Hybrid Warfare: When States Become Their Own Biggest Threat

Zainab Chaudhary

The era of hybrid war has completely altered the pattern with which wars are fought. Where guns, tanks, and soldiers have existed to decide the destiny of nations, algorithms, narratives, and disinformation campaigns are determining victory and defeat. But the bad news is that states tend to be their own worst enemy. Governments build the foundation on which enemies can capitalize on by investing in short-term strategic victories, disregarding internal fractures, and developing instruments of control.

Hybrid warfare thrives on internal fractures, exploiting governance failures, inequality, and mistrust.

Look at Pakistan, where decades of being dependent on proxies and transactional security alliances generated instantaneous leverage in the area but placed the seeds of instability over the long run. Government, formerly perceived to have been an asset, groups began turning inwar,d and the writ of the state was slowly undermined in areas like Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The reforms that were planned to bolster power served to undermine national stability.

Likewise, the US, with all its intelligence services and its control of the Internet world, has learned that the broader harm is usually not caused by external hackers but by polarization within. The fact that the 2016 elections were interfered with by the Russians, as an illustration, failed to achieve its objective since Moscow made up new divisions. It succeeded because American society was already divided along racial, economic, and ideological lines.

This is the inhuman simplicity of hybrid war. It flourishes on exaggerations of what is already present. External actors do not have to establish completely new fault lines. They just have to capitalize on the cracks that bad governance, inequality, and mistrust have left open. Whenever a government marginalizes areas, disregards skepticism, or mishandles development, it provides its foes with an arming arsenal ready to go. The stories about exclusion in Balochistan and Sindh are aggravated by online campaigns that position the state as oppressive and disconnected in Pakistan. Fake news exacerbates mistrust in institutions in Western democracies, yet the roots of this are in the actual failures of political accountability.

Surveillance and censorship cannot replace legitimacy and public trust as defenses against hybrid threats.

The first instinctive reaction of most governments to hybrid threats is to redouble their focus on surveillance and censorship, and firewalls. The rationale is to seal the digital loopholes, seal the propaganda, and suffocate dissent before it proliferates. This plan, however, confuses the symptom with the disease. There is no algorithm, no matter how advanced, that can keep a country safe that does not have a powerful social contract. A government that is incapable of creating a sense of legitimacy or providing fundamental government will be at all times susceptible to manipulation. It is public trust, rather than state coercion, that makes up the real firewall against hybrid warfare.

The unique threat posed by hybrid warfare is that it promotes the eroding of sovereignty internally. Conventional invasions unite people in the protection of the state; hybrid invasions make societies confused about who the enemy is. When fake news is being spread, when militant stories are spreading, when cyber campaigns are shaping minds, the citizen is at cross-purposes as to whether it is foreign powers or local elites. It is that ambiguity itself that is a triumph to those who use hybrid tactics.

This brings in a more acute question as to whether sometimes states permit the practice of such conflicts to carry on, owing to some interests? In Pakistan, militancy is here to stay, and security budgets are overstated. Some of the elites will continue to have relevance and politics feed on fear. In the U.S., accounts of foreign intervention are occasionally applied in order to conceal the internal decay of governments. States that enjoy the fruits of insecurity, even indirectly, are undermining their own ability to survive.

To get out of this cycle, honesty is needed. States have to face the fact that hybrid threats are inseparable from their mistakes. Governments that marginalize regions, institutions that do not deliver justice, and leaders who emphasize control, rather than legitimacy, make militants and disinformation networks stronger. The confession of this does no injury to sovereignty; it enhances it.

True resilience lies not in firewalls or coercion but in inclusive governance and a strong social contract.

The hybrid war is here to remain. Algorithms will become more and more powerful, and disinformation will be even more difficult to identify. But the success of these threats is not so much based on external foes as on internal might. It is much easier to stabilize a country where people feel included, respected, and heard as opposed to one where mistrust and exclusion abound. Guns can secure the borders, but trust secures countries.

It is not the presence of new wars that is the actual threat at the moment, but the fact that states will continue to open the doors to new wars by denying and neglecting them. The external threat will never go away, but the internal threat is the one creating the playbook.

The author is a PolicyEast USA-Group intern with a focus on economic diplomacy and regional integration. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Defence and Strategic Studies from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.