Hybridisota ja hybridiuhat – paljon vanhaa...onko mitään uutta?
Abstrakti
Ever since Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula and started a military crisis in Eastern Ukraine in early 2014, many Western statesmen and analysts of strategy have framed Russia’s actions as hybrid warfare against the West. Hybrid threats posed by Russia have filled much of the Western media space ever since. “Green men”, “information warfare” and “cyber warfare” have been part of the Western strategic narrative on Russian hybrid warfare. This article analyses this Western narrative on hybrid warfare and hybrid threats from the viewpoint of the post- Cold War era Western perspective on international security. It is argued that the emergence and maturation of the Western hybrid warfare narrative since 2014 is based on the need to formulate an analytical explanation for the surprise that the very traditional great-power behavior of Russia has caused within the West. After all, the post-Cold War era Western perspective on international security had prior to 2014 deliberately moved away from great-power rivalries, spheres of influence thinking and zero-sum notions of international politics. Thus, it is argued that hybrid warfare and hybrid threats are Western concepts – not Russian ones.
