Hybrid Warfare (merged thread)
Are We Ready for Hybrid Wars?
Quote:
The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies has just released a new monograph that presents an alternative view of the character of warfare in the 21st Century. This new model argues that future conflicts will blur the distinction between war and peace, combatants and noncombatants.
Rather than distinct modes of war, we will face “Hybrid Wars” that are a combination of traditional warfare mixed with terrorism and insurgency.
Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, by Research Fellow Frank Hoffman, summarizes the background and analysis of the changing character of warfare in our time. Examining the debate over the past decade about the evolution of modern warfare in the post Cold-war world, several thinkers have claimed that we were in the midst of a “Revolution in Warfare.” Hoffman takes this discussion to a new and much more mature level by recognizing that we are entering a time when multiple types of warfare will be used simultaneously by flexible and sophisticated adversaries. These adversaries understand that successful conflict takes on a variety of forms that are designed to fit one’s goals at that particular time—identified as “Hybrid Wars” in Conflict in the 21st Century...
War is a serious business.
As we all know. Therefor, it seems to me that it is incumbent on everyone who engages in warfare at any level, from the politician who sends units forth to the last Snuffy (yes, even him...) to read as much as possible on the topic and to discuss with others the various potentials and probabilities. Everyone who addresses war should be noted to the extent possible. Discussion is important but I've learned far more over a couple of drinks than I've learned in structured discussions. The important thing is to kick it around.
We are confronted with the fact that most of our political masters will not do this, therefor it's important that all practitioners do it and be thorough in their study so they can give the best possible advice. I think, though, that two thoughts should always remain in mind:
1. The theoreticians are human, that means they have experience (or not), education, heredity and environmental factors that have shaped them and their thoughts and thus, consciously or not, are subject to have some biases and possibly some gaps in knowledge. They also write for a specialist audience -- more frequently for other theorists than for practitioners --and thus these two factors can skew what they write or say and one is well advised to read or listen, evaluate and take that which ones instincts say are valuable while not hewing to anyone's line. That simply because no one has all the answers.
2. At the end of the day, you'll be on a hill watching your Division deploy to meet the Screaming Horde approaching at from 3 to 300 kilometers per hour. Or you'll deplane with your company or troop in the middle of nowhere with skulking opponents everywhere. Or you'll be on a lonely street at Oh-dark-thirty wondering whether to shoot the two vaguely human shapes that seem to be approaching you. None of the theoreticians will be there with you...
Hybrid, Mixed, Blended - or Chaoplexic?
Hi All. I just picked up on the release of Frank Hoffman's report today, and I'm on UK time right now, at 00:57, so won't be reading it until tomorrow. I noticed some of the discussion here got to the usual frustration with definitionalism, the utility of labeling, the utility of the label "hybrid", and so on.
Well, here's another to chew on: at a recent British International Studies Association (BISA) meeting, Antoine Bousquet, a new PhD graduate from the London School of Economics, presented what I thought was a pretty interesting paper on scientific metaphor in military thought.
More specifically, he gets into how the metaphors of four broad era in scientific developments/thought in the West have, in parallel, shaped military understanding of and approaches to war. The first three are fairly straightforward: clockwork/mechanical (ordered), thermodynamic (energetic), and cybernetic (think information and information loops). For the fourth era (now), he adapted a hybrid (!) term, chaoplexity, drawn from chaos and complexity theory and coined a little over a decade ago in a book entitled The End of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age.
Personally, I'm skeptical not of the uses of new labels and reconceptualization in general, but of overlabeling and relabeling the issues of now. A lot of the confusion and debate on what is and what isn't "new", I think, is gobbledygook longhand for "what we don't yet understand" and "insufficient historical hindsight to get a grip". In this case, though, I think Hoffman's work is worth considering; so's Bousquet's.
Here's the link to Bousquet's paper: www.bisa.ac.uk/2007/pps/bousquet.pdf
Thoughts?
Mike