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The international security environment has in recent years evolved into a volatile and increasingly grey zone of war and peace. Security challenges arising from hybrid threats and hybrid warfare, henceforth HT&HW, are today high on security agendas across the globe. However, despite the attention, and a growing body of studies on specific issues, there is an imminent need for research bringing attention to how these challenges can be addressed in order to develop a comprehensive approach towards identifying, analysing and countering HT&HW. This volume supports the development of such an approach by bringing together practitioners and scholarly perspectives on HT&HW, by covering the threats themselves as well as the tools and means to counter them together with a number of real-world case studies.

Over time the grey zone between peace and war has grown considerably, underscoring the necessity of understanding hybrid warfare and related threats. Russia’s actions in Ukraine have manifested this paradigm, being a good example of the problem in thinking about war and peace as binary categories. How does a country or group of countries deal with threats and aggression in this grey area, such as ‘little green men’ that appear in uniform but without national denomination and refuse to tell where they come from, election-influenced operations or cyberattacks, to mention but a few possible actions.

By uniting the knowledge of both practitioners and scholars, the volume aims to identify the existing tools for countering HT&HW, as well as experiences from a wide set of empirical contexts. Mirroring this, the project is a cross-sector collaboration between the Department of Military Studies and the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS) at the Swedish Defence University. The former represents an academic environment where research and teaching are intertwined in a range of subjects including War Studies, Military Technology and Military History. The latter is a national centre within the Swedish Defence University tasked with developing and disseminating knowledge about asymmetric threats within the context of societal security and resilience.

This volume focuses on the challenge posed by HT&HW to Western democracies, and their ability to address it. Western democracies are not only the type of states most frequently targeted by hybrid measures, but also the most vulnerable. By virtue of being open, pluralistic and liberal societies with freedom of the press and rule of law, Western democracies display both inherent weaknesses that can be targeted and inherent constraints – in particular through the rule of law and basic freedoms – that limit the scope for defensive actions. These vulnerabilities are increasingly recognized by Western governments, which have developed a range of entities to address them, although coordination in many instances remains weak. The later sections outline the growing significance of HT&HW on the security agendas of Western democracies and the challenges they imply, as well as the entities these states have established in response. Although neither list is complete, they provide an overview of the current situation. The final sections provide an outline of the volume’s structure and a summary of each chapter.

I kapitlet diskuteras doktrinens roll som verktyg och arbetsmetod inom den militära sfären. Diskussionerna bygger primärt på forskning om doktrin, men även på den beprövade erfarenhet som ackumulerats över tid inom försvarsmakter världen över, främst i några av de västländer som haft regelbunden erfarenhet av deltagande i väpnade konflikter. Vidare redogörs övergripande för hur den formella doktrinutvecklingsprocessen ser ut i några av dessa länder, främst i syfte att belysa hur en väl utvecklad och genomtänkt process för doktrinutveckling och doktrinimplementering kan utformas.

Kapitlet består av två delar, där den första diskuterar begreppet doktrin, vad det är och varför en doktrin anses viktig att ha för en militär organisation. Den andra delen handlar om hur doktriner utvecklas och implementeras och vilka erfarenheter man kan dra från sådana utvecklings- och implementeringsprocesser. I detta kapitel, om inget annat sägs, används begreppet "doktrin" som ett övergripande samlingsbegrepp för den typ av formaliserade styrdokument som i Sverige uppdelas i bland annat doktriner, reglementen, anvisningar, taktiska procedurer, handböcker, bestämmelser och instruktioner, och som militära myndigheter ger ut i såväl sekretessbelagda som öppna och publicerade texter. 

Hybrid Warfare refers to a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, so-called ‘irregular warfare’ and cyber-attacks with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy and foreign political intervention. As Hybrid Warfare becomes increasingly commonplace, there is an imminent need for research bringing attention to how these challenges can be addressed in order to develop a comprehensive approach towards Hybrid Threats and Hybrid Warfare. This volume supports the development of such an approach by bringing together practitioners and scholarly perspectives on the topic and by covering the threats themselves, as well as the tools and means to counter them, together with a number of real-world case studies.

The book covers numerous aspects of current Hybrid Warfare discourses including a discussion of the perspectives of key western actors such as NATO, the US and the EU; an analysis of Russia and China’s Hybrid Warfare capabilities; and the growing threat of cyberwarfare. A range of global case studies – featuring specific examples from the Baltics, Taiwan, Ukraine, Iran and Catalonia – are drawn upon to demonstrate the employment of Hybrid Warfare tactics and how they have been countered in practice. Finally, the editors propose a new method through which to understand the dynamics of Hybrid Threats, Warfare and their countermeasures, termed the ‘Hybridity Blizzard Model’. With a focus on practitioner insight and practicable International Relations theory, this volume is an essential guide to identifying, analysing and countering Hybrid Threats and Warfare.