‘Hybrid warfare’ as an academic fashion
Journal: Journal of Strategic Studies
Year: 2023

The ‘hybrid warfare’ concept had been coined years earlier, but became fashionable only when it was adopted and adapted by NATO in 2014, after which academic interest suddenly sky-rocketed. Academics often adopted NATO’s understanding of the concept, took for granted its fit for Russian actions, and imported its political assumptions into the academic debate. The fashionability of the term also led to bandwagoning and thus superficial engagement with both the concept and the phenomenon it was ap