Neither Conventional War, nor a Cyber War, but a Long-Lasting and Silent Hybrid War

Abstract

A blitz of media, punditry, and ofªcial pronouncements raise the specter of war on the internet. Future conºicts may well take place in cyberspace, where victory or defeat could be determined in mere "nanoseconds."1 Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has even warned of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."2 Nor are fears of cyberwar abstract speculation. Events such as the denial of service attacks against Estonian and Georgian government websites, the Stuxnet worm designed to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges, and the recent hacking of U.S. military computer networks seem to indicate that the era of cyberwar has already arrived.Cyberwar can be viewed as the most recent phase in the ongoing revolution in military affairs.3 This time, however, the threat is said to be directed at the sophisticated technological civilizations of the West, rather than at desert insurgents or the leaders of rogue states with arsenals of inferior second world military hardware. Joseph Nye expresses this emerging consensus, "Dependence on complex cyber systems for support of military and economic activities creates new vulnerabilities in large states that can be exploited by nonstate actors."4 Following this logic, the United States appears destined to be "the Erik Gartzke

A Modern Warfare Paradigm: Reconsideration of Combat Power Concept

“…If in 1GW, 2GW and 3GW the main threat was external and orientated to sovereignty, in 4GW the threat is internal and orientated to core of the state identity (Davis, 2014). 4GW is based on the exploitation of superior ideological (cultural) ideas (Schmidt, 2014) by braking enemy (whole nation or society) from the inside (Davis, 2014;Lind, 2004). It can be assumed that for the first time in the history of war, nonmilitary means became more important than the military ones.…”

“…Meanwhile, non-western have their own view in the operational environment and operational domains. In the so called the doctrine of Gerasimov Russians conceptually separated information space, while others domains are disguised (Bartles, 2016;Schmidt, 2014). However, exclusive capabilities of cyber warfare (Plėta, Karasov, & Jakštas, 2018;Wilson, 2014) and electronic warfare (McDermott, 2017) give a evident insight of Russian's conceptualization of cyberspace and electromagnetic space as operational domains.…”

“…Nevertheless, the conceptualization of information space as an operational domain is not very accurate: "Russia's view of the future is one of contactless war where the main battles are held is in the mind" (Renz & Smith, 2016). According to Schmidt (2014) the main purpose of a modern war is "changing minds of our opponents to force them to fulfill our will", and actually "no lethal force is needed". Information with the combination of various measures is only the material in information warfare and does not have nothing in common with the operational domain.…”

“…Thain and Bradley (2012) in the book "Store Wars: The Worldwide Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace" have introduced and covered the term mindspace as the operational domain. Capabilities to "withstand intended mental influence to our minds" and "deliberate influence to undermine our beliefs into our value structures" are questions for discussion; as well as even attacking the enemy's mindspace by information flow (Schmidt, 2014). Thus, the term mindspace is more accurate and less misleading.…”

Síria e narrativas de guerra por procuração o caso dos curdos

“…Nesse sentido, definições como "Novas Guerras" (Kaldor, 2005;Reyna, 2009), Novíssimas Guerras (Moura, 2005), Guerras de 4ª Geração (Simons, 2010;Lind e Thiele, 2015) e Guerras Híbridas (Schmidt, 2014) apontariam que o financiamento de um terceiro ator para atingir fins políticos seria uma prática necessária em um cenário de ameaças difusas e com menos apoio doméstico para ações militares.…”