Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Chapter One: The Changing Character of Conflict

Chapter One: The Changing Character of Conflict Countering Hybrid Warfare Max Boot ‘Hybrid warfare’ is a modern term for an ancient practice that has become more prevalent in recent centuries: the combination of regular and irregular forces to menace an enemy. This is a potent one–two punch. In fact, it is in many ways more effective than either conventional or unconventional forces fighting by themselves. As described by Frank Hoffman, scholar at the US National Defense University and the foremost theorist of hybrid warfare, ‘hybrid threats blend the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.’ Confronted with this challenge, the opposing army has only unpalat- able options. It can either concentrate its forces, leaving lines of communication vulnerable to irregulars; or disperse its troops to police these lines of commu- nication, exposing itself to defeat by an overwhelming conventional offensive. The origins of hybrid warfare can be traced to sometime in the last 5,000 years, before which there were no conventional armies. Until approximately 3000 bce, all war was irregular, waged by tribal warriors without a bureaucracy to clothe, feed, arm or discipline them. Hybrid warfare was made possible by the rise of city states and their armies, which fought http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Armed Conflict Survey Taylor & Francis

Chapter One: The Changing Character of Conflict

Download PDF
58 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/chapter-one-the-changing-character-of-conflict-Kk4ihRreB1

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2015 The International Institute for Strategic Studies
ISSN
2374-0981
eISSN
2374-0973
DOI
10.1080/23740973.2015.1041721
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Countering Hybrid Warfare Max Boot ‘Hybrid warfare’ is a modern term for an ancient practice that has become more prevalent in recent centuries: the combination of regular and irregular forces to menace an enemy. This is a potent one–two punch. In fact, it is in many ways more effective than either conventional or unconventional forces fighting by themselves. As described by Frank Hoffman, scholar at the US National Defense University and the foremost theorist of hybrid warfare, ‘hybrid threats blend the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.’ Confronted with this challenge, the opposing army has only unpalat- able options. It can either concentrate its forces, leaving lines of communication vulnerable to irregulars; or disperse its troops to police these lines of commu- nication, exposing itself to defeat by an overwhelming conventional offensive. The origins of hybrid warfare can be traced to sometime in the last 5,000 years, before which there were no conventional armies. Until approximately 3000 bce, all war was irregular, waged by tribal warriors without a bureaucracy to clothe, feed, arm or discipline them. Hybrid warfare was made possible by the rise of city states and their armies, which fought

Journal

Armed Conflict Survey – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 1, 2015

There are no references for this article.