How Russia wages its hybrid war 2024-04-06 01:28:14

Colonel, you are researching hybrid warfare. What makes it different from “normal” military warfare?

Reinhard Bingener

Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.

Hybrid warfare is nothing new, we in the West just have a hard time understanding unorthodox forms of warfare. What is important is that in hybrid wars there is a horizontal blurring of boundaries in the battlefield. They are not only waged militarily, but also take place as a propaganda war, an economic war, a culture war. Hybrid wars do not necessarily have to be decided militarily. Consider the Second Indochina War. The USA did not lose this war militarily in Vietnam, but because it lost the legitimacy of taking up arms in its own society. Of course, we also find non-military elements such as propaganda in – from our point of view – classic wars. The distinction between hybrid and classic wars is by no means trivial. The key point is that classic wars like the Napoleonic campaigns seek a battlefield decision, so they are military-centered. More recently, the Falklands War, the first Gulf War and Azerbaijan’s conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh corresponded to this pattern. However, hybrid wars are more common.