The Contemporary Spectrum of Conflict Protracted, Gray Zone, Ambiguous, and Hybrid Modes of War

Below is Frank Hoffman's very important essay and it can be downloaded in PDF at this link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ims-2016/PDF/2016_Index_of_US_Military_Strength_ESSAYS_HOFFMAN.pdf

I cannot emphasize this excerpt enough:

They have refreshed George Kennan’s arguments from the 1950s for the institutionalization of U.S. capacity for political warfare, which Kennan defined as:

the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures, and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.44

Kennan’s definition of political warfare is misleading. His concept has little to do with warfare per se; it is largely about non-military efforts associated with subversion or counter-subversion. While these can have a political element to them, in terms of aiding political groups and factions, the range of efforts involved goes beyond the diplomatic and political sphere.

But there is little doubt that unconventional warfare and the types of techniques included in Kennan’s definition of political warfare are relevant to the 21st century.45 Unlike other forms of warfare in the proposed spectrum of conflict, unconventional warfare does not fit easily within a spectrum in terms of the scale of violence. Moreover, unconventional warfare can occur concurrently with other methods in both peace and war. Thus, it is depicted in Figure 1 as ranging across the entire spectrum, not just by the intensity of violence.

This concept would seem to have great merit as a response to both Russian and Chinese actions in gray zone conflicts, since neither state embraces the idea that war and peace are binary conditions. Both of them, as well as other strategic cultures, envision a more complex continuum of cooperation, competition, collaboration, and conflict. Moreover, many other nations do not organize their government institutions with the same black-and-white military and non-military distinctions as the U.S. maintains. There is evidence that some components of the U.S. military are devoting intellectual capital to this issue,46 and Congress has shown interest in assessing U.S. capabilities in this domain. By its nature, a U.S. capacity for unconventional warfare would involve the ability to develop and execute a strategy that tightly integrated measures needed to counter the subversion, propaganda, and political actions of gray area conflict short of actual warfare.

The Contemporary Spectrum of Conflict

Protracted, Gray Zone, Ambiguous, and Hybrid Modes of War

Dr. Frank Hoffman

http://index.heritage.org/military/2016/essays/contemporary-spectrum-of-conflict/

Hew Strachan, the preeminent military historian at Oxford, stated in a lecture delivered in 2006 that one of our most serious problems today is that we do not know what war is. He put his finger on a critical shortfall in Western thinking about security:

If we are to identify whether war is changing, and—if it is—how those changes affect international relations, we need to know first what war is. One of the central challenges confronting international relations today is that we do not really know what is a war and what is not. The consequences of our confusion would seem absurd, were they not so profoundly dangerous.1

The larger problem is that the U.S. has a strategic culture that does not appreciate history or strategy, nor does it devote sufficient attention to the breadth of adversaries facing it and the many different forms that human conflict can take. Many current critics of U.S. policy or strategy in the Middle East or Asia bemoan the aimless state of strategy and policy. While there are deficiencies in U.S. planning and strategy processes, the larger intellectual challenge is a blinkered conception of conflict that frequently quotes the great Prussian soldier Clausewitz without realizing the true essence of his theory and how it applies to the ever evolving, interactive phenomenon we call “war.” Moreover, the U.S. national security establishment too often fails to understand opponents, their strategic cultures, and their own unique conceptions of victory and war.

Current perceptions about the risks of major war, our presumed preponderance of military power, a flawed understanding of irregular war, and our ingrained reliance on technological panaceas like precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and drone warfare make serious defense planning ever harder. This misunderstanding afflicts the military as much as it does political elites and the general public. At least three consequences can be expected from a flawed grasp of contemporary conflict:

·         Unreasonable political and public expectations for quick wins at low cost,

·         An overly simplistic grasp of the application of blunt military power and what it will supposedly achieve, and

·         Naïve views of both adversaries and the context for conflict.

As our own recent history shows, however, the reality is much more complex. War is seldom so clear-cut, and “victory” is far more elusive in reality. The vast majority of conflicts are seldom as precise or as free of casualties or political frustrations as we tend to remember. We prefer Operation Desert Storm (1991) as a simple and satisfying war. It pitted good against evil, and its conclusion was decisive, albeit not as decisive as World War II. But most conflicts are messy, relatively ill-defined in scope and by objective, with an array of actors, and unsatisfying in outcome.

