On the Russian Hybrid War Against Europe
Christmas time provides a great opportunity for a good read, even if the piece was written almost a decade ago!
I came across a brilliant paper by Martin Murphy, “Understanding Russia’s Concept for Total War in Europe”, published in 2016 (full text available here)
The paper examines Russia’s strategy of hybrid war, also known as New Generation Warfare.
As we enter 2025, we continue witnessing full-scale implementation of Russia’s concept of total war in Europe. This includes Russia’s war against Ukraine, the possibility of real military aggression against EU Member States, sabotage acts in Germany and against underwater communication infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, the weaponization of migrants against Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States and persistent hybrid interference into political processes in Romania, Moldova, and Georgia. These and other actions are evidence of a total/hybrid war waged against us.
My Mission Letter tasks me to “contribute to the work to address our vulnerabilities to /…/ hybrid attacks and build up our resilience and capacity to counter them more robustly and effectively”.
Martin Murphy provides valuable advice on how we can “build up our resilience and capacity to counter them (hybrid attacks) more robustly and effectively”. His comments and advice, which were originally addressed to the U.S. administration, remain relevant today for the EU and EU Member States:
“NGW (New Generation Warfare) is designed to exploit the West’s current, limited interpretation of what constitutes conflict and the dangerously unbalanced American and European preference for conflict prevention and conflict resolution over conflict engagement and deterrence./…/
The United States needs to recognize that its own organizational, institutional, and intellectual approach to war is precisely what is enabling Russia to succeed. The U.S. is overly dependent on military responses. The Russian approach is designed specifically to avoid giving the U.S. and other outside powers a reason to respond using military force. The U.S. consequently needs to broaden its response portfolio to include political, diplomatic, economic, financial, cyber, covert, and other means coordinated into a “whole of government” approach that is able to counter rapid moves by an adversary across the whole spectrum of potential conflict. America has the means and resources to counter this hidden, undeclared, and ambiguous form of warfare, but will only be able to deploy them if it is able to become more flexible and less predictable in its responses./…/
Unless the United States recognizes that its enemies are willing to engage in a war that is total but hidden, undeclared and ambiguous, is prepared to show the American people what this truly entails, and coordinates all elements of national power to confront this challenge, U.S. global power will erode, as hostile regional powers arise to take its place.”
Almost a decade after this paper was published, it’s time for us to ask a pressing question – to what extent are we ready to start to “coordinate all elements of national power to confront this challenge”?
