Fears of Trolls and Little Green Men:
Does Hybrid Warfare Work, for Whom, and When?
4 May 2018, 10:00-17:30
Badia, Emeroteca
Keynote Speech:
'Eastern Threats, Western Resilience, and the Cyber Domain'
by
Brandon Valeriano
(Donald Bren Chair of Armed Politics, Marine Corps University)
Organisers: Paul van Hooft (MWP-SPS), Stefano Marcuzzi (MWP- RSC), Akisato Suzuki (MWP-SPS)
Abstract
Hybrid warfare has become a buzzword for scholars, policymakers, and journalists to describe Russian intervention in Ukraine.
The use of online misinformation, cyberattacks on infrastructure, the covert insertion of forces, and so on, seemed highly successful tactics to accomplish Russian goals of destabilization. Given that new prominence, scholars and policy analysts have hotly debated how we can define hybrid warfare to establish the analytical leverage of the concept, or whether hybrid warfare is new after all (Giles 2016; Renz and Smith 2016).
However, little has been discussed so far regarding whether hybrid warfare, understood as the blend of multiple conventional and unconventional methods to fight, is in fact an effective strategy and, if so, for whom and at which level.
Can states accomplish more than short-term gains, such as undermining the legitimacy and cohesion of adversaries, or conversely strengthening domestic support (Chiozza and Goemans 2011)? Or is possible to achieve long-term strategic goals?
In short, how much should we fear online trolls and little green men?
Understanding what goals hybrid warfare can effectively achieve is therefore crucial.This workshop brings expertise in warfare and security studies with multidisciplinary perspectives, including strategic studies, military history, and political science, thereby shedding new light on the hotly topic of hybrid warfare with analytical and empirical rigor.
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