The conflict spectrum includes a range of activities to which students and practitioners of war refer when attempting to characterize a given conflict by participants, methods, level of effort, types of forces, levels of organization or sophistication, etc. As should be expected in any attempt to define aspects of something as complex as war, there is ample debate over characterizations and definitions, whether one form of war is more or less complex than any other, or whether war can be so neatly categorized as to subdivide it along a spectrum in the first place. Debates over supposedly “new” and generational wars are common today in academic circles, and the prevalence of irregular wars is increasingly recognized.2

(Continued at the link below)

http://index.heritage.org/military/2016/essays/contemporary-spectrum-of-conflict/

A view of Hybrid Warfare from Finland.  The 11 page paper with some interesting graphics can be downloaded at this link: http://www.gcsp.ch/download/4612/106908

Below the summary is a blog post from the authors that provides an earlier summary of their paper.  One of the authors, Pasi Eronen, is a graduate of our Security Studies Program.

HOW ARE SOCIETIES DEFENDED AGAINST HYBRID THREATS?

Strategic Security Analysis

Strategic Security Analysis - 2015 n°9

Author(s):

• Mr Aapo Cederberg
• Mr Pasi Eronen

Release Date:

September 2015

Download publication

Key Points

• Hybrid warfare intentionally blurs the distinction between the times of peace and war making it hard for the targeted countries to devise policy responses in a proper and timely manner.
• The multi-pronged hybrid threat demands that defence planners engage all parts of society in defensive efforts. Intergovernmental or interagency efforts are not enough anymore.
• The comprehensive defence approach requires a patient build-up of national capabilities. In the short term, shortcomings can be overcome by utilising the capabilities and capacity-building efforts of one’s allies.

Wake up, West! The Era of Hybrid Warfare Is Upon Us

Aapo Cederberg and Pasi Eronen

https://www.overtaction.org/2015/08/wake-up-west-the-era-of-hybrid-warfare-is-upon-us/

 ON AUGUST 25 |  IN EUROPE, FOREIGN POLICY, RUSSIA, WAR OF IDEAS

Times have changed. We in the West—especially in Europe—should know by now that we’ve left behind us an era when wars took place in some remote foreign location, waged by professionals with American accents utilizing high-tech weapons systems in an apparently surgical manner with a limited number of casualties.

This kind of war allowed Western civilians to be seduced by an idea of perpetual peace, briefly disturbed by occasional acts of terrorism. We could stay detached from the complexities of power struggles taking place in the international arena. Similarly, this state allowed many Western militaries to resemble more of an international policing force than a solid fighting machine prepared for national and alliance defense.

Europe has now entered an era of hybrid warfare that will force us all, civilians and military alike, to participate. The events in Ukraine—first in Crimea and then in the eastern part of the country—are still currently unfolding. It’s important for the West to understand hybrid warfare is not limited to Ukraine. Russia is already waging hybrid warfare throughout the West.

We have been challenged on several fronts, which means that the time of perpetual peace is over. It’s time to wake up to the way the world is.

What is Hybrid Warfare?

These instruments, such as cyber attacks, economic blackmail, information warfare, and exploitation of ethnic divisions, target various parts of society. Targets reside wherever there are major societal vulnerabilities and greatest asymmetry between target’s weaknesses and own strengths are found.

The use of violence is by no means necessary—or even desired. The political end state should be preferably reached without reaching the threshold of war, which would allow an opponent to legally use force. This would make the conflict much more expensive, as well as draw unwanted international attention.

This is why hybrid warfare presents a great challenge to Western countries. The whole-of-society targeting makes the hybrid threat even more difficult to fight, as our siloed defense mechanisms do not work particularly well when the adversary strikes at soft targets throughout society.

Russia Is Already in the Game

Our old adversary is already mastering this new type of warfare. The Russian toolkit contains a wide variety of instruments that can be applied against a target. The recent uses of those instruments indicate the extent of the challenge the West now faces.

Russians already see themselves being in conflict with us, which is why they have deployed various instruments from their toolkit against the West. All these serve Moscow’s political goals.

As we have witnessed, Russia conducts information warfare activities in an industrial manner. Ethnic Russians residing outside ‘Mother Russia’ are taken advantage of in justifying diplomatic bullying, and military forces are used tointimidate and threaten both neighboring countries and NATO members farther away. Furthermore, Russia exploits energy issues—both as a tool for blackmail and to build new dependencies for later use.

Despite Russia’s WTO membership, trade is applied as a weapon for example by limiting imports from the West and by threatening to deny exports critical to trade partner’s industries. Other economic links are taken advantage of, such as using sovereign debt as pressurizing means. Financial means are used not only to lobby, but given out as loans tobuy political influence, financing NGOs and popular movements that can help reaching Kremlin’s goals. Moreover, Russian individuals and companies are buying stakes in Western critical infrastructure and key resources, investing inland plots located next to critical military installations.

