The term “hybrid warfare” slipped into the global security lexicon in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It describes a new style of conflict that blends conventional military operations with unconventional tools aimed at destabilizing an adversary. It’s not just boots on the ground or bombs from the sky. Hybrid warfare also means cyberattacks, economic sabotage, disinformation blitzes, propaganda campaigns, and fueling separatist or anti-government movements.
Today, “hybrid war,” along with spinoffs like “hybrid threats” and “hybrid attacks,” has become the catchall in political rhetoric, think tank reports, and the press. The label now covers nearly every hostile act that stops short of open warfare. Critics, though, argue the definition is so elastic it’s often wielded as a propaganda tool rather than a clear analytical concept.
The Birth of a Concept
One of the first modern uses of the term came from U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Mattis. In September 2005, he delivered a presentation at a defense forum, and shortly after co-authored a paper with Lt. Col. Frank Hoffman titled Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars. Hoffman later fleshed out the theory in a series of essays and books, zeroing in on lessons from the 2006 Lebanon War.
That conflict was a wake-up call. Hezbollah mixed high-tech firepower—anti-ship and cruise missiles—with classic guerrilla tactics and a full-throttle media operation targeting Israel. Hoffman argued that America’s future adversaries would do the same: deploy conventional forces and weaponry alongside terrorism, cyberwarfare, ties to organized crime, and relentless propaganda. The goal? Inflict maximum damage, both physical and psychological.
Hoffman’s core definition of hybrid war was blunt: the simultaneous use of regular arms, irregular tactics, terrorism—including indiscriminate violence—and criminal practices. Different units could handle different tasks, or the same unit could do it all. But the critical element was coordination—stacking these tools together to create a force multiplier on the battlefield.
NATO and Europe Catch On
By the early 2010s, NATO began weaving the hybrid warfare concept into its strategic doctrine. The 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia turned that interest into urgency. For the first time, “hybrid threats” appeared in a NATO summit declaration in Wales. Initially, the focus was on non-state actors like the Taliban or Hezbollah. After Crimea, the spotlight shifted to state actors—Russia, Iran, China, North Korea.
By 2016, NATO went a step further. At its Warsaw summit, the alliance recognized that Article 5—the mutual defense clause—could be triggered by a hybrid attack. The same year, NATO and the EU signed on to coordinate their responses. A year later, NATO stood up a dedicated Hybrid Threats Division, while the EU rolled out its Framework on Countering Hybrid Threats. In 2018, the European Commission unveiled a joint communication on strengthening resilience against hybrid attacks, and Helsinki opened the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats—a one-of-a-kind hub where NATO and EU experts sit under the same roof.
National Playbooks
The U.S. military went all in. Hybrid warfare is now baked into American doctrine, training manuals, and the thinking of every branch of the armed forces. Finland and Norway also moved quickly, embedding hybrid defense in their national security frameworks. Denmark went so far as to create a specialized hybrid threats unit within its armed forces in 2018.
From Theory to Battlefield Reality
In less than twenty years, what began as a Marine general’s thought experiment has become a cornerstone of global defense strategy. Hybrid war is no longer a metaphor—it’s the way the game is played. Governments from Washington to Brussels to Helsinki are bracing for it, because ignoring hybrid warfare isn’t just shortsighted. It’s a guaranteed way to lose a war that’s already being fought, whether you’ve noticed it or not.
Alternative Theories and the Roots of Hybrid Warfare
By the late 1990s, Chinese military thinkers were already pushing the boundaries of what “war” could mean. Two senior PLA Air Force colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published a provocative vision under the banner of Unrestricted Warfare. Their idea was simple but radical: the future battlefield wasn’t just soldiers, missiles, and tanks—it was everything. Cyberattacks, malware targeting critical infrastructure, currency manipulation, urban terrorism, and disinformation campaigns all counted as tools of war.
Out of this thinking came another influential doctrine in the early 2000s: the “Three Warfares” concept—psychological, informational, and legal. The last was especially striking. It treated national and international law not as constraints, but as weapons to achieve political and military objectives, particularly over land and maritime boundaries. By 2013, in the PLA’s Science of Military Strategy, the theory evolved further with the notion of “civil-military fusion”—folding diplomacy, economics, and science into China’s broader deterrence toolkit.
Meanwhile, in the West during the 1990s, military theorists debated “fourth-generation warfare,” “compound warfare,” and other hybrid-style frameworks that tried to capture the messy blend of regular and irregular conflict. Frank Hoffman would later synthesize many of these strands into his landmark 2007 concept of hybrid warfare. A cousin to these theories is the now widely used term “gray zone”—a shorthand for competition that falls short of open conflict but relies heavily on political, economic, and informational pressure.
The Russian Playbook: Nonlinear War
In February 2013, Russian General Valery Gerasimov laid out his vision in Military-Industrial Courier. His concept of “nonlinear war” proposed that strategic goals could be met not through tanks rolling across borders, but through shaping public opinion, propping up opposition movements, and orchestrating “color revolutions.” Western analysts largely ignored it—until Crimea. By 2014, with Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula and the war in eastern Ukraine, the so-called “Gerasimov Doctrine” became a buzzword in NATO capitals.
