What is Hybrid War?
The confusing idea of the Hybrid War is essential to understand how and why it affects current trends of violent radicalisation.
Hybrid War: Definition
Hybrid warfare suggests weaponising all available means: social, cultural, religious, racial, ideological, political, economic, technological, and military in an all-out assault against a target country.
Hybrid warfare aims to combine every exploitable means to create a hybrid of offensive capabilities, ranging from conventional warfare to irregular (asymmetric) warfare with added capabilities of influence such as social and political manipulation, political subversion, disinformation, population displacement, migration, alliance disunity, racial/religious tension, social distress, lawfare, organised crime, deception, and sabotage.
Hybrid warfare uses organised multi-channel offensive, targeting socio-cultural, political, economic, and military domains ‘wherein adversaries will use all capabilities at their disposal’.
Steven C. Williamson, From Forth Generation Warfare to Hybrid War (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2009), i.