Russia has also engaged in lawfare, utilizing legal agreements and frameworks, to serve its goals. Kremlin is also amajor cyberpower, as the Pentagon recently noted. Members of German parliament, and hundreds of private sector companies have been subjected to sophisticated cyber attacks. Most worrisome, nuclear threats have been brought back to the table to test NATO’s unity and determination.

This all leads to an unsettling conclusion that Russia has already mobilized and deployed its hybrid instruments against the West.

What Can The West Do To Defend Against Hybrid Warfare?

While we might not be fully aware of Moscow’s intentions behind the use of its hybrid capabilities, we are not powerless to face this challenge. The West can build defensive mechanisms to shield our societies and alliances while establishing deterrence to ensure any aggressor will pay a high price.

Furthermore, updating and strengthening our policies can help us deny Russia’s access to its hybrid warfare instruments by both limiting the number of the instruments available and supportive allies. Lastly, certain steps can be taken to erode Russia’s current ability to field its existing hybrid capabilities.

There have already been a number of individual and collective actions that have some success in countering Russia’s efforts. Regarding information warfare, in addition to wide recognition of Russian information warfare activities throughout the Western media, NATO established in 2014 a Center of Excellence in Strategic Communications to Riga, Latvia. There are also other geographically well-targeted initiatives, such as offering grants for training journalists in countering the Russian narrative in Baltics.

In the area of energy security, the EU has taken concrete steps to blunt the efficacy of Russian energy blackmail against European countries. These steps have been supported by US diplomatic efforts.

In addition to defensive actions, there has been several military exercises conducted with allies and partners, andforward deployment of equipment shows support deterrence and resolve. The most proactive instruments the West has taken into use are the economic sanctions that deny certain actors Western capital and technology, thus eroding the long-term outlook both for the Russian economy and the unity of the ruling clique.

What More Can Be Done?

While the existing actions serve as a good start, there are further steps to counter Russia’s hybrid warfare activities:

In the short-term:

• Any political, military or economic benefits that Russia receives from their illegal annexations and establishment of proxy powers should continue to be denied, while Western powers should continue to increase costs for this behavior. One form of cost imposing is continued and tightened sanctions.
• More attention should be paid to identify both national and international societal vulnerabilities that can be targeted and exploited by hybrid operations. These vulnerabilities can be patched with whole-of-society approaches, such asFinnish “comprehensive security” concept. Identifying vulnerabilities helps also preparing relevant threat scenarios that support defense planning.
• As it has been already requested and despite of their known shortcomings, additional intelligence assets should be dedicated to Russia. This is necessary in order to gain more accurate situational awareness, and to better understand Russian decisionmaking system and the actions it takes. This would also help to see through the Kremlin’s diversion-and-deception tactics, thus partly removing the element of surprise. Lastly, intelligence from Russia will help the West determine whether our own response to Russian hybrid operations has been efficient.
• Counterintelligence efforts should receive further resources to prevent any further penetration of the Western societies by Russian intelligence agencies, and to begin to expose and roll back their existing networks in political, cultural, economic, and civil society circles.
• Russian propaganda and information warfare efforts needs to be exposed without at the same giving any credibility to their narrative or attempts to mess the information space. Instead of engaging in counter-propaganda, Western societies need to continue to rely to the power of free media and private organizations that reside outside governmental command structure. At the same time, it is necessary to ensure Russians will continue to have an unobstructed access to trustworthy information sources on various media platforms.
• There should be tighter cybersecurity collaboration between the United States and EU. Collaboration should include information and technology exchanges while also sharing exercises between militaries and civilian organizations. Private sector entities should also be involved.
• Furthermore, Russia should be denied from any Western developed dual-use cyber technologies. Cybercrime originating from Russia should be actively fought, as they supply some of Moscow’s hybrid capabilities.

In the medium-term:

• In order for the defensive efforts to be effective against hybrid threats and operations, they need to be well coordinated both on national and international levels. For the coordination purposes there needs to be administrative and communication structures established that help break the siloes, support sharing situational awareness, and enable preparations and defensive actions.
• Existing sanctions need to be enforced closely and evasion mechanisms have to be identified and plugged. Contamination zones should be established to ensure certain entities don’t evade sanctions.
• In addition to blocking access to Western capital, safe havens for illicit funds should be denied, and flows of illicit funds should be better blocked, as they serve the Moscow’s overall interests.
• Greater transparency should be required from Western politicians, businesses, and civil society organizations to combat toxic economic connections. Toxic economic connections help Moscow penetrate our decisionmaking systems and societies, corrupt them, and use them for their purposes.
• More US military equipment and personnel should be deployed to Europe. Force levels should be similar to those during the cold war years than those that were considered necessary during the time of ‘peace dividend’. European allies should also be more willing to bear a part of the burden and increase their military expenditure levels towards more sustainable levels.
• Russia’s nuclear rhetoric need to be countered by clearly stating that any use of nuclear weapons against any alliance members would lead to a nuclear response by the United States. Further reassurance to allies most threatened by Russian nuclear rhetoric could be offered by re-establishing the missile shield initiative in collaboration with local partners in Europe.

