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25–088 2017

[H.A.S.C. No. 115–22] 

THE EVOLUTION OF HYBRID WARFARE 

AND KEY CHALLENGES 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 22, 2017 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

TRENT KELLY, Mississippi 

MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin 

MATT GAETZ, Florida 

DON BACON, Nebraska 

JIM BANKS, Indiana 

LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

BETO O’ROURKE, Texas 

DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey 

RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona 

SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts 

COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii 

CAROL SHEA–PORTER, New Hampshire 

JACKY ROSEN, Nevada 

A. DONALD MCEACHIN, Virginia 

SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California 

ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland 

STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida 

RO KHANNA, California 

TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

(Vacancy) 

ROBERT L. SIMMONS II, Staff Director 

CATHERINE SENDAK, Professional Staff Member 

KATY QUINN, Professional Staff Member 

BRITTON BURKETT, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Thornberry, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac,’’ a Representative from Texas, Chairman, 

Committee on Armed Services ............................................................................ 1 

WITNESSES 

Chivvis, Dr. Christopher S., Associate Director, International Security and 

Defense Policy Center, Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation ............ 7 

Hoffman, Dr. Francis G., Distinguished Fellow, National Defense University .. 2 

Shearer, Andrew, Senior Adviser on Asia Pacific Security, Director, Alliances 

and American Leadership Project, Center for Strategic and International 

Studies .................................................................................................................. 5 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Chivvis, Dr. Christopher S. ............................................................................. 59 

Hoffman, Dr. Francis G. .................................................................................. 38 

Shearer, Andrew ............................................................................................... 51 

Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Armed Services ..................................................................... 37 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Lamborn ..................................................................................................... 77 

(1) 

THE EVOLUTION OF HYBRID WARFARE AND 

KEY CHALLENGES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 22, 2017. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William M. ‘‘Mac’’ 

Thornberry (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. ‘‘MAC’’ THORNBERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. The committee 

meets today to examine the challenge posed by unconventional 

forms of warfare. A variety of terms are used to describe it: hybrid 

warfare, indirect warfare, the gray zone, and others. Americans are 

used to thinking of a binary state of either war or peace. That is 

the way our organizations, doctrine, and approaches are geared. 

Other countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, use a wider 

array of centrally controlled, or at least centrally directed, instruments of national power and influence to achieve their objectives. 

Whether it is contributing to foreign political parties, targeted 

assassinations of opponents, infiltrating non-uniformed personnel 

such as the little green men, traditional media and social media, 

influence operations, or cyber-connected activity, all of these tactics 

and more are used to advance their national interests and most 

often to damage American national interests. 

These tactics are not new. Indeed, as Professor Williamson Murray has written, the historical records suggest that hybrid warfare 

in one form or another may well be the norm for human conflict, 

rather than the exception. And this committee has examined these 

issues previously, despite the fact that some of these tactics are 

much in the news these days. 

But I believe these tactics pose a particular challenge for us and 

our system. So I think it is helpful to shine a light on them, but 

also help develop ways that the U.S. can better develop capabilities 

to counter them. That is the topic for today’s hearing. 

Before turning to our witnesses, I would yield to the distinguished acting ranking member, gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. 

Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you noted, I am 

standing in for the real ranking member, Adam Smith. And I 

would like to ask unanimous consent that his statement be inserted for the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 
2 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the Appendix on page 37.] 

Mr. COOPER. I have no opening statement. I am here to hear the 

witnesses and actually have a real hearing. So I look forward to 

hearing the witnesses’ testimony. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. We are pleased to welcome Dr. Francis Hoffman, distinguished research fellow from National Defense University; Mr. Andrew Shearer, senior adviser on 

Asia Pacific [Security] and Director for Alliances in American Leadership Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Dr. Christopher Chivvis, Associate Director, International 

Security and Defense Policy Center, senior political scientist, man, 

y’all got long titles, at the RAND Corporation. 

Really, three people I think who can help shine a light and help 

guide us in these challenging issues. I very much appreciate all of 

you being with us. Without objection, your full written statement 

will be made part of the record. And we would be pleased to hear 

any oral comments you would like to make. 

Dr. Hoffman, we will start with you. 

STATEMENT OF DR. FRANCIS G. HOFFMAN, DISTINGUISHED 

FELLOW, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, acting Ranking Member Mr. Cooper, and distinguished panelists and members of this 

committee. It is an honor to appear before you once again and talk 

about the threats facing our country. I thank you for this opportunity and also the opportunity to appear with my two expert colleagues here today. 

Our joint forces and our country must be able to respond to challenges across the full spectrum of conflict. Partially because of the 

complexity of this challenge, we are falling behind in our readiness 

today and in the future. 

As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has testified, quote, 

‘‘We are already falling behind in adapting to the changed character of war today in so many ways.’’ 

Our tendency as a country to ignore forms of conflict that are not 

conventional and kinetic in character has impeded our performance 

in the past and will continue to do so until we grasp the full set 

of conflict types. Without an explicit recognition and conceptualization and understanding of these types, we are going to remain in 

a perpetual state of reactive adaptation. 

A decade ago, before a subcommittee led by the chairman of this 

distinguished committee now, I outlined a concept and hypothesis 

that General Mattis and I had developed about hybrid threats and 

what we saw as a coming emerging problem. 

That threat was based on the expected convergence of irregular 

forces with advanced military capabilities due to globalization and 

the diffusion of technology. It also forecasted that states in a 

unipolar world, the part we got wrong, would come down from 

high-end conventional capabilities and would try to take us on in 

the middle conflict spectrum with proxy forces that they would 

train and equip. 

The mixture of irregular methods and conventional tools was not 

necessarily new, as the chairman has noted. But we did think that 
3 

the toxic addition of catastrophic terrorism and criminal behavior 

fused in the same battle space might present unique challenges for 

which we are not prepared. 

The war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, 

the evolution of ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] over the last 

few years, with encryption, drones, precision capabilities, and the 

ongoing bloodshed in eastern Ukraine, suggest that our forecast of 

hybrid threats in the middle of the conflict spectrum, a violent admixture, was not too far off. Perhaps imperfect, but not too far off 

the mark. 

Today, European military analysts and some Americans pushed 

by Russia’s examples and behavior, have embraced the hybrid 

threat as a feature of contemporary conflict. Yet the NATO [North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization] interpretation, which is pretty predominant now in the literature, is broader and different than the 

methods that General Mattis and I had originally depicted. 

They see it as a mixture of military means with nonmilitary 

tools, including propaganda and cyber activity directed at below the 

threshold of armed conflict. And this mixture of tools, Mr. Chairman, is what I said is commonly referred to as gray zone conflicts 

in this country. 

And the distinction between indirect gray zone conflicts and the 

violent methods posed by the original depiction of hybrid threats 

should be noted as the key distinction, the use of violence. 

The European version of hybrid represents a return to Cold War 

tactics as I understood them when I was trained and educated and 

was commissioned in the 1970s. 

We rely on traditional and legitimate forms of influence and competition, but our adversaries are applying more ambiguous, illegitimate, and nontraditional instruments of statecraft consistent with 

their culture and previous practices, going back almost a century 

with respect to Russia. 

Such autocratic states have far more options than democracies. 

Mr. Kennan, the architect of containment who knew something 

about the Russians, noted decades ago that ‘‘The varieties of skullduggery which make up the repertoire of totalitarian governments, 

are just about as unlimited as human ingenuity itself and just 

about as unpleasant.’’ 

So Kennan’s understanding of the problem was informed by a 

very deep lifelong study of Russia and its preference for indirect 

methods, which I think we see today. Kennan himself used the 

term ‘‘measures short of war,’’ which I think is a fairly good term 

to understand where Russia is coming from, and its expertise in 

this area. 

And I have used the same term now in my research at NDU [National Defense University] supporting both the intelligence community and the chairman. And I think measures short of armed conflict or measures short of war relates very well to Russia, which 

has a history of a form of operation they call ‘‘active measures.’’ 

And it parallels today’s activity pretty well. 

Measures short of war and hybrid conflict have some combinations and some common aspects, and particularly the combination 

of methods. Where I see hybrid threats in the middle of the conflict 
4 

spectrum is mixing active regular conventional capabilities with irregular methods with irregular tactics and crime. 

Measures short of armed conflict is combinations of economic corruption, propaganda, disinformation, you know, nonmilitary kinds 

of capabilities combined in a time and place. The hybrid threats 

also use combinations, but it is mostly about violent methods being 

kind of mixed. 

I think an historical case study might help eliminate the distinction between some of the terminology. I see the competition between Russia, the West, and the EU [European Union] over 

Ukraine’s independence as a gray zone kind of conflict, a measure 

short of conflict from 2010 to 2014. 

Mr. Putin attempted to apply indirect forms of influence including economic tariffs, corruption, political subversion, and disinformation, but Russia failed to be successful at intimidating Ukraine’s 

people. And thus Putin had to shift up the conflict continuum and 

use more violent means to be more successful, thereby seizing Crimea and invading Ukraine itself. 

The ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, I see as an archetype 

of what I had imagined as hybrid warfare. An integrated design 

that has produced a costly conflict by mixing Spetsnaz special 

forces, separatists that are basically militia or untrained military. 

We see electronic warfare, we see drones, we see long range rockets, and we see some light armor, all fused and mixed in the same 

time and place. 

We also see economic corruption, criminality, control over food 

and employment in the areas as intimidating and terrorizing the 

population. So I see that as a representative of a hybrid warfare 

kind of example, as I saw it a decade ago. 

But today’s challenge is recognizing the competition for influence 

that exists in peacetime using measures short of armed conflict. In 

Europe and Asia we are now competing with major revisionist powers that are seeking influence and trying to undermine the international rules of order and the norms and behavior that we have 

come to establish and tried to be the guarantor of for the last two 

generations. 

We are also competing for the retention of a coalition network 

and a basing structure that we have used for two generations to 

gain and sustain access to key markets and key regions of the 

world and friends, as part of our power projection system. 

Our adversaries continue to use illegitimate instruments of statecraft. Seizing disputed rocks, seizing and disordering borders, to 

undermine our credibility, to dilute the cohesion of our alliances, 

and to prevent us from sustaining international order, on which 

our core interests and economic prosperity benefit from and should 

continue to benefit from. 

Overall, I think, we are prepared for the violence of hybrid 

threats now after 15 years of fighting irregular warfare. But we are 

not ready for the more indirect methods that we need to think 

about. How do we ensure that forms of subversion and disinformation here and abroad are neutralized? 

Who operationalizes our responses to indirect conflict, and who 

counters the propaganda designed to undercut our democratic institutions? Who designs and integrates strategic approaches in meas-
5 

ures short of armed conflict? The NSC [National Security Council], 

the State Department, the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], or 

our theater commanders? In short, how do we organize ourselves 

to address this challenge? 

We shouldn’t underestimate our adversaries. This is not an existential form of conflict. But it can create the conditions that if we 

do actually get into a war with somebody after an extended period 

of hybrid threat, that we will fight with fewer friends in a position 

of geographic disadvantage, or a coalition that is not as cohesive 

and effective as it should be. So it could set up the conditions for 

failure in America’s interest. 

So again, we shouldn’t underestimate our adversaries. They’re 

full spectrum, we need to understand that conceptually, and we 

need to become full spectrum ourselves consistent with our values 

and democratic principles. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear today. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hoffman can be found in the Appendix on page 38.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Shearer. 

STATEMENT OF ANDREW SHEARER, SENIOR ADVISER ON ASIA 

PACIFIC SECURITY, DIRECTOR, ALLIANCES AND AMERICAN 

LEADERSHIP PROJECT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Mr. SHEARER. Chairman Thornberry, acting Ranking Member 

Cooper, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today. Like Russia and China—and 

Iran, rather, China is fusing both conventional and unconventional 

capabilities and tactics to waken liberal norms and institutions to 

erode U.S. influence and to impose its own security preferences on 

its neighbors. 

Left unchecked, this trend will undermine the regional and global order, endangering the security and prosperity of the United 

States and its allies. China’s hybrid warfare strategy draws on 

many of the elements also employed by Russia and Iran, exploiting 

the gray zone created, as the chairman said, by the West’s binary 

notion of war and peace. 

Primarily, using paramilitary coast guard and militia organizations, while keeping regular military forces back over the horizon 

and combining all of the instruments of national power, including 

sophisticated cyber operations, economic incentives and sanctions, 

and legal and political warfare. Or as the Chinese call it, lawfare. 

And over the past decade and particularly since President Xi 

Jinping took office 4 years ago, China has ramped up its assertiveness in the Western Pacific. 

By exploiting ambiguity and asymmetry, this incremental salami-slicing approach has enabled China to achieve much of its political and territorial agenda in East Asia without triggering a 

forceful military response from the United States and its allies. 

Beijing calculates that it lacks the military capabilities, at least 

for now, to prevail in an outright conflict at an acceptable cost. Instead, it uses capabilities where it has a comparative advantage, 
6 

such as maritime militia and law enforcement vessels, some of 

which are larger than U.S. Navy cruisers. 

And it targets objectives like small offshore islands in which it 

believes Washington has little direct stake. Backed by its expanding suite of advanced access-denial capabilities, the intent of China’s creeping militarization of the South China Sea is to give itself 

the ability to restrict U.S. maritime forces’ traditional ability to 

project power and support allies within the first island chain running from Japan in the north through to the Philippines in the 

south. 

The effect is to complicate U.S. military planning, undermine the 

confidence of regional countries in American security commitments, 

and ratchet up pressure on the U.S. alliance system in Asia. 

Sometimes you hear people say that China’s facilities in the 

South China Sea aren’t such a problem because they would be an 

easy target in a major conventional conflict. With respect, that is 

not the point. 

We are confronting a profoundly different Asia-Pacific region if 

the United States has to contemplate fighting its way back into the 

South China Sea, a vital international waterway that carries $5.3 

trillion worth of trade annually, $1.2 trillion of it American. 

To respond effectively to this complex challenge, the United 

States needs to invest in adequate nuclear and conventional military capabilities to maintain a favorable military balance in the region capable of deterring escalation, including attacks against U.S. 

or allied forces. Credible military forces are also vital for resisting 

coercion and shaping a benign regional security environment. 

Rather than reacting piecemeal to each event, the United States 

needs a considered proactive counter-coercion strategy that is part 

of a broader coherent Asia strategy. 

Continuing to deter any further move at Scarborough Shoal is 

particularly important. China’s modus operandi is to target weak 

points. Any further significant change in the status quo in the 

South China Sea would feed doubts in the region and increase 

pressure on America’s vital alliances in Northeast Asia. 

However, an effective U.S. strategy must extend beyond military 

might and overcome the bureaucratic and military scenes needed 

to match China’s comprehensive national approach. The starting 

point has to be recognition that the United States is already engaged in an intense competition both of interest and values in the 

Western Pacific. 

The outcome will shape not only the future of the region, but the 

United States’ long term security and prosperity. By building what 

Dean Acheson called ‘‘situations of strength,’’ the United States can 

increase the cost to China of pursuing its gray zone strategy. 

It should strengthen existing alliances and network them more 

closely, as well as working with allies to build maritime capability 

and resilience in Southeast Asian countries. The United States also 

needs to continue to champion the rule of war in fundamental principles, such as freedom of navigation. 

Secrecy and deniability are part of Beijing’s strategy. So wherever possible the United States should promote transparency about 

China’s activities. This in the intention behind the CSIS [Center 
7 

for Strategic and International Studies] Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. 

Implementing this strategy will require carefully picking and 

choosing which of China’s moves to contest, clarifying how the 

United States will respond to deter them, and being prepared to accept greater calculated risk. 

Finally, the United States should not cede nonmilitary spaces to 

China either which also seeks to expand its wider influence, which 

is why continuing American leadership on trade and investment is 

so important. 

America’s allies are looking for reassurance that America has the 

clarity of purpose to develop an effective strategy. And the resolve 

to carry it through with firmness and consistency. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shearer can be found in the Appendix on page 51.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Chivvis. 

STATEMENT OF DR. CHRISTOPHER S. CHIVVIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY 

CENTER, SENIOR POLITICAL SCIENTIST, RAND CORPORATION 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Thank you and good morning Chairman Thornberry, acting Ranking Member Cooper, members of the committee and 

staff. 

I think this hearing comes at an important moment in our national effort to address hybrid threats, especially from Russia. I am 

grateful for the chance to be here. 

I will start by noting that there are many terms for hybrid warfare. Some analysts refer to it as gray zone warfare, others competition short of conflict, still others active measures, and there are 

other terms as well. 

Now of course, each of these terms has a slightly different meaning, but they all point to one big thing. Moscow has developed and 

deployed its own version of the whole-of-government approach to 

achieve its major foreign policy objectives. More often than not, this 

is at the expense of America’s interests. 

The Kremlin is using hybrid strategies to weaken NATO, undermine European unity as a pretext for military action, and to influence a range of policy decisions among our allies and to do so in 

ways that complicate and slow down our own ability to respond. 

Its use of hybrid strategies is linked to its broader military modernization program which has been going on for a decade now, and 

is itself bound up with President Putin’s determination to challenge 

and even undermine the American-built world order. 

So what are the main characteristics of hybrid warfare as practiced by Russia? Well there are at least three that come to mind. 

First of all, it is population-centric. In other words, it focuses on 

the people of the countries that it targets. 

Second of all, it is persistent. Russian military leaders, and I am 

thinking here, for example, of the current chairman of the Russian 

general staff, Valery Gerasimov, these leaders have rejected the 

idea that a country can be truly at peace in the 21st century. In-
8 

stead, they think conflict is ever-present, even if it varies in intensity in different places, and at different times. 

Third, Russia’s hybrid warfare strategies economize on the use of 

kinetic force. This helps Moscow maintain plausible deniability, 

and get inside our decision loop. It is also because the Kremlin 

would actually prefer not to get into an outright military conflict 

with the United States or with NATO. 

So what are the instruments that Russia typically uses for hybrid war? Well, there are several, including information operations 

via outlets like RT [Russia Today], cyber tools for espionage or for 

direct attacks on our networks, proxies that can range from protest 

groups to Kremlin-funded motorcycle gangs and other thugs, economic influence of various kinds, covert action with Russian special 

forces, military intelligence or other operatives, and of course, overt 

political pressure, and military intimidation. 

As we speak, Russian hybrid operations appear to be under way 

in several places of significance to American interests. Russia is 

widely suspected of aiming to influence upcoming national elections 

in two key allied countries, France and Germany. 

