.

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