Added on Perspectives

Hybrid Warfare is Less Than Warfare: A Dangerous Illusion

“Hybrid warfare”, “information warfare,” “cyber war” are popular buzzwords or catch-all phrases frequently used in the international discourse, especially in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022 and continues to this day. However, despite the hype, neither scholars nor practitioners have agreed on a consensus definition of the hybrid warfare phenomenon, in particular, that would add substance to the debate over the informational and public opinion dimensions of contemporary conflicts, diplomacy, and security issues.

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A Wagner Group Delivery to Hezbollah: Russia and Iran Reaffirm Mutual Objectives via Proxy Groups

As the Israel-Hamas War continues, questions loom as to whether Hezbollah, a strong ally of Hamas and Iran, will enter the fight against Israel. Both regional and international actors remain concerned of escalation as assistance provided by countries like Iran and Russia arrives in the Levant. On 3 November 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to U.S. intelligence, Russia’s Wagner Group is planning to provide the Pantsir-S1 system to Hezbollah. This comes as Hezbollah’s leading figure, Syed Hassan Nasrallah, gave a public speech the same day, praising the organization’s fallen fighters, asserting support for Palestinian efforts in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, and blaming the United States for the war.

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UPDATED DEADLINE: Call for Papers: Irregular Warfare Lessons Learned Since 9/11

Submission deadline extended to August 1, 2024. The Department of Defense’s Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) and the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s (FPRI) Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare are seeking papers to be presented at a two-day conference on September 17 and 18, 2024 to discuss irregular warfare lessons learned since 9/11 at the U.S. Naval Institute […]

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Perspectives Apart: Unveiling the Indo-Pacific Understanding of Irregular Warfare

The turn toward strategic competition, due to the increase in conflict outside the bounds of conventional war, has also pivoted security researchers and practitioners toward the idea of irregular warfare (IW). Though IW has been practiced and written on for centuries, the term is not conceptualized in similar fashion across the world—or even across the organizations constituting the U.S. government. Though a globally uniform idea of IW is not likely, and perhaps not even desirable, due to regional and historical differences in conflict experience, it is still critical for the Department of Defense (DoD) to understand how allies and partners conceptualize IW in order to engage them effectively. The Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) has worked to fill this gap with a series of regionally focused studies and follow-on workshops on the conceptualization of IW. The first study in the series focused on the European conceptualization of IW through engaging with PME institutions in the region. The second study followed the same methodology but turned to the Indo-Pacific region. The results of the second study show that, like Europe, countries in the Indo-Pacific conceptualize IW differently, requiring a nuanced understanding of these regional conceptualizations to engage partners and allies in the region effectively.

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