Biography 

Dumitru Minzarari is a lecturer in security studies in the Department of Political and Strategic Studies at the Baltic Defence College. His research interests focus on modern warfare, determinants of military strategy, interstate conflict below the threshold of conventional war, including “hybrid warfare”, Russian foreign and security policies, and NATO deterrence on its eastern flank. Prior to joining the Baltic Defence College, he was a research associate with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin (SWP), covering Russia’s domestic, foreign and security policies. He was also both a fellow and visiting scholar with the research division of the NATO Defense College in Rome. Dr. Minzarari’s policy experience includes working as a senior political advisor to the head of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Kyrgyzstan, holding expert positions with the OSCE field missions in Georgia and Ukraine and consulting the Moldovan government on security sector reform. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and his MA in international affairs from Columbia University in New York. 

Presentation abstract 

Following the Russian annexation of Crimea and the initiation of a proxy war in Donbas in 2014, NATO adopted a hybrid strategy in 2015 due to deliberations at the 2014 NATO Wales Summit. Consequently, the EU followed suit with its 2016 Joint Framework on Countering Hybrid Threats, giving birth to its official hybrid war policy. Despite the political significance of these policy decisions, with both NATO and the EU expressing their positions on Russia’s coercive activities below the threshold of conventional war and bringing into effect legal and institutional frameworks allowing for the allocation of relevant resources, capability building, and procedures to counter Russia’s hybrid aggression, these decisions simultaneously set off some major policy obstacles. Recent interviews with NATO officials and professionals uncovered that “there was little or no operational value in the concept.” The key challenge resides in what political scientist Giovani Sartori referred to as “conceptual travelling,” i.e., the application of concepts to new cases and “conceptual stretching,” i.e., vague and amorphous conceptualizations. In turn, concept stretching prevents both NATO and the EU from operationalizing effective responses to a group of threats stemming from a phenomenon that has come to be labeled as hybrid warfare. I argue that this operationalization requires a clearer understanding of the character of the threats inherent in hybrid warfare. To advance this view, I carry out a structured comparison of hybrid warfare as conducted by Russia – as a potentially evolved form of interstate aggression – with conventional and proxy types of warfare. I compare them across three variables: coercive sequences or mechanisms, coercive targets, and coercive means. The results of this comparison have potential security policy implications for the operationalization of more effective responses to hybrid warfare, focused policies, and an optimal allocation of resources.