There is no universally accepted definition of hybrid warfare, but they all believe that it does not look like a war, but has a common goal: to cause significant damage to the enemy through cheaper and more effective unconventional means.
Tanks and airplanes were weapons of the First and Second World Wars. Today, conflicts are usually triggered by sanctions—initiated by the Western world, and rogue states respond with asymmetric retaliation.
An example of a hybrid war that may enter textbooks is Alexander Lukashenko’s response to Western pressure to step down after the election he rigged last year.
The Belarusian dictator was dissatisfied with the Western sanctions, but was particularly angry with Lithuania and Poland, because Lithuania and Poland received and provided logistical support to the Belarusian opposition.
Lukashenko’s secret service, known as KGB, Soon invented a plan for Lithuania and Poland. Knowing that these countries are particularly sensitive to illegal immigrants, they organized a plan to flood them with immigrants.
The cost of the plan is almost zero. It may even bring some income to Belarus. The secret service in Minsk advertised that future immigrants no longer need to travel long distances and risk their lives at sea.
Instead, all they have to do is to board a plane to Minsk (no visa required), from where the country’s authorities will help them enter Lithuania or Poland. It’s that easy.
Mixed wars are sometimes difficult to prove, but the situation in Belarus is an exception because of the ample evidence.
Hybrid warfare usually includes cyber attacks (by cyber groups that enjoy state protection, not necessarily state entities), false propaganda activities designed to influence elections (by troll factories, not necessarily state actors), and “kompromat” against politicians. The attack was eliminated, using mercenaries or civil contractors.
Traditional military forces find it difficult to deal with mixed threats because they are trained to deal with conventional attacks. It is difficult for the government and military organizations, including NATO, to agree on how to deal with mixed threats, because “reasonable denial” applies, and it makes no sense to respond to mixed attacks with conventional attacks.
There are also counterarguments that the West also uses hybrid warfare—Moscow accuses Washington of engaging in hybrid warfare against Russia, especially during the Revolution in Independence Square in Ukraine.
The EU has a slightly outdated “Joint framework for dealing with hybrid threats“, which said that the main responsibility lies with member states, and called for intelligence and information sharing.
It also seems to extend the joint defense clause introduced by the Lisbon Treaty to hybrid warfare, which requires the EU to act together when a member state becomes the target of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster.
Now it’s time to see how this works. If the EU does not use all its powers in unity in the context of a mixed attack by Belarus, we can be sure that more attacks will follow, and come from more dangerous participants.
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Pay close attention, watch out, watch out…
- Economic Commissioner Paul Gentiloni participated in a joint meeting of finance ministers and health ministers of the Group of Twenty in Rome.
- The informal meeting of political directors will continue on Friday, focusing on EU foreign policy issues.
The opinions are those of the author.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