Russia has been working to undermine stability and project 

power via hybrid strategies in the Balkans. For example, with an 

attempt to stage a coup against a pro-NATO government in Montenegro just last fall, only a few months before Montenegro was to 

become the 29th member of the NATO alliance. 

Russian hybrid strategies also extend to countries in Central Europe, where Russia has a legacy economic influence, especially in 

the energy sector. Estonia and Latvia are also potential targets of 

Russian hybrid efforts, although they have recently strengthened 

their defenses against these strategies. Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, 

and other countries along Russia’s border all remain vulnerable. 

Now, it is true that Russian resources for hybrid warfare aren’t 

infinite. And many scholars have also pointed out that the Soviets 

used similar strategies during the Cold War. It may also be helpful 

to draw attention to the fact that Russia views many U.S. policies 

as hybrid warfare aimed against its own interests. 

Nevertheless, the reality is that the Kremlin’s use of hybrid 

strategies has been growing significantly in the last few years and 

at our expense. 

I think these threats should be treated with greater urgency. Hybrid strategies may not have the immediacy of the threat from the 

Islamic State, but if left unchecked, they can do equal if not greater 

damage to American power and interests. 

We need a strategy to combat this effectively, and I have laid out 

some of the bones of such a strategy in my written testimony. One 

is strong interagency coordination. Another is effective countermessaging. Yet another is ensuring that the U.S. intelligence community has the resources it needs to get on top of the threat in the 

European theater. 

A successful strategy is also going to mean giving America’s full 

support to European anti-corruption and institution-building efforts, including defense institution building. U.S. special operations 

forces clearly have a role to play here as trainers, but they can also 

help with counter-messaging and in other areas. 
9 

Finally, European partners and allies are often the first line of 

defense, and we have to do everything we can to support their own 

efforts to push back against the Kremlin, all while recognizing that 

America itself isn’t immune. The process of developing this strategy 

should be led by the National Security Council staff. 

Congress’ role is in ensuring funding for the related institutionbuilding and anti-corruption programs, as well as the intelligence 

collection and analysis requirements. Raising public awareness 

with hearings such as this one is also a very valuable contribution. 

We can’t necessarily deter Russian hybrid strategies; we may be 

able to deter elements of them, for example, cyberattacks. But the 

key to dealing with this problem is to strengthen our defenses and 

those of our allies. It is important to get the balance right between 

conventional deterrence, nuclear deterrence, and addressing hybrid 

threats. 

Protecting America’s interests in Europe calls for strength on all 

three fronts. But of all of these lines of effort, I am least confident 

about our glide path with regard to hybrid threats. That is why I 

am very pleased that you have decided to have this hearing today, 

and want to urge Congress and the rest of the U.S. Government 

to remain seized with this matter. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Chivvis can be found in the Appendix on page 59.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And I appreciate the fact that y’all 

have emphasized—maybe we have the longest history of dealing 

with Russia with these tactics, but China is using them. 

We didn’t quite get to Iran and I want, as the hearing goes on, 

to look at that. Because it seems to me, what is successful by one 

will be picked up and used by others. 

I just want to ask, kind of going back a little bit in the history. 

Some of the press reports recently have talked about the Soviet efforts to spread a rumor that the U.S. Government was involved in 

assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr., that they spread the rumor 

U.S. intelligence had created the AIDS [acquired immune deficiency syndrome] virus up at Fort Detrick. 

That they used a web of front groups, secret payments to activists and articles, to try to prevent our deployment of medium-range 

missiles in Europe in the 1980s, Pershing II and Glickmans and so 

forth. I wonder about recent leaks that we have seen from WikiLeaks and others, if that could not be a part of this web of activities to destabilize. 

And then, I think, the Emerging Threat Subcommittee had a 

hearing last week, where one of the witnesses had reprinted a 

chart from Russian military doctrine that talked about the goal of 

disorienting the political and military leadership of the victim and 

spreading dissatisfaction among the population. 

And you think about that, and you think about their efforts in 

the past, and what may be happening now. Is that a part of the 

goal of hybrid warfare? To disorient the political and military 

leadership, spreading dissatisfaction? 

Dr. Hoffman. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Yes, sir. And, one doesn’t really have to go into 

either fictional accounts, or even back to the 1980s to see a lot of 
10 

this in Europe, where I have been focusing most of my research of 

late in the Baltics in the European. 

There are efforts by Russian entities to loan money to political 

parties. They are funding studies to advance their interests, to put 

out issues on climate change, or energy usage, that benefit them 

directly. 

There are very concerted campaigns going on against the Swedes 

and the Finns, to undermine them and separate them from NATO. 

There is some very interesting research by scholars in Sweden that 

is showing this, one of the new aspects of disinformation. 

In the old days, the Russians would work really hard to bribe 

somebody to write an article or get a rumor into a newspaper in 

Canada or the United States. And you would hope that over a series of months that those articles might get some momentum. 

But today with computers and with automated tools and bots, I 

mean, you can put an innuendo into a crummy source on Monday, 

it can be picked up by three supporting news sites on Wednesday, 

and then it gets picked up by 20 or 30. 

And by Friday, some mainstream individual is picking this up as 

a fact and articulating it. And Sweden has been attacked on this, 

and Sweden has been threatened by some aspects. 

There are several cases documented by the German intelligence 

that show that rumors against Mrs. Merkel or rumors against German actions with respect to immigrants, have been picked up and 

planted by external sources, probably of Russian origin, to attack 

the German cohesiveness and the German political process. 

So we see this kind of activity in the current tense and contemporary conflict right now directed against many of our allies and 

all along the periphery. I don’t know if it is a concerted, integrated, 

campaign. I don’t think Mr. Putin is 10 feet tall. 

I don’t think he is playing three-level chess against us. But he 

has got a lot of checkers games going on simultaneously. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Shearer, do you see efforts from China to 

disorient the political and military leadership, and spread dissatisfaction among the people, whether it is here at home or with 

countries around China’s periphery? 

Mr. SHEARER. Mr. Chairman, I think one distinction between 

China’s use of hybrid warfare tactics and what we are seeing from 

Russia, is that at least today, China has been a little more restrained and a little less aggressive, and it hasn’t crossed that 

threshold into the actual use of conventional military force, for example, which Russia has, as Dr. Hoffman said. 

I think China is using—making very aggressive use of lawfare. 

So for example, its announcement of an air defense identification 

zone in the East China Sea, which it did in 2013; its rejection of 

the recent arbitration award in favor of the Philippines, which shed 

doubt over many of China’s legal claims in the South China Sea; 

its very assertive use of economic sanctions and embargoes, and so 

on, which we are seeing deployed today against South Korean companies for no greater offense than the country taking measures in 

its own defense. 

And then finally, something I have seen in my own country, unfortunately, which is a more sophisticated influence campaign with 

growing Chinese control over the local ethnic media, for example, 
11 

and also media reports of China-sourced money making its way to 

the major political parties, both sides of politics in Australia. 

So, I think a more sophisticated attempt to influence, rather 

than to actually destabilize us, thus far. 

The CHAIRMAN. And briefly, Dr. Chivvis, and I realize that I am 

asking you to speculate here a bit. But, these leaks from WikiLeaks, Snowden, all of that sort of stuff, it has done such enormous 

damage to our national security. Could that be a part of a hybrid 

warfare effort by Russia? 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Yes. I mean, it certainly could be. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. I want to come back to what we do about 

it in a bit, but at this point I yield to Mr. Cooper. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to put all three of you on the spot, by asking a completely different line of questions. I think too often, we assume 

what has been assumed in the testimony today, that it is a U.S. 

point of view. What if we were to put ourselves in the shoes of 

many of our adversaries, and the way they might view us? 

And I do this with intent. I think the first rule of war is to understand the nature of the enemy. So what are they thinking about 

us? I would start by questioning the chairman’s first view that the 

U.S. has a binary view of war. We are either at war or at peace. 

I don’t think I need to remind these sophisticated witnesses that 

we really haven’t declared a war since what—World War II. So, 

these have been varieties of police actions. And right now, we are 

failing to even authorize, properly, through a use of force resolution, our current troops that are in the Middle East. 

So, we have indulged legally in all sorts of permutations of war, 

whether the Pentagon has acknowledged these formally or not. On 

many other different levels, and I think a lot of this is probably 

paranoia on the part of countries around the world. 

I don’t think I need to remind you that, I think, traditionally, 

India even viewed our Peace Corps as a weapon of war and refused 

to allow any Peace Corps volunteers in the country of India. Because they were somehow suspect. 

Some countries view our cultural exports as Western imperialism. Because it is kind of ironic that in the country of Iran, we are 

more popular there than any other Muslim country. Because of the 

sophisticated Iranian youth, kind of like our movies and our books. 

I think some of these countries maybe attribute to us a wholeof-government approach which we, in fact, do not have, and incapable of projecting. But they still see a unified sort of aspect to our 

policies. And I am not even counting our intelligence agencies activities, which have been performing during the Cold War, and 

after the Cold War, things like that. 

Because it is my understanding that Vladimir Putin tries to 

blame us for all sorts of color revolutions, even though we probably 

had nothing to do with the Orange Revolution, or the other varieties of color revolutions. So, to me, if we put ourselves in the shoes 

of our adversaries, and of neutral countries around the world, it is 

a much more confusing picture. 

Because we may actually be better at some of these things than 

we are giving ourselves credit for. Now, there is some bureaucratic 

slowness, probably, in the Pentagon, for using these as formal in-
12 

struments of U.S. power, but just the lack of whole-of-government 

coordination doesn’t necessarily mean we are being ineffective. 

So, to me, I would like to try that approach on. And I am sorry 

to upend your testimonies. But to me, it is perhaps a more useful 

analysis than the ones that you have pursued. I will start with Dr. 

Hoffman. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. I would be glad to respond to that just a little bit, 

sir. It would be naive of me, as an historian, not to acknowledge 

that our actions, say, against Cuba, our actions against Iran, perhaps in the 1950s, and some actions against Central America don’t 

represent some activity that would be considered non-traditional 

forms of influence operations of our own. 

But I do believe that both, particularly Mr. Putin and his clique, 

which are largely from the intelligence community, are psychologically positioning themselves to look at the color-coded revolutions that I don’t believe we fomented, I don’t believe we supported, 

we may have encouraged, but we certainly didn’t engage significant 

resources to push behind. 

I think he is just looking for an excuse to justify most of his own 

actions. But, I know in the Cold War—I am old enough to, you 

know, be a Cold War veteran, and understand that period of time, 

that we, too, played this game under the table in the shadow wars, 

pretty extensively. 

And anybody who has read Mr. Gates’ memoirs on shadow wars 

would understand the competition. I, as a young man, had the opportunity to travel in the 1970s in East and West Germany, and 

saw the competition between two different forms of government, 

and understand that conflict. 

I think, overall, for humanity and for the West, and for the 

world, that our competition, again, as I close, my last sentence, our 

understanding of the opponent, and our engagement of them, consistent with our democratic principles and values is the approach 

that we should be taking. And I think all of our strategies probably 

reflect that. 

I do want to pick up one point that you made about the binary 

nature, and I, in my written testimony, include the little chart. But 

I don’t think it is all black and white. I think we actually do compete in that space a little bit. 

I do think our adversaries emphasize, under the table, illegitimate forms of influence. We see building partnership capacity, theater engagement, security force assistance, the Defense Cooperative 

Security Agency, mil-to-mil engagements, interactions that we have 

at NDU with foreign governments. 

You know, we see this, I think, incrementally, and in a stovepipe 

manner, but they are forms of influence, interaction with the 

world, I think, people benefit from. And we might not strategically 

orchestrate that very effectively, but I think it is a very positive, 

a very constructive, a very transparent kind of thing. 

So, I think we are involved, but maybe we are not strategically, 

coherently influencing the way we want to in certain regions. And 

that is an area that, perhaps the joint world and the NSC can improve our strategic responses, because we buy things, sometimes, 

and I don’t think we understand that when we are supporting a 
13 

particular ally and building up their military, we think we are stabilizing something. 

But Mr. Putin, he likes that weakness. He wants to see peripheral states along the Eastern seaboard to be spheres of influence 

for him. You know, he wants them to be destabilized. And that is, 

I think, something that we need to take to heart. 

We focus, in the military, much on the hardware of the Soviet 

Union, or Russia, today. Its anti-access/area denial capabilities, 

A2/AD, has become a buzzword in defense. And I think that the 

A2/RD, the anti-alliance and the reality denial activities that the 

Russians are up to, is something we need to, you know, to push 

back on. 

So, I take your point. I do believe we are competing, we are just 

not, probably, competing as strategically and coherently as I think 

we do. And we need to understand how the opponent sees that. 

When we build up the Philippines, or work with the Vietnamese, 

clearly the Chinese see that as something against their interests, 

and we need to be transparent and understanding about that. 

Mr. SHEARER. Sir, with respect to China, I totally agree. It is 

very important to understand their worldview, and what they are 

thinking, and of course, they come to this problem as a country 

with very significant achievements. 

They have dragged hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, 

and they have a history of imperialism in their country and so 

forth, that they feel very strongly, and I think there is no question 

that they feel encircled, if you like, by American allies, is how they 

would put it. 

And therefore, at one level, it is not unreasonable for them to 

look to sort of push back that American influence. What has 

changed, I think, most recently, is that China now has more capability to do that, including very sophisticated military capabilities. 

And seemingly, under its current political leadership, more intent to do that. And I agree that China doesn’t want a conflict, for 

the reasons I mentioned in my statement. I think the problem, 

though, is that what China does seem to want, is a traditional, 

19th century style sort of sphere of influence, where the region is 

organized politically, economically, and in security terms, according 

to its preferences. 

And the real problem is that, in the region, we have an order 

which has worked very well for 70 years, and produced an extraordinary period of prosperity and peace, in which China has risen 

so incredibly successfully. And it is a question about what sort of 

region we want in the future it seems to me. 

And the problem here is that if part of the deal and the sphere 

of influence is giving China what it wants, which is ultimately an 

end to the American alliances and the sort of say that I am describing in the affairs of regional countries, that is a very different region, and I think a very problematic one for us all, including for 

U.S. interests ultimately. 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Congressman Cooper, you raise an important issue, 

and there is no question about it that Russia sees many things that 

the United States does as hybrid warfare. It said so on many occasions. You are absolutely right. 
14 

It views our support for democracy promotion programs as hybrid warfare, things like NDI [National Democratic Institute], IRI 

[International Republican Institute], our general support to civil society, it all sees as part of a broader U.S. hybrid warfare strategy. 

The question for me is always, well, okay. That may be the case, 

but what is the significance from a foreign policy or a defense perspective? Because it doesn’t change the reality that Russia is using 

these tactics in Europe to undermine American interests. 

So whether or not it is true that we do similar kinds of things 

around the world, it doesn’t change the fact that the Kremlin right 

now is actively using hybrid warfare strategies to work against and 

undermine things that we have built in Europe over the course of 

the last several decades. 

So I guess my answer is a yes and a no at the same time. 

Mr. COOPER. I know my time has expired, but I would like to 

hope that in your answers to other people’s questions you can 

somehow include these two quick thoughts. One, should we kick 

out RT from America? 

And two, when we mention South China Sea troubles, I wish we 

could hear more about creeping Chinese influence in Hong Kong, 

which is probably economically much more significant and yet 

somehow it is not as much in the news. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Wilson. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank each of you 

for being here today. And a question I want to begin with, Dr. Hoffman, and each of you can answer, my fellow Cold War veteran. So 

I am grateful to be with you. 

In recent weeks North Korea has continued to launch ballistic 

missiles off the coast of South Korea in continued defiance of the 

international community. How effective are North Korea’s hybrid 

methods in obtaining its strategic goals? 

In addition, what capabilities does the United States and its 

partners have, and allies, to confront the hybrid threats of North 

Korea? And each of you can answer, again, beginning with Dr. 

Hoffman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Microphone. 

Mr. WILSON. Mike. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you would hit the mike, please? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Yes, I am sorry. The North Koreans have never 

really been much of my research base. The only time I have explored that was a few years ago after the war with Hezbollah the 

North Koreans had a little bit of chatter about how successful Hezbollah was against the Israelis. And there was some open source 

material on how they might adapt their forces. 

And so my discussion on, and research on, North Korea has been 

limited largely to how they have adapted their force structure for 

a post-conflict sort of insurgency. They have prepared themselves, 

you know, if we were to invade North Korea or to be involved in 

a post-regime stability operation, how they would conduct a hybrid 

campaign to attrit us over time. And I think they perhaps have 

even exercised that a little bit. 

But what we have seen of late with North Korea, you have got 

the missile threats, you know, kind of the high-end things, intimidating both South Korea, forcing us to invest in the theater area 
15 

missile defense system. They threatened our friends in Japan with 

their missiles. 

The recent assassination in Kuala Lumpur using a weapon of 

mass destruction is something that is of great concern, I think, to 

the security community writ large. It is clearly a violation of a 

norm that we didn’t want to see anybody pass. And there hasn’t 

been sufficient cost-imposing actions, you know, taken yet on the 

North Koreans. 

We have contained a lot of their nefarious economic activity, 

money laundering, human trafficking. We have limited their counterproliferation efforts, which I think is a hybrid technique that 

doesn’t get mentioned very much. But they have been successful in 

the past at exporting some missile components to adversaries of 

ours. So that is kind of a concern. 

But I don’t have anything more direct or specific than that. I 

have been focusing on the Middle East and Europe for the last 

years, and Iran. 

Mr. WILSON. Well, you certainly have addressed every issue not 

being focused. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you. 

Mr. SHEARER. Yes, sir. Sir, I have spoken mostly about China, 

but North Korea is, in my view, the most acute security threat facing us in the Asia-Pacific region. And the answer to your question 

about the hybrid capabilities is, unfortunately, they are very effective. 

We have seen them carry out an assassination using a suspected 

nerve agent in another country. We have seen them carry out a 

range of similar actions over many years now, and they are very 

good at it. 

They are very good at acquiring illicit technologies; the rate of 

progress in their missile programs and their nuclear weapons program is very disturbing. And they also are very good at funding 

these programs by a variety of nefarious means, organized crime, 

counterfeiting. 

It is extraordinary some of the activities they get up to around 

the world often using their diplomatic missions as cover. 

And then finally they have got very advanced cyber capabilities, 

which we saw exhibited in the Sony hack a couple of years ago. So 

their capabilities are very strong. 

On our side, nuclear and conventional deterrence remains vital 

as always. Increasingly important, though, missile defense has to 

be part of that deterrent picture and it is vital there that the 

United States is networking its missile defenses more effectively 

with allies in North Asia especially, like Japan and South Korea. 

