The Long History of “Little Green Men” Tactics and How They Were Defeated

In both Crimea and the subsequent fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine, Russia’s signature tactic has been the use of so-called “Green Men,” soldiers without identifying insignia whose identity as Russian soldiers the Kremlin denied. Ukraine, Georgia, and even NATO members like Estonia now fear that they could be the next target for Russia’s Green Men.  NATO, alarmed by the need to prepare for this unexpected tactic, has committed to develop new countermeasures to defend against this threat. Green Men, or deniable forces, are a central part of what has come to be called “hybrid warfare” in the “gray zone” between war and peace.  All of this seems to be a new and innovative departure from traditional tactics, perhaps even a new model for conflict in the 21^st century.

However, deniable forces are nothing new. Nor, in fact, is the specific phenomenon of using them to seize a piece of territory, as Russia did in Crimea. There is a long history of hybrid warfare in general and of intervening with deniable forces in particular. This history points not just to the enduring nature of the threat, but also to the contours of a “counter-hybrid” strategy to defeat it.

In the course of a broader research project for which I compiled data on every land grab since 1918, 105 land grabs in total, I found three instances before Crimea of deniable forces seizing territory. In 1999, Pakistani forces crossed the Line of Control in the Kargil region of Kashmir, occupying positions overlooking strategically important roads in Indian territory. Like the Russians, Pakistan used deniable forces that they described as Kashmiri insurgents. Unlike the Ukrainians, the Indians counterattacked, absorbing heavy casualties to expel the Pakistanis.

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Russian Hybrid Warfare and Other Dark Arts

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, hybrid warfare has become conversational short form in the West for describing Moscow’s sneaky ways of fighting war. If there’s one thing you’ve learned over the past two years about Russia, it’s that it uses hybrid warfare, a dangerous Kremlin innovation the West must learn to grapple with. In two short years, the word has mutated from describing how Moscow was fighting its war in Ukraine to incorporating all the various elements of Russian influence and national power. The term continues to evolve, spawning iterations like “multi-vector hybrid warfare” in Europe. Hybrid warfare has become the Frankenstein of the field of Russia military analysis; it has taken on a life of its own and there is no obvious way to contain it.

In trying to separate hybrid warfare from the classical bins of conventional or irregular war, I prefer to use Frank Hoffman’s definition, “a tailored mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and criminal behavior in the same time and battlespace to obtain [a group’s] political objectives.” There are other definitions out there, but you will find they are not being applied correctly to analysis of Russian tactics. Unfortunately, what Russian hybrid warfare is, and how it works, varies dramatically depending on what article, report, or PowerPoint brief you are reading. The more we have talked about it, the less we understand it as a useful concept or framework for looking at Russian actions.

What’s wrong with a little hybrid warfare?

If you torture hybrid warfare long enough it will tell you anything, and torture it we have. The term now covers every type of discernible Russian activity, from propaganda to conventional warfare, and most that exists in between. What exactly does Russian hybrid warfare do, and how does it work? The short answer in the Russia-watcher community is everything. The church of Russian hybrid warfare has a broad and influential following these days, but finds few worshippers among experts who study the Russian military. There’s a reason for that: Many don’t believe it exists as described. I’m not the first to point out the problems with applying this lens to Russian tactics , and I have criticized itelsewhere, but in this piece I hope to offer a fresh perspective on why the national security establishment continues to do itself a disservice by thinking about Russia through a hybrid warfare lens.

My purpose here is not to engage in an esoteric disagreement over military terms and definitions. It matters less what we call it if there is a common and useful understanding of the subject. The trouble is that thanks to narratives surrounding hybrid warfare, we lack a shared knowledge of how Russia fights and what happened on the battlefields of Ukraine. Without a common understanding of the facts here, the United States cannot hope to successfully counter or deter Moscow elsewhere. It would be one thing for such notions to dominate the world of punditry, but the references to Russia’s dark hybrid arts permeate the conversation among U.S. policymakers and leading generals alike. I have nothing against hybrid warfare as a concept, but in the case of Russia, it has become more of a handicap than an enabler for our decision-makers and military leaders.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks