Sofia Romansky, Alisa Hoenig, Rick Meessen and Kimberley Kruijver
Since 2020, a number of events have upset the norms guiding amiable interstate relations. COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and growing tensions between China and the U.S mark a deterioration of the global security environment. In this context, international actors deploy an assortment of coercive measures to leverage power and influence behaviour while evading detection.
One popular way of describing this phenomenon is through the term hybrid threat. A hybrid threat can be defined as the coordinated and synchronised use of military and/or non-military instruments by state and non-state actors which deliberately harm or undermine the foundations of a state or society. Importantly, hybrid activity remains difficult to attribute and below the threshold of conventional warfare. The difficulty of attribution associated with hybrid threats distinguishes them from conventional military activity and statecraft. Beyond the oft cited examples of foreign election interference and meddling in the information domain, strategic actors are adapting the tactics used to harm their adversaries. The practice of using hard and soft power simultaneously has been around for centuries. Yet, modern emerging technologies and globalisation have created new instruments for hybrid threats, intensified vulnerabilities in different domains, and increased the scale, speed, and reach of hybrid attacks.
No comments:
Post a Comment