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f28793448 Hybrid Threats Reconceptualizing The Evolving Character
f28793448 Hybrid Threats Reconceptualizing The Evolving Character
No. 240
April 2009
Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University
http://www.ndu.edu/inss
Key Points Secretary of Defense Robert Gates directly what degree should investment resources
challenged the Pentagon’s strategists and mil- be allocated to conducting current opera-
itary chiefs in an important speech at the tions, and what needs to be invested in the
America’s ongoing battles in Afghanistan
and Iraq have highlighted limitations in our
National Defense University in September 2008. future? How much should be devoted to so-
understanding of the complexity of modern
The speech was a critical assessment of the pre- called nontraditional or irregular missions
warfare. Furthermore, our cultural prism has vailing U.S. military culture and the prism such as counterinsurgency versus traditional
retarded the institutionalization of capabilities through which our Armed Forces see themselves. military capabilities? How should we invest
needed to prevail in stabilization and counter- This prism clarifies what is important about scarce funding to reflect this balance? How do
insurgency missions. the future and how we posture our forces for the we balance not only missions, but also force
An ongoing debate about future threats is future. Secretary Gates questioned that mindset capabilities, risks, and resources?
often framed as a dichotomous choice between and its hold on the Services and the Department In the defense community, this “fight over
counterinsurgency and conventional war. This of Defense’s capitalization practices. the next war” has been going on for some time.3
oversimplifies defense planning and resource Secretary Gates also declared that “the The debate has been poorly framed as a choice
allocation decisions. Instead of fundamen- defining principle of the Pentagon’s new between idealized dichotomous options (see figure
tally different approaches, we should expect National Defense Strategy is balance,”1 a 1). This distorted conception grossly oversimplifies
competitors who will employ all forms of war, principle that will also be key in the upcom- critical defense planning and resource allocation
perhaps simultaneously. Such multimodal ing Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). decisions. Secretary Gates implied that this was
threats are often called hybrid threats. Hybrid This principle will force the critical exam- not how he perceived balance in any event. This
adversaries employ combinations of capabili- ination of assumptions about the future, essay aims to widen the debate over post–Opera-
ties to gain an asymmetric advantage. our understanding of threats, and their rel- tion Iraqi Freedom defense budgets and the pos-
Thus, the choice is not simply one of ative priorities. Gates emphasizes achiev- ture of the joint warfighting community.
preparing for long-term stability operations or ing a balance between our current conflicts This reconceptualization will have signifi-
high-intensity conflict. We must be able to do and the Pentagon’s penchant to plan toward cant implications for military force design and
both simultaneously against enemies far more
more canonical, conventional scenarios. posture. In a perfect world, our military would be
ruthless than today’s.
The Secretary believes that the Pentagon is robustly sized, and we would build distinct forces
This essay widens the aperture of the
devoted to postulated longer term challenges for discrete missions along the conflict spectrum.
current debate to account for this threat. It com-
that have little to do with current conflicts We would have separate forces to deal with coun-
pares and contrasts four competing perspec-
tives and evaluates them for readiness and risk
and more likely threats. He used the term terterrorism, protracted counterinsurgencies,
implications. This risk assessment argues that
Next-War-itis to describe a prism that distorts expeditionary missions, and the rare but existen-
the hybrid threat presents the most operational the Services’ ability to see military affairs tial interstate conflagration. The training and
risk in the near- to midterm. Accordingly, it con- clearly and objectively.2 equipping of these forces would be well matched
cludes that hybrid threats are a better focal point The concept of balance is central to to their expected operating environments and
for considering alternative joint force postures. today’s security debate, but it is a complex threats. But we do not live in such a world, and
problem rather than a simple equation. To we need to prepare and shape our forces in an