This is a first book-long analysis showing how the notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ was used to transform security policies and discourses in an EU/NATO country. Building on current debates in International Political Sociology, Critical Security Studies, and Critical Geopolitics, it provides a novel account of how crisis, geopolitics, uncertainty, and expertise are intertwined in the social construction of threats. Based on extensive and original empirical research of large textual archive and elite interviews in the Czech Republic and Brussels, the book shows how officials, bureaucrats, journalists, activists, and experts all participate in the reshaping of security in a new geopolitical environment. Zooming on the case of Czechia and its specific Central European context, it complements the predominantly Western-centric studies of insecurity with an account of how the liminal position on an East/West boundary influences security politics. As a first study of its kind and scope, it will be of interest to academics and students interested in Central European politics, practices and discourses of hybrid warfare, as well as critical approaches to security and geopolitics.

Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents is a series that provides primary source documents and expert commentary on various topics relating to the worldwide effort to combat terrorism, as well as efforts by the United States and other nations to protect their national security interests. Volume 141, Hybrid Warfare and the Gray Zone Threat, considers the mutation of the international security environment brought on by decades of unrivaled U.S. conventional military power. The term "hybrid warfare" encompasses conventional warfare, irregular warfare, cyberwarfare, insurgency, criminality, economic blackmail, ethnic warfare, "lawfare," and the application of low-cost but effective technologies to thwart high-cost technologically advanced forces. This volume is divided into five sections covering different aspects of this topic, each of which is introduced by expert commentary written by series editor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr. This volume contains thirteen useful documents exploring various facets of the shifting international security environment, including a detailed report on hybrid warfare issued by the Joint Special Operations University and a White Paper on special operations forces support to political warfare prepared by the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, as well as a GAO report and a CRS report covering similar topics. Specific coverage is also given to topics such as cybersecurity and cyberwarfare, the efficacy of sanctions in avoiding and deterring hybrid warfare threats, and the intersection of the military and domestic U.S. law enforcement.

During the last decade, 'Hybrid Warfare' has become a novel yet controversial term in academic, political and professional military lexicons, intended to suggest some sort of mix between different military and non-military means and methods of confrontation. Enthusiastic discussion of the notion has been undermined by conceptual vagueness and political manipulation, particularly since the onset of the Ukrainian Crisis in early 2014, as ideas about Hybrid Warfare engulf Russia and the West, especially in the media. Western defense and political specialists analyzing Russian responses to the crisis have been quick to confirm that Hybrid Warfare is the Kremlin's main strategy in the twenty-first century. But many respected Russian strategists and political observers contend that it is the West that has been waging Hybrid War, Gibridnaya Voyna, since the end of the Cold War. In this highly topical book, Ofer Fridman offers a clear delineation of the conceptual debates about Hybrid Warfare. What leads Russian experts to say that the West is conducting a Gibridnaya Voyna against Russia, and what do they mean by it? Why do Western observers claim that the Kremlin engages in Hybrid Warfare? And, beyond terminology, is this something genuinely new?

Western academics, politicians, and military leaders alike have labelled Russia's actions in Crimea and its follow-on operations in Eastern Ukraine as a new form of “Hybrid Warfare.” In this book, Kent DeBenedictis argues that, despite these claims, the 2014 Crimean operation is more accurately to be seen as the Russian Federation's modern application of historic Soviet political warfare practices-the overt and covert informational, political, and military tools used to influence the actions of foreign governments and foreign populations. DeBenedictis links the use of Soviet practices, such as the use of propaganda, disinformation, front organizations, and forged political processes, in the Crimea in 2014 to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (the “Prague Spring”) and the earliest stages of the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Through an in-depth case study analysis of these conflicts, featuring original interviews, government documents and Russian and Ukrainian sources, this book demonstrates that the operation, which inspired discussions about Russian “Hybrid Warfare,” is in fact the modern adaptation of Soviet political warfare tools and not the invention of a new type of warfare.

This anthology covers Small Wars Journal writings on Iranian and Hezbollah hybrid warfare activities around the world. Writings date from 2007 to 2015, including coverage on the nuclear deal, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and Qods Force global movements, and Hezbollah’s expanding influence as Iran’s proxy. This anthology is meant to support the U.S. security debate on a post-nuclear deal Iran and an increasing Hezbollah presence in Middle East affairs as well as Latin America. This volume is composed of sixty chapters divided into four sections on Iran’s military capabilities and nuclear ambitions, Hezbollah’s global operations, Iranian and Hezbollah influence in Middle Eastern security affairs and their activities in Latin America. Also included is a foreword by Jason Rivera, an afterword by Dr. Luis Fleischman, a postscript by Dr. John P. Sullivan, an acronym listing, chapter notes, suggested readings following each section, and short biographies of the fifty-three contributors showcased in this work.

World politics as a scientific discipline was established during the second half of the 20th century and has gained rapid distribution in many countries. This field of study focuses attention on current political processes as well as the potential of further development. It is essential to analyze world politics to move progress forward while also strengthening international security and the creation of a safer civilization. World politics cannot be understood without the combined knowledge of history, economics, law, social sciences, and psychology. World Politics and the Challenges for International Security describes the global processes in the field of world politics and international security and discusses global problems, global security, and the threats and challenges that currently affect global society. Covering topics such as digital diplomacy, political corruption, and terrorist psychology, this book is essential for political scientists, researchers, policymakers, global leaders, national security officers, diplomats, professors and students of higher education, and academicians.

‘This is the essential book today for understanding maritime security law” -Prof. James Kraska (US Naval War College & Harvard Law School) The recrudescence of great power competition at sea raises several legal problems. Maritime Security Law in Hybrid Warfare brings together authors from various fields of international law to address such challenges in the legal intersection between naval war, military activities, maritime law enforcement, and hybrid warfare. This book explores the means for increasing legal resilience against the emerging trend of weaponization of commercial ships, underwater cables and pipelines, lawfare, and migration by hybrid adversaries.

This book cuts through the misunderstandings about Russia’s geopolitical challenge to the West, presenting this not as ‘hybrid war’ but ‘political war.’ Russia seeks to antagonise: its diplomats castigate Western ‘Russophobia’ and cultivate populist sentiment abroad, while its media sells Russia as a peaceable neighbour and a bastion of traditional social values. Its spies snoop, and even kill, and its hackers and trolls mount a 24/7 onslaught on Western systems and discourses. This is generally characterised as ‘hybrid war,’ but this is a misunderstanding of Russian strategy. Drawing extensively not just on their writings but also decades of interactions with Russian military, security and government officials, this study demonstrates that the Kremlin has updated traditional forms of non-military ‘political war’ for the modern world. Aware that the West, if united, is vastly richer and stronger, Putin is seeking to divide, and distract, in the hope it will either accept his claim to Russia’s great-power status – or at least be unable to prevent him. In the process, Russia may be foreshadowing how the very nature of war is changing: political war may be the future. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, war studies, Russian politics and security studies.