- By Vincent Desportes, Emmanuel Dupuy, and Patrick Boisselier ( Revue Défense Nationale 2023/HS12 Special Edition)
- Translated by Mohamed Sakhri
Patrick Boisselier
The topic of this roundtable focuses on hybrid wars and cross-cutting risks. At first glance, the title may seem somewhat abstract. Allow me to outline its contours, keeping in mind that the experts around this table will surely clarify their viewpoints and may even contradict some of the points I will present.
A war is termed hybrid when it combines conventional warfare operations, asymmetric (or irregular) warfare, cyber warfare, and other tools such as misinformation. In a way, this has always existed, either by combining all four elements or some of them. The conflict in Ukraine is a perfect example, with the Russians leveraging the supposed desires for independence among citizens in occupied territories to conduct a conventional war while imposing propaganda that is completely disconnected from reality, whether concerning the international scene, their own citizens, or the occupied populations they seek to “Russify” by any means of acculturation. Indiscriminate violence (rape, torture, bombardment of civilians, mass killings, deportation), threats of nuclear weapon use, constitute unconventional warfare alongside military maneuvers. It is also known that the cyber war, largely won by the Ukrainians, plays an important role in this context. Given this blend of genres, one might wonder if the concept is too vague to establish a solid definition. We will see, with General Vincent Desportes—who holds a doctorate in history—his approach to the notion of hybrid war.
As for cross-cutting risks, the concept has left me somewhat perplexed given its vastness. To stay within a concrete example—and the war in Ukraine provides ample material, especially in light of the current disarray of the Russian army—one can mention the nuclear risk associated with fighting near Zaporizhzhia and its power plant, as well as the destabilization of the global economy linked to the oil and gas that the Russians produce abundantly, along with the cereal production that particularly affects Africans. Europeans are currently facing inflation, partly due to retaliatory measures against Russia. The reliance on coal to address heating and electricity production issues constitutes consequences related to the conflict that exacerbate the problem of climate change. The former Soviet republics are witnessing conflicts erupt at their borders. Cross-cutting risks can vary greatly in nature. Mr. Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for Foresight and Security in Europe (IPSE), will discuss the need not only to anticipate the hybridity of conflicts and the transversality of threats but also to engage in offensive modes rather than merely reactive ones.
Vincent Desportes Does hybrid warfare exist? To answer this question, one must return to the definition of war. The shortest, classical, and universal definition is as follows: war is the armed confrontation of wills, or the armed dialectic of wills. To clarify, according to Clausewitz’s definition: “An act of violence aimed at coercing the adversary to execute our will.” Furthermore, his famous formulation, “War is the continuation of politics by other means,” allows us to specify the object.
War is essentially political; it constitutes a particular relationship between two political entities. Clausewitz rightly considers that war is both a social object and that any non-political means can become a tool of war.
He therefore postulated, as early as the mid-19th century, “the unlimited extension of the domain of war,” to borrow Pierre Servent’s expression, which he himself takes from Michel Houellebecq, who speaks in his eponymous work of “the extension of the domain of struggle.”
At this point in our reasoning, we note that it is in the nature of war not to have any limits or constraints in the palette of its means. However, Clausewitz observes that there is a limit to the extension of war, this limit being found in the facts regarding the impossibility of resorting to extremes for reasons that are, moreover, foreign to it.
Has the world witnessed pure forms of war? Are there wars that use only weapons intended to kill and destroy, which are the primary and differentiating means of armies? Probably never.
One can cite the so-called Battle of Champions (546 BC) between Argos and Sparta. The two cities agreed that only the three hundred best men from each side would fight to the death, thereby avoiding the engagement of their entire armies. From the start, Argos and Sparta decided to accept the verdict of arms and leave it at that; both cities honored their word, benefiting Sparta.
We can mention the knightly combats of the Middle Ages, such as the “Combat of the Thirty” in 1351 during the Breton Succession War. Jean de Beaumanoir challenged Robert Bemborough to a tournament. Bemborough accepted and proposed thirty fighters from each camp; the chosen location was between Josselin and Ploërmel.
One of the camps emerged victorious. Is the matter settled?
