Future Hybrid Wars - Forecasting and Planning
The weakening of the modern system of global security, its deformation and fragmentation lead to the increasing chaos of international relations. Color revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, and more recently in Ukraine, contribute to the avalanche-like development of this process. International conflicts are intensifying, network forms of international terrorism are gaining momentum, for which the source of resources is Afghan drug trafficking and organized crime. The United States, in its pursuit of world hegemony, uses the opportunities that open up to weaken strategic competitors, primarily China and the European Union.
GLOBAL CRITICALITY IN THE MODERN WORLD
As a result, the world is rapidly plunging into the chaos of large and small wars, ethno-political and religious conflicts. Within the framework of the system of international relations, global criticality is created, capable of undermining the fundamental foundations of the existing world order.
The heightened controversial nature of globalization processes reveals serious defects in the international security system. In the conditions of an avalanche-like increase in the problems and contradictions caused by globalization, the “element” of globalization is out of control and leads to the chaos of international relations.
This is facilitated by one of the important properties of the system of international relations itself, which consists in its nonequilibrium character and in the initially incorporated desire for chaos.
The well-known American neo-realist political analyst Kenneth Voltz warned about this property: "The systems within the states are centralized and hierarchical ... International systems are decentralized and anarchic."
As applied to the problem considered in this article, the conclusion of an American political scientist is methodological in nature, since the proposed principle of international anarchy as a characteristic of the system of international relations determines the foreign policy strategies of states. One of such strategies can be attributed to the strategy of creating controlled chaos, developed in the USA and actively used in various countries and regions, which allows to hide the true goals of the aggressor state behind a set of seemingly unrelated actions leading to the chaos of the situation in the whole region or separate victim state.
The United States considers chaos "manageable" and sees it as a new tool for promoting its national interests under the pretext of democratizing the modern world. The rest of the countries, including Russia, view this process as a general disaster that could lead to a global catastrophe.
Stephen Mann, one of the developers of controlled chaos theory, frankly outlined the American strategy of using criticality in the national interests of the United States back in 1998: “I would like to express one wish: we should be open to the opportunity to strengthen and exploit criticality, if it is in our national interest - for example , with the destruction of the Iraqi military machine and the Saddam state. Here our national interest is more important than international stability. In fact, whether we realize it or not, we are already taking measures to increase chaos when we promote democracy, market reforms, and develop media through the private sector. ”
It is worth paying attention to the unconditionally declared thesis about the highest priority of the national interests of your own country. The rest, please do not worry ...
One of the consequences of the emerging criticality in the sphere of international relations is the emergence of conflicts of a new type, including those that take place using non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals in the struggle against the enemy. At the initial stage, such conflicts are based on the protest potential of the population during the so-called color revolutions, which are a combination of subversive technologies for the non-violent seizure of power. Such technologies worked, for example, in the 2004 year in Ukraine and allowed us to keep the country in the right direction for the West for several years.
However, then, for a number of reasons, some changes occurred in the position of the Ukrainian elites, and the forces that did not fully suit the customers of the previous color revolution came to power again. The next revolution was already developing according to other laws and eventually led to civil confrontation in the country, which, according to the terminology proposed by the United States and NATO, can be attributed to hybrid-type wars. The term implies a wide range of hostile actions that are undertaken as part of a flexible strategy with long-term goals. These strategies are based on the integrated application of diplomatic, information, military and economic means to destabilize the enemy (A. Bartosh. Hybrid warfare in the strategy of the USA and NATO. See “NVO” from 10.10.14).
HYBRID WAR IN THE FORECASTS AND PLANS OF THE USA AND NATO
Today, a number of official documents of the US Army are devoted to the development of issues of conducting a hybrid war and confronting hybrid threats, including the White Paper of the US Army Special Operations Command "Countering Non-Traditional War" and the operational concept of the US Army "Defeating in a Difficult World."
By hybrid warfare, the US military means unannounced, secret military operations, in which the belligerent attacks the state structures or the regular army of the enemy with the help of local insurgents and separatists supported weapons and finances from abroad and some internal structures (oligarchs, organized crime, nationalist and pseudo-religious organizations).
