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The geopolitical, military, and economic development of the People's Republic of China (PRC) represents a challenge to the world order that international actors will have to manage in the coming years. The destructuring approach of the current international system, based on US pre-eminence, is attacked simultaneously in three fields. It is a method that does not respect the rules of strategic logic and is capable of leading to the collapse of the Chinese regime due to the strong international friction it will create2. The strategic realignment of the United Kingdom, USA, Japan, and Australia that has been in place since 2021 to contain China's international activism is a signal of a highly protective containment strategy currently deployed by the western allies led by Washington, but it is especially proof that Chinese policies are creating counterreactions.

Hybrid warfare is neither a novel idea nor a new phenomenon. It has been evolving for ages, yet its manifestation in the contemporary era has intensified. Taking advantage of politico-ethnic fault lines, socio-religious vulnerabilities, and identity conflicts, hybrid warfare advocates using all means available including regular or irregular and conventional or unconventional ways of warfare to subdue the will of an adversary. An externally motivated and supported threat requires essential measures in the foreign policy domain to thwart and foil it outside the borders. Therefore, this paper deals with the conceptual aspects of hybrid warfare and highlights the contours of the hybrid threat currently confronting Pakistan. It navigates through the challenges for foreign policy formulation and implementation in a hybrid warfare environment and identifies loopholes and grey areas while recommending tangible measures.

Bibliography Entry
Naz, Imtiaz Hussain. 2021. "Foreign Policy in Hybrid Warfare Environment – Way Forward for Pakistan." Margalla Papers 25 (1): 1-11.

AbstractThis article presents the study of ambiguity as the essence of hybrid warfare to reconcile it with the international political context. It addresses the gaps in the literature in an effort to elucidate the essence of hybrid warfare not as a separate concept, but rather as the symptom of a changing political environment. The analysis of the literature is reinforced by two case studies: the war in eastern Ukraine of 2014 and the South China Sea dispute. Both these case studies express ambiguity in the combination of kinetic and non-kinetic means used to achieve political objectives. The article rests on three pillars that constitute the architecture of the central argument. The first pillar will address the gap in the current literature on hybrid warfare and how the current debate is too concerned with conflict dynamics rather than its political nature. The second pillar will delineate the essence, characteristics, and value of ambiguity in hybrid warfare. The third pillar will address the practice of hybrid warfare as the conduct of war by great powers.

The nature of conflict has changed dramatically over the last few decades. Hybrid warfare — also known as grey zone conflict or low-intensity conflict — is a reality and political and military leaders must be ready to confront and deter it. Hybrid warfare is the effort to achieve strategic objectives without using significant force. There is no common definition of the term and therefore it is correspondingly ambiguous. It is an amorphous definition for an amorphous strategy. While it is a blend of traditional and irregular tactics, hybrid warfare makes overt and covert use of a wide range of tools: military and civilian, conventional and unconventional. However, the term is so broad that it includes a set of tactics, techniques, technologies and methods. Hybrid warfare is an umbrella concept that can include, inter alia, information and disinformation operations, deception, troop movements, cyberattacks, sabotage and other non-military tactics or a combination of all these means. It can also include actual force. Hybrid warfare can be considered a form of comprehensive warfare, a strategy, not merely a set of tactics and techniques. This array of military activities may fall under the broad definition of hybrid warfare, that is not new, but is boosted by technological advance. Furthermore, hybrid warfare is low risk, low cost and provides an adversary the opportunity to cloud, throwing doubt on who is responsible for these "gray zone" actions. Hybrid warfare operations, for which it is difficult to attribute responsibility and which are not specifically regulated by international law, fall below the threshold of armed conflict and are convenient to be used to destabilize a government or to try to legitimize (unlawful) actions. Covert operations and support to proxies, such as independentists and secessionists, are facilitated by the nature of hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare blurs the lines between peace and war and is therefore questioned whether it should be considered below the threshold of armed conflict. ...

There are many tools to achieve the goals of a hybrid war. And to say that they are well known and studied is false.One of them is the newly formed armed forces. The article deals with the emergence and development of illegal armed groups as one of the main tools for achieving the goal of hybrid warfare in Ukraine.And especially the implementation of integrated and related preparatory and executive activities of the country – aggressor in the development of the internal military-political situation in Ukraine and the external environment. To continue the fight against illegal armed groups have been made some recommendations. Key words: an armed conflict; illegal armed groups; a hybrid warfare; a guerrilla warfare; the tactics; the Armed forces of Ukraine.

Hybrid warfare (HW) is one of the most debated concepts in contemporary military science. While most scholars agree that HW is conducted in the gray-zone between war and peace, they define the phenomenon differently. This disagreement has resulted in a conceptual gray-zone. The lack of theoretical clarity is exacerbated by the fact that authors have coined additional security and defense concepts that are based on the idea of hybridity, such as hybrid peace and hybrid influence. This article examines the different views on HW and aims to offer a more precise framework for its analysis. To fulfill its objective, it addresses five questions: What makes HW "hybrid"? Which acts of aggression could not be categorized as HW? Is HW "warfare"? Is HW a new phenomenon? Why is HW so contested? The author argues that, due to conflicting opinions and various concepts linked to HW, scholars and policymakers must always clearly define the concept when using it. Without proper definition, the concept of HW can be misunderstood and has limited academic value. Thus, this article also starts a mapping exercise of the concepts in security and defense based on the idea of hybridity. Such mapping is almost non-existent at the moment.

The goal of the article is to study the essence of hybrid warfare within the sociological aspect. The paper focuses on the essence of "soft power" as the basis of a certain social technology that comprises the system of means and methods of purposeful action on social processes, the life of people under a hybrid war. The essence of organisational weapons is highlighted in the sociological context. It is noted that organisational weapons are based on special technologies of organisational management reflexion, which are aimed at representatives of social groups and institutions who are directly or indirectly involved in the long-term and short-term regulation of the behaviour of the population. The mechanism of the organizational weapons impact on the value and semantic models of social reality perception is determined.

Hybrid warfare is perhaps the most frequently used concept in seeking to explain and define Russia's military actions in Ukraine. This article thoroughly analyses the development of the theory of hybrid warfare and circumstances of its formation, draws a line between hybrid warfare and hybrid threats, and discusses the perception of hybrid warfare in the armies of Western states and Russia. Actions of the Russian army in Crimea are analysed on the grounds of the provisions of the theory of hybrid warfare formulated by Frank Hoffman through revealing the impact on a military operation not only of the changing warfare tendencies but also of political, cultural, demographic and military conditions that existed on the Crimean peninsula. The article ends with an assessment of the capability of the hybrid warfare theory, as an analytical category, to explain Russia's military actions in Crimea.