The alliances generally will be vital in our response to the North 

Korea challenge. I think the idea that we can just sort of rely on 

China to sort out the problem is a mistake and rock solid alliances 

have to be the foundation of our strategy for dealing with North 

Korea. 

And then finally, there is a place for effective, targeted U.S.-led 

sanctions. They have had some success in the past at really putting 

the screws on the North Koreans. And personally I think we need 

to go back there again. 
16 

Dr. CHIVVIS. I don’t think I have anything to add on North 

Korea. 

Mr. WILSON. And thank you very much, Dr. Chivvis. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. McEachin. 

Mr. MCEACHIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, gentlemen. Isn’t it true that international institutions and alliances 

take on heightened importance in a context of hybrid threats? For 

example, the FVEY’s [Five Eyes] intelligence sharing agreement 

can only work if there is goodwill and trust among the parties. 

First of all, I would like for each of you all to comment about the 

importance of that arrangement, if you would? And then share 

with us your impressions about the administration’s attitudes towards these institutions and whether they are enhancing our alliances or damaging to our security? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. They are excellent questions, sir. I think I alluded 

in my comment that I think much of the tactics, particularly from 

Russia, but also China are against alliances. 

They are trying to find cracks and seams and actually widen 

them, separate us from them economically, politically, and from a 

security perspective. So I think that is a key commonality, particularly with both the Chinese and the Russian activity. 

In my countering hybrid threat strategy, I have an element that 

is about political competition, and it is about strengthening and 

employing all regional organizations and legal mechanisms at our 

disposal. So I would emphasize aspects such as the EU, which has 

an economic, political, and social integration aspect that I think 

helps fight off some of the Russian intrusions. 

So I believe that the need to strengthen, sustain alliances, and 

work within alliances is kind of critical. Some of the statements 

that the administration made or before, at least maybe in the campaign, I think most of the comments since Mr. Trump has been inaugurated, such as his comments about NATO, Mr. Tillerson’s visit 

to Munich and to Brussels, Mr. Mattis’ trip to see the Japanese 

and also to Munich and Brussels have been about the importance 

of these alliances and everybody working together. 

The second aspect of my strategy, also though, does require an 

enhanced alliance capability investments. And Mr. Trump, Mr. 

Mattis, and Mr. Tillerson have been emphasizing to all of our allies 

that the burdens of security and their own capabilities need to 

notch it up a little bit. 

So I think that twin message about the importance of allies has 

been part, I think central to the administration’s message and also 

the need to increase their capability levels and defense spending 

levels. 

And I think that two-step message is, judging from the latest reports from NATO, that it is being effective. I don’t know about 

Asia. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. SHEARER. Sir, thank you for your question. As someone who 

started his career as an Australian intelligence officer, I have been 

involved in the FVEY’s partnership really for over a quarter of a 

century now. And it is a massive force multiplier for us, and I 

think it has never been as important as it is today. 

And as you said, it rests on goodwill and trust rather than a sort 

of more transactional approach. And that, maintaining that is crit-
17 

ical and it is no secret to anyone on this committee that the 

Snowden revelations, for example, did enormous damage to the 

FVEYs and really were a blow to that trust. 

But I think the strength of the arrangement is demonstrated by 

how well it sort of absorbed that shock and continues to play such 

a critical role, really in everything we do around all those threats 

we are talking about today. 

And your point about institutions is spot on as well because ultimately this is an normative contest. It is a contest about who is 

going to set the rules. And I don’t personally believe that in the 

Asia-Pacific China wants to completely demolish the regional order 

and start again. 

It is not a revisionist power in that sense, but nor is it a status 

quo power. It wants to kind of selectively pick and choose rules 

that it is going to follow. 

And just going back to the earlier point about Hong Kong, I 

mean, I think that is a really good example where Great Britain 

did a deal, if you like, with China in good faith and then over time 

you get this crab-walking away from the deal. 

And for various reasons, not least all about economic equities in 

China, which are very significant, yet somehow we are not as vocal 

in defending our values and our principles as we should be. 

So I think strengthening institutions is incredibly important. 

That is why it is really vital, I think, that the U.S. remains engaged in Asian institutions like APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] and the East Asia Summit and with ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations]. 

And having just traveled to Southeast Asia I can say there is 

real anxiety out there about, you know, is the President going to 

come to APEC? And will the U.S. sort of drop back its level of 

engagement with Southeast Asia? 

And those countries are looking for a lead and they are also 

hedging. They are also trying to get their minds around a world 

with less U.S. engagement. So it is very important that the institutions respect it and engage with them. 

Mr. MCEACHIN. Thank you. My time has expired, and I yield 

back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ms. Stefanik. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Hoffman, in the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] 

for fiscal year 2016, almost 2 years ago, this committee noted concern about hybrid and unconventional threats and directed the 

DOD [Department of Defense] to submit a strategy for countering 

unconventional and hybrid threats. Unfortunately, to date the DOD 

has yet to submit or even begin to coordinate with other government agencies. 

In our language in that NDAA we also noted that, quote, ‘‘Most 

state sponsors of unconventional warfare such as Russia and Iran 

have doctrinally linked conventional warfare, economic warfare, 

cyber warfare, information operations, intelligence operations, and 

other activities seamlessly in an effort to undermine U.S. national 

security objectives and the objectives of U.S. allies alike.’’ 

My question for you is, first, do you agree with this assessment 

still and the need to develop such a comprehensive whole-of-gov-
18 

ernment strategy? And second, in terms of countering hybrid warfare, are we any closer to linking all of our tools and capabilities 

such as conventional, unconventional, economic, cyber, intelligence, 

and information operations in our effort to counter these adversarial threats? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. In short, no, ma’am. We are not as ready. I do 

agree that the committee’s language was necessary. I was in the 

Pentagon working at the time and we actually directed some of the 

similar language. But I am not aware of where the status of those 

reports are. 

There has been a lot of work done by the special operations community and the military about unconventional warfare, but I think 

they have a narrower definition. And this is one of the problems 

with hybridity and the Russian approach is that it transcends this 

committee’s charter. It goes beyond NATO’s capability. 

I think one of the reasons I was working with General Breedlove 

on hybridity is that he understood that the challenge to Europe 

went beyond the narrow military charter of itself. 

And I think we need to—one of the advantages of thinking of this 

multidimensionally, the way we have with hybrid threats, is that 

the economic aspects, the political, and the informational are more 

apparent, as they were to General Breedlove. 

He understood that the resilience of Europe, the border security 

issues, the immigration challenges, the propaganda, aspects of European security that were not under his charter was something 

that he was trying to pull into the conversation. 

And I don’t believe we are organized. As I said in my series of 

questions in my oral statement, I believe that the organization and 

the orchestration of our responses needs to be more strategically 

integrated. And I don’t believe it is. 

And I don’t know where that is resonant. And I don’t know 

enough about the covert activities up at Langley to make an assessment on that. It has not been my area of focus academically. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you. Would the other witnesses like to add 

to that? 

Dr. Chivvis. 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Sure. As I said in my written comments, I think the 

locus for developing this kind of a strategy is the National Security 

Council staff. 

And I would recommend a regular set of meetings at the PCC 

[Policy Coordination Committee] level to establish some kind of a 

national-level strategy. That is how I would start this process rather than in the Defense Department itself. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Mr. Shearer. 

Mr. SHEARER. The only thing I would add is that I think it is important that there is an overarching strategy but also regional 

strategies, if you like, because the precise mix of tactics and approaches and capabilities that is used in Europe, for example by 

the Russians, is different from what the Chinese are doing in the 

South China Sea and the East China Sea. 

And I think we need to make sure our strategies are tailored to 

the problem. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you. My second question is in reference to 

a subcommittee hearing I chaired last week for the Emerging 
19 

Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. The subject was information warfare and counter-propaganda strategies. 

One of our witnesses, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Lumpkin, described the State Department as a 19th century 

bureaucracy using 20th century tools against 21st century adversaries. Would each of you agree with that assessment? 

And since the State Department is so critical to countering hybrid threats, what are some of the ways that Congress could help 

here? What are some of the ways that DOD could integrate better 

with State, for example? 

Certainly if State faces significant cuts as the current administration proposes, how can DOD help fill that void? I would like to 

get your assessment of what the proper model would be. 

Dr. Hoffman. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. I watched that hearing and read all the testimonies, and I was particularly impressed with Mr. Lumpkin’s. I 

am not sure that I agree with him that the GEC [Global Engagement Center] could be somehow injected with steroids in the State 

Department and that was the proper place for it. 

And then when I was preparing my statement I was considering, 

you know, the NSC. On the strategic side I agree with my fellow 

panelists that regional directors do think about these matters in a 

strategic and comprehensive way. 

But I worry about operationalizing the NSC to get into something that involves right now economic activity, which is difficult 

the way the NSC is kind of focused on foreign policy and military 

aspects. So again, I am not quite sure where to place this. 

We have experimented with a variety of locations and we have 

experimented with things like the National Counterterrorism Center. And maybe there is some need for some study that some of the 

studies that you have requested in the past that haven’t been completed should really examine. 

But this issue of counter-messaging on the propaganda side and 

the disinformation is a key element. It is a major thrust that we 

are not well organized on that needs some investment, some pushing. 

It just—whose jurisdiction does all this fit into and a method 

that is seeking to avoid hard surfaces and is looking for all those 

institutional barriers and cracks to kind of try to get into. But we 

are not there and we probably need to push the government to respond in some way. 

Ms. STEFANIK. Thank you. My time has expired. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. O’Halleran. 

Mr. O’HALLERAN. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

I am sad to hear what you just said about us not being organized. It bothers me and it brings to mind our intelligence operations prior to 9/11 and the issues that occurred afterwards. 

And I still don’t know that we are fully there where we need to 

be in that. 

But I am going to take up Mr. Cooper’s idea about the South 

China Sea. Throw in there if you have any concerns about the Philippines and what containment strategies we can use? 

Start with Dr. Hoffman. 
20 

Dr. HOFFMAN. I have some grave concerns about the Philippines, 

whether, you know, Mr. Duarte’s actions represent a change in foreign policy for the Philippines that is permanent, whether it is a 

temporary alteration or an aberration in a longstanding—with the 

Philippines going back the better part of this century. 

But I do believe that the Chinese are trying to abet that change 

and they are trying to institutionalize it as much as they can, 

which would limit our ability to have potential bases or access in 

that particular region of the world. 

I am particularly concerned about China’s activities with the 

building up of the missile bases and the atolls. I think they will 

continue that. They will continue to push on the threshold. They 

will continue to seize as many islands. 

I think they are going to solve their entire South China Sea and 

energy access as incrementally and as illegally as they possibly can 

over a period of time. 

I think that is their strategy in the region. And to undercut us 

and any potential other ally that we might want to, you know, 

build in the region. 

Mr. O’HALLERAN. Containment. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Yes. Well, again we are not—I don’t believe we are 

imposing costs sufficiently either diplomatically or economically 

against the Chinese for the actions they took. They have made 

promises and they have continued to not live up to all those promises. 

You know, they have started building up these bases and said 

they wouldn’t arm them and they have. And I think they are going 

to continue to do so. 

That is part of, I think, a deliberate strategy of misinformation 

and diplomatic doublespeak that they are going to continue for a 

period of time. But I will have to defer to the regional expert in 

that particular area. 

Mr. O’HALLERAN. And let us go to the regional expert. Thank 

you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. SHEARER. Thank you for the question, sir. So clearly the 

U.S.-Philippines alliance is going through a difficult period and 

President Duarte has got some very outspoken views. Myself, I am 

concerned about the situation, and I think we need to work very 

hard at it. But I don’t think we need to despair totally yet. 

I was in Manila a couple of weeks ago. And my impression is 

that the Philippines, like many countries around Southeast Asia, 

wants the strongest possible economic relationship with China, and 

wants the benefits that come from that particular investment in infrastructure and so forth, which it needs. But it also wants the 

United States. 

The very clear message to me was that they value the U.S. alliance. They know how important it is to them. And their military 

in particular know how important U.S. training, and backup, if you 

like, is. And I think that is absolutely critical. Even despite all the 

noise and the problems, the core of U.S. exercises with the Philippines has gone on uninterrupted. 

Two or three of them have been cancelled, but more than a hundred are going ahead, which is good news. And the enhanced defense cooperation arrangements are still intact. 
21 

So, while I don’t think we should be complacent, I don’t think we 

should sort of give up the Philippines yet either. And I do think, 

as I said in my statement, that it is particularly important because 

of the strategic location of Scarborough Shoal, about 150 nautical 

miles from Manila, that China is prevented from moving ahead and 

doing its dredging an island and building another of these 10,000 

foot runways which can basically station a Chinese fighter regiment. 

So I think, focusing on maintaining deterrence against that step 

is absolutely vital. As is continuing to build up the Philippines 

military’s own capabilities, especially their maritime capabilities. 

Mr. O’HALLERAN. Thank you. And I yield back, Mr. Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Banks. 

Mr. BANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thanks to each of you 

for being here today and for your testimony. In a few weeks I will 

be joining some other members of the committee to travel to Eastern Europe to gain a better understanding of the extent of these 

gray zone strategies as Dr. Chivvis articulates. 

And I wonder, based on that, if each of you could articulate or 

help me define what you would determine as the crossing of the 

threshold of war? And also if you could just talk for a little bit 

about what are the best ways that we can identify and respond to 

these actions? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. We need to work on the educational basis. This is 

something that I included, specifically in figure 1, in written testimony where I tried to create what we don’t have in the American 

conceptualization of war. We have this black and white, or kinds 

of war. But we don’t understand the competitive conflicts space. 

So I try to define a continuum and I make a distinction between 

being in conflict with somebody and being at war with somebody. 

And I drew a red line in my chart. 

When you apply organized violence, when you apply lethal force 

to someone, you have crossed over, in my mind, from using instruments of conflict into using instruments of war. So irregular war 

and terrorism cross over that line. 

But the activities we see right now where people bump into 

boats, where they intimidate air traffic, where they impede into 

airspace, where they try to corrupt or penetrate with a false-front 

organization, when RT comes in and sets up shop and starts spewing a series of rumors, innuendos, and false information, you are 

in conflict with somebody because you are contesting and competing for influence and control over either population or benefits 

of being in the area. 

To me that red line is somewhat important. I do believe there is 

a professional domain and jurisdiction for the military in the art 

of war that is applied violence for political objectives. 

And then there is broader areas in which other instruments play. 

And that is the conceptual problem we are kind of struggling with. 

We all use the phrase spectrum of war and we all use the phrase 

sometimes continuum of conflict. But nobody has ever defined it. 

U.S. joint doctrine is there are two forms. There is irregular and 

there is traditional. And think about the word traditional. Traditional defined by us, not in a commonly understood, you know, kind 

of thing. 
22 

So that is the research I have been trying to help the chairman 

who has been interested in this conceptualization problem. The 

chairman recognizes the problem, intellectually and conceptually, 

on how we are educating our officers. 

Mr. SHEARER. So that is one way to sort of explain how this 

works in the South China Sea context, is what some analysts call 

a ‘‘cabbage strategy’’ from the Chinese. And that is, the first thing 

they will do is move in their maritime militia which are fishing 

boats, unarmed fishing boats. But they will coordinate them and 

sort of convoy them in. They did this with about 300 at the same 

time around the Senkakus. 

Then, if there is a robust response from the other country to 

that, for example their coast guard responds, the Chinese will move 

in their coast guard ships, which as I said, are in at least two cases 

larger than American cruisers. I mean, very big; they’re warships, 

except that they are painted white, and they are assigned to the 

coast guard. So that is their next layer. 

And then if the other country chooses to escalate again, they 

have got naval forces over the horizon. And so each time, what they 

are doing, is they are putting the onus on the Philippines or Japan, 

either to submit to their move or to escalate. So that is the thinking. 

And then where does that become actual armed conflict? Well 

after that there are warships bumping into each other. There are 

warships, you know, signaling each other. There are warning shots. 

And a new area is the whole sort of non-kinetics space using 

electronic warfare, lasers, et cetera, to, you know, affect the other. 

So it is a very complicated question, I guess. 

And in terms of how we should respond? I think it is really important we don’t draw false red lines. I think it is absolutely critical that we decide where to make a stand and then we make a 

stand. I think we have to be clearer about our commitments. 

Sometimes ambiguity is a good thing in strategy. But I think we 

are in a phase in these different regions where we need to be clearer about what we will oppose and how we will oppose it. 

I think we are going to have to accept more risk, calculated risk. 

But to impose cost, we have to accept more risk. We have to tighten our alliances as well. 

Dr. CHIVVIS. When we are talking about responding we are already back on our heels, which is why we need to be defending 

against these things. You can’t predict where the next hybrid warfare operation is going to occur. 

There are certain characteristics of countries which are more vulnerable than others, corruption and historical links to Russia, divided populace, where we can at least expect that it might occur. 

Mr. BANKS. My time has expired. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all of you 

for being here. Speaking of being back on our heels, when we already have to respond, I wonder if you could comment on sort of 

where we are when we look at the interagency effort or response 

on some of the different levels? 
23 

It is really clear that Russia and China are pretty good at hybrid 

warfare, I think. And excellent in incorporating the elements of diplomacy, information, military, and economics. 

And with some of the proposals right now, which would be essentially cutting some critical elements—where does that put us in 

terms of trying to make greater headway when we think of these 

different elements? 

And I think you have made a case that, in fact, we do have interagency that is working in some of these areas. But my concern is 

will they stop? Will they be underresourced in those areas as they 

have been in the past? 

Could you speak to that and what alarms you within that realm? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Well the two things that came to mind, the organization and being on our back foot and where the new administration has some emerging issues. 

I am concerned about our ability to think strategically about 

cost-imposing actions. Particularly in the economic domain. Our desire to back out of the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] in Asia I 

think has put us a little bit on the back foot from a leadership option. 

It may have been a bad deal economically. It might not have 

been in America’s best interest, particularly in a purely economic 

or an employment or a transactional perspective. But it is perceived or misperceived in Asia as a withdrawal from commitments. 

It is perceived as opening up a vacuum for China, for other actors to step into that void. We may do better economically in a bilateral arrangement applying our huge market advantages to a series of deals over time. But that is going to take a period of time. 

So I am concerned that we have lost a little bit of maneuver 

space on strategic leadership, on economic action, and that the administration needs to think about that. And I think, the new NSC, 

as it forms up, will have to put that together. Along with the economic advisors who are outside the NSC structure right now, 

which I think creates some interesting tension organizationally. 

