The Alliance’s Enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltics and Poland could face serious challenges in ‘sub-conventional’ ...Read more >

The Ukraine crisis offers some important energy security lessons : when it comes to energy, geography is still destiny. Pipelines still mean both economic and political ...Read more >

Western observers have fallen into a now familiar parlance for describing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Frequently termed Russia’s “hybrid war” against ...Read more >

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked a rethinking of traditional geopolitical norms and warfare tactics. For this reason, ICDS convened a panel of experts to shed light on recent developments and in ...Read more >

The United States Army War College educates and develops leaders for service at the strategic level while advancing knowledge in the global application of ...Read more >

Before Gustavus Adolphus revolutionized warfare, most armies were composed of groups of uncoordinated mercenaries, with little overall organization or chain of command. The Lion of the North instituted permanent units, assigned a fixed chain of command, and established a ...Read more >

While the nature of war does not change, the conduct and methods available to wage and win wars does. This appears to be the case with respect to hybrid war, an evolving type of war that the United States may soon face. The definition of hybrid war is the merging of different methods and theories of war and warfare at different levels of war, in different realms and domains, especially the cognitive and moral domains, by a blend of actors, arranged in time and space to achieve objectives at all ...Read more >

The hybrid threat concept represents the evolution of operational art and a potential paradigm shift as a doctrinal and organizational Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). As interest-based rational actors, hybrid threats seek to master unrestricted operational art in order to reconcile overmatch and protect or advance their ...Read more >

The sound of traffic passing through the intersection of West 45th Street and Broadway echoed through Times Square as tourists crowded the sidewalks of Astor Plaza. The two men prepared to sell their t-shirts and handbags to the crowds, anticipating the rush of theater goers emerging from The Lion King playing at the Minskoff Theatre. They barely noticed the dark blue 1993 Nissan Pathfinder sport utility vehicle as it pulled up to the sidewalk at 6:28 ...Read more >

War, all of it a political endeavor, regular irregular and in between-compound. We can never solve the equation on the correct mix. The classical Clausewitzian Trinitarian view on the character of war: passion, politics, probability conducted by the government, military and needs support of its people, gave way to a more modern (French) view that sees people as human terrain. The IW challenges both these paradigms suggesting that, given the informational technological influence on local and ...Read more >

In the late 1980s, Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) theorists began to recognize a shift in warfare which they assumed was both in the character and nature of war. Their ideas and publications triggered a captivating dialogue on how warfare was changing. This debate helped prompt the U.S. military to recognize the change and begin its ...Read more >

Hybrid warfare will be the dominant form of warfare in the twenty-first century due to the prevalence of hybrid threats that currently exist throughout the world. It is a combination of conventional and irregular warfighting capabilities hybrid warfare is combination of capabilities that will give the implementer a decisive advantage over its ...Read more >

Marines fighting the Global War on Terrorism confront adversaries that are adaptive, decentralized, and elusive. Recognizing the overwhelming conventional superiority of U.S. forces, our enemies will continue to develop new tactics designed to exploit perceived seams in our capabilities, or to otherwise undermine our advantages in mobility, firepower, sensing, and command and ...Read more >

The emerging concept of hybrid warfare is one of many attempts to clarify the contemporary defense operating environment for senior Washington decisionmakers and warfighters in the field. The more intense debates occurring on the margins of the Quadrennial Defense Review center on hybrid threats and their impact on defense strategy and ...Read more >