Hybrid, ambiguous, and non-linear? How new is Russia’s ‘new way of war’?

Mark Galeotti

Small Wars and Insurgencies, 2016, vol. 27, issue 2, 282-301

Abstract: Russia’s recent operations in Ukraine, especially the integrated use of militias, gangsters, information operations, intelligence, and special forces, have created a concern in the West about a ‘new way of war’, sometimes described as ‘hybrid’. However, not only are many of the tactics used familiar from Western operations, they also have their roots in Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian practice. They are distinctive in terms of the degree to which they are willing to give primacy to ‘non-kinetic’ means, the scale of integration of non-state actors, and tight linkage between political and military command structures. However, this is all largely a question of degree rather than true qualitative novelty. Instead, what is new is the contemporary political, military, technological, and social context in which new wars are being fought.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2015.1129170 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:27:y:2016:i:2:p:282-301

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fswi20

DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2015.1129170

Access Statistics for this article

Small Wars and Insurgencies is currently edited by Paul Rich

More articles in Small Wars and Insurgencies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().