In the long-term:

• At the grand strategic level, there should be extra efforts taken to ensure that the transatlantic bonds are further strengthened through free trade agreements that would also have positive geostrategic implications.
• In a similar geostrategic move, China’s will to stand by Russia and collaborate with it in a creation of geostrategic alternative reality should be more rigorously tested.

Conclusion

While we focused upon Russia’s hybrid operations and policy options countering them, it would be a mistake to state only Russia is capable of engaging in hybrid warfare. It is not far-fetched to see several analogies between those instruments that Russia has been utilizing and those that China has in its own toolbox.

While strong, developed, autocratic nations may have an edge on the offensive side of hybrid operations, all countries have an opportunity to organize their defenses against hybrid threats. It is important to build a more resilient society. This should not be viewed only as an extra burden to already economically-struggling Western societies, but is should be seen as an opportunity to get one’s house in order.

Why? Because the structures that allow a society to respond in an agile manner to hybrid threats can better cope with the complex underlying frictions that make our modern societies fragile. A more resilient society does not equate to a militarized or fear-driven society, but rather a more functional one, as decisionmaking processes becomes more transparent and inclusive.

Putting one’s own house in order and improving defenses is only one side of the story. The other side is taking a more active role in the game. This requires assets in place to deter the adversary, actions taken to deny adversary’s access to their own and allies’ instruments, and finally using strengths to erode adversary’s ability to deploy hybrid operations.

Yet we must be wary of going too far. The West must counteract Russia’s hybrid warfare efforts without unnecessarily crossing the threshold of war-justifying destruction of lives and physical infrastructure. That would allow Moscow to legally resort to massively violent means to achieve its goals. While uncontrolled escalation of events is in no nation’s interests, Western countries need to establish a credible deterrent that will deny also Kremlin from resorting to that tool again in hopes of making more gains.

*****

Aapo Cederberg is an associate fellow in the Emerging Security Challenges Programme at Geneva Centre for Security Policy and also a retired colonel from the Finnish Armed Forces. He was previously the Secretary General for the Finnish Security Committee and prior to that was the Head of Strategic Planning in the Ministry of Defence. Twitter: @ace_aapo

Pasi Eronen is a project researcher for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on economic power projection and cyber warfare. Twitter: @pasieronen

photo: The National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) in Kiev, Ukraine, by Bert Kaufmann (Creative Commons)

The ‘new’ type of war that finally has the Pentagon’s attention

Note Congressman Thornberry's comments.  Below is the verbiage in the mark-up of the NDAA. (note use of unconventional and counter unconventional warfare).  We have to be able to operate in the "gray zone" between peace and war.  As Frank Hoffman says we cannot think of things in terms of black and white.  Are we going to learn from George Kennan when he wrote in 1948? "Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition,

political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national
objectives.

​"​ 

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/65ciafounding3.htm

The bottom line is:

1.  Are we going to get comfortable operating in the space between peace and war that is described by hybrid, political and unconventional warfare?

2.  Are we willing to do strategy in that space to achieve our policy objectives?

3.  Are we willing to inform the national leadership that we have the will and capability to operate in that space between peace and war and conduct our own forms of hybrid, political and unconventional warfare?

I suggest a read of the USASOC SOF Support to Political Warfare White Paper: http://maxoki161.blogspot.com/2015/03/sof-support-to-political-warfare-white.html

This kind of warfare transcends traditional notions of one military confronting another by incorporating both conventional and unconventional forces, information warfare such as propaganda, as well as economic measures to undermine an enemy, according to Frank Hoffman, a professor at the National Defense University.“The critique was, and still is, that America’s view of war is overly simplified,” he said. “We think of things in black-and-white terms. The newly fashionable term is a relatively old concept — its essential elements had been part of Russia’s and China’s military doctrines long before the Kremlin sent its so-called “little green men” into Crimea, according to Hoffman.“This is something that we have to do better as the United States to identify and deal with,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in an interview. “This poses a challenge for us, and adversaries know that. They’re looking to run between the seams and confuse and delay us.”In the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, Thornberry has included a provision calling on the Pentagon to develop a strategy to counter hybrid warfare.“Hopefully, this provision in the bill helps Secretary Carter get more of the thinking and the intellectual heft of the department in helping us have a more effective response,” Thornberry said

