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Higher Seminar in Statecraft and Strategic Communication | Oscar Jonsson

The Threat and Dynamics of Non-Military Warfare

Abstract: This volume analyses 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, 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 US, 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, defence studies, foreign policy and International Relations, as well as professional practitioners.

Bio: Oscar Jonsson is director of Phronesis Analysis, Associate Senior Lecturer at the Swedish Defense University and a Senior Non-Resident Associate Fellow at NATO Defense College. He has spent over a dozen year researching Russian strategy as well as military and non-military warfare. Oscar has earlier worked as a subject-matter expert at the Swedish Joint Staff, and been director for the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University and Stockholm Free World Forum. He has also taught at the U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute for U.S. Diplomats en route to Moscow. He is the author of three books, including The Russian Understanding of War and holds a PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

 

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CSSC Governance Research seminar