![]() ![]() Hybrid attacks are generally marked by a lot of vagueness. The second defining characteristic of hybrid warfare relates to ambiguity and attribution. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting, as the ancient military strategist, Sun Tzu, suggested. This remains closely linked to the philosophy of war as well. A key question here is: can there be a war without any direct combat or physical confrontation taking place? With hybrid warfare permeating inter-state conflicts, it is possible to answer this in the affirmative. The costs and risks are markedly less, but the damage is real. It is much more feasible to, let’s say, sponsor and fan disinformation in collaboration with non-state actors than it is to roll tanks into another country’s territory or scramble fighter jets into its airspace. Hybrid warfare below the threshold of war or direct overt violence pays dividends despite being easier, cheaper, and less risky than kinetic operations. War becomes elusive as it becomes difficult to operationalise it. This means that it is hard to identify or discern the war threshold. First, the line between war and peace time is rendered obscure. Furthermore, there are two distinct characteristics of hybrid warfare. The objective of conflating kinetic tools and non-kinetic tactics is to inflict damage on a belligerent state in an optimal manner. These instruments or tools are blended in a synchronised manner to exploit the vulnerabilities of an antagonist and achieve synergistic effects. To put it simply, hybrid warfare entails an interplay or fusion of conventional as well as unconventional instruments of power and tools of subversion. Nevertheless, the concept furnishes us with key insights into contemporary and future security and defence challenges. It has been subjected to a lot of criticism for lacking conceptual clarity, being merely a catch-all phrase or a buzzword, and not brining anything distinctly new to policy debates. Hybrid warfare remains a contested concept and there is no universally agreed definition of it. Second, Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and achieved its objectives by virtue of conflating “deniable” special forces, local armed actors, economic clout, disinformation, and exploitation of socio-political polarisation in Ukraine. First, in 2005, two US military officials wrote about the “ rise of hybrid wars” and emphasised the combination of conventional and unconventional strategies, methods, and tactics in contemporary warfare as well as the psychological or information-related aspects of modern conflicts. In April, the Confederacy surrendered and the war was over.Before we delve into the concept, it is important to highlight that hybrid warfare in the contemporary era became increasingly popular in policy debates following two important developments. (The 10,000 Confederates who were supposed to be guarding it had already fled.) Sherman presented the city of Savannah and its 25,000 bales of cotton to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift.Early in 1865, Sherman and his men left Savannah and pillaged and burned their way through South Carolina to Charleston. The city was undefended when they got there. ![]() Sherman’s troops arrived in Savannah on December 21, 1864, about three weeks after they left Atlanta. ![]() (These groups of foraging soldiers were nicknamed “bummers,” and they burned whatever they could not carry.) The marauding Yankees needed the supplies, but they also wanted to teach Georgians a lesson: “it isn’t so sweet to secede,” one soldier wrote in a letter home, “as thought it would be.” They raided farms and plantations, stealing and slaughtering cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep and hogs and taking as much other food–especially bread and potatoes–as they could carry. The Union soldiers were just as unsparing. Instead, they fled South ahead of Sherman’s troops, wreaking their own havoc as they went: They wrecked bridges, chopped down trees and burned barns filled with provisions before the Union army could reach them. On November 22, 3,500 Confederate cavalry started a skirmish with the Union soldiers at Griswoldville, but that ended so badly–650 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded, compared to 62 Yankee casualties–that Southern troops initiated no more battles. To that end, Sherman’s troops marched south toward Savannah in two wings, about 30 miles apart. ![]()
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