Non-Military Warfare: A War of Our Time

This volume analyzes the phenomenon of non-military warfare in theory and practice, including its relation to military warfare, and how states can understand and counter this activity.

War has traditionally been understood as soldiers with weapons fighting on a battlefield. Today, however, it is difficult to say who is a combatant, what weapons are, or even where the battlefield ends. Industrial-scale information operations and hacking attacks can be both an integral part of and a substitute for military operations. This book, which brings together scholars from different fields, goes beyond conceptual debates and provides a focused analysis of the advent of non-military warfare and its impact on strategy. The empirical chapters investigate non-military warfare primarily as conducted by the United States, Russia, and China in the areas of politics, cyber, diasporas, technology, and law. The theoretical chapters seek to answer broader questions about how we should think about victory, defeat, and participation in non-military warfare, and when it can complement and take the place of military operations. As modern warfare is moving into non-military domains, understanding this shift is vital to state survival in the 21st century.

This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defense studies, foreign policy, and International Relations, as well as professional practitioners.

Oscar Jonsson is director of Phronesis Analysis, Senior Non-Resident Associate Fellow at NATO Defense College and Associate Senior Lecturer at the Swedish Defense University. He is the author of three books, and holds a PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

Ilmari Käihkö is a University Researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland, an Associate Professor of War Studies at the Department of War Studies, Swedish Defence University, and a veteran of the Finnish Defence Forces.