And I am still concerned about our counter-messaging thing that 

Ms. Stefanik brought up in her hearing. We need to, I think, respond appropriately both in Asia and in Europe a lot better than 

we are doing. I think there is an organizational dilemma there as 

well. 

Mr. SHEARER. As I said in my statement, I think the military 

piece of this is very important, though our strategy has to extend 

well beyond that obviously as you said in your question. And diplomacy has to be front and center in this. 

So it is not an either/or that you can sort of take from one and 

give to the other. We do need robust diplomatic capabilities and we 

need to make sure that our diplomatic capabilities are adapting to 

a much more complex world, obviously. So that is very important 

as part of this strategy. 

I completely agree with Dr. Hoffman on the economic point. 

There are two elements of this. One is with regard to China, for 

example, we need to offer countries around the Asia-Pacific a compelling economic vision that is not China’s. 

And of course, the irony is that that is exactly what the TransPacific Partnership did. And that is why I think it is such an unfor-
24 

tunate setback. I don’t think it is a setback forever, I think, you 

know, we can work out and recover from it. 

But it is undeniably a setback because we actually want these 

countries to diversify their economic linkages and not be beholden 

to China, so that China can, you know, stop them from entering 

ports or stop exporting rare herbs to them when China chooses to 

do that. Incredibly important. 

The other economic aspect is we need a more coordinated strategy so that we can use the United States economic leverage more 

effectively in response to China’s efforts to build its influence 

through things like the ‘‘One Belt, One Road’’ initiative, but also 

through targeted sanctions when those are appropriate. 

And there may come a time when those are appropriate in the 

South China Sea, for example. So that is very important. 

And then, I think, the other aspect is the communication aspect 

where we have to get our messaging right. And that obviously is 

just harder and harder in this sort of world we are living in. But 

it shouldn’t be impossible. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Did you want to comment—— 

Dr. CHIVVIS. The problem—— 

Mrs. DAVIS [continuing]. The resources in addition to—— 

Dr. CHIVVIS. From our adversary’s perspective, from the Russian 

perspective, General Gerasimov, who I mentioned in my comments, 

sees this as a four to one civilian to military effort. And I think 

that is a reality that we need to take into account when we think 

about the resources that we are putting towards this. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am sorry, would you say that one more time? 

Sees this as a what? 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Four to one civilian—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, four to one. 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Four to one civilian to military ratio in terms of the 

effort. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. I am sorry, I just didn’t understand what 

you said. 

Dr. Abraham. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Shearer, I will 

start with you but certainly the other two gentlemen can chime in 

on this. 

I read your testimony and certainly the importance of the deterrence of the South China Sea issue is fore and foremost in everybody’s minds. Heretofore, in the last 18 to 24 months, the missteps 

and misinterpretation of intelligence, or whatever you want to call 

it, simply has not deterred construction and militarization of the 

South China Sea. 

So my question is, hindsight being 20/20, we look back, what 

could have been done differently and what do we need to do from 

this point on if we are going to say ‘‘okay, enough is enough’’? 

Where do we go from here? 

Mr. SHEARER. Thank you. It is a very good question. There has 

actually—I agree with your broad assessment. We have collectively 

failed to deter China from this kind of creeping de facto militarization. I think there is very little doubt of that. 
25 

There have been tactical exceptions to that though. Last year the 

media reported that the U.S. had successfully deterred Beijing from 

making a move on Scarborough Shoal through a combination of 

very high-level political messaging and military posturing, deployment of A–10s and an aircraft carrier. 

And that changed China’s calculations. It ramped up the cost of 

what they were planning to do. And I think, you know, that is a 

good example of what we need to think about going forward, including deterring further moves on Scarborough Shoal. 

So I think we need to be thinking about our vertical escalation 

options, which we did in that case. And then I think we need to 

be thinking about a broader set of other, if you like, horizontal escalation options. And we need to be engaging the Chinese and telling them that moving on Scarborough Shoal with dredges and so 

forth is not going to be acceptable. 

And those other steps could include, for example, the U.S. making its legal position on claims in the South China Sea less ambiguous than it currently is. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. I don’t think China would listen to that very well. 

Mr. SHEARER. I think it is about having a cumulative effect. So, 

I think as I said, at a certain point economic sanctions could come 

on the table if there are Chinese companies that are involved in 

the sort of massive environmental damage that is done when these 

places get kind of bulldozed and dredged and so forth. Then sanctions against those companies is probably an option. 

And then I think you need to go to the things that China values 

and fears, if you like. And one thing that they don’t want is closer, 

sort of encircling alliances around them. 

So I think sending the signal to China that one of the United 

States responses will be to tighten its alliances, tighten its alliance 

with Japan and South Korea and Australia and make those alliances more capable and more able to deter China. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Dr. Chivvis, Dr. Hoffman, do you want to comment? 

Dr. CHIVVIS. I will pass on the Asia question, thank you. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Okay. Let me follow up with a question that Dr. 

Banks had a while ago. We are talking about hybrid warfare, using 

an analogy of they look at it as death by a thousand cuts, so to 

speak. Where do we stop the bleeding militarily? Where do we 

intervene militarily to stop the bleeding to prevent the death? 

Dr. Chivvis, I will ask you to start with that question. 

Dr. CHIVVIS. That is obviously a difficult question and the main 

reason for that is that it is going to be different in every case. I 

think it is going to be difficult to develop some kind of a litmus test 

for when we deploy military forces into action, which is again why 

I emphasize the importance of building up our defenses against 

this. This is one of the things that makes this so hard. 

Obviously there is, you can imagine, in any case a point at which 

our interests are so threatened that it becomes justified to use 

large-scale kinetic military force. 

We have spent a lot of time at the RAND Corporation looking at 

different kinds of scenarios in the Baltic States, for example. And 

certainly you can imagine hybrid scenarios in a country like Esto-
26 

nia which get out of hand and call for the deployment of significant 

military forces into combat. 

So that doesn’t mean that we will always know when that comes, 

which it is good that we are having conversations like this to think 

about it in advance. 

Dr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So we were talking 

about China and Mr. Shearer, I want to build on that. And I apologize, I have multiple committee meetings at the same time here. 

So you may have answered this. But can you expound a little bit 

more on China’s strategic goals and how hybrid activities help advance those goals? 

Mr. SHEARER. Certainly ma’am. I think that the first thing I 

would say is that, at least at the moment, one of China’s most important goals is to avoid a major conflict with the United States. 

That is not in its plans. 

China wants to continue its rise. Its preoccupations are overwhelmingly internal in the sense that it has an authoritarian government that is struggling with a slowing economy, a number of 

problems stored up in that economy in the financial sector, in loans 

and so forth, separatist movements and so forth, massive environmental problems. 

So its focus is very much internal, but at the same time it is a 

country which in the last decade or so, and much more so in the 

last few years, has been looking to increase its strategic space. 

And the problem, of course, is that that means pushing back the 

United States influence and blunting the United States ability to 

project military power forward into the region, which has been one 

of the lynchpins of America’s Asia strategy for a very long time. 

The other problem of course is that China is rising not on its own 

in its own hemisphere, I guess the way the United States once did, 

but already with Japan, a major power next door to it, South Korea 

and a series of other countries, who are all very heavily invested 

in the U.S.-led order in the region and want to see it continue. 

And hence based on all of that, China’s strategy is to over time 

squeeze out U.S. influence using its anti-access and area denial capabilities to weaken the ability of the U.S. to project force, to create 

doubts in the minds of U.S. allies about whether the United States 

will be there for them when it is needed. 

And ultimately, it would like to decouple those alliances and 

have a region where China is very central, where countries all 

around the region have to defer to China’s choices about how the 

region is organized politically, economically, and in security terms. 

That is their game and the way they are trying to do it, it has 

to be said with quite a lot of success so far, is to stay under that 

threshold of conflict with the United States. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. What are some of the hybrid activities that they 

are doing with that? I know I came in and heard you shifting to 

their coast guard, you know, which is kind of a gray area. 

Mr. SHEARER. Yes. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. What are some of the other hybrid areas you 

would say they are employing? 
27 

Mr. SHEARER. They are very active in the communication space 

trying to influence domestic opinion using Chinese-owned news 

outlets and so forth. Social media, the internet, they have a very 

sophisticated cyber capability. They are active on that front. We 

talked about the paramilitary piece of this. 

And then economically where, for example, right now they are 

using de facto sanctions against South Korean companies to show 

their displeasure about South Korea’s decision to deploy the 

THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] missile defense 

system in response to the threat from North Korea. I would say 

that. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Can you build on that as a—we have heard a lot 

about them being very forward-thinking and going into areas 

where typically our allies and buying up hotels, buying up areas. 

Can you give more examples of some of their economic activities 

they are doing to try to project their power and gain influence? 

Mr. SHEARER. Certainly. The main one is what they call the Belt 

and Road initiative, which is this idea of creating a sort of network 

of Chinese-funded infrastructure facilities stretching all the way 

from China through to the Middle East. 

And examples of their purchasing or investing in ports and railroads and other critical pieces of strategic infrastructure, very often 

with a dual purpose in mind. So, mysteriously, China now has a 

de facto naval facility next door to the U.S. one in Djibouti. 

There was in Australia a couple of years ago the Chinese bought 

a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin, which happens to be the 

port used by the U.S. Marines to support their rotations through 

Northern Australia. So quite a sophisticated long-term strategic investment plan. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. My time is up, but is there a map that shows 

all of their different spots where they have invested with a table 

that lists what those are? 

Mr. SHEARER. Yes. CSIS actually has a whole project looking at 

that, so I could get that information for you. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Yes. That would be great. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The information referred to was not available at the time of 

printing.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me circle back around to a couple items that 

we have kind of touched on, but first one we haven’t touched on. 

Does anybody have any comments about Iran’s activities that may 

fall within hybrid warfare? 

Dr. Hoffman. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Sir. We did a study. I believe it was 2009 when 

Iran was a maritime hybrid threat as opposed to a ground-based 

threat. But clearly as an exporter of instability—they have an organization called the Quds Force, which is, you know, a special operations force that is basically in the business of advising foreign 

military nonstate actors into fairly capable hybrid threat actors 

such as Hezbollah. 

They are in the business of creating instability through these hybrid actors that they sustain financially, they give advice and training to. But I also looked at Iran’s naval capabilities. 
28 

They really don’t have a conventional navy, haven’t bought a 

frigate in 40 or 50 years, and I believe they are out of major missiles, but they have bought small boats. They have bought foreign 

boats from Europe. 

They have ad hoc’d navigation and missile systems on top of 

these capabilities. They have some small submarines with advanced submarines. They have cruise missiles along the coast. 

They basically fight a hybrid war at sea as part of an exercise that 

they plan to swarm major capital ships. 

They have bought or have acquired a significant number of Chinese influence mines. So they have the capability of trying to impose costs on us economically by attempting to close the Straits of 

Hormuz and then ambush and raid against any kind of naval 

forces and activity all along their coast. 

So from a maritime perspective definitely a hybrid kind of threat 

in the classical sense, as well as the land projection capability. Admiral Stavridis has recently written on hybrid maritime threats as 

well, both in the Baltics where he and I were working, and in the 

Iranian area. 

And Admiral Stavridis has published two articles in the Naval 

Institute Proceedings and one now in the Royal Uniform Services 

Journal in London in this particular area. 

Iran I think is definitely an exporter of hybrid threats and multiplying them, and we see Hezbollah now in Syria getting some offensive skills that it didn’t have in its repertoire before. 

They were somewhat of a defensive force with their missiles and 

fighting capabilities in southern Lebanon against Israel. But now 

they are on the march. Whether that is a threat multiplier for 

Hezbollah or weakens them remains to be seen what kind of attrition they take over time. 

But definitely Iran is definitely an issue that is worthy of study. 

And there are a variety of experts that I work with in the national 

intelligence community that are focused on that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Let me go back to your continuum for just 

a second and where you draw the line, violence, nonviolence. Where 

does the little green men fit in? Because they commit violence. 

They don’t have a uniform. They try to blend in as, you know, indigenous separatist sort of thing. Which side of the line are they 

on? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Well, Crimea is somewhat of a unique case. I have 

actually tried to explore what was the violent count, and violence 

in terms of I am looking at lethality in terms of killed in action 

kind of thing, not in the movement of military force. 

In one sense, that is a classical coup de main, a descent of a uniformed, organized military force and leadership. I view that in 

somewhat conventional terms, like us rushing into Panama where 

we already had forces. 

The Russians had naval bases, troops, paramilitary. They had 

pretty much infiltrated Crimea. It would be interesting in a classified forum to discuss the previous penetration of Crimea informationally, cyber, and influence. I believe a lot of phone calls, a lot 

of people were sick that day or didn’t attend work. 

There was a lot of prep. We missed this in our study at military. 

We kind of start with the enemy order of battle on the day the bat-
29 

tle began, but if you looked at, in studying Czechoslovakia and 

Hungary, there is a lot of activity there going on months before 

that the Russians do. And that case it can be seen as more conventional. 

But they are filling it with some hybrid aspects. The ambiguity 

and the paralysis that they intended, to delay anybody responding, 

certainly to allow people who want to delay making a decision, like 

NATO, to delay and to argue about is it really a Russian military 

force? 

But I look at the troops. I recognize the uniforms. I actually 

know who the units were. I think we even knew who the commanders were. We know where they came from. They wore Russian 

helmets with Russian-speaking individuals wearing Russian uniforms. They were just missing the patch. 

It is not too unique. And it is very hard to replicate that in other 

places I believe. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, but, well, I guess that gets to the deception 

part of this. If they slow you down in the response then maybe it 

has achieved its objectives. 

And I would like to ask each of you to comment on the benefits 

and the cost of making public more of these activities, because you 

always have this balance with the intelligence community that you 

don’t want to reveal your sources and methods. You don’t want 

them to know what you know. 

And yet if so much of hybrid warfare is based on deception, shining a light on it and saying the Russians are trying to push a 

rumor that U.S. started AIDS at Fort Detrick. Is it not something 

that we ought to do more of, I will put it that way, to shine the 

light on what they are trying to do on the deception to bring that 

out, I guess, is what I am saying. 

Dr. Chivvis, we will start with you and go the other way. 

Dr. CHIVVIS. Sure. I would agree that it is probably leaning in 

on this. There is always a balance between protecting sources and 

methods and making things like this public. But I think in dealing 

with hybrid warfare, obviously, we may want to move the needle 

a little bit towards being more liberal in terms of what we put out 

there. 

I think that there is obviously a middle course, which is to communicate with our allies about this, and this gets back to the question about FVEYs. I mean, the benefits of intelligence sharing are 

both that we gain intelligence from our allies. 

Oftentimes they have that important understanding of what is 

happening on the ground that we do not have access to. But also 

we have to be able to tell them when something is happening in 

their own country that they may not be aware of in order to get 

them to take actions that we want them to take. So it goes both 

ways. 

And I think that at least in that middle space the more that we 

can share I think the better. 

Mr. SHEARER. Mr. Chairman, I mentioned the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. What I think has been good about 

that is it uses commercial imagery and then we show it to the 

world and it has had a remarkable effect in terms of exactly what 

you are speaking about. 
30 

Before we did that, you know, this just wasn’t part of people’s 

consciousness, and then suddenly you can see these enormous islands, runways, hangars, the whole thing. It somehow makes it 

real to people. So I think that is an incredibly important part of 

this. 

We have to protect sources and methods, obviously, but my sense 

is we can lean much further forward than we are in information 

warfare, to call it what it really is. And psychologically I think the 

point here is, going back to your opening comment about being at 

peace and being at war, we just don’t have our heads in this game. 

And we have been there before. We have done it before, but we 

need to get our heads back in the game quickly, in my view. Because otherwise we are not going to make all the sort of bureaucratic and budget investment decisions and so forth that we really 

need to build these strategies. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. I really can’t add very much to that, sir, but in 

my strategy for countering hybrid threats the very first aspect is 

an open, transparent, strategic narrative about what we are about 

in terms of a rule-based order, normative values and being up front 

about that. If we could arm our diplomats, the U.N. [United Nations] ambassador with some kind of—I don’t think as much of it 

is classified as it needs to be. 

But I have already seen our French intelligence allies and the 

German intelligence being very public about the intrusions and the 

information and diplomatic space inside those two countries and 

their elections. They are getting out in front of it before the elections. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Just a side note, Mr. Shearer, I think, for 

example, the environmental damage done by this island building is 

something that hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention. I have had 

people suggest it is the largest environmental disaster the world 

has ever seen. I don’t know how you measure that, but the point 

is there is probably more that could be done. 

Last question I want to get back to is back to this NSC question. 

You know, part of our concern has been too much micromanagement by the National Security Council staffers in an operational 

sense. I have even been around Washington long enough to remember Iran-Contra where that was the big issue is to what extent the 

NSC was operational. 

And yet I take the point if this is not a clear sort of issue that 

falls clearly in the Department of Defense, and yet we turn to the 

Department of Defense because they are the most capable agency 

for solving problems. Even though that may not be the best way 

to do. 

Dr. Chivvis, what is your view about this? I mean, I got your 

point on a strategy for dealing kind of across the board. That is 

what the NSC should do. But they shouldn’t really be micromanaging the details, should they? 

Dr. CHIVVIS. No. I completely agree. Again, what I was recommending was the development of a national strategy for this, and 

I think that the NSC is the right place to do that. 

A, obviously, because that is its responsibility is to coordinate, 

and second of all, because it also signals a level of significance and 
31 

importance to this issue to the other agencies in the U.S. Government. And I think that is what we need right now. 

The CHAIRMAN. Anybody else? Yes. 

Dr. HOFFMAN. Sir, I have published a study on the NSC as advice for the incoming administration, and I was somewhat sympathetic about the size of the NSC in the past because of the nature 

of the problems we face. And not because I wanted to operationalize the NSC or the White House. 

And I come from the same era of having come to town in 1983. 

I understood that period of time and have worked for members of 

the other body who were on the Church Committee as well. And 

I am old enough to remember that. 

But the nature of the problems we have today puts a, without 

the regional architecture that we have in the military, I can turn 

to a PACOM [Pacific Command] or a EUCOM [European Command] and get a staff that, you know, does certain things. 

But the rest of the government lacks that regional architecture, 

and I think sometimes what happens with the NSC is because 

there is no other integrating body to both design, conduct, assess, 

and adjust, is that the NSC ends up, you know, in that supra kind 

of role compensating for that. 

