The ambiguity of hybrid warfare: a qualitative content analysis of the United Kingdom's political-military discourse on Russia's hostile activities/
Silvie Janičatová and Petra Mlejnková
- 2021
This article takes a bottom-up approach and analyzes the discourse of political and military representatives in the United Kingdom to explore how they understand hybrid warfare by Russia and what the implications are for defense policy. Using qualitative content analysis with quantitative aspects, the results show not only a range of different terms used to describe Russia's hostile activities, but also that the discussed topics do not reflect one particular definition of hybrid warfare. The analysis further reveals that representatives highlight non-military aspects of hybrid warfare over the military ones and consider the role of defense policy dependent on the nature of a particular hybrid threat.