HYBRID WARS 4. IN THE GREATER HEARTLAND (II)

(Please read Part I prior to this article)

“The Eurasian Balkans”

As promising of a potential that the Greater Heartland has in fulfilling what seems to be the world’s inevitable multipolar destiny, it runs the risk of being held back by the adroit manipulation of its “Eurasian Balkan” socio-political vulnerabilities. To bring the reader up to speed real quick, this is the idea first espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski that the mass of territory spanning from North Africa to Central Asia is riskily threatened by large-scale fragmentation along identity-based lines (ethnic, religious, historical, etc.), mirroring on a much larger scale the demographic “irregularities” that intensified the fratricidal Balkan Wars of the early 1990s.

HYBRID WARS 3. PREDICTING NEXT HYBRID WARS

(Please read Part I and Part II prior to this article)

Theoretical Review

Identifying The Targets:

The first two parts of the series introduced new concepts to the Hybrid War theory and successfully tested them on the Syrian and Ukrainian cases. This proved that a certain methodology does in fact exist for explaining and analyzing Hybrid Wars, and excitingly, this rubric can proactively be applied in attempting to predict the places where this form of post-modern warfare could be directed next. To refer to Part I, one must first recall the Law of Hybrid Warfare:

“The grand objective behind every Hybrid War is to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, regional, political, etc.) within a targeted transit state.”

HYBRID WARS 2. TESTING THE THEORY – SYRIA & UKRAINE

(Please read ‘Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare‘ prior to this article)

The author’s book, “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (available for free PDF download here), thoroughly makes the case that Syria and Ukraine are the US’ first victims of Hybrid War, but the scope of the article is to express how the abovementioned innovations not included in the original publication have been importantly at play all along. The purpose is to prove that the newly discovered facets can seamlessly be interwoven into the overall theory and used to enhance one’s comprehension of it as a result, thus positioning studied observers to more accurately project the future battlegrounds in which Hybrid Wars are most likely to be fought.

This part of the research thus follows the theoretical model that was just set out before it, in that it elaborates on the geostrategic-economic determinants that were behind the Wars on Syria and Ukraine, before touching on the socio-political structural vulnerabilities that the US attempted to exploit to various degrees of success. The last part incorporates the idea of social and structural preconditioning and briefly discusses how it was present in each case.

HYBRID WARS 1. THE LAW OF HYBRID WARFARE

After the Fall of Berlin Wall, the events on global geopolitical scene, have been speeding up, dramatically.  We have witnessed the changes in international relations, that were unimaginable not only to general public, but also to a number of political analysts. The stage that was set up after the WWII, exploded right in our faces at the end of the past and at the beginning of the New Millennium, changing life of millions. The "New World Order", "post-modern states", the "jungle of the countries still living in XIX century" (cit. Sir Robert Cooper "The post-modern state and the world order"), all the geopolitical strategic points of view promoting the international relations based on double standards, force, preemptive attack, deception, and most of all limits on states sovereignty imposed by "post-modern" states to "jungle" countries are our everyday life, now. The "new" view appears to be an old one. Second millennium, at its very start, reintroduced the relations known at the start of previous one. There is The Rome, and the barbaric world outside of its limes. In that uni-polar World, the Rome had all the power to impose its will on barbarians using the methods listed above, in the name of "civilization", but in real, grabbing resources, and melting or destroying other societies.