The US and NATO documents state that with the fundamental role of the armed forces for successful confrontation in hybrid wars, states should unite the efforts of their governments, armies and intelligence services under the auspices of the United States in the framework of a “comprehensive interdepartmental, intergovernmental and international strategy” and use the methods of “political economic, military and psychological pressure. " In these and some other documents, it is noted that hybrid warfare is the use of a combination of ordinary, irregular and asymmetric means in combination with constant manipulation of political and ideological conflict.
In the geopolitical context, hybrid war is a relatively new concept, mainly used in the field of operations of special forces and combining the experience of tough confrontations with emerging threats to international security and lessons learned in the fight against extremism of state and non-state actors. A hybrid war is fought both by forces operating within a country or a region and seeking to weaken or overthrow the government, as well as by external forces. The actions of external forces are to assist the rebels in the recruitment of supporters and their training, operational and logistical support, the impact on the economy and the social sphere, the coordination of diplomatic efforts, as well as the conduct of individual force actions. For these purposes, special operations forces, reconnaissance, organized crime are involved, a large-scale informational psychological impact on the population, personnel of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies, and power structures using the whole range of information and communication technologies is carried out.
In recent years, hybrid wars have been fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Georgia, now in Ukraine. A new form of unconventional warfare by non-state actors is ISIS.
Taking into account the peculiarities of the hybrid war, the government’s task is to organize counteraction through the complex synergistic use of the diplomatic, informational, economic, financial and legal resources of the state together with military force. According to the recently retired US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, currently not only states, but also “non-state actors” have access to destructive technologies and powerful weapons. "The ghost of the so-called hybrid war is becoming more and more real when our opponents use rebel tactics using highly equipped armed forces and sophisticated technology." At the same time, the minister said that “The requirements for the army (USA) will become more and more diverse and complex. The threat from terrorists and insurgents will exist for us for a long time, but we also have to deal with the revisionist Russia, with its modern and efficient army. ”
Factors of Criticism Exacerbation
Developed in the United States and NATO, the forecasts of the development of the international situation for the period of the next few decades are united by the conclusion of growing global instability. According to the Americans, from the point of view of ensuring the national security of the state, the following factors will play a significant role:
- the increasing role of non-state actors with a simultaneous increase in the number of possible political-military combinations, including state and non-state actors;
- the diffusion of power in a multipolar world against the background of the spread of information and military technologies;
- demographic changes, including accelerated urbanization;
- increased competition for access to global resources.
At the same time, the threat of interstate conflicts with the use of modern types of high-precision weapons persists while maintaining the role of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. The presence of such trends requires the preparation of the country and the armed forces to participate in a wide range of possible classical and irregular conflicts, including hybrid wars.
The diffusion of global power is a consequence of the formation of a multipolar world, which contributes to the development of geopolitical instability. According to current forecasts, a single center of power is not expected to be formed by 2030, which will make existing alliances unstable, and relations between states will be characterized by a greater degree of hostility than before.
Diffusion of global power will also manifest itself in the growing role of non-state actors, who will strive to exert greater influence at both the local and global levels. The threats associated with the proliferation of information and military technologies will increase, allowing individuals and small groups to gain access to various types of lethal weapons, especially high-precision and biological weapons, to the so-called dirty bomb capable of creating radioactive contamination in large areas of the terrain, as well as to various hazardous chemicals and cyber technologies. Thus, extremists and criminal groups will be able to break the state monopoly on large-scale use of violence.
The complex impact of these factors leads to the emergence of a new type of threat - hybrid threats, the sources of which can be both states and other subjects. A special feature of this type of threat is its clear focus against the previously exposed weak and vulnerable points of a particular country or a particular region.
The development of a combat strategy, planning and building resilience should be based on the important role of external support in hybrid wars. General methods of countering hybrid wars are reduced to reliably cutting off the channels of financing subversive forces, using diplomatic means to isolate and punish sponsoring states, targeting all types of intelligence to the autopsy and identifying leaders and infrastructure as the primary targets for destroying them with high-precision weapons.
