By Phillip Smyth, Tim Michetti, and Owen Daniels for Atlantic Council
Hybrid warfare has been with us since the American Revolution, when George Washington’s Continental Army was supported by a bevy of irregulars, such as Francis Marion of South Carolina. More recently, the United States has worked in close cooperation with irregular militias both to overthrow the Taliban regime in 2001-2002 and as a concomitant to the “surge” that suppressed the Iraqi insurrections in 2007.
America hardly has had a monopoly in hybrid warfare; over the past decade, Russia has refined the concept while seizing Crimea and destabilizing eastern Ukraine, employing local irregulars and soldiers without uniforms—both armed with modern weaponry, cash, hackers, and propaganda, among other tools, to achieve its aims.
Above all, however, it has been Iran that has relied most heavily on hybrid warfare. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to assert that the Iranians have virtually perfected hybrid warfare, having operated unconventionally across the region with a good deal of success since the very inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Read the full Atlantic Council report
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