In Russian discourse, “hybrid war” has often been boiled down to nonmilitary methods of destabilization—targeting the legitimacy of governments and the foundations of political systems. At the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, the assessment is stark: the goal of such tactics is to erode trust in democratic institutions, deepen polarization, and weaken the ability of policymakers to make decisions.
Why Hybrid Wars Happen
At the heart of hybrid war lies asymmetry. A weaker actor—state or nonstate—that cannot win on a conventional battlefield turns to hybrid methods because they’re cheap, flexible, and effective. No advanced standing army required, yet the damage—political, economic, and psychological—can be profound.
Hybrid warfare also thrives on plausible deniability. Aggressors can dodge accountability, sidestep sanctions, and avoid outright political isolation by cloaking their actions in ambiguity. “Prove it,” becomes their shield. In the nuclear age, this ambiguity is priceless: states can ratchet up or dial back pressure without crossing the threshold of direct conflict that could spiral into catastrophe.
For the target, though, it’s a nightmare. Hybrid attacks are murky, layered, and often invisible until it’s too late. Governments struggle to respond without restricting rights, tightening police controls, or clamping down on the media—moves that can backfire by fueling unrest. In this sense, hybrid war doesn’t just destabilize from the outside; it eats away from within, turning societies into permanent battlegrounds.
Case Studies in Hybrid Conflict
The post-2014 Ukraine crisis cemented the debate. Western governments and Kyiv accused Moscow of deploying the full hybrid arsenal: financing and arming separatist enclaves in Donbas, running disinformation offensives, and deploying covert operatives—all while denying everything. With the invasion of 2022, the accusations only grew louder, even as Russia flipped the narrative and accused the West of waging a hybrid war against it.
In June 2024, the EU adopted a new sanctions regime linking measures directly to Russian hybrid operations—sabotage, disinformation, cyberattacks, covert coercion, and even the weaponization of migration. By December, Brussels had slapped personal sanctions on Russian citizens accused of orchestrating these campaigns. Moscow, for its part, doubled down on denials. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeatedly branded the confrontation with the West as a “hybrid war” turned against Russia itself.
China’s strategy in the South and East China Seas is another textbook example. Where Beijing faces maritime disputes with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei, it deploys “gray zone” tactics. The most visible tool: its maritime militia, the so-called “little blue men” drawn from the fishing fleet. They harass foreign vessels, shadow construction projects on artificial islands, and conduct reconnaissance—all while operating in the gray zone between civilian and military. The payoff is obvious: expanding Chinese control over sea lanes and strategic chokepoints.
Iran, too, has perfected its brand of hybrid warfare. Its doctrine of “forward defense” relies on proxy forces—Hezbollah and other Shiite militias—that control territory, run businesses, and fight wars across the Middle East. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force arms, trains, and coordinates these groups, while also carrying out sabotage and intelligence missions abroad. This sprawling “axis of resistance” is Tehran’s insurance policy, allowing it to strike adversaries far from its own borders while keeping its fingerprints just blurred enough to avoid full-scale retaliation.
The Methods of Hybrid Warfare
The toolkit of hybrid operations is as sprawling as it is unsettling. Among the main weapons in this arsenal are:
- cyberattacks and hacking campaigns
- terrorism and sabotage
- disinformation and online manipulation
- economic disruption and infrastructure strikes
- false-flag operations
- covert use of special forces and intelligence networks
- support for proxies, rebels, separatists, and opposition groups
- diplomatic pressure and sanctions
- meddling in elections, including funding parties and NGOs
None of these tactics are especially new on their own. What makes hybrid warfare dangerous is how they’re layered, coordinated, and combined—leaving the target disoriented and often unsure how to respond.
Why the Concept Gets Pushback
For all its popularity, “hybrid warfare” still lacks a single, universally accepted definition. Different research centers frame it through their own lenses. Small Wars Journal, for instance, has catalogued at least five separate definitions, each emphasizing different aspects—from the role of non-state actors to the information dimension.
Still, the concept resonates because it fits today’s reality: low-intensity wars, cross-border armed movements, weaponized digital technologies, and ever more intricate blends of conventional and unconventional pressure.
The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that by 2024 there were roughly 120 armed conflicts around the globe involving over 60 states and more than 120 non-state groups. Many African wars since the 1960s have had a foreign footprint. One of the most glaring recent examples is the crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Since late 2021, the M23 movement has ramped up its campaign, seizing large swaths of North and South Kivu by early 2025. The UN and Western governments accused Rwanda of arming the rebels and even deploying regular troops to back them.
Hybrid war, in other words, is no longer an abstract theory. It’s a defining feature of 21st-century conflict.
No Single Definition
Even official strategy papers can’t agree. The European Commission defines “hybrid threats” as actions by state or non-state actors that exploit vulnerabilities in the EU through a mix of political, military, economic, and technological means—without formally declaring war.
The Swiss armed forces describe hybrid warfare as “a combination of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and paramilitary instruments to achieve strategic goals,” stressing its irregular and covert nature.