No, of course not. As has been the case ever since, the verdict of arms is not respected by the loser, who questions it, seeking other means to prevail. Why? Because the fundamental principle of war is immutable: to impose my will on the other, I must dominate or circumvent theirs. War therefore naturally employs all the means at its disposal to achieve its goal: to dominate or circumvent.
Political leaders quickly understand that military force cannot do everything: it is merely one of the instruments of war. They rapidly realize that military action must be combined, in time and space, with other actions if it is to produce a political result. Recently, we ourselves believed we had discovered a new concept, that of “overall maneuver,” although conducting war has always required organizing the convergence of effects and lines of operations, with this convergence aimed at undermining the will of the other.
Clausewitz assists us here again with his remarkable trinity. War is not solely the business of the military; it involves three actors: the state and its leaders, the army, and the people. Therefore, it is not just the will of the army that is the target of war but also those of the state, the army, and the people, which gives war a three-dimensional nature. The current Russo-Ukrainian conflict is a perfect illustration of this.
The extension of war is therefore inherent in its very nature. Its eternal rule is simple.
War seizes all spaces conquered by humanity: land, sea, air, nuclear space, outer space, cyberspace… War employs all techniques that humanity masters or even suspects. There is no such thing as hybrid war because hybridity is inherent to the nature of war: there is only war, which will take all forms it can take until the destruction of the world; it will insert itself into all worlds and spaces we discover, because as long as humanity exists, it will always harbor the temptation for war for the three eternal reasons described by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War: power, honor, or wealth.
Our adversaries will be intelligent. They will do everything to ensure our plans fail. They will employ hybrid actions and equipment—from the most rustic to the most modern, from the most civilized to the most barbaric. They will also be hybrid because they will always operate at the heart of a complex web combining conventional battles, insurgencies, crime, and violent religious extremism. They will blend military with food, energy with social issues, economics with lies and propaganda.
So?
Contrary to what we have long believed, we will always operate in situations of increasing uncertainty, with unexpected twists and turns. The “fog of war” will never lift from our theaters of operation. The roles of political leaders and military commanders will become increasingly complex; their fields of action and responsibility will expand; they will need to master an ever-wider range of skills and competencies. Therefore, we must work tirelessly to understand if we wish to rise to the challenges that we will constantly face.
So?
We must be strong and determined. Our civilization, so contested today, is our great strength, but it is also our significant weakness.
We will always fight with one hand tied behind our backs to combat barbarism that, having been temporarily subdued, is again seizing the world.
Emmanuel Dupuy I will begin by echoing the general’s thesis to determine whether this hybridity exists and to what extent our adversaries are as predictable as they seem. In addition to what Alain Bauer has invited us to consider, as he referenced the two officers who wrote “War Without Limits,” I would like to mention another, much older figure: Sun Tzu, with his formulation that seems to set the stage for the debate—”Be subtle to the point of invisibility, be mysterious to the point of inaudibility. Then you can master the destiny of your adversaries.” I would like to begin addressing this statement by highlighting both the hybridity of conflicts and the transversality of threats. Although it may seem dialectically debatable, a number of our adversaries have proclaimed it as a means of waging war. Consequently, we must account for it defensively and possibly even offensively.
Of course, all this takes place within a context: the one in which our forces operate, and in which our diplomatic efforts try to evolve. The return of high-intensity war is a reality we see in Ukraine today, in the South China Sea tomorrow, and possibly between Armenia and Azerbaijan soon. We are facing recurrent conflictuality entrenched in the Sahel, a situation that falls under the threshold of conflict, characterized by two unfortunately persistent dynamics. First, intra-state threats: this was evident recently, when an attack occurred on a humanitarian convoy in Burkina Faso. And then, recently (though this is also an old issue), there are inter-state fragilities disturbing the way states work together. Let us consider the coups in Mali in May 2020 and Burkina Faso in January 2022, which seem to have strained our perspective on responding to insecurities. We are also witnessing the resurgence of “strategies of power politics.” This is how President Emmanuel Macron described them during his speech to ambassadors. Russian strategists mention this while associating it with the return of the sovereign democracies’ power politics. Vladislav Surkov speaks of it, emphasizing that Russia, Turkey, China, and perhaps Iran also have the right to their own power strategies, which in fact hinder our way of conceptualizing international relations.
