Speaking of hybrid warfare: Multiple narratives and differing expertise in the ‘hybrid warfare’ debate in Czechia
| DOI | 10.1177/00108367211000799 |
| Author | Jakub Eberle,Jan Daniel |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211000799
Cooperation and Conflict
2021, Vol. 56(4) 432 –453
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367211000799
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Speaking of hybrid warfare:
Multiple narratives and
differing expertise in the
‘hybrid warfare’ debate in
Czechia
Jan Daniel and Jakub Eberle
Abstract
What do we speak of when we speak of ‘hybrid warfare’, a notion that has become prominent in
discussions of European security? The article shows that this question is difficult to answer, as the
hybrid warfare discourse is not only vague, but also consists of multiple, and at times contradictory,
narratives. While talking and writing about supposedly the same thing, participants in the hybrid
warfare debate often suggest markedly different ideas about the precise nature and target of the
threat, offer different responses and draw upon different expertise. Grounding our argument in
critical scholarship on narratives, security knowledge and hybrid warfare, we build a framework
for studying security narratives around the four elements of threat, threatened value, response
and underlying knowledge. This framework is utilised in a case study of Czechia, a country that
has played a pioneering and outsized role in European hybrid warfare debates. We identify three
narratives of hybrid warfare – defence, counterinfluence and education – which present markedly
different understandings of ‘hybrid warfare’, and ways to defend against it. Our intervention hopes
to contribute to disentangling the contradictions of the hybrid warfare discourse, itself a necessary
precondition for both sound state policy and an informed public debate.
Keywords
Czech Republic, disinformation, expertise, hybrid warfare, narratives
Since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, ‘hybrid warfare’ (HW), a term most
broadly understood as a combination of military and non-military means of conflict, has
been elevated to one of the primary threats to European security (Fridman, 2018; Galeotti,
2019). While discussed and addressed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
and the European Union (EU), and resonating in particular in central and eastern Europe,
Corresponding author:
Jan Daniel, Institute of International Relations, Nerudova 3, Prague 118 01, Czech Republic.
Email: daniel@iir.cz
100079CAC0010.1177/00108367211000799Cooperation and ConflictDaniel and Eberle
research-article2021
Article
Daniel and Eberle 433
the shape of the threat has often remained opaque. What is it exactly that Russians are
supposed to threaten, and how? What is it precisely that governments should do in
response? Various experts have provided explanations ranging from the particularities of
Russian military thought, through changing conditions of war, to the rise of new tech-
nologies and proliferation of social media. Some of them also highlighted the extremely
vague and undifferentiated ways that HW1 is conceptualised and spoken about (Fridman,
2018; Johnson, 2018). In this article, we build upon and move beyond these studies by
showing that the broader HW discourse in fact consists of multiple different and even
contradictory narratives. While talking and writing about supposedly the same thing,
participants in the HW debate often suggest markedly different ideas about the precise
nature and target of the threat, offer different responses and draw upon different sources
of expertise.
This variation poses a problem that deserves to be addressed for both analytical and
normative purposes. If HW really is such a threat, as its adoption by NATO and EU, docu-
mented by the creation of a string of new institutions, strategies and action plans suggests
(for overviews, see Bajarūnas, 2020; Rühle and Roberts, 2019), we should be interested
in understanding its precise character to be able to craft well-tailored responses. However,
as we will show, the HW label is pinned freely upon issues ranging from military chal-
lenges and functioning of democratic institutions, through covert subversion and social
polarisation, all the way to critical thinking and media literacy. By identifying the key
differences between the main threat constructions, we shed light on what issues are at
stake when we talk about HW. Thereby, this article also makes a political intervention by
denaturalising the often unreflected reading of HW as a singular problem. By disentan-
gling the distinctive stories of causes and effects, we hope to re-problematise the coexist-
ence of very different ideas under the same headline. It is often only the label of ‘hybrid
war’ that temporarily holds these different narratives and knowledges together, as their
assumptions may not be commensurable (see also Ördén, 2019; Rühle, 2019; Szostek,
2020). Therefore, the very label needs to be applied with extreme cautiousness as it hardly
speaks about a coherent problem. Put bluntly, by facing HW without clearly specifying
what it means exactly, we risk not only over-securitising the issue by applying security
and war framing to issues such as social polarisation or media literacy, but also ending up
tasking our security apparatuses with fighting everything and nothing at the same time.
While we are interested in the general issues of denaturalising HW, showing the vari-
ation within the discourse and pointing out the usually tacit discrepancies, we examine
them through a study of one case: Czechia. The country is a good example for exploring
how such a new threat is made sense of in the public sphere, as it is considered a pioneer
in responding to HW (Jankowicz, 2020). The notion of HW made a significant impact on
Czech security policies, as it has been included in key strategic documents and embed-
ded in security and political institutions. Czechia has also played an outsized role in the
European institutions, acting as a policy entrepreneur on several levels. Prague hosts the
Stratcom Summit, a leading international forum for networking and discussing
HW-related issues. As one of the very first countries, the Czech government contributed
with two officials to the EU’s East StratCom Task Force, which runs the EUvsDisinfo
website. The Czech Vice President of the European Commission, Věra Jourová, now
oversees large parts of the EU’s ‘hybrid threats’ agenda, and Czech European Parliament
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