ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Leonid Savin The terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22nd demonstrated a new stage in the development of terrorism. The attacks were not the actions of lone wolves or the conspiratorial actions of a branch of al-Qaeda. In addition, they do not look like the classic political terrorist attacks typical of the middle of the 20th century or the special services’ operation Gladio. If ISIS claims to be some kind of “state”, its actions should also be styled like a quasi-state. A new kind of hybrid terrorism has elements of all of these categories, but is framed by nihilistic Postmodern and liberal propaganda. Prehistory As an instrument of state policy, terror became widely practiced as a product of the Enlightenment. Being institutionalized in France at the end of the XVIII century, it spread across Europe and became a reliable tool for governments. Only later did terrorists become understood as people and organizations that seek political goals by using violence, including agai...

Andrew Korybko Hybrid Wars are actually something completely different than what most people think they are. My view is that what everybody else talks about – information war, economic war, institutional war – all of that has actually been practiced before, it’s just that nowadays it’s being integrated together into a weaponized approach. Instead, my definition of Hybrid War deals with its practical implementation in transitioning a Color Revolution into an Unconventional War in order to pursue regime change or identity federalism in a targeted state. “The Law Of Hybrid War”, as I call it, is that “the grand objective behind every Hybrid War is to disrupt multipolar transnational connective projects through externally provoked identity conflicts (ethnic, religious, regional, political, etc.) within a targeted transit state”, and we can observe that in practice by the US’ efforts to obstruct Russia’s integration projects in Ukraine and sabotage Iran’s previously planned Friendship...

Vladimir Kozin We can assume that the leaders of the official Western nuclear powers (the UK, US, and France) as well as the other states that actually possess such weapons (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) will continue to base the conceptual foundation of their military strategy on this incontestable truism: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Russia’s current military and political leaders agree with this self-evident observation. In his Oct. 22 speech in Sochi before the Valdai Club, an international discussion group, President Vladimir Putin echoed these sentiments: “The development of nuclear weapons has made it clear that there can be no winners in a global conflict.” Unlike nuclear weapons, which are “tools of extreme impact,” Long-Range Hypersonic High-Precision Weapons (or Advanced Hypersonic Weapons – AHW in US terminology) are ready for use in any scenario, including as part of counter-terror operations. AHW do not cause unnecessary civi...

Valentin Vasilescu GEOPOLITICS US rules the globe, having a navy three times stronger than that of Russia. Moreover, the Pentagon has created a strategic command to deploy large units of land forces, consisting of hundreds of cargo ships of large capacity. All of these vessels are organized in very strong expeditionary naval groups and around aircraft carriers, amphibious landing ships, and naval convoys of troops and military equipment. With troops deployed in Europe and Asia, with the armies of allied states, the US can trigger an invasion of Russia. Therefore Russia's new military doctrine establishes that the biggest risk to Russia's security groups is the American expeditionary naval groups, which can transport invasion troops to the Russian border. Several types of anti-ballistic shield protect US naval expeditionary groups and zones of landing for troops from transport ships. The first is the naval system AEGIS armed with SM-3 block 1b mounted...