The U.S. Army’s training circular TC 7-100 calls hybrid threats “a dynamic combination of regular and irregular forces, along with criminal elements, working together for mutual benefit.” That language found its way almost verbatim into the Army’s capstone doctrine (ADP 3-0). TRADOC, the Army’s training command, goes further, adding political, social, and non-kinetic instruments to the mix.
Sweden often sidesteps the term altogether, preferring the “gray zone problem” (gråzonsproblematik) within its concept of “total defense,” which demands preparing for any kind of threat, military or not.
A Concept Under Fire
The elastic nature of the term invites criticism. Analysts argue that stretching “hybrid threats” too far makes it a catchall for almost any hostile act. In 2021, the European Parliament warned that vague definitions blur institutional responsibilities and hobble efforts to craft tailored countermeasures.
Others—especially military historians—urge a narrower reading. To them, hybrid war is specifically about the coordinated use of regular and irregular forces under a single strategy. Historically, movements like the Viet Minh, the Viet Cong, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the Tamil Tigers all fought this way. More recently, so did ISIS between 2014 and 2017, combining conventional arms with guerrilla tactics, terror campaigns, and sophisticated media operations.
In short, whether stretched wide or drawn tight, the debate over hybrid warfare reflects a central truth: war in the 21st century doesn’t come in neat categories. It’s messy, layered, and designed to keep the defender off balance.
Historical Parallels and Academic Disputes
Some military historians argue that hybrid warfare isn’t a new invention of the 21st century but simply a fresh label for tactics as old as war itself. Williamson Murray and Peter Mansoor, for example, point to the Peloponnesian War (431–405 BC) as an early case. When Athens seized the island of Pylos near Messenia, it turned the outpost into a launchpad for rebellion. Athenian allies from Naupactus, fluent in the local dialect, spread propaganda and carried out sabotage, encouraging helots to defect en masse. Suddenly, Sparta was forced to divert major forces to guard against revolt, a pressure point that eventually pushed it to the negotiating table.
Frank Hoffman, who coined the modern term “hybrid war,” often drew on history to ground his theory. He cited campaigns from the American Revolution, Napoleon’s battles in Spain, T.E. Lawrence’s operations during the Arab Revolt, Ireland’s insurgency of 1919–1920, and the Vietnam War. Even World War II—often considered the most conventional of conflicts—was saturated with hybrid elements: partisan movements in the Soviet Union, China, and France that undermined Axis supply lines, coupled with sophisticated propaganda efforts that ran in parallel with battlefield operations.
The Cold War made hybridity almost standard. North Vietnam combined conventional forces with Viet Cong guerrillas, sabotage, and terror. The U.S., in turn, leaned heavily on CIA covert ops, training and arming anti-communist groups like the Hmong in Laos to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail. It was a chess match of proxies, sabotage, and irregular pressure designed to tilt the balance without triggering a superpower showdown.
Where the Experts Still Clash
Inside academia, debates rage over whether hybrid war plays out mainly on the battlefield or at the grand strategic level. Some scholars see hybridity as tactical—the blend of conventional and unconventional forces in combat. Others stress its strategic dimension: campaigns designed to corrode state legitimacy and drain public morale.
Canadian researcher Jean-Christophe Boucher highlights the defining feature of hybrid war as its reliance on civilians, noncombatants, and non-state actors. U.S. counterinsurgency expert Col. John McCuen takes it further, arguing that the targets of hybrid war aren’t just enemy armies but populations—of the adversary, of the aggressor, and of the international community. In his view, hybrid conflict operates simultaneously across military, social, and informational domains.
The New Face of Conflict
Hybrid war isn’t just jargon in think tank white papers. It’s the reality of modern geopolitics. The battle lines no longer run only through trenches and city streets—they cut across fiber-optic cables, bank accounts, media ecosystems, smartphones, and the fragile trust between citizens and their governments.
Unlike the wars of the past, hybrid wars have no clear beginning or end. They come without declarations, without peace treaties, without victory parades. They sprawl across time, blending military force with economics, culture, and information. In hybrid war, anything can be a weapon: a viral video, a terrorist attack, a cyber breach, sanctions, or a surge of migrants across a border. And because responsibility can always be denied, defeat often happens long before the first shot is fired.
History shows that asymmetric and combined methods have always shadowed humanity—from helot uprisings in Sparta to the guerrilla wars of the 20th century. But only in the 21st century have these methods become systemic and global. Hybrid conflict is no longer the exception—it’s the rule. No state, strong or weak, is immune. In fact, the more open and democratic a society is, the more vulnerable it becomes to manipulation, disinformation, and political subversion.
The Challenge Ahead
Hybrid war turns the planet into a permanent battlefield, where peace and conflict bleed into each other, where the home front is the front line, and where every citizen is both a target and a potential tool of attack. Victory won’t belong to the side with the most tanks or missiles. It will go to those who can protect their values, fortify social resilience, and build immunity to chaos and lies.
In the past, wars ended with signatures on peace treaties. In the hybrid age, peace is little more than an intermission between attacks. The real question is this: are we willing to admit that the war is already underway, even if we can’t see it? Because those who refuse to recognize it are destined to lose.