Daily Times

Provision of security from internal and external threats is central to the idea of the state. Thomas Hobbes, the 17thEnglish philosopher, in his famous book, Leviathan, considers security as the raison d’être of the state. According to him, it is the responsibility of the state to keep domestic peace, and safeguard people and property against civil and foreign threats. A state is thus, established with the sole purpose to protect the lives of those who live within it. Traditionally, external threats, particularly inter-state wars over territorial control, resources, and political hegemony, have been the main threats to the security of a state. Since a major threat to the state was that of outside intervention, military power was considered to be the only source of national security.

This perception about national security underwent a major change during the Second World War when civilians became extensively involved in military planning for the first time, hence initiating the first wave of security studies. However, serious research on security studies started in the mid-1970s, particularly after the Vietnam War, when several academic centres and journals on security studies were sponsored by philanthropist organisations such as the Ford Foundation and the Rand Corporation.

Another important development was the shift of focus from pure military sources of threat to non-military sources. There emerged a realisation that aspects of domestic socio-economic dimensions were as important determinants of national security policy as the military threat.

Barry Buzan, Ole Weaver and Jaap de Vilde in their book, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, published in 1998, redefined the concept of national security in the post-Cold War era. They argued that the rise of non-state transnational actors and their transnational religious-cum-political agendas posed new threats to the national security of states. The framework sought to integrate environmental, societal, economic, and political issues with traditional security to address a wide range of national security objectives. National security is, therefore, an inter-disciplinary concept including the traditional military security as well as non-traditional security objectives such as economic security, energy security, food security, ecological and environmental security and socio-political security. It is an evolving concept that calls for a concerted effort to formulate and implement a comprehensive response to traditional and non-traditional challenges.

The type of hybrid war the US launched against Russia and China through ‘curtailment’ and ‘constructive engagement’, respectively, proved its worth over time

War is the oldest of the adventures of the human race since the conception of human civilisation. Although it has nothing to do with civility, it is fait accompli of all people, civilised or otherwise, either by choice, by design, or by an unavoidable sudden imperative that is imposed on a given set of people or nation. With the advancement in science and technology, passing through stone, bronze, iron, wheel, agriculture, and industrial ages, respectively, and now with the dawn of the era of knowledge economy, war has witnessed equally deadly diversity in its ugly growth with an ever-increasing scale and scope of devastation.

Modern day world wars are not merely fighting battles by armies. These are the times when hybrid warfare has become a permanent feature of wars, with dimension of economic, trade, water (natural resources), including but not limited to, direct and proxy theatres that affect the capacity of a nation state to maintain or attain professed objectives of its strategy, security, sovereignty, and existence. Hybrid warfare can thus be defined as: “A conflict involving a combination of conventional (military), non-conventional(guerrillas, insurgents, terrorists),economic, trade/media wars. It may include state/non-state actors/entities/ institutions/organisation, aimed at achieving a common political purpose.”

To a certain extent, all wars include a battle of narratives i.e. which side possesses the moral high ground or can convince the people of the justice of its cause. By bringing the population into the conflict, hybrid warfare highlights the significance of perceptions. Although wartime propaganda is a time-honoured tradition as far back as the ancient world, modern communication systems such as the Internet, social media, satellite television, and radio radically amplify the transmission rate of propaganda and public information. Insurgents realise that military actions are but a supplement to the information war, by which they try to sway perceptions of both their own people and enemy’s population.

In the modern information environment of instantaneous communication and 24/7 news coverage, one must become more adept at engaging in the battle of narratives that can determine the difference between victory and defeat. Anyone with a laptop with Internet access can play havoc with the image of the entire nation. The advent of disruptive technologies, like that of Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, has all pushed the traceability beyond facial recognition that can alter behaviours and response of masses in no time. The Arab Spring has been a glaring example of a meltdown organised by the help of technology.

The type of hybrid war the US launched against Russia and China through ‘curtailment’ and ‘constructive engagement’, respectively, proved its worth over time. The curtailment helped the dissolution of the Soviet Union through a series of multi-cut strategies, the latest being the Afghan jihad and the Iran conflict. Whereas constructive engagement, adopted in 1970s with China created a catch-22 situation as China diversified its engagement so dexterously that a slowdown of the Chinese economy means a loss to the US investment, and world economy in general.

In Pakistan, low-level insurgency in Balochistan is particularly exacerbated by CPEC, which is not digestible for India, and for that it has launched a hybrid war against Pakistan. Similarly, Karachi has been a victim of hybrid war by India and some other forces that helped perpetuate the disability by providing training to proxies, and giving safe havens to political mentors of proxies.

The writer is freelancer, has done MPA from Institute of Administrative Sciences (IAS), Lahore. He can be reached at saudzafar5@gmail.com