And if we had—in my Orbis essay, I suggest that perhaps one 

of our problems is the lack of regional task forces that are actually 

interagency is an architectural problem that would resolve that 

problem for us. 

The CHAIRMAN. I will go look at your paper. One of my concerns 

is when an NSC is implementing strategy, I mean, implementing 

policies and they are not developing strategy. And unfortunately I 

think that is what we have had in recent years. 

Do you have other questions? 

Thank you all. I appreciate your insights and your study of this 

very challenging issue for us. With that, the hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:37 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 22, 2017 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

MARCH 22, 2017 

(37) 

Statement of Ranking Member Adam Smith 

House Armed Services Committee Hearing: 

The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare and Key Challenges 

March 22, 2017 

Thank you, Mr. Chainnan, for holding today's hearing on a topic of critical 

importance. Thank you as well to our witnesses for sharing their expertise on the 

evolution of hybrid warfare. I look forward to their views about how the United States 

should respond to hybrid threats and methods short of war. 

Our adversaries, including Russia, China, North Korea, and !ran, are blending 

methods to achieve strategic ends, which seek to undermine Western democracies, the 

international order, and various intemational organizations. While the term hybrid 

warfare may not be precisely defined, it is clear that our adversaries are using blended 

irregular and conventional approaches to achieve these strategic goals. 

For example, in the South China Sea, Chinese Coast Guard patrol vessels provide a 

continuous presence to reinforce China's claims in the region. The Russian Federation 

learned from its experience in Georgia to comhine information operations with 

deployments of Russian special forces, and it used this hybrid approach effectively when 

it occupied Crimea. Russia also employed hybrid methods to enable separatist elements 

in the conflict in eastem Ukraine. 

Hybrid threats and methods short of war are also evolving. Following the int1uence 

campaign perpetrated by the Russian Federation during the 2016 U.S. elections, reports 

appear to indicate that Russia is orchestrating a coordinated campaign to influence 

elections across Europe, disrupt international order, and exploit seams to push countries 

away from NATO and the European Union (EU). 

What I'd like know is what we should be doing to address hybrid threats and 

methods short of war? How should we be postured to understand what our adversaries are 

doing, to deter them, and, if necessary, to respond appropriately to their use of hybrid 

methods? 

Hybrid approaches tend to cross department and agency jurisdictions within the 

U.S. government. The challenge we have lies in establishing a robust, well-coordinated, 

and effective interagency response. Addressing hybrid methods will also require close 

coordination with our partners and allies across the spectrum of regional and functional 

areas affected by hybrid threats. 

At its core, an effective U.S. response system would entail regional strategies, 

consistent coordinated messaging, and prioritization across the interagency, ultimately 

converging at-and with direction emanating from-the White House. I'm patiicularly 

concerned that any U.S. response to a hybrid threat today would be insufficiently 

coordinated and that the message from this Administration is that Russia is not a priority. 
38 

Statement before tbe House Armed Services Committee 

on 

The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare and Key Challenges 

Francis G. Hoftinan, Ph.D. 

Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University 1 

March 22, 2017 

Mr. Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Mr. Smith, and distinguished members of the 

committee, it is an honor to appear again before you and speak on the threats facing our country. 

I thank you for this opportunity to participate and address the key challenges generated by the 

convergence of modes of warfare represented by hybrid threats and other forms of conflict. 

Our Joint forces must be ready and able to respond to challenges across the full spectrum 

of conflict. The U.S. defense community faces global challengers, and must devote sufticient 

attention to the breadth of adversaries facing it and the many different forms that human conflict 

can take. The first step is understanding both the range of conflicts we may face and then their 

changing character. Partially because of this two-part challenge, we are falling behind in our 

readiness for the future. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, 

has concluded "We're already behind in adapting to the changed character of war today in so 

many ways." 1 

American strategic culture is sometimes criticized for an emphasis, if not myopic focus, 

on conventional interstate war. This emphasis was acknowledged in a major lessons learned 

project produced by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff which observed that a "big war" paradigm 

clouded our understanding and delayed the adaptation required for U.S. forces to succeed in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. 2 The tendency to ignore certain types of threats or forms of conflict has 

impeded U.S. strategic performance in the past, and will continue to do so until we grasp the full 

set of conflict types. Without explicit recognition of conflict types in our strategy and doctrine, 

we remain in a perpetual state of reactive adaptation. 3 

Years ago, before this Committee, I explained the origins of the so-called hybrid threat as 

we saw it emerging in the early years of the last decade. This threat was based on the expected 

convergence of irregular forces with advanced military capabilities. The mixture of these both 

irregular methods and conventional tools was not a new form of warfare, but the toxic addition 

of catastrophic terrorism and criminal behavior was expected to present unique challenges for 

which we were not prepared. The war between Israel and Hczbollah in the summer of2006, the 

evolution of ISIS over the past several years, and the ongoing bloodshed in eastern Ukraine 

suggest that our forecast was not too tar off the mark. 

1 This statement reflects only the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent 

the positions of the Defense of Defense or the U.S. Government. 
39 

Hybrid Wt~rfare. Nearly 15 years ago, defense analysts at the Pentagon and at the 

Marine Corps' Warfighting Lab identified trends and writings about deliberate efforts to blur and 

blend methods of war. This forecast suggested that our prevailing technological dominance in 

the American-led Revolution in Military Affairs would produce a counter-revolution that would 

exploit the convergence of different modes of contlict. This threat hypothesis evolved into a 

theory about hybrid threats. 4 Just a few years later, the projection was born out in Southern 

Lebanon with Hezbollah's example, and appears to be relevant to other conflicts as well. 5 Three 

U.S. Secretaries of Defense, including the current DoD leadership, found the concept useful and 

have cited the emergence of hybrid adversaries. 6 

A hybrid threat reflects more than a blend of regular and irregular tactics. Over a decade 

ago, this mode of conflict was defined as an adversary that "'simultaneously and adaptively 

employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, catastrophic terrorism, and 

criminal behavior in the battlespace to obtain desired political objectives."7 The convergence of 

criminal and "socially disruptive behavior," along with the rise of mass terrorism was forecasted 

as a rising factor back in 2005. The fusion of advanced capabilities with irregular forces and 

tactics is key, as borne out repeatedly over the last decade from Hezbollah to Russian campaigns 

in Georgia and Ukraine. 8 It is important to note that the concept is not limited to landpower, and 

is equally applicable to the maritime domain. 9 

Hybrid threats can often be created by a state actor creating a proxy force. 10 Sponsorship 

from a major power can generate hybrid threats more readily by the provision of advanced 

military capabilities to the proxy. Proxy wars, appealing to some powers as 'warfare on the 

cheap' are historically ubiquitous but chronically understudied. 

The hybrid threat captures the ongoing implications of globalization, the diffusion of 

military-related technologies, and the information revolution. Hybrid threats are qualitatively 

different from less complex iJTegular or militia forces. They, by and large, cannot be defeated 

simply by Western counter-terrorism tactics or protracted counterinsurgency techniques. Hybrid 

threats are more lethal than irregular forces conducting simple ambushes and crude improvised 

explosive devices, but they are not necessarily unknown to Western forces, and may be defeated 

with sufficient combat power. Ilezbollah's method of fighting Israel, as evidenced by their 

political leader Hassan Nasrallah, is an organic response to their security dilemma that is "not a 

conventional army and not a guerrilla force, it is something in between."'' 

Events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have led European security officials to pay more 

attention to Russia's assertive behavior and its ways of war. For this reason, hybrid warfare is 

now an explicit discussion point at NATO and among NATO civilianleaders. 12 ln the Crimea, 

Russia demonstrated that it had learned from its performance in Georgia in 2008 and employed 

inherently conventional methods, but with better agility and illegal methods. 13 This was hardly 

new or "ambiguous" but it was effective under circumstances that arc not easily replicated 

elsewhere. These are not novel, especially to Russia. These are actually time-tested methods 

with which the U.S. security community has seen before. 14 

2 
40 

European military analysts, pushed by Russia's example, have also embraced the hybrid 

evolution as a feature of contemporary conflict. 15 Yet the NATO interpretation of hybrid 

warfare is much broader, depicting it as a mixture of military means with non-military tools 

including propaganda and cyber activity. This interpretation is much closer to the issues raised 

in this country by scholars and senior U.S. military officials studying what they call gray zone 

conflicts. The distinction between indirect gray zone cont1icts and the violent methods posited 

by hybrid threats should be noted as a key distinction. 16 

Hybrid warfare as a mix of methods short of war has become a common interpretation 

and an alternative definition in Europe, where key leaders at NATO define hybrid threats as "a 

wide range of overt and covert military, paramilitary, and civilian measures are employed in a 

highly integrated design." 17 The NATO version re11ects a combination of methods, and 

emphasized an integrated and purposeful design. This is a broad definition that could explain 

just about all wars, which usually contain combinations of military and non-military activity in 

an integrated plan. [n the context faced by NATO today, such activities arc occurring short of 

armed conflict. Thus, NATO's perspective is closer conceptually to gray zone or what l call 

Measures Short of Armed Cont1ict. 

The Continuum of Conflict. Understanding war as a holistic phenomenon is important, 

and so too is understanding the complexity and distinctions of various modes of warfare across 

the "continuum of contlict." To dissipate the fog of conlhsion in current terminology, a heuristic 

construct for conflict is presented below in Figure l. 

Lower Violence Continuum of Conflict High Violence 

Measures Short Irregular Hybrid Conventional Warfare 

of Armed Warfare/ Warfare (Limited Objectives to Theater-wide) 

Conl1ict Terrorism 

Unconventional Warfare 

,. hgure I 

Measures Short of Armed Conflict. The Joint Statl's projected security environment 

forecasts a fhture in which adversaries will employ stratagems to gain influence and undermine 

U.S. interests with techniques well short of traditional armed contlict. 18 During the Cold War, 

the United States faced persistent efforts to undermine order, weaken our alliances, and undercut 

our interests by activities that fell well short of military violence. The Soviet Union had wellestablished directorates in their intelligence organizations designed to sow discord, de-legitimize 

political opponents and weaken the resolve of the NATO alliance. 19 

More recently, non-violent coercion measures as a form of geopolitical competition have 

been occurring with regularity, suggesting that this history remains relevant. China's use of 

diplomatic assetiions, deliberate use of tishery/maritime law enforcement forces, and aggressive 

seizures of disputed islands in the Pacific constitute a modern case study. 2

° China's asse1iive 

3 
41 

behaviors in the South China Sea appear designed to erode the existing international order and 

change the norms of international behavior through acts of latent coercion. China has used 

maritime militia forces to disrupt foreign survey, energy development, and commercial fishing 

operations and to extend and consolidate areas it views as Chinese territory with low risk of 

escalating to greater violence. 21 

Chinese conceptions of"quasi-war" and the "Three Warfares" which embrace legal, 

psychological, and information activities short of warfare, are relevant to this discussion. 22 

Recent research suggests a convergence of China and Russian tactics is occurring, emanating 

trom Chinese interpretations of Russia's actions in the Crimea and in the cyber domain. We 

should expect Russia, in turn, to absorb lessons from the South China Sea, as well as other 

states. 23 

Cold War and recent experience with the Russians suggests that the admixture of 

political/economic/subversive activity remains an element of their operational art. 24 Russia uses 

similar tactics in Ukraine and elsewhere, a form of "simmering borscht" that seeks to extend 

Moscow's sphere of int1uence without triggering an armed response. The Soviet Union 

frequently employed what it called "Active Measures" (Russian: aKTHBHbie MeponpH5ITH5! or 

ak ti'vnyye mero priya'tniya) in the information domain, including false stories. 25 Russian 

interest and application of Active Measures does not seem to have abated, and perhaps has even 

been expanded via social media and fake news outlets in the last several years, particularly in 

Europe.26 Russia's current leadership clique emerged from the state intelligence agencies and 

seems well-experienced in the use of covert approaches and the use of distortion, disinfonnation, 

subversion and propagandaY Much attention has recently been made of Russian meddling in 

U.S. electoral campaigns, but such int1uence efforts have routinely been part of their tradecraft 

for a long time. 28 Its cyber efforts have garnered a lot of attention in Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, 

and now in the United States. 29 However, its interference in European political parties, and its 

development of soft power "false front" organizations is also noteworthy. 30 

Belatedly, we are appreciating the need to compete with greater agility at lower levels 

short of war, against multi-functional or multi-dimensional threats. This gap in our 

understanding of the competitive space between peace and war is a shortfall in U.S. strategic 

culture. 31 More recently, a defense policy scholar has noted: "By failing to understand that the 

space between war and peace is not an empty one but a landscape churning with political, 

economic, and security competitions that require constant attention- American foreign policy 

risks being reduced to a reactive and tactical empha~is on the military instrument by default." 32 

This suggests that U.S. security or policy community does not currently recognize the 

importance of competing in this arena. An examination of any regional or theater commander's 

engagement plans suggests this concern may be exaggerated. Theater Security Cooperation 

plans, military to military engagement, military aid or support, exercises and various !onns of 

engagement are routinely employed by our regional commands to compete for int1uence and 

signal U.S. commitment. We may not coordinate these efforts well, or think of them as part of a 

collective competition against other major powers. But the United States does employ what is 

best described as the constructive instruments of traditional statecraft, as shown below in Figure 

2. 

4 
42 

Figure 2. Forms of Statecraft and Influence 

Our adversaries, on the other hand, have mastered the more ambiguous and nontraditional 

instruments of statecraft, and have been criticized as nefarious or of questionable legitimacy. 

Kennan noted this decades ago when he observed that "The varieties of skullduggery which 

make up the repertoire of the totalitarian government are just about as unlimited as human 

ingenuity itself, and just about as unpleasant." 33 While the challenge varies from region to 

region, we should recognize the need to orchestrate our traditional forms of statecraft, integrating 

the military and non-military clements, coherently as part of an integrated design. 

Some Cold War scholars will recall George Kennan's arguments for the 

institutionalization of Political Warfare by the United States to counter Russian activities. 34 

Kennan defined Political Warfare as "the employment of all the means at a nation's command, 

short ofwar."35 His understanding of the problem was informed by a deep understanding of 

Russia and its preference for indirect methods. Covert Action (or activities) displaced the use of 

Political Warfare over time. Kennan himself used "Measures Short of War" in his lectures at the 

National War College. 

This conflict mode has recently drawn renewed interest as "Gray Zone Conflicts." These 

have been defined as actors "employing sequences of gradual steps to secure strategic leverage. 

The e1Torts remain below thresholds that would generate a powerful U.S. or international 

response, but nonetheless are forceful and deliberate, calculated to gain measurable traction over 

time." 36 These arc admittedly not novel, but rather arc more classical "salami-slicing" strategies, 

fortified with a range of unconventional techniqucs,,-from cyberattacks to information 

campaigns to energy diplomacy. One scholar goes on to list numerous current relevant 

examples, including eastern Ukraine. But Ukraine, particularly the fighting in Donbas, has 

blown past being an ambiguous no-man's land, given the violent scope of the conflict (10,000 

5 
43 

dead) and the overt use of advanced conventional power (armor, rockets, missiles). This 

definition would lump together or 80 percent of the occurrences of conflict, including all forms 

of irregular or proxy war. 

Others argue that "The Gray Zone is characterized by intense political, economic, 

informational, and military competition more fervent in nature than normal steady-state 

diplomacy, yet short of conventional war." 37 These scholars note that such contlicts "involve 

some aggression or use of force, but in many ways their defining characteristic is ambiguityabout the ultimate objectives, the participants, whether international treaties and nonns have 

been violated, and the role that military forces should play in response." 38 They go on to list 

Russia's annexation of Crimea, its support of separatists in Don bas, Ukraine; the advances of 

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); the murderous Boko Haram's insurgency in Nigeria, 

as Gray Zone Conflicts. That is a wide range of very different conflicts and asks a lot of the 

concept. Their inclusion of the fighting in Donbas challenges their definition, as Russia's war 

inside Ukraine has resulted in nearly 7,000 deaths and tens of thousands of other casualties--

hardly covert or ambiguous. These are not gray or ambiguous acts. Several of these conflicts 

are more accurately described as irregular or revolutionary movements. 

Thus, the definition of Gray Zone conflict remains expansive and elusive. Instead, I 

think the better term is Measures Short of Armed Conflict. Short of"armed conflict" puts it in 

the right place on the continuum and also outside of what we know and teach as war. 

Comparison 

The distinction between Hybrid warfare and Measures Short ofAnned Contlict is important. Both 

use combinations. The latter seeks to gain advantage politically without the overt and explicit usc of 

violence. Actors employing Measures Short of Anned Conflict seek to avoid violence. Hybtid threats also 

have combinations including the use of political warfare and narratives, but they combine it with violent 

force direc!Lxl at both military and non-combatants. 

An historical case study will illuminate the distinctions between the original usage of the 

concept of"hybrid threats" and its NATO interpretation. Russia's efforts to influence Kiev's 

discussions about joining the EU constitute an example of a gray zone conflict, clearly intended 

to interfere with Ukraine's realignment by indirect forms of influence including corruption and 

disintormation. This is well short of traditional armed conflict. However, the ongoing violence 

in eastem Ukraine is an archetypical form of hybrid warfare within an integrated design that has 

produced a costly conflict. 39 The contlict has generated nearly I 0,000 dead and over 22,000 

wounded. 40 

The fusion of the various forces or means employed in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts 

(combinations of separatists, Sestinas special torces, Russian regulars with advanced military 

capabilities Electronic Warfare, drones, rocket launchers, and some armor) is representative of 

hybrid warfare as originally defined in the United States and used by various Secretaries of 

Defense over the last decade. 41 The employment of political repression, control over food 

supplies to control the local population, and the accidental catastrophic act of killing of 217 

passengers aboard MH-17 suggest a less conventional character in the middle of the conflict 

6 
44 

spectrum, and all represent elements consistent with hybrid threat methods. The evidence of 

rampant corruption and suppression of employment and economic security evidence all the 

elements of a hybrid operational context within a deliberate design. 42 

The Russians under Mr. Putin's leadership are not reinventing a new approach to warfare. 

