EVN Security Report: May 2024

As Armenia’s security thinking has evolved and transitioned from the Russo-Soviet model of large-scale, full-spectrum warfare to a small state, comprehensive security doctrine, the fundamental threats faced from Azerbaijan have revolved around two approaches: asymmetrical disparity and non-linear warfare. In the common parlance, asymmetrical disparity primarily refers to the imbalance in power capabilities, both in weaponry and military capacity, while non-linear warfare primarily refers to the wide range of hybrid warfare tactics utilized by Baku. In the confluence of these two dominant tactical approaches by Azerbaijan, Armenia has proceeded to counteract by two strategic approaches: deterrence-by-denial and resiliency modeling. Armenia’s deterrence strategy has revolved around denying Azerbaijan from achieving its military and coercive objectives, while resiliency modeling has revolved around disrupting Baku’s attempts to erode and weaken Armenian society. The extent to which Armenia’s strategic approaches have been successful cannot be empirically qualified at the moment, since it is a work in progress amidst a fluctuating security climate, while at the same time, the fact that deterrence and resilience capabilities need continuous and robust enhancement is intrinsically evident. In this context, while deterrence-by-denial has been an initial stopgap measure in attempting to counteract Baku amidst the asymmetrical disparity that Yerevan finds itself in, resiliency modeling is a long-term approach that systemically compliments the comprehensive security approach. Thus, between the immediate approach and the long-term approach, Armenia needs an intermediate approach to allow for a transition from the severe security situation it faces in the present to the long-term comprehensive system it is seeking to establish. To address Azerbaijan’s non-linear warfare, which ranges from kinetic diplomacy to complex hybrid operations, Armenia must utilize the concept of de-hybridization. 

De-hybridization refers to the instruments, mechanisms, and processes utilized by a defender state against the hybrid and kinetic activities of an antagonistic state, with the de-hybridization tactics designed to target the vulnerabilities of the antagonistic state. The underlying objective is to utilize countermeasures against Azerbaijan’s hybrid and gray zone tactics, yet doing so without counter-attacking or engaging in reciprocal responses, but rather, altering the scope of asymmetry to render the hybrid dimensions of Azerbaijan’s tactics ineffective. In more simple terms, de-hybridization, for Armenia, will entail not the act of executing its own hybrid warfare against Azerbaijan, but rather, developing surgical strategies that would negate and deny the effectiveness of Azerbaijan’s hybrid attacks. De-hybridization, in this context, disrupts and defeats the antagonistic state’s hybrid warfare initiative by making such an initiative ineffective, and to this end, since non-linear warfare defines success based on effectiveness, the ability to render Azerbaijan’s hybrid dimensions ineffective will disrupt the strength and scope of their hybrid warfare capabilities. 

What would a strategy of de-hybridization for Armenia look like? Considering the fact that the six dimensions of Azerbaijan’s hybrid warfare stratagem entails diplomatic, economic, cyber, information, unconventional, and military components, Armenia’s ability to neutralize or limit the effectiveness of each hybrid dimension will qualify as cases of de-hybridization. In this context, understanding the hybrid warfare strategy of the opposing state, the next step for Armenia would be to develop surgical strategic depth in addressing each dimension of Baku’s hybrid warfare stratagem. The underlying objective of de-hybridization, for this reason, is not to stop the enemy from engaging in hybrid warfare (that is beyond Armenia’s scope, nor can an antagonistic state be stopped from utilizing hybrid warfare tactics), but rather, making the dimensions of its hybrid warfare tactics ineffective. Thus, if their attacks do not work, they have been de-hybridized. At the same time, what constitutes effectiveness or ineffectiveness will need to be determined and qualified by a quantifiable set of metrics; but at the most basic level, mitigating the effectiveness of what Baku seeks to achieve and disrupting the efficacy of its efforts will qualify as successful cases of de-hybridization. In more simple terms, if Baku seeks to achieve A, B, C, and D, but it only partially achieves B (35%), and to a large extent achieves C (90%), while failing to achieve either A or B, this will qualify as a successful case of de-hybridization, for in the quantifiable domain of its objectives, Baku would have only achieved 31% of its total objectives, while Armenia having succeeded in denying 69% of Azerbaijan’s hybrid assaults. In this context, if Azerbaijan is accustomed to a 70% to 85% success rate, a diminishing of its hybrid effectiveness will exponentially produce a robust de-hybridization effect.

Qualifying the six domains of Baku’s hybrid warfare strategy, its weakest dimension is economic (Baku has relatively little to no effect on Armenia’s economy), its strongest dimension is unconventional tactics and military, while the dimensions of medium efficacy are diplomatic, cyber, and informational. While the efficacy metric is quite clear, another important factor to pay attention to is the frequency matrix: the highest rates of attack from the given dimension. In this context, the medium efficacy dimensions have the highest frequency, while the strongest dimension has the lesser frequency. Thus, the distribution of types of hybrid attacks, based on frequency, must be correlated with the strength and scope of the military and unconventional tactics dimensions.    

Based on this framework, in the domain of risk propensity, Armenia’s de-hybridization strategy must revolve around addressing Azerbaijan’s diplomatic, cyber and information domains. Considering the power asymmetry, Armenia’s ability to de-hybridize the unconventional or military dimensions are a