Out of the Shadows: Ukraine and the Shock of Non-Hybrid War
Journal: Journal of Global Security Studies
Year: 2023

Abstract For two decades, a large body of security practitioners and scholars axiomatically expected “future war” to be ambiguous and hybrid, based on recent cases. The scale and overt form of the Russia–Ukraine war, which begun on February 22, 2022, demonstrates the limits of this orthodoxy. This article asks why informed opinion fell prey to such false expectations. It argues that as well as the pathologies of fashion in military-academic circles, there was an intellectual failure. Those who c