WHITE KNIGHTS VERSUS DARK VADER? ON THE PROBLEMS AND PITFALLS OF DEBATING HYBRID WARFARE

Ever since Russia occupied the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, debating the concepts and boundary conditions of Hybrid Warfare has become an academic growth industry in European social science. There is, however, no agreement on the exact content of the concept, nor on its qualitative characteristics, nor on its political implications. While some sources stress its newness and see Hybrid Warfare as a further development of asymmetric warfare located in a postmodern gray zone between peace and war, others maintain that a combination of regular and irregular forms of war fighting has been with Humanity at least since Antiquity. The paper adduces much of the confusion over terms to the blending of two distinct hybrid warfare concepts: an additive concept, which indeed reaches back to the very early (pre-)historic sources and forms of war fighting, and a “hybrid warfare plus” concept, which, in a materialistic view of history, is the reflection of the development of the forces of destruction during the Third Industrial Revolution, particularly taking account of digitalization, globalization, and anonymization of responsibilities.