Hybrid Warfare: Where's the Beef?

An excellent analysis of warfare in the current age can be read at 'War on the Rocks.'

“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.”

— Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege

Lately, a lot has been said and written down on hybrid war and hybrid warfare. The hybrid war thesis has been advocated to depict the new reality of contemporary warfare. Although the concept is not a new one, it has been proposed that today we are witnessing some new features in warfare. Russia’s capture of the Crimean peninsula and its support to the separatists in Eastern Ukraine have been presented as the contemporary pinnacle of hybrid warfare. For many analysts of contemporary security and defense issues, the hubris around this buzzword seems to neglect the very basic principles of war that have been discussed and theorized for centuries. Namely, war is not — and has actually never been — a “pure” military matter that is executed only by military forces. When looking closely at the various attributes of Russian and separatist warfare in Ukraine that together are said to constitute hybrid warfare, it becomes clear that none of this is new or unique to a special kind of warfare known as hybrid.

To read more go here.

http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/hybrid-warfare-wheres-the-beef/