What is clear is that a new generation of leaders, spawned within the KGB, are clearly applying 

longstanding Russian concepts of protracted conflict from the Cold WarY Russia's 

understanding of contlict constitutes a full spectrum approach, which means it can employ 

measures short of war or more violent hybrid approaches appropriate to the situation. 44 It can 

also pose credible conventional combat capability, and project it at great distance, as shown 

several times in the Middle East. NATO's posture in Europe was indeed dangerously close to 

inviting aggression in the Baltics, and Congressional actions to reassure the Alliance and 

enhance conventional forces in the region has averted the crossing of a violent threshold. 45 

The actions described as gray contlict or Measures Short of Armed Conflict are very 

significant to our security interests. This area has been highlighted by strategic assessments of 

the U.S. intelligence community and cannot be ignored. 46 Some see the indirect approach, 

staying below the threshold of actual armed clashes, to be "a weapon of choice" for the future. 

think this assessment holds true only for one of our major geopolitical competitors. Russia is 

likely to continue to employ more ambiguous and less kinetic efforts given both its past practices 

and its declining political, demographic and economic fortunes. China on the other hand 

continues to grow both in economic and military indices, and has, by its actions, expressed an 

inclination to alter the existing rules set and international order. While a physical controntation 

is not inevitable, it appears to be a contingency that is increasingly more likely. The combination 

of growing conventional power and national aspirations for regional control by China's 

leadership portend a higher potential for military confrontation. There will be many instances of 

"salami slicing tactics" in the South China Sea and cyber espionage. These may produce a shift 

in the region. But at the end of the day, hard power will be required to substantially reorder the 

balance of power and to dominate the region. 

Our key challenge is recognizing the competition for intluence that occurs in peacetime 

as part of Measures Short of Armed Conflict. In both Europe and in Asia, we are competing 

with major revisionist powers for influence and for the retention of a rules based international 

order. We are also competing for the retention of the coalition network and basing structures we 

have used for a generation to gain access to key regions of the world for power projection. Our 

adversaries are using illegitimate instruments of statecraft (such as economic corruption, political 

intimidation, energy security threats, false Ji·ont organizations and dis information activities) to 

undermine our credibility, dilute the cohesion of our alliances, and prevent us from sustaining the 

international order and regional stability on which our economic prosperity has been based. 

We need to move past the lexicon debate and begin to improve our ability to counter the 

activities our adversaries employ to undercut our interests. 47 Countering these subtle coercive 

techniques is the subject of new studies. 48 The U.S. defense policy community and the military 

are now beginning to devote intellectual capital to this issue. 49 But countering this method of 

contlict will require more than traditional military strategy responses and incorporate more than 

special operations forces. We need to establish or reestablish a broader framework for contlict 

7 
45 

short of violent warfare that incorporates a wider range of tools beyond traditional tools, and 

Special Forces or paramilitary operations. I think we are prepared for the violence of the hybrid 

threat but we need to ask ourselves some harder questions about more indirect methods. For 

example, how do we counter manipulation of elections and efforts to sow discord via cyber 

intrusions and the deliberate distribution of false information?50 How do we ensure that fonns of 

subversion or dis information, here and abroad, is neutralized? Who designs and integrates our 

strategic approaches in Measures Short ofAnned Conflict? How should we organize ourselves 

to address this challenge?51 

Conclusion 

When looking back at our engagements of tbe last 50 years and peering forward into the 

future, it is safe to say that the United States will continue to face challenges across the 

continuum of conflict. As Professor Eliot Cohen has noted: 

The wars of the twenty-first century may take many forms. Conventional conflict, 

including with China, most assuredly cannot be ruled out. At the other end of the 

spectrum, terrorism will surely continue. In between, what has been called hybrid warblending different forms of force with subversion, sabotage, and terror will also exist. 52 

The prevailing black and white distinctions between Traditional War and Irregular War in 

U.S. strategic culture make for simple boxes but the real world is not so easily categorized. 

Some adversaries seek to exploit the institutional and cognitive seams that these oversimplifications create. They seek combinations, both mul!i-domain and mul!i-functional, to gain 

an advantage. We must not underestimate them. Instead we do need to conceptually understand 

them and become full spectrum capable ourselves. 

NOTES 

'General Jnseph Dunford, USMC, Remarks at NDU Graduation Ceremony, ft. McNair, DC, June 10, 

2016. Available at http://www. jcs.mil/Media/Speeches/ Article/79784 7 /gen-dunfords-remarks-at-thenational-defense-university-graduation/. 

2 U.S. Joint Chiefs ofStaft~ Decade of' War: Vol. 1: Enduring Lessonsfi'om the Last Decade of' 

Operations, Suffolk, VA: Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis, June 15, 2012. 

3 Jan K. Glciman, "The American Counterculture of War: Supporting Foreign Insurgencies and the 

American Discourse of War," Special Operations Journal Vol. I, no l (2015), 19-36. 

'William. J. Nemeth, USMC, Future War and Chechnya: A Case for Hybrid Warfare, Monterrey, CA: 

Naval Postgraduate School, Master's Thesis, June 2002; James N. Mattis and Frank Hoffman, "Hybrid 

Threats and the Four Block War," Proceedings, September 2005; Frank Hoffman, "Hybrid Threats: 

Rcconceptualizing the Evolving Character of Modern Conflict," Strategic Forum 240, Washington, DC: 

Institute for National Strategic Studies, April 2009. 

8 
46 

5 David Johnson, Military Capabilities for Hybrid War: Insightsfi'om the Israel Defense Forces in 

Lebanon and Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 201 0). 

6 Robert M. Gates "The National Defense Strategy: Striking the Right Balance," Joint Force Quarterly 

( 1" Quarter 2009), 2-7; Leon Panetta, Remarks at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, 

October 11, 2011. Accessed at http://ww,y,_dcfffi""'RQYL!ffif!.g_~l.J:®.§fi!Rt.asQx?transcriptid~490.3_. 

7 Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise cif Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac 

Institute for Policy Studies, 2007), 14, 58. This version emphasized simultaneity and deliberate fusion of 

modes. 

'Anders Fogh Rasmussen quoted in Mark Landler and Michael Gordon, "NATO Chief Warns of 

Duplicity by Putin on Ukraine," The New York Times, July 8, 2014. 

9 James Stavridis, "Maritime Hybrid Warfare is Coming," Naval Institute Proceedings, December, 2016, 

30-34. 

10 Andrew Mumford "Proxy Warfare and the Future of Conflict,'' The RUSI Journal Vol. 158, no. 2 

(20 13), 40-46. 

11 Quoted in Matt Mathews, We Were Caught Unprepared, the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, Ft. 

Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008. 

12 Anders Fogh Rasmussen quoted in Mark Landler and Michael Gordon, "NATO Chief Warns of 

Duplicity by Putin on Ukraine," The New York Times, July 8, 2014. 

13 Sam Jones, "Ukraine: Russia's new art of war," FTCom, August 28,2014, 

14 Ben Connable, Jason H. Campbell, and Dan Madden, Stretching and Exploiting Thresholds for HighOrder War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 20 16). 

"Strategic Survey 2014 (London: Institute for lntcmational Strategic Studies, 2014), 53-64; "Hybrid 

Warfare: Challenge and Response," Military Balance (London: Institute for lntemational Strategic 

Studies, 20 15), 17-20. 

16 Mazarr, "Mastering the Gray Zone, 44-46; Michael Kofman and Matthew Rojansky. "A Closer Look at 

Russia's Hybrid War," Kennan Cable No. 7, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, April, 2015. 

17 Wales NATO Summit Communique, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, September 4, 2014, accessed 

at http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official texts ll2964.htm?selectedLocale=en. 

18 Kevin Scott, Joint Operating Environment 2035. Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs ofStafti'J7, July 14, 

2016, ii. 

19 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the 

Secret History of' the KGB. (New York: Basic, 1999). 

20 AndrewS. Erickson, Connor M. Kennedy, "Beware of China's "Little Blue Men" in the South China 

Sea," The National Interest, September 15,2015, http://nationa1interest.orglhlog/the-buz7Jbeware-chinaslittle-blue-men-the-south-china-sea-13846. 

21 AndrewS. Erickson and Connor M. Kennedy, "Countering China's Third Sea Force: Unmask Maritime 

Militia before They're Used Again," The National Interest, July 6, 2016, 

http://nationalinterest.org/teature/countering-chinas-third-sea-force-unmask-maritime-militia16860?page~show. 

22 Alison A. Kautinan and Daniel M. Hartnett, Managing Conflict: Examining Recent PLA Writings on 

Escalation Control (Arlington, VA: CNA, February 201 6), 26-28; Stephan Halper, "China: The Three 

Warfares," May 2013, available at 
47 

d=l397212645609. See also Sangkuk Lee, "China's Three Warfares, Origins, Applications and 

Organizations," Journal ofStrategic Studies. Vol. 37, no. 2 (April2014), 198-220. 

23 Lora Sallman, "Little Grey Men: China and the Ukraine Crisis," Survival Vol. 58, Issue 6 (2016 ), 135-

156. 

24 Victor Madeira, "Russian Subversion: Haven't We Been Here Before?," July 30,2014, available at 

http://www.statecraft.org.uklresearch/russian-subversion-havent-we-been-here; David Maxwell, "Taking 

a Spoon to a Gunfight," War on the Rocks, April2, 2014; Steven Metz, "In Ukraine, Russia Reveals Its 

Mastery of Unrestricted Warfare," World Politics Review, April 16, 2014. 

25 Vasily Mitrokhin, KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Ojficer Handbook (London: Frank Cass, 

1992), 13. See Richard H. Shultz and Roy Godson, Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy 

(McLean, VA: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1984); News reports suggest that the Russians have continued their 

practices, sec Craig Timberg, "Research tics 'fake news' to Russia," The Washington Post, November 25, 

2016,Al,Al5. 

26 Martin Kragh and Sebastian Asberg, "Russia's Strategy for Influence through Public Diplomacy and 

Active Measures: The Swedish Case," Journal of Strategic Studies, January 5, 2017, at 

http://dx.doi.org/l 0.1080/01402390.2016.1273830. 

27 Jolanta Darczewska, "The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare, The Crimean Operation," Point of 

View, Warsaw: Centre tor Eastern Stndies, May 2014. 

28 Mark Kramer, "The Soviet Roots of Meddling in U.S. Politics," PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 452. 

Washington, DC, January, 2017, at http://wwvLJ22l1ill:~£Ura§ia.org/n1emo/soviet-roots-meddliJ}g:Uspolitics. 

29 Michael Birnhaum, "Russian's Tactics Roil Europe," The Washington Post, August 14,2016, I; 

Helene Cooper, "Russia is Sternly Warned to Stay Out of U.S. Election," The New York Times, 

September 8, 2016, A6. 

30 Orysia Lutsevych, Agents of the Russian World (Proxy Groups) (London: Royal United Services 

Institute, April 20 16). 

31 See David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb, "Peacetime Engagement" in Sam Sarkesian and Robert 

Connor, America's Armed Forces, A Handbook of' Current and Future Capabilities (Westport, CT: 

Greenwood Press, 1996). 

Nadia Schadlow, "Peace and War, the Space Between," War on the Rocks, August 18,2014, 

h!!P_:il.warof1Jherofks.cmni2_0 14/08/p~ce-~nd-waJ..::!.Q~Uff:'betweQllL, 

33 Giles D. Harlow and George C. Maerz, eds., Measures Short of War: The George F. Kennan Lectures 

at the National War College. /946-47 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1990), 6-8. 

He noted that "The varieties of skullduggery which make up the repertoire of the totalitarian government 

are just about as unlimited as human ingenuity itself, and just about as unpleasant." 

34 Max Boot and Michael Doran, "Political Warfare: Changing America's Approach to the Middle East," 

Brookings, June 28,2013, available at http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/06/28-politicalwarfare-us-middle-east-counter1erTorism-doran-boot. 

of the State Department, see 

36 Michael Mazarr, "Mastering the Gray Zone," Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2015. 

37 General Joseph L. Vote!, statement before the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on 

Emerging Threats and Capabilities, March 18, 20 15; Captain Philip Kapusta, U.S. Special Operations 

Command (USSOCOM) white paper, "Defining Gray Zone Challenges," April2015. 10 
48 

38 David Barno and Nora Bensahel, "Fighting and Winning in the 'Gray Zone,"' War on the Rocks, May 

19,2015. 

39 Philip A. Karber, "Lessons Learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War," paper delivered at the Historical 

Lessons Learned Workshop, Laurel, MD: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, July 2015. 

"'UN statistics cited at http://euromaidanpress.com/20 16/09/21 /real-human-costs-ot~russian-aggressionin-ukraine-still-uncounted-un-says/. 

41 Phillip A. Karber, "Russian Style Hybrid Warfare," McLean, VA: The Potomac Foundation, 2015. 

42 Vladimir Peshkov, "The Donbas: Back in the USSR," Enropean Council on Foreign Relations, 2014. 

Valentin Torba. 'The great tragedy oflittle Luhansk," European Council on Foreign Relations, January 

15,2016, available at http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentarv the great tragedy of little luhansk. 

"3 Robert Strauz-Hupe and William Kintner, Protracted Conflict, Philadelphia, PA: Foreign Policy 

Research Institute, 1959; John Haines, "Putin's 'New" Warfare," Philadelphia; Foreign Policy Research 

Institute, E Note, May 2014. 

""Oscar Jonsson and Robert Seely, "Russian Full-Spectrum Conflict: An Appraisal after Ukraine," Journal of Slavic 

Military Studies, Vol. 28, March 2015. 

45 Eric Edelman and Whitney M McNamara, "US Must Counter Putin, Push NATO to Rearm," Breaking 

Defense March 8, 2017. 

"'Office of the Director ofNationallntelligence, Global Trends: Paradox of Progress (Washington, DC: 

National Intelligence Council, 2017) .. 

47 Nadia Schadlow, "Welcome to the Competition," War on the Rocks, January 26, 2017. 

48 For ideas about how to counter coercive activities by China in Asia, see Patrick Cronin and Andrew 

Sullivan, Preserving the Rules: Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia (Washington, DC: Center for a 

New American Century, March 20 15). 

49 U.S. Army Special Operations Command, "Counter-Unconventional Warfare," White Paper, Fort 

Bragg, NC, September 26,2014. See also Joseph L Vote], Charles, T. Cleveland, Charles T. Connett, and 

Will Irwin, "Unconventional Warfare in the Gray Zone," Joint Force Quarterly Issue 80 (!"Quarter 

2016), 101-110. 

50 As noted in the recent claim by the U.S. government, available at 

https :/ /www .dhs. gov/news/20 16/ 1 0/07 /joint -statement -department -homeland-securitv -and -officedirector-national. 

51 Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: !low Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring 

Cold War Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); James M. Ludes, A Consistency of 

Purpose: Political Warfare and the National Security Strategy olthe Eisenhower Administration, 

unpublished PhD dissertation, Georgetown University, 2003. On informational activities to counter 

Soviet influence efforts see Herbert Romerstein "The Interagency Active Measures Working Group," in 

Michael Waller, ed., Strategic Influence, Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare 

(Washington, DC: Institute for World Politics, 2009). 

" Eliot A. Cohen, The Big Stick: The Limits ofSofi Power & the Necessity afForce (New York: Basic 

Books, 20 16), 208-209. 

11 
49 

Frank Hoffman, Ph.D. 

Frank Hoffman is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic 

Studies at the National Defense University. He has been at NDU since 2011, and focuses 

his research on national security strategies, defense policy, military theory, future of 

cont1ict, and joint force development. Prior to this position, he worked for over 30 years 

with the U.S. Marines and the Department of the Navy. He retired from the Marine Corps 

Reserves in 200 I at the grade of Lieutenant ColoneL He has twice served as a senior 

political appointee, in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations. His last 

appointment was as Deputy Director of the Office of Program Appraisal from August 2009 

to June 2011. He was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in October 2009. Before 

his service in the Obama Administration, Dr. Hoffman was a Research Fellow at the 

Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) in Quantico, VA from 2001 to 

July 2009. While working at CETO, he led numerous Marine research studies and was a 

chapter author for FM 3-24, the counterinsurgency manual. 

Dr. Hoffman has served as a consultant to the intelligence community, the Defense 

Department, and Joint Forces Command, NATO, and numerous corporations on the 

emerging security environment. He has lectured at most U.S. military educational 

institutions, and in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. 

He is a frequent contributor to professional military and foreign policy journals, having 

published over 100 anicles and essays, and authored Decisive Force: The New American 

Way of War (Praeger 1996) and numerous book chapters. His latest work includes 

chapters in Lessons Encountered, Learning from the Long War, and in Charting a Course: 

Strategic Choices for a New Administration, published by NDU in 2015 and 2016. His 

awards include the Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the 

Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal, two Navy Commendation Medals, and a Navy 

Achievement Medal. 

Dr. Hoffman graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 (Wharton School, 

B.S. Economics). He also holds Master's degrees from George Mason University (M.Ed.) 

and the Naval War College (M.A., National Strategic Studies with highest distinction). He 

earned a Ph.D. from the Department of War Studies, King's College, London. 

Recent Articles and Studies 

"The United States and Strategy: The Unspannable Bridge," in Liberal Ways of War, Alan 

Cromartie, cd., Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014. 

"Crafting "Good" Strategy," Naval Institute Proceedings, April2012. 

"A Maritime Grand Strategy: Forward Partnering," Naval Institute Proceedings, Jan. 2013. 

"American Grand Strategy: Forward Pattnering," Orbis, Winter 2012. 

"Posturing the Marine Corps for the 21st Century, Marine Corps Gazette, Nov. 2012. 

"Land power and QDR," Parameters, Army War College, Dec. 2013 

"Options for Alternative Marine Corps," with G. P. Garrett, Center for a New American Security, 

March2014. 

"On Adaptation," Naval Institute Proceedings, March 2014. "Considerations in Grand Strategy," 

Orbis, Summer 2014. 

"Thoughts on Future Conflict," Marine Corps Gazette, November 2014. 

"Learning at War, The Development of US Navy Wolf Packs Tactics in World War II," Joint Force 
50 

Quarterly, 80, 2d Qtr, 2016. 

"No Wake for Ares: War As An Enduring Reality," Naval Institute Proceedings, Dec. 2015. 

"Strategic Adaptation" in Richard D. Hooker, Jr. and Joseph Collins, eds., Lessons Encountered: 

Learning from the Long War, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2015. 

"Rethinking the Future Security Environment," Marine Corps Gazette, May 2016. "Submarine 

Warfare in the Pacitic: Adapting Under the Sea," Naval Institute Proceedings, May 2016. 

"Avoiding Inertia: National Security Council Reforms," Orbis, Spring 2016. "Strategic Assessment 

and Adaptation in Afghanistan," Naval War College Review, Summer 2016. 

