RUSSIA’S HYBRID WARFARE – WHY NARRATIVES AND IDEATIONAL FACTORS PLAY A ROLE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

The article’s main objective is to discuss Russia’s hybrid warfare in terms of both material and ideational factors. Therefore, a social-constructivist interpretation will show that an important part of Russia’s “hybrid warfare” revolves around ideational factors and discourse constructions. In othe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:On-line journal modelling the new Europe 2016-12 (21), p.52-76
Main Author: Herta, Laura M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cold War
Competition
International law
Military policy
Military strategy
Politics
Politics / Political Sciences
Terrorism
Threats
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The article’s main objective is to discuss Russia’s hybrid warfare in terms of both material and ideational factors. Therefore, a social-constructivist interpretation will show that an important part of Russia’s “hybrid warfare” revolves around ideational factors and discourse constructions. In other words, alongside cyber, kinetic, information, malware operations, backed up by auxiliary troops (which in this approach represent material facts), a narrative meant to explain Russia’s rationale played an equally important role (and these were ideational facts). The first part will briefly present the origins and features of hybrid warfare. The second part will tackle Russia’s hybrid warfare as a response to asymmetry at the global level. The last part will stress a different form of “hybridity” in Russia’s recent action, which entails both material facts (the blended strategies employed in eastern Ukraine) and ideational facts (the Russian narrative of events and the meanings assigned to Russian actions).
ISSN:2247-0514