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS26/20150422/103282/BILLS-114HR1735ih-U1.pdf 

Section 10XX—Department of Defense Strategy for Countering Unconventional Warfare 

 This section would required the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to develop a strategy for the Department of Defense to counter unconventional warfare threats posed by adversarial state and non-state actors. This section would require the Secretary of Defense to submit the strategy to the congressional defense committees within 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act. The committee is concerned about the growing unconventional warfare capabilities and threats being posed most notably and recently by the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The committee notes that unconventional warfare is defined most accurately as those activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied area. The committee also notes that most state-sponsors of unconventional warfare, such as Russia and Iran, have doctrinally linked conventional warfare, economic warfare, cyber warfare, information operations, intelligence operations, and other activities seamlessly in an effort to undermine U.S. national security objectives and the objectives of U.S. allies alike. 

The ‘new’ type of war that 

finally has the Pentagon’s 

attention

Special Forces of the Polish army attack a house during NATO military exercises in June. The force is NATO's response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff July 3 at 6:28 PM  

The Pentagon is increasingly concerned about how to combat “hybrid warfare,” the combination of stealth invasion, local proxy forces and international propaganda that Russia used to annex Crimea and destabilize eastern Ukraine, U.S. officials said.

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday released the 2015 National Military Strategy in which he cited Russia’s actions in Ukraine and said “hybrid conflicts” will persist well into the future.

This kind of warfare transcends traditional notions of one military confronting another by incorporating both conventional and unconventional forces, information warfare such as propaganda, as well as economic measures to undermine an enemy, according to Frank Hoffman, a professor at the National Defense University.

“The critique was, and still is, that America’s view of war is overly simplified,” he said. “We think of things in black-and-white terms.”

The issue animated Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter’s recent trip to Europe.

“How do we confront cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns and hybrid warfare?” Carter asked during a speech in Berlin. “How do we ensure we can deal with more than one challenge at a time?”

The newly fashionable term is a relatively old concept — its essential elements had been part of Russia’s and China’s military doctrines long before the Kremlin sent its so-called “little green men” into Crimea, according to Hoffman.

“This is something that we have to do better as the United States to identify and deal with,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in an interview. “This poses a challenge for us, and adversaries know that. They’re looking to run between the seams and confuse and delay us.”

In the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, Thornberry has included a provision calling on the Pentagon to develop a strategy to counter hybrid warfare.

(Continued at the link below)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-new-type-of-war-that-finally-has-the-pentagons-attention/2015/07/03/b5e3fcda-20be-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html

From one of our former students here at Georgetown from Finland.

The 101 page report can be downloaded directly at this link.  

http://www.fiia.fi/assets/publications/FIIAReport43.pdf

There is some very interesting perspectives in this report upon first scan.  I think some of the best information that has come out on Russia's strategy and operations has been from the Finns, Latvians and Poles.

Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine:
Breaking the Enemy’s Ability to Resist

http://www.fiia.fi/fi/publication/514/russia_s_hybrid_war_in_ukraine/

Julkaistu 16.6.2015

András Rácz
The Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Lataa PDF (405 Kb)

Since the change of power in Ukraine in February 2014, Russia has been swift to occupy and annex the Crimean peninsula. In April 2014, separatist riots broke out in Eastern Ukraine, following a very similar pattern to those in Crimea. These actions were accompanied by a strong and intensive, well-coordinated diplomatic, economic and media campaign both in Ukraine and abroad, also supported by pressure exerted by the large Russian military units lined up along the border with Ukraine. 

The form of warfare Russia employed in Ukraine in 2014, often called hybrid war, has been aimed at defeating the target country by breaking its ability to resist without actually launching a full-scale military attack. In line with contemporary Russian military thinking on ‘new generation warfare’, hybrid war is built on the combined use of military and non-military means, employing basically the whole spectrum of a state’s policy inventory, including diplomatic, economic, political, social, information and also military means. 

This report aims to seek answers to two main research questions. First, what are the main features and characteristics of Russia’s hybrid warfare as conducted in Ukraine? Derived from the first, the second research question is focused on the operational prerequisites for the Russian hybrid war. In other words, is the Russian hybrid war a universal warfare method deployable anywhere, or is it more country or region-specific?