Hybrid War as a Part of the Post-global World

Abstract

The ongoing process of militarization of the informational environment leads to the evolution of approaches to the force-based methods of transformation of the geopolitical balance. It appears that the methods based upon the capabilities to limit the escalation appear to be the most acceptable. However, they open the door for chaotization of viral regions. That increases sharply the interest of the key players in the world politics towards this model of interstate competition that includes military means but is still below the level of classic conventional conflict. Earlier the use of such methods based upon the methods of interrelated informational, psychological and cyber-informational influence were addressed with caution since even 5–7 years ago these methods were not properly elaborated yet and did not give guaranteed results, as well as were related to the high risks of disclosure of the basic information about the organizers of actions and mostly were regarded as supplementary element to the more robust and tested methods of direct military aggression. Nowadays the leading role in the spectrum of military instruments is occupied by the hybrid wars that are a complex phenomenon that includes diverse instruments of political, informational and military (force) nature. The new potential of digital information society serves as an integrating basis for hybrid wars. With their emergence and practical approbation of the new model of war as well as their structural sophistication integration with the force instruments world enters a drastically new political era in which hybrid wars and especially the methods of informational manipulations take the leading roles and become the major instruments of the implementation of the state politics. For Russia that means a substantial change of the environment for competition with other countries as well as for an ultimate necessity to supplement to the foreign policy inventory with the new capabilities that go beyond classic diplomacy and also beyond the soft power potential that is rather underdeveloped in Russia.

Keywords

• hybrid wars
• informational wars
• paramilitary units
• cyberstrike means
• soft power