Hybrid War

Allies Help Those Who Help Themselves: How Estonia and Japan Approach Deterrence

Up until the blatant act of Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2022, the West had been gradually shifting its attention towards East Asia, with China seen as the primary challenge of the first half of the 21st century. The new context requires a thorough reassessment of international security architecture by all national stakeholders. This, in turn, offers Estonia and Japan the opportunity to enrich their security perspectives on common strategic threats, as well as on broader geopolitical shifts caused by Russia and China.

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Why Russia Went to War: A Three-Dimensional Perspective

Since Ukraine’s independence became a recognised fact in 1991, the spectre of war with Russia has arisen on several occasions, only to subside. To many outsiders, the war of 2014 was a ‘hybrid war’ launched by ‘separatists backed by Russia’, rather than a fully-fledged war, and the ‘Minsk process’ was defusing it. Until the United States presented details of Russian war plans at the end of 2021, very few observers expected Russia to transgress the bounds of coercive intimidation in its dealings with Ukraine. Once war broke out in February 2022, the pervasive question was ‘why?’

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With the Hybrid War, Russia and the West Both Played a Losing Hand

Eight years ago, Russo-Western relations took a pivotal turn for the worse when Russia resumed its gaze on Ukraine and set out on a quest to subordinate its independence to Russia’s. That quest, capitalising on the promotion of regional separatism and internal insurgency through information weapons, cyberattacks and proxy militias, found initial success with the bloodless annexation of Crimea. Implications for the place and nature of hybrid war in Russian strategy were misdrawn by Russia and the West alike.

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