Unlike anti-terrorist operations, a significant range of which is carried out in a short time, the time frame for planning, implementing and coordinating actions in a hybrid war is much broader. If the convincing measure of success in an antiterrorist operation can be the destruction or captivity of leaders, then in a hybrid war there are no such obvious indicators. To assess the results of such a war, one has to resort to a comparison of the territories controlled by the rebels and the government forces.
Successful planning and interaction require the development and coordination of terminology used at all stages of preparation and warfare.
In a hybrid war, public diplomacy plays a crucial role, capable of exerting the necessary influence on the parties to the conflict in order to give events the necessary direction. At the same time, opposition to information attacks of the enemy are organized.
In general, as part of preparations for participation in a hybrid war, an appropriate long-term military-political strategy is being formed as the basis for opposing the enemy, a special body is being created to coordinate efforts at all levels, ranging from strategic to tactical national, and fundamental approaches are developed for the effective and covert use of special operations forces. and striking with precision weapons. The areas that can be covered by the hybrid war are carefully determined, all their characteristics are first studied.
increasingly used as the main
shock power in hybrid wars.
Photo: Reuters
HYBRID WAR MANAGEMENT
Particular attention is paid to the formation of regional and global bodies of hybrid warfare. With regard to the United States at the strategic level, they can, for example, cover the regions of responsibility of the US European, Central and Pacific military commands. Such bodies by nature should also have a hybrid character, have flexibility and adaptability from the tactical to the strategic level, appropriate personnel, communication and information exchange systems, and opportunities for interaction with partners. The presence of such bodies will accelerate the planning process and reduce the reaction time, taking into account the extremely rapid development of the situation in a hybrid war. The core of such bodies is formed mainly by special operations forces, while the operational art and methods of planning the forces themselves also need to be adapted.
On the whole, the creation of a reliable and effective system for managing a new type of war is possible due to a serious restructuring of the entire system of state and military government bodies in order to give them the necessary hybrid properties, increase the speed and flexibility of management. An important place is given to decision-making procedures on the use of military force, taking into account the hardly predictable transformations of the boundaries of areas covered by the hybrid war.
Particular attention is expected to be paid to the issues of conducting hybrid war operations in remote theaters. Such operations may include military-civilian component, intelligence, control of the population and resources, the use of advisers.
EXPLORATION IN HYBRID WAR
Intelligence in a hybrid war is a vital type of combat support; it is hybrid in nature and combines the full range of available forces and assets, the task of which is to uncover the enemy’s mobilization system, its weaknesses and bottlenecks, in war-torn areas, organizing intelligence for them propaganda, transport and logistics. A feature of intelligence activities in a hybrid war is the need to extract information about hidden subversive elements that operate in a network of isolated cells. In this context, in regions covered by a hybrid war, it may be useful to create peculiar reconnaissance-strike groups, which may consist of isolated reconnaissance and strike-sabotage cells, each of which can solve a range of relevant tasks, have its own operational, reliable and secretive communication system. The isolation of such cells will contribute to their survival in conditions of intensive action. It should be noted that the leadership of the French Resistance came to the conclusion about the need for strict isolation of reconnaissance and sabotage links after many failures in the initial period of World War II.
The complex of reconnaissance tasks in a hybrid war differs significantly from reconnaissance tasks in an interstate conventional conflict and requires, in particular, organizing the collection of seemingly irrelevant information when the enemy uses asymmetric approaches. Processing and evaluation of such information, which at first glance do not have obvious political or military significance, can be entrusted to an effective and highly professional analytical service created on hybrid principles, including not only the military, but also humanities, linguists, regional experts, psychologists, economists, financiers. It is important to have specialists with knowledge of foreign languages and national psychological characteristics of the population of the respective countries and regions.
CONCLUSIONS FOR RUSSIA
Domestic politicians, military leaders and experts speak about the growth of the complex of non-traditional challenges and threats to the national security of Russia. “The world is changing ... More and more new regional and local wars are breaking out before our eyes. Zones of instability and artificially heated, controlled chaos arise ... We see how the basic principles of international law have been devalued and destroyed. Especially in the field of international security, ”said Vladimir Putin in his programmatic article“ To be strong: a guarantee of Russia's national security, ”published in the central press of 20 in February of 2012.