"Forecasting Future War, Ending the Greatest Illusion," Philadelphia Paper, Foreign Policy 

Research Institute, Fall 2016. 
51 

Statement Before the 

House Armed Services Committee 

Senior Adviser on Asia Pacific """''""'j"'and 

'-' "' "'"'''""' Alliances and American 

Center for and Intcmational Studies 

March 2017 
52 

Shearer: Written Testimony, HASC 0312212017 2 

Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Smith, distinguished Members of the Committee, thank 

you for this opportunity to testifY before you today on a subject of great importance: the 

evolution of hybrid warfare. 

Like Russia and Iran, China is using an ambiguous fusion of conventional and unconventional 

capabilities and tactics to weaken liberal nonns and institutions, erode U.S. inl1uence, and 

impose its own security preferences on its neighbors. Left unchecked, this trend will undermine 

the regional and global order endangering the security and prosperity of the United States and 

its allies. 

China's hybrid warfare strategy draws on many ofthe elements also employed by Russia and 

Iran: exploiting the "gray zone" created by the West's binary notion of"war" and "peace"; 

primarily using paramilitary, coast guard, or militia organizations while keeping regular military 

forces over the horizon; and combining all instruments of national power, including sophisticated 

cyber operations, economic incentives and sanctions, and legal and political warfare ("lawfare"). 

Over the past decade and particularly since President Xi Jinping took office four years agoChina has ramped up its assertiveness in the Western Pacific region. Recent examples include: 

• Establishment of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea (2013) and 

rejection of an international tribunal's ruling on Beijing's South China Sea claims (2016); 

• Island building at seven disputed features in the Spratlys (since 20 13); 

• Deployment of an oil rig into disputed waters near Vietnam (2014); 

• Harassment of supply missions to a Philippine military outpost (20 14 ); 

• Convoying more than 300 Jishing vessels to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands 

(2016); 

• China-sourced donations to Australia's major political parties (reported in 2016); 

• And economic coercion, including limits on rare earth exports to Japan (2010) and fruit 

imports from the Philippines (2012), as well as ongoing measures to harm South Korean 

companies in retaliation for deployment of the TIIAAD ballistic missile defense system. 

This incremental "salami-slicing" has enabled China to achieve much of its political and 

ten·itorial agenda in East Asia without triggering a forceful military response from the United 

States and its allies. Beijing calculates it lacks the military capabilities (at least for now) to 

prevail in an outright conflict at an acceptable cost. Instead, it has used capabilities like maritime 

Jaw enforcement where it has a comparative advantage, for objectives like offshore islands in 

which it believes Washington has little direct stake. 

Backed by its expanding suite of advanced access denial capabilities, the intent of China's 

creeping militarization of the South China Sea is to give itself the ability to restrict U.S. maritime 
53 

Shearer: Written Testimony, HASC 03/22/2017 

forces' traditional ability to project power and support allies within the First Island Chain. The 

effort is to complicate U.S. military planning, undermine regional countries' confidence in 

American security commitments, and ratchet up pressure on the U.S. alliance system. 

We will be confronting a profoundly different Asia-Pacific region if the United States has to 

contemplate fighting its way back into the South China Sea. 

3 

To respond effectively, the United States needs to invest in adequate nuclear and conventional 

military capabilities to maintain a favorable regional military balance that can deter escalation, 

including attacks against U.S. or allied forces. Credible military forces are also vital for resisting 

coercion and shaping a benign security environment. 

Continuing to deter any further move at Scarborough Shoal is particularly important. China's 

modus operandi is to target weak points; any further significant change in the status quo in the 

South China Sea will feed doubts in the region and increase pressure on U.S. alliances in 

Northeast Asia. 

However, an effective U.S. strategy must extend beyond military might and overcome 

bureaucratic and military "seams" to match China's comprehensive national approach. 

The starting point needs to be recognition that the United States is already engaged in an intense 

competition of interests and values in the Western Pacific. The outcome will shape not only the 

future of the region but the United States' long-term security and prosperity. 

By building what Dean Acheson called "situations of strength," the United States can increase 

the costs to China of pursuing its gray-zone strategy. It should strengthen existing alliances and 

network them more closely, as well as working with allies to build capacity and resilience in 

Southeast Asia. 

The United States also needs to continue to champion the rule oflaw and fundamental principles 

such as freedom of navigation. 

Secrecy and deniability are part of Beijing's strategy, so wherever possible the United States 

should promote transparency about China's activities; this is the intention behind the CSIS Asia 

Maritime Transparency Initiative. 

Finally, the United States should not cede non-military spaces to China, which also seeks to 

expand its wider influence. This is why continuing American leadership on trade and investment 

is so important- and why countries in the region look to the United States to engage actively 
54 

Shearer: Written Testimony, HASC 03/22/2017 

with regional institutions such as APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Conference), the East Asia 

Summit, and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). 

The United States has the capacity to develop and implement an effective strategy. Your friends 

and allies are looking for reassurance that America has the clarity of purpose to do so, and the 

resolve to carry it through with firmness and consistency. 

4 
55 

Andrew Shearer 

Senior Adviser on Asia Pacific Security and Director, Alliances and 

American Leadership Project 

Andrew Shearer joined CSIS in May 2016 as senior adviser on Asia-Pacific Security. He is 

also director of a new CSIS project on alliances and American leadership. Mr. Shearer was 

previously national security adviser to Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott of 

Australia. In that capacity, he played a leading role in fonnulating and implementing 

Australian foreign, defense, and counter-terrorism policies. He provided high-level advice 

that shaped Australian government decisions on engagement with the Asia-Pacific region, 

defense capabilities, responses to international crises and terrorist incidents, and longerterm strategic challenges. 

Mr. Shearer has more than 25 years of experience in intelligence, national security, 

diplomacy, and alliance management. He was political minister-counselor at the Australian 

embassy in Washington, D.C. Earlier, he was strategic policy adviser to former Australian 

defence minister Robert Hill and held positions in the Department of Foreign Affairs of 

Trade, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Office ofNational 

Assessments (Australia's premier intelligence analysis organization). As the deputy 

secretary advising the former Victorian state premier on international engagement, Mr. 

Shearer led the development of a comprehensive trade and investment strategy, 

establishing new representational offices in China and Indonesia, leveraging business, 

academic, and cultural relationships, and modernizing the state's Chinese language 

curriculum. Mr. Shearer is a respected commentator on Asia-Pacific strategic issues. He 

was director of studies at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, and his analysis has 

been published in books, journals, and leading U.S., Australian, and Asian newspapers. He 

holds a master's degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge and 

honors degrees in law and arts from the University of Melbourne. He was awarded a UK 

Foreign Office Chevening Scholarship. 
56 

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59 

Understanding Russian "Hybrid Warfare" 

And What Can Be Done About it 

Christopher S. Chivvis 

CT-468 

Testimony presented before the House Armed Services Committee on March 22, 2017. 
60 

For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT468.html 

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61 

Understanding Russian "Hybrid Warfare" and What Can be Done About It 

Testimony of Christopher S. Chivvis 1 

The RAND Corporation2 

Before the Committee on Armed Services 

United States House of Representatives 

March 22, 2017 

As used today in reference to Russia, "hybrid warfare" refers to Moscow's use of a broad 

range of subversive instruments, many of which are nonmilitary, to further Russian 

national interests. Moscow seeks to use hybrid wartare to ensure compliance on a 

number of specific policy questions; to divide and weaken NATO; to subvert pro-Western 

governments; to create pretexts for war; to annex territory; and to ensure access to European 

markets on its own terms. 

Experts use the term "hybrid warfare" in different ways. Several related terms are now in 

use, including "gray zone strategies," "competition short of conflict," "active measures," and 

"new generation warfare." Despite subtle differences, all these tenns point to the same thing: 

Russia is using multiple instruments of power and influence, with an emphasis on nonmilitary 

tools, to pursue its national interests outside its borders-often at the expense of U.S. interests 

and those of U.S. allies. 

Russia's use of hybrid strategies has grown markedly in recent years. This growth is a key 

dimension in the overall increase in Russian military capabilities and the Kremlin's antagonistic 

attitude toward the West. Russian resources for hybrid warfare are not infinite, of course, and 

Russia faces many of the same difficulties any other country does in coordinating a multipronged 

foreign policy. Its hybrid tactics will also not be effective everywhere. Nevertheless, the United 

States and its allies need a clear understanding of the threat and strategy to effectively counter 

Russian hybrid strategies before critical U.S. interests are damaged in Europe and elsewhere. 3 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the author's alone and should not be interpreted as 

representing those of the RAND Corporation or any of the sponsors of its research. 

2 The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make 

communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, 

nonpartisan, and committed to !he public interest. 

3 Olga Oliker, Christopher S. Chivvis. Keith Crane, Olesya Tkach eva, and Scott Boston. Russian Foreign Policy in 

Historical and Current Context, Santa Monica, Cal it:: RAND Corporation, PE-144-A 2015. 
62 

This testimony explains the key characteristics and uses of Russian hybrid warfare, the major 

tools involved, and the countries currently targeted. It then gives a brief sketch of the history of 

Russian hybrid warfare and outlines basic clements for a strategy to counter it. 

Key Characteristics of Russian Hybrid Warfare 

Russian hybrid warfare has at least three main characteristics. 

It economizes the use of force. Recognizing Russia would stand little chance of winning a 

protracted conventional conflict with NATO, Moscow seeks instead to pursue its interests 

without overt use of military power if possible. Russia may still use its conventional and even 

nuclear threats as part of a hybrid strategy, but in general it prefers to minimize the actual 

employment of traditional military force. The use ofcybcrtools is an excellent example of one 

way in which Russia economizes on the use of force. 

It is persistent. Hybrid war breaks down the traditional binary delineation between war and 

peace. The reality of hybrid war is ever-changing intensity ofcont1ict. Hybrid war strategies are 

always underway, although at certain moments they may become more acute and intense or cross 

over into conventional combat operations. 

It is population-centric. Russian military experts have watched as the United States and its 

allies fought in the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere over the course of the last quartercentury. They seized upon the importance of an approach that seeks to influence the population 

oftm·get countries through information operations, proxy groups, and other inf1uence operations. 

Russia uses hybrid warfare to work within existing political and social frameworks to further 

Russian objectives. 

Typical Objectives of Russian Hybrid Warfare 

As practiced today, Russian hybrid warfare can have at least three objectives. 

1. Capturing territory without resorting to overt or conventional military force. This 

was the objective of Russia's successful annexation of Crimea in 2014, the move that 

launched the debate over Russian "hybrid strategies." The annexation of Crimea relied 

heavily on the now-infamous "little green men"-primarily Russian special forces 

operating through a newly created Russian special operations command. The use of these 

elite troops, in conjunction with an information warfare campaign and the deployment of 

loyal Russian proxies, created circumstances that laid the groundwork for a bloodless 

conventional takeover of Crimea. Russia used some similar tactics ahead of its 2008 

invasion of Georgia. The resulting "frozen conflicts" in Ukraine and Georgia have 

hampered these countries' efforts towards integration with Western Europe. In a muchreferenced 2013 article on modern warfare, Russian Chief of the General Staff General 

Valery Gcrasimov argued that nonmilitary means arc used four times more often in 

modern conl1icts than conventional military measures.4 

4 Valery Gerasimov. "The Value of Science is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and 

Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations," Voyenno-Promyshlennyy Kurier, February 26,2013. 

2 
63 

2. Creating a pretext for overt, conventional military action. Russia's annexation of 

Crimea generated concerns that the Kremlin might seek to use a hybrid strategy to create 

a pretext for military action elsewhere, such as in the Baltic states. Russia might seek to 

foment discord between the minority Russian population in a country like Estonia, 

creating a narrative that portrays the Estonian government as repressive and then 

exploiting this narrative to justify a Russian military intervention on behalf of the Russian 

minority. Such an operation would likely be accompanied by cyber operations aimed at 

inflaming tensions or complicating national and NATO responses. It would almost 

certainly be accompanied by efforts to influence broader European and world opinion in 

ways that favored Russia's intervention. On the ground, it would involve the use of 

Russian secret agents and proxies. 

3. Using hybrid measures to influence the politics and policies of countries in the West 

and elsewhere. This objective is currently the most pressing challenge for Western 

governments, including the United States. Here, the Kremlin does not seek to use hybrid 

strategies as a substitute for military action or as a precursor for war. Instead, it seeks to 

ensure that political outcomes in targeted countries serve Russia's national interests. Most 

vulnerable are countries with weak legal and anticorruption measures or where key 

domestic groups share Russia's interests or worldview. However, even strong countries, 

such as the United States and Germany, are far from immune. 

Russia's Hybrid Warfare Toolkit 

Moscow has many mechanisms and levers for hybrid war. 

Information operations. Russia has become notably more effective in its use of strategic 

communications to shape political narratives in many countries. Outlets such as Russia Today 

and Sputnik News are among the most well known vectors for this strategy, but Russia also uses 

targeted television programming; funds European think tanks to promote its views; and employs 

large numbers oflnternet trolls, bots, and fake news farms. The result is high volume and 

multichannel. 5 The objective of these infornmtion operations is primarily to muddy the waters 

and cast doubt upon objective truths. Needless to say, these media outlets do not share 

established Westem journalistic practices regarding factual evidence and truth. They aim to 

shape the political discussion in ways that will benefit the Kremlin. 

Cyber. The Kremlin now has access to a growing cadre of cyber warriors that allows it to 

hack into Western information systems to collect valuable information. The information is then 

used to influence elections and other political outcomes outside Russia's borders. This was the 

strategy Russia appears to have attempted during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Beyond 

stealing secrets, Russia could deploy more advanced cyber tools to directly manipulate or 

otherwise affect the information systems on which Western political processes rely. There is no 

evidence that Russia possesses such capabilities today, but if Western defenses are not 

strengthened, it may develop them. 

5 Chris Paul and Miriam Matthews, The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood·· Propaganda Model. Santa Monica, 

Calif.: RAND Corporation. PE-198-0SD, 2016. 

3 
64 

Proxies. Russia also uses a range of proxies to further its interests. Proxies are often groups 

that have broad sympathy with Russia's objectives. One of the Kremlin's typical proxies is the 

Night Wolves, a biker club and ultranationalist, anti-American gang, whose leader is a personal 

friend of President Putin. The exact role of the Night Wolves is uncertain, although it can be 

used to intimidate populations and may facilitate a range of hybrid activities behind the scenes. 

Russia also seeks to exploit European protest movements. For example, it backed anti-European 

Union (EU) groups in a 2016 referendum on trade with Ukraine in the Netherlands.6 lt is also 

suspected of supporting the anti-shale gas and other protest movements in Bulgaria that have 

complicated Bulgaria's efforts to reduce its dependence on Russian energy sources.7 

Economic influence. Russia uses both direct and indirect economic influence to affect 

European politics. Moscow used energy as a tool of foreign policy when it shut otT the natural 

gas supplies to Ukraine in the dead of the winter in 2006 and 2009 in an overt effort to coerce 

Ukraine into agreement on the price of its gas. The indirect influence Moscow has built in 

Europe, however, may be even more important. Taking advantage ofthe vast network of natural 

gas pipelines built in Soviet times, the Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom and its 

subsidiaries wield influence over the politics and economics of many European countries. Russia 

has also offered large-scale investment to build energy pipelines and other infrastructure in 

countries that are dependent on Russian energy supplies as a means of growing its influenceoften through murky back-room deals. Many other Russian investments are legal, but their use to 

further Russian national interests is problematic, and the results can damage free markets and 

democratic institutions. 

Clandestine measures. Russia also bas the ability to use traditional espionage as part of its 

hybrid methods, bribing, extorting, and otherwise attempting to influence vulnerable political 

ligures to further its interests. As part of its broader military modemization program, Russia has 

invested in strengthening its special operations forces. These forces have a range of roles, but 

one of their most dramatic has been in infiltrating other countries and directing hybrid warfare 

efTorts there. Russian military intelligence, for example, is believed to have instigated a 2016 

plot to overthrow the pro-NATO govemment of Montenegro. Russian special forces were crucial 

in seizing Crimea and supporting separatists in the Donbass, and they are likely operating in 

several NATO-allied countries. 

Political influence. Of course, Russian leaders also use traditional diplomacy to support their 

preferred political parties and candidates, otTering high-level visits in Moscow and otherwise 

attempting to champion their claims, while deriding the positions of political leaders more 

critical of Moscow. 

Behind these levers lies the implicit threat of Russian conventional and, in the extreme, 

nuclear force. A discussion of Russia's full military capabilities is unwmTanted in this testimony, 

but it is important to recognize that these higher-end militmy capabilities arc the backdrop 

against which hybrid warfare is carried out. 

6 Anne Applebaum, "The Dutch Just Showed the World How Russia Influences Western European Elections," 

Washington Post, April 8, 2016. 

7 Kerin Hope, "Bulgarians See Russian Hand in Anti-Shale Protests," Financial Times, November 30,2014. 

4 
65 

Today's Targets 

Russian hybrid warfare targets a number of different countries in Europe and Eurasia. I will 

not detail them all here, but a few key examples deserve attention. The newest focus of Russian 

efforts appears to be on the Balkans and West European elections, but hybrid activities in the 

Baltic states, Central Europe, Ukraine, and elsewhere persist. 

Upcoming European Elections 

The greatest immediate concern is the potential for Russian meddling in several key elections 

that will take place in Europe in 2017. Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential 

elections, combined with known Russian efforts to hack into the computers of Germany's lower 

parliament in 2015, have piqued concern that Russia may be seeking to undermine pro-American 

and especially pro-EU parties in Germany, France, and Italy. 

The most important of these elections is !he German election scheduled for the fall, where 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a tough re-election battle. Merkel has taken a hard line 

with Moscow over Ukraine and been a lynchpin of efforts to sustain European sanctions on 

Russia. The chancellor's uncompromising stance on the European migration crisis has hurt her 

popularity and made some parts of German society more receptive to Russia's anti-EU, antiimmigration views. In early 2016, Russian news media and Russia's lop political leadership 

alleged that a 13-year-old Russian girl had been gang-raped by a band of Muslim immigrants in 

Germany. The story turned out to be a fabrication, but it complicated Merkel's effort to maintain 

a pro-immigrant stance in the face of a major influx of migrants from overseas. Similar 

opportunities for Russia to inflame tensions could arise in 2017. Merkel's ouster in favor of a 

more pro-Moscow Social Democratic party would be a boon for the Kremlin. Even better from 

Moscow's view would be a coalition that includes either the far-right Alternative fur 

Deutschland party or the far left, Die Linke, which is the remnant of the East German 

Communist party. 