If the doctrine of hybridity does not exist, it must be remembered that it has been conceptualized by General Valeri Gerasimov, chief of staff of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. He mentioned that, from 2014 onward, with the conquest of Donbas and Crimea, along with the parallel military intervention in Syria starting in 2015, “the role of non-military means in achieving political and strategic goals has increased, and even surpassed the power of armed force.” This does not mean they replace military actions; rather, they complement them. Obviously, one could argue that the conflict in Ukraine ultimately provides us with a sort of condensed example or case study of cross-cutting or hybrid threat. The concept of threats to underwater cables or pipelines, as conceptualized in the Strategic Review as Seabed Warfare, is one example among many. It highlights another aspect: we are quite fragile regarding our critical infrastructure, particularly our gas pipelines. Thus, this instability, unpredictability, and strategic ambiguity go hand in hand with the extension of the field of confrontation or conflict. This is noted in the 2017 Strategic Review; it has been revised in its update in February 2021. Competition is ongoing, as is contestation in various fields—economic, geopolitical, and geocultural. Ultimately, this may lead to more military confrontations.
Beyond these issues, I would like to change the perspective on this topic. If we assume that these hybrid threats temporarily, definitively, or sporadically replace the possibility of direct confrontation on the ground, our military power must confront it or take it into account, even if many doubt it. This leads to a series of questions, which will prompt a series of proposals from me, presented very succinctly.
Firstly, regarding this evolution of conflictuality, history teaches us that we must avoid strategic hesitations at all costs. We should not repeat our previous mistakes in several domains and missed opportunities. We should not be in today’s war while still fighting yesterday’s battles. I’ll take the example of drones: we did not recognize the nature of conflict’s change. It took until December 2017 for Parliament to authorize our Reaper drones to be utilized in the Sahel as part of our military strategy on the ground. We are still far from making the necessary investments for the drones we need; for instance, consider the Eurodrone: we are equipping ourselves very late, especially after many of our partners have already done so, with this medium-altitude, long-endurance drone. Cyber defense is the second example: these are tools that could enable resilience against this transversality or hybridity. Senator Jean-Marie Bockel’s report discussed the possibility of strengthening cyber defense capabilities and proactively offering new alternatives with offensive capacities. This report is from 2012. It wasn’t until January 2019 that the Cyber Defense Strategic Review mentioned the possible use of offensive cyber actions to complement our deterrent capabilities.
Four other elements need to be taken into account in these transformations:
- Externalization has become a reality. Some of our armies resort to outsourcing and privatization for kinetic operations or simply for armed protection in high-risk areas. France mentioned the idea of working in this direction. A report by deputies Jean-Claude Viollet and Christian Ménard dates back to February 2012. In ten years, we have not made significant progress in how to invest in the field of security and defense service companies—Private Military Companies (PMC).
- Maritimization. The Indo-Pacific strategy has been a reality since November 2019 and was elevated in a European aspect starting February 2022. This is an absolute priority since 93% of our Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) depend on securing our lands and protecting our strategic and vital interests in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
- Space. Of course, there is a dual aspect regarding the militarization of space and the privatization of space (New Space or “Uberization” of space). France is somewhat behind in these areas.
- Informational warfare. This is a critical point when facing hybridity or the erosion of our defense investment since competition also occurs in the fields of influence and perception. We must defend ourselves but also potentially possess our own narrative. This would afford us offensive capabilities to attack those who are considering or, unfortunately, executing detrimental actions. I am pleased that there is coordination between the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) and the anti-infox unit, under Ambassador Anne-Sophie Avé. The Ministry of Armed Forces has a similar agency led by General Pascal Ianni. It is better to act now, but it would have been beneficial to do so earlier.
