The hybrid war scandal

Whyte, Jeffrey (2026) The hybrid war scandal. Security Dialogue. ISSN 0967-0106

Abstract

This article considers the recent emergence of the concept of “hybrid warfare” in international politics. Rather than viewing the concept of hybrid warfare as a reflection of a new and distinct modality of war, this article argues that discourses of hybrid war have appeared in the form of a “geopolitical scandal” through which states have sought to recriminate and publicize the perceived transgressions of adversary states. Drawing on scholars of secrecy, scandal, and security, I argue that “the hybrid war scandal” has been underwritten by uneven and ultimately contradictory imaginations of war’s ontology, namely claims that (a) that the boundary between war and peace has been transgressed, (b) that the boundary between war and peace had previously been stable, and (c) that the West eschews this transgression while non-Western adversaries embrace it. I argue that by presenting the boundary between war and peace as transgressed, the hybrid war scandal ultimately places the civilian sphere in a position subordinate to war. I conclude with a call for critical scholars to “forget hybrid warfare” and insist upon the fundamentally political nature of questions concerning war's ontology.