In France, !he far-right National Front, which espouses a political outlook akin to Putin's 

own, has received financial support from Russian banks. The center-right presidential candidate 

Fran~ois Filion has also taken a very pro-Moscow stance. Currently, both candidates are running 

behind the center-left Emmanuel Macron, but concern that Russia may seek opportunities to turn 

the tide against him persist. 

Concern about potential Russian hybrid strategies in the United Kingdom have meanwhile 

intensified rapidly, as exemplified by Foreign Minister Boris Johnson's recent outbursts against 

Putin's "ditiy tricks."8 Many experts believe !hal there was a Russian hand in shaping the 2016 

British vote to leave the European Union. ftaly may also hold elections early in 2018, and there 

are suspicions that Italy was targeted by a Russian influence operation aimed at unseating its 

moderate government in December 2016. 

8 Kate McCann, "Boris Johnson Claims Russia Was Behind Plot to Assassinate Prime Minister of Montenegro as 

He Warns ofPutin's 'Dit1y Tricks,'" The Telegraph, March 12, 2017. 

5 
66 

The outcome of the Dutch elections last week may be one bright spot. The rise of the farright Dutch Party for freedom, led by Geert Wilders, created yet another opportunity for 

Moscow to make inroads. Luckily, the Party of Freedom did not win, but it did gain seats. 

The Balkans 

Another concern is the Balkans. Over the course of the last year, the western Balkans have 

emerged as a key target of Russian hybrid strategies within Europe. Simmering discontent in the 

Balkans over economic stagnation, lack of progress to EU membership, persistent ethnic 

tensions, and Russian cultural links have made the subregion a ripe target for Russian hybrid 

strategies. 

Russia has been seeking, for example, to establish a base in Serbia that could be used for 

covert operations across the Balkans under the guise of a "Humanitarian Center."9 As noted 

already, Russia is widely alleged to have orchestrated the attempted coup against a pro-NATO 

government in Montenegro in October 2016. 10 Russia has also stoked separatist tensions, 

backing the controversial leader of the semiautonomous Repuhlika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, and 

supporting Serb separatism in northern Kosovo. In 2016, Croatia, a NATO member, was also 

wracked by scandal when it was revealed that a former deputy prime minister had received 

campaign funding from Russian sources. In 2012, the Bulgarian government cancelled a license 

for Chevron to explore its shale gas reserves under pressure from Russian-backed protestors. 

Business networks with Russian financial backing have also played a prominent role in shaping 

government policy in Sofia and across the region. 

Central Europe and the Baltic States 

Kremlin influence in Central Europe, especially with U.S. allies such as Hungary, the Czech 

Republic, and Slovakia, is grounded in historical links to the Soviet empire. Russian influence in 

these countries is often derived ftom Russia's key role in the energy sectors of these countries, 

but Moscow has also used other means to influence the region's policies. In 2015 and 2016, the 

strain of the European migration crisis opened the door to even deeper Russian involvement in 

the region, as anti-EU and anti-immigrant sentiment rose. 

Political parties with strong pro-Moscow sympathies, such as the Hungarian nationalist party 

Fidez, have introduced legislation designed to facilitate Russian investment in their national 

economies. Suspicion is widespread of foul play in Russia's win of the 12.5-billion-euro deal to 

build the Paks-2 nuclear plant in Hungary, largely on account of the nontransparent way in which 

the decision was made. Rumors have meanwhile swirled about warm ties between the Czech 

Republic's President Zeman and Moscow, especially after Russia's largest private oil company, 

Lukoil, paid a 1.4-million-euro fine to keep one of Zeman's top advisers out of prison in late 

2016. 11 

9 Dusan Stojanovic. "Inside Russian 'Spy Base' in the Balkans," Associated Press. October 6, 2016. 

10 Andrew Higgins, "Finger Pointed at Russians in Alleged Coup Plot in Montenegrol New York Times, 

November 26,2016. 

11 Neil McFarquhar, "'How Russians Pay to Play in Other Countries," Nc~v York Times, December 30, 2016. 

6 
67 

Moscow also has signiticant influence in the Baltic states. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 

have historical links to Russia that are even closer than those of U.S. allies in Central Europe. 

These countries were part of the Soviet Union, whereas their Central European counterparts were 

separate countries bound to Moscow via the Warsaw Pact. 12 

Russia provides funds to pro-Russian groups throughout the Baltics via its "Compatriots 

Policy." Latvia and Estonia are both home to sizeable Russian minority populations, some 

(although not all) of which are easily influenced by Moscow. A key example is the Harmony 

Party in Latvia. The Harmony Party is supported by Latvia's ethnic Russian minority, has 

established a formal partnership with Putin's United Russia Party, and advocates a softer 

approach to Russia on issues such as the Ukraine sanctions. In Estonia, Russian minorities are 

concentrated in areas such as the town ofNarva, which lies along the northeastern border with 

Russia. These minorities arc accordingly potential targets for Kremlin covert activities and, in a 

worst-case (and also least likely) scenario, efforts to create a pretext for military intervention in 

the Baltic statcsu 

Notably, there has been some progress in raising awareness of the threat in the Baltic states, 

perhaps because these states are on the front lines. Baltic governments, as well as the 

governments of the Nordic countries, are increasingly engaged in strengthening their defenses 

and resilience against hybrid strategies. 

Ukraine and Other Areas 

Russia's efforts to make inroads in the Balkans and influence European politics more broadly 

have not put an end to Russian operations in Ukraine, where its operations first ignited debate 

over the subject of hybrid war. Russia continues to support separatists in the eastern Donbas 

region with its special operations forces and pursues a campaign that involves media, cyber, and 

economic pressure against the U.S.-backed government in Kiev. 

Russian Hybrid Strategies Are Not New . .. 

Russia's use of hybrid strategies is not new. During the Soviet era, Moscow frequently made 

use of subversive "active measures" to gain influence and shape the political landscape in 

Europe. For example, Soviets funded "euro-communist" political parties, encouraged antinuclear 

protest movements, and sought to manipulate the European media. The Kremlin conducted these 

activities in conjunction with efforts to steal state secrets and buy influence through traditional 

forms of espionage. Soviet special forces also trained for activities similar to those of Russian 

special forces in hybrid warfare today. 

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, these activities naturally 

declined. Moscow lacked both the resources and the interest in pursuing them. It lacked the 

resources because of its dire economic state. It lacked the interest because, in the 1990s at least, 

12 Although never recognized as such by the U.S. Congress. 

13 F. Stephen Larrabee, Stephanie Pezard, Andrew Radin, Nathan Chandler. Keith Crane, and Thomas S. Szayna. 

Russia and the West Afler the Ukrainian Crisis, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation. RR-1305-A, 2017. 

7 
68 

Russia appeared to be on a trajectory for greater cooperation and integration with Europe. Even 

at the turn of the century, in the early years ofPutin's presidency, hope that Russia and the West 

would get along persisted. 

Beginning with the so-called color revolutions in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, 

however, Russia's relations with the West began deteriorating. Meanwhile, thanks to foreign 

investment and strong oil prices, Russia regained resources that it lacked in the 1990s and 

invested them in its military and security services . 

. . . But Are Updated for the Twenty-First Century 

The hybrid war tactics that Russia uses today, however, are not identical to those used during 

the Cold War. Even if Russia used infonnation operations back then, the volume and ambition of 

Russian information campaigns today are far greater and facilitated by the existence of the 

Internet, cable news, and especially social media. The use of cyber operations is also new, as is 

Russia's more extensive use of economic levers to influence foreign governments. Because 

Russia and the world are much more closely interlinked than during the Cold War, it is easier for 

Russia to penetrate Western societies. Russia's use of these tactics also appears to be less 

ideological than during the Cold War, when the Kremlin held a hidebound Marxist worldview. 

Russia's outlook today is less bound to any ideology, and Moscow may be shrewder as a result. 

Developing Strategies to Counter Hybrid Warfare 

Meeting the challenge posed by Russian hybrid warfare will take time and effort. It must also 

be developed in conjunction with efforts to strengthen conventional deterrence. An effective 

strategy to defend U.S. interests against hybrid Russian strategies will include, at a minimum, the 

following. 

Strong coordination and cooperation within the U.S. interagency. Russian hybrid warfare 

plays out in areas that are the purview of the U.S. State Department, the Defense Department, the 

Treasury Department, and the intelligence community. The Defense Department has an 

important role, but cannot counter Russian hybrid war strategies alone. Developing and 

implementing an effective strategy calls not only for effective coordination of response but also 

consensus about the threat and its meaning to U.S. national security. The White House may also 

wish to consider establishing regular interagency meetings led by the National Security Council 

staff-for example, at the policy coordination committee level-to develop and implement a 

coordinated national strategy and potentially a National Security Presidential Directive. 14 

Appropriate resource allocation to the collection and analysis of intelligence in the 

European theater. For over two decades, Europe's security has largely been uncontested. But 

European insecurity is now growing rapidly as a result of Russian threats and the threat posed by 

terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State oflraq and Syria. The United States must ensure that it 

has the resources necessary to meet that threat in Europe. Tracking and gaining advance warning 

14 See Charles P. Ries, Improving Decisionmaking in a Turbulent World, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 

PE-192-RC, 2016. 

8 
69 

of Russian hybrid activities is vitally important, but it imposes a toll on intelligence collection 

and analysis capabilities. The United States must also continue to develop close intelligence 

sharing relationships with key allies-both to obtain information about Russian activities and to 

share it when it serves U.S. interests. To combat hybrid strategies, intelligence agencies must be 

as closely linked with law enforcement as possible. 

Support for transparency and anticorruption efforts. Tolerance of corruption greatly 

facilitates Russian influence strategies. Some countries in Europe-for example, many states in 

the Balkans-suffer from weak anticorruption legal frameworks and limited political will for 

change. In other countries, political will may be strong, but individual privacy concerns can limit 

the remit of transparency laws. In these areas, the EU is an important partner for both the United 

States and for NATO. The United States should support European anticorruption efforts 

wholeheartedly, with appropriate funding for related State Department and U.S. Agency for 

International Development programs. 

Support for internal security reform and defense institution building in targeted states 

such as the Balkans and Ukraine. Although some Balkan militaries already meet NATO 

standards of professionalization, others need additional support. Institution-building in these 

countries needs to be focused on weakening any lingering ties with Russian security services. In 

addition, strengthening capabilities in such countries, as well as in the Baltic states, will enable 

greater detection and resistance to covert Russian operations. In general, U.S. assistance targeted 

at strengthening the rule of law will complicate Moscow's hybrid efforts. 15 

Strategies to push back against Russian influence operations. More work needs to be 

done in this difficult area, but initial research suggests that it may be better to focus on 

discrediting sources such as Russia Today and generally raising awareness of misinformation 

rather than attempting to tight each and every story on a tit-for-tat basis. Civil society must also 

be encouraged to play a larger role in combatting Russian disinformation. Increasing the flow of 

positive information will also help. In extreme cases, such as wartime, it may be necessary to 

temporarily close off access to Russian media outlets. 16 

Effective use of U.S. special operations forces in the U.S. European Command area of 

operations. U.S. special operations forces have an important role to play in combating Russian 

hybrid strategies in Europe. Both the mission and operating environment in Europe, however, is 

different from that in countries like Iraq and Syria. This requires some adaptation. For example, 

one challenge is ensuring that U.S. diplomats are attuned to the needs of U.S. special operations 

forces conducting training and other activities in the region. Conversely, U.S. torces must also be 

fully aware of the delicate nature of some U.S. diplomatic activities underway in these same 

countries. The United States must also operate in support of individual European countries' 

plans, filling their gaps and bolstering their programs. 

Support for European efforts to combat Russian hybrid warfare. The United States, after 

all, is not the first line of defense against most tonns of Russian hybrid warfare in Europe. 

15 Andrew Radin. Hybrid Warjiwe in the Baltics: Threats and Potential Responses, Santa Monica. Calif.: 

RAND Corporation, RR-1577-PAF, 2017. 

16 Paul and Matthews, 2016. 

9 
70 

Instead, the first line of defense is the EU and European countries themselves. The United States 

can support specific efforts, such as Finland's Hybrid War Center ofExcellence, Latvia's 

Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, and Estonia's Cybcr Center of Excellence, 

while encouraging other best practices, such as closer public-private partnerships in Europe, to 

strengthen Europe's own defenses against cybcr attacks. 

Not Going Away 

Russian hybrid strategies pose a clear challenge to U.S. national interests in NATO unity, a 

prosperous EU, and a strong liberal democratic system in Europe. In the most extreme case, 

hybrid strategies could be used for outright aggression against NATO territory. 

Of course, Russia does not have endless resources for hybrid warfare, so it will be important 

not to overexaggerate the threat. It is also helpful to remember that Russia uses hybrid strategies 

as a means of pursuing what it believes to be its national interests-and views many U.S. and 

NATO activities as hybrid strategies directed against it. 

Nevertheless, the growing challenge posed by Russian hybrid threats is real and not going 

away. The United States must recognize this fact and remain wary of Russian etTorts to influence 

allied politics-and our own. 

10 
71 

Christopher S. Chivvis 

Associate Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center; 

Senior Political Scientist 

RAND Corporation, Washington Office 

Education 

Ph.D., Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University 

Chris Chivvis is associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center 

and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in national 

security issues in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, including NATO, military 

interventions, counter-terrorism, and deterrence. He is also an adjunct professor at the 

Johns Hopkins, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). 

The author of three scholarly books and several monographs and articles on U.S. foreign 

and security policy, Chivvis has worked on Eurasian security and NATO-Russia issues in 

the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He has also held research 

positions at the French Institute for International Relations (lfri) in Paris and at the German 

Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, and taught graduate 

courses at Johns Hopkins University, New York University, and Sciences Po in Paris. 

His work has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The 

National Interest, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor, 

CNN.com, and other leading publications. Chivvis received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, 

SAIS. 
72 

Federal Contract or Grant Information 

The RAND Corporation is an independent, non-profit organization that performs research 

and analysis. During the time period in question (FY20 15 through FY20 17), RAND has 

had contracts and grants with various agencies of the federal government to perform 

research and analysis. Research has been performed for the Departments of Agriculture, 

Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland 

Security, Justice, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the Administrative Office of the United 

States Courts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of 

Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, 

the Federal Reserve Banks ofBoston and New York, the Intelligence Community, the 

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the National Aeronautics and Space 

Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Social Security Administration, and 

the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. RAND has contracts with 

the Department of Defense to operate tour federally funded research and development 

centers (FFRDC): PROJECT AIR FORCE for the U.S. Air Force; Arroyo Center for the 

U.S. Army; National Defense Research Institute tor the Department of Defense, and 

Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) for the Department of 

Homeland Security. 

Foreign Government Contract or Payment Information 

FY2017 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

FY2016 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Foreign Government 

South Korea 

Japan 

Subject of contract or 

payment 

Research 

Research 

Subject of contract or 

Foreign Government Dollar Value payment 

Commonwealth of 

Australia $1,521,072 Research 

Jinan Water 

Resources BureauPeoples Republic of 

China $355,652 Research 

Japan $207,700 Research 

South Korea $249,040 Research 

United Arab 

Emirates $3,155,000 Research 
73 

FYlS 

Foreign 

Contract/Payment 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Contract 

Subject of contract or 

Foreign Government Dollar Value payment 

Commonwealth of 

Australia $9,104,636 Research 

Canada $17,624 Research 

Japan $207,700 Research 

South Korea $100,000 Research 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MARCH 22, 2017 

(77) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LAMBORN 

Mr. LAMBORN. Does DOD have the resources and capabilities needed to confront 

the hybrid threat? How well does DOD prioritize responding to this threat? 

Dr. HOFFMAN. [No answer was available at the time of printing.] 

Mr. LAMBORN. Does DOD have the resources and capabilities needed to confront 

the hybrid threat? How well does DOD prioritize responding to this threat? 

Mr. SHEARER. The defense funding cap imposed by the Budget Control Act impedes coherent defense planning and has a deleterious impact on U.S. military readiness and investment in future capability. Nevertheless, neither resource constraints 

nor capability gaps are not the main impediment to confronting the hybrid threat. 

The main challenges are: 1. Recognizing the nature and scale of the evolving hybrid 

warfare threat in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; 2. Developing tailored regional 

strategies to counter competitors’ determined efforts to exploit the ‘‘gray zone’’ between peace and war to undermine the interests of the United States and its allies; 

and 3. Aligning and concerting not only DOD resources but the capabilities of agencies across the U.S. Government to implement those strategies. The absence of coherent regional strategies makes it difficult for DOD to prioritize relevant capabilities. Within DOD, greater priority should be given to the following areas: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; cyber; irregular warfare, including special 

forces; and information operations. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Does DOD have the resources and capabilities needed to confront 

the hybrid threat? How well does DOD prioritize responding to this threat? 

Dr. CHIVVIS. This is an important question. Although RAND has extensive analytical experience in assessing the cost implications of challenges like Russia’s use of 

hybrid warfare, we have not yet been asked to do so. Here are a few initial 

thoughts, building on my written testimony. 

Allocation of resources for countering Russian hybrid war strategies should naturally flow from the strategy for countering Russian hybrid war. I have outlined the 

elements of such a strategy in my written testimony, including: 

1. strong interagency coordination 

2. appropriate resource allocation for analysis and collection of intelligence in the 

European area of responsibility (AOR) 

3. support for transparency and anticorruption efforts in Europe 

4. strategies to push back against Russian influence operations 

5. effective use of U.S. special operations forces 

6. support for European efforts to combat Russian hybrid warfare. 

Of these dimensions, the DOD has the lead in effective use of U.S. special operations forces and some elements of support to European efforts to combat Russian 

hybrid warfare. It has a role in interagency coordination and allocation of resources 

for intelligence collection—for example, through Defense Intelligence Agency programs. 

This being the case, the key to ensuring adequate DOD funding for countering 

Russian hybrid war will be adequate funding for U.S. special operations forces in 

the European AOR, DOD intelligence activities in the AOR, and necessary funding 

for building partner capacity (although much of the relevant funding in this category is under State Department authorities). I note that support to North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization special operations forces could also be valuable in this regard. 

Investments in DOD-related programs needed to counter hybrid warfare in Europe should not come at the expense of relevant State Department and other civilian 

programs, and it is important to recall that Russian military leaders consider the 

relevant ratio of civilian to military activity to be 4:1 when it comes to hybrid warfare. Similarly, funding for hybrid warfare does not obviate the need for funding 

conventional forces in Europe, which are needed to reduce the risk of Russian conventional war. 

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