Russian leaders and policymakers use the term “hybrid war” to refer to a very specific type of conflict, while their counterparts in the West tend to use that same term in a general sense to refer to different kinds of conflict that include a mix of conventional and asymmetrical means. US leaders cannot allow this semantic difference to go unexamined because those same Russian leaders believe they are on the defensive side of a hybrid war perpetrated by the West against Russia. Failing to appreciate the nuances of the Russian interpretation of hybrid war is therefore akin to ignoring a potential adversary’s rules of engagement and could easily lead to policy missteps and unintended consequences. Mason Clark leads ISW’s Russia Team and has been closely studying the Russian definition of hybrid war. He joins this episode of Overwatch to talk about the importance of this term’s definition in US-Russia relations.