General of the Army Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, at a military-scientific conference of the Academy of Military Sciences in January 2014, noted: “The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals, which in some cases greatly exceed military means, has increased. They are complemented by covert military measures, including information confrontation measures, actions of special operations forces, and the use of the protest potential of the population. ”
According to the authoritative Russian military expert, Army General Yury Baluyevsky, the potential likelihood of using transnational, illegal (irregular) armed formations to violently change the existing state system, violating the territorial integrity of the state persists, and such a development cannot be ruled out in the foreseeable future for Russia. In this regard, the potential danger of a sharp exacerbation of internal problems with a subsequent escalation to the level of internal armed conflict is a real threat to the stability and territorial integrity of our country for the medium term.
Under these conditions, there is a need to reflect in the doctrinal documents of the Russian Federation, including the Military Doctrine, the challenges, risks, dangers and threats associated with preparing a potential enemy for waging new wars against our country - hybrid wars. The enemy is developing for use against Russia and its allies complexes of hybrid threats, each of which is based on careful consideration of all the features of the proposed war initiation area.
Attention should also be paid to the problems of information confrontation as part of a hybrid war. In this regard, it is necessary to constantly and deeply monitor the development of information technologies, as well as improve and modernize the protection systems of the entire state and military infrastructure of Russia, create mechanisms for identifying and suppressing the information and psychological impact on the population of the Russian Federation.
At the heart of all steps to ensure the national security of Russia in a changing world should be prognostic evaluations. There is no doubt the difficulty of forecasting in the conditions of modern turbulence. However, just as unquestionable is the task of developing scientifically based predictions that will provide information on which political and military goals are achievable for the state and its allies; create a basis for decision making in the presence of alternative political and military objectives; to reveal the consequences of political and military decisions taken, to identify points of social tension and threats to social and political stability and thus prevent possible conflicts.
In the course of preparing the country and its armed forces for confronting the threats of modernity, including hybrid war and hybrid threats, political forecasting plays an important role as an integral part of social forecasting and at the same time an important basis for political and military decisions. The results of the forecast will allow to show the directions of political changes, the transformation of the sphere of military security and the strategy of social development. The development of such forecasts is provided for by the Federal Law of the Russian Federation on 28 June 2014 of the Year “On Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation”. In particular, the strategic forecast should contain an assessment of the risks and threats to the national security of Russia.
Such a forecast can be based on a problem-target approach, in which extrapolation into the future of observable development trends of the studied phenomena provides a common vision of emerging issues and contributes to the search for their effective solution. It is important that the prediction takes into account the interrelation of risks for national security not only in the military sphere, but also in the field of socio-economic, informational, finance, etc.
New geopolitical realities, determined by a significant transformation of the spectrum of challenges, risks, dangers and threats to the national security of Russia, made it imperative to revise a number of fundamental provisions of the country's military doctrine. At the same time, it is hardly worth exposing the whole doctrine of cardinal revision that has been in effect since 2010. A number of its provisions remain relevant today. This fully concerns the development and possible use of nuclear weapons systems. Feverish activity on rebuilding existing strategic plans is unacceptable here.
Along with this, it is necessary today to adjust a whole range of its provisions in connection with the radical revision of the US and NATO of the whole complex of their relations with Russia based on the buildup of the power component in their policies, the adoption of sanctions affecting the defense industry of our country. It requires the adoption of a proactive system of measures in the context of plans for a possible further expansion of NATO, preparation of hybrid wars, increasing the military presence of the bloc near the borders of Russia, including the deployment of missile defense in Europe, and plans for conducting large-scale military exercises. A strategic analysis of all aspects of the situation in Ukraine, a forecast of its development, and a consideration of the results obtained in military planning are needed. There are other very disturbing events in the world in the developmental stage that need to be taken into account in the military doctrine.
It is also advisable to involve the expert community in forecasting, to broaden the public with expert opinions. In this context, I would like to wish success to the independent expert-analytical center “Epoch”, which, together with the editorial board of the Independent Military Review, held several productive meetings of experts on the problems of contemporary conflicts.
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