Does our system of cooperation, collective security, and our belonging to a collective defense and security cooperation framework provide us with minimal guarantees for safeguarding our autonomy and sovereignty, or at least for confronting the mentioned threats? I paraphrase what the general said this morning: “It is about hindering and preventing our adversaries from attacking us,” as General Thierry Burkhard noted in his strategic concept in October 2021. We have tools: NATO’s Article 5, Article 222 of the Lisbon Treaty, and Article 42 paragraph 7, which offers cooperation if an environmental or human-originating catastrophe undermines the security of a country. Others have Article 4 of the Organization of Collective Security Treaty (CSTO), which allows member countries to seek protection from others. This article has not been invoked when two countries recently fought each other or when Armenia requested that this Article 4 be invoked. Is this dogma of collective security articles truly considered, especially knowing that Article 5 has only been invoked to combat the Taliban or justify a unitary intervention in Afghanistan?
The various strategic projections we are engaged in—the Strategic Update of February 2021, the European Union’s Strategic Compass voted in March 2022 at the European Council, or simply NATO’s strategic concept for 2030 voted in Madrid—should account for a defensive posture regarding these threats. Do they lead us into a proactive or offensive logic? Perhaps we should, by symmetry, devise our own strategy for hybridity and influence, to deter our adversaries from using these ambiguous means in the literal sense, which are corollaries of hybrid strategies.
So what should we do?
Invest in a more inclusive narrative: let’s take our external operations as an example. We need to “de-Barkhanize” our intervention in the Sahel to reclaim an initiative we have lost in several countries, especially those that no longer want our military intervention. We must mount a counter-offensive against the informational warfare that seeks to distort and challenge the legitimacy, effectiveness, and efficiency of military intervention.
Strengthen our normative power: we have tools that we do not utilize sufficiently, especially given the conclusion of the 77th United Nations General Assembly. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948, the UN Charter, obviously, the commitment to revise Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty—a sticking point on which France, as a nuclear power, should have taken the initiative if it believes disarmament is both useful and logical—the strengthening of international justice through the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, or proactively creating a criminal tribunal, which Emmanuel Macron subtly mentioned in his UN General Assembly speech. We should enhance attempts to utilize the law to overturn the ways lawfare is used against us, emphasizing the strength, validity, legitimacy, and historicity of our norms, continental law over community law as a guarantee of political and societal cohesion, and how to conduct business together through the tool of international business law.
Resort to sanctions only when absolutely necessary, so that we do not fall into the trap of the notion that we sanction when it suits us but refrain from doing so when our vital interests are at stake. This is certainly what some emerging countries perceive, especially in Africa, which do not comprehend the proactive stance we take regarding Ukraine and question a supposed double standard.
Reform multilateralism, which requires expanding the UN Security Council. This is an old chestnut, but it is important to keep in mind when multilateralism is failing to maintain perfect cohesion, as illustrated by the 22nd summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand. I also think of the continental free trade logics among Canada, the United States, or Mexico, or even the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership encompassing all South and Southeast Asian countries. This creates financial behemoths, where there is political and social cohesion that we do not have in Europe. We have not made progress on a Euro-African partnership as a continental free trade area emerges, and while we have the European Economic Area.
Finally, we must not exclusively shift into the asymmetry of threats—wars against terrorism, maritime piracy, drug trafficking. We must continue counter-insurgency efforts while understanding that they coincide with the return of war. The transition from the 2013 model of “peace, crisis, and war” to the 2017-2021 model of “competition, contestation, and confrontation” should not make us forget that our diplomatic partners today may become our systemic adversaries tomorrow—perhaps they already are. Moreover, these diplomatic partners are also economic competitors.
Silence does not equal nonexistence: General Éric Bucquet noted that our adversaries act in silence, subtly, below the radar. We may need to improve our sensitivity to weak signals so we are not just responding but rather anticipating.
Source
[1] ervent Pierre, L’extension du domaine de la guerre. Après les attentats, comment affronter l’avenir, Robert Laffont, 2016, 300 pages.[2] iang Qiao et Xiangsui Wang, La guerre hors limites, Payot Rivages, 1999 (rééd. 2003 et 2006), 322 pages.
[3] un Tzu, L’art de la guerre.
[4] evue stratégique de Défense et de Sécurité nationale, 2017, 111 pages (https://medias.vie-publique.fr/).
[5] ctualisation stratégique, février 2021, 56 pages (www.defense.gouv.fr/).
[6] a Russie, la Biélorussie, l’Arménie, le Kazakhstan, le Kirghizistan et le Tadjikistan.
