The ambiguity of hybrid warfare : A qualitative content analysis of the United Kingdom's political–military discourse on Russia's hostile activities

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Authors

JANIČATOVÁ Silvie MLEJNKOVÁ Petra

Year of publication 2021
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Contemporary Security Policy
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13523260.2021.1885921
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2021.1885921
Keywords Hybrid warfare; hybrid threats; Russian Federation; United Kingdom; defense policy; discourse analysis
Attached files
Description Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, hybrid warfare has become a widely used yet ambiguous term to describe Russia's hostile activities. In academic publications and policy documents, there have been a plethora of different definitions and concepts to make sense of hybrid warfare. This article takes a bottom-up approach and analyzes the discourse of political and military representatives in the United Kingdom to explore how they understand hybrid warfare by Russia and what the implications are for defense policy. Using qualitative content analysis with quantitative aspects, the results show not only a range of different terms used to describe Russia's hostile activities, but also that the discussed topics do not reflect one particular definition of hybrid warfare. The analysis further reveals that representatives highlight non-military aspects of hybrid warfare over the military ones and consider the role of defense policy dependent on the nature of a particular hybrid threat.
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