Stop acting like hybrid warfare is anything but the warfare of the weak against the incapable or unwilling.
Personally, I don’t like the “little green men” expression [describing Russian special forces in Crimea with unmarked uniforms], but I do appreciate and understand hybrid. Undermining a sovereign nation can be done without firing a shot through intimidation, spawning social or nationalistic unrest, capitalizing on social-media and utilizing the new domains of cyber and space in coordinated attacks that occur under the threshold of a NATO Charter Article 5. All these things happened and now Crimea has been annexed and there exists a continuing tension along the border in Donbas or what is often called a frozen conflict.
Russia conquered Crimea through unique circumstances that are not accounted for in that somewhat magical view of hybrid warfare:
In Crimea, Russia had a major base. Russia could reinforce the base pre-H Hour without a problem.
Ukraine was in chaos with the overthrow of the government and no clear authority in place.
The Ukrainian military was unsure of who to obey even if the government still forming was capable of issuing orders.
Nearly all of the Ukrainian military in Crimea was composed of support troops (a single marine battalion was the only combat unit).
The Ukrainian military was a shambles after years of deliberate near-sabotage by the pro-Russian government that didn't want an effective military.
And Ukraine was not a member of NATO.
If Crimea was an easy target because of Russia's vaunted "hybrid warfare", why didn't Russia just toss in all of the Donbas while they were at it? Instead, the Russians invaded months later under cover of AstroTurf "rebels" and were stymied by minimally reconstituted Ukrainian ground forces.
In fact, hybrid warfare is very simple:
Good Lord people, Russian "hybrid warfare" is just Russian aggression that we pretend isn't happening. Sadly, there's nothing new or novel about that.
And the only thing missing is the determination to fight them by ignoring the Russian denials:
But we know Putin invaded Ukraine. It doesn't matter that Putin has denied it. If we wanted to, we could have reacted far more vigorously than we have to help Ukraine fight and regain their territory.
After all, there are few limits to the ability to get away with a denial of aggression when you consider that China denied fighting the American-led United Nations alliance in the Korean War.
China didn't send in the People's Liberation Army. No, China sent in the People's Volunteer Army, which had nothing at all to do with China. Just a bunch of heavily armed Chinese men with a deep affection for North Korea.
Three million Chinese troops and civilians (I won't dare call them "little yellow men") served in that "volunteer" army before the war ended.
That fiction didn't prevent America and our allies from waging war on China on the Korean peninsula. We just called it a "police action."
We met fiction with fiction.
If Russia tried that combination of tactics that worked in Crimea against a NATO state, even a semi-functioning state could crush the mercenaries, information warfare, and unmarked special forces:
If "little green men" or tanks show up in your country, you don't need any complicated "hybrid" counter-tactics to cope. You send your trained military to kill the invaders. Throwing your center of excellence at them won't do a darned thing.
I have repeatedly complained about the apparent analysis paralysis that has arisen in response to obvious Russian aggression.
Honest to God, I feel like I'm on crazy pills.
The aggressor would then be compelled to openly escalate or retreat and lick their wounds.
Russia has not come up with some magical formula:
This Russian approach is all based on Russian conventional weakness (compared to America-against their western neighbors Russia has the edge). Tell me that Russia wouldn't have preferred to hit the Donbas hard and win fast. The West got over the stripping of Georgian territories in 2008 because the war was over fast. The West seems to be ignoring the Russian conquest of Crimea and no doubt would have forgotten about it almost as quickly, given all the excuses still being deployed in the West to justify Russian aggression.
That's the way it works. The USSR subdued Hungary and Czechoslovakia quickly. We could do nothing. The USSR failed to subdue Afghanistan and eventually we made them pay a price for fighting there.
Russia should have invaded the Donbas while they took Crimea if they had the capability and gotten it done fast--or refrained from the attempt, being satisfied with the well-executed seizure of Crimea.
We in the West have just made up magical reasons why it is awesome and not the last resort of a weakened regional power with continents-spanning defense needs.
