Hybrid Warfare and the Transformation of Modern Conflict: Challenges for International Security Frameworks

Abstract

The concept of hybrid warfare has become an element of a modern conflict and has radically transformed the nature of international security. Hybrid warfare in integrating conventional military force with irregular strategies, cyber operations, disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, and use of non-state actors strategically causes the blurring of the traditional differentiation between war and peace, state and non-state violence, and internal and external security. In this article, the author critically analyzes how emergence of hybrid warfare is confronting the current international security systems, which were mostly made to address blatant, state-focused, and kinetically fueled conflicts in the international system. The research is based on a qualitative and doctrinal analytical method, where the conceptual development of hybrid warfare is examined and its implications to international law, collective security mechanisms, and the deterrence theory are assessed. Using the chosen case examples of modernity, the article proves that ambiguity, deniability, and sub-threshold operations severely limit the performance of the existing legal and institutional measures. The results indicate that the current international security practices are plagued with structural and normative weaknesses to respond to hybrid threats, especially in the aspect of attribution, escalation control, and responsibility. The article suggests that, the international security systems be re-assessed through application of adaptive legal norms, institutional reorientation and integrated security policies, which can be used to address the multidimensional character of the new conflict. Conducting the problem of hybrid warfare within the framework of a broader discourse on the study of security, the study will assist in developing the dynamics of changing nature of conflicts and give insights which have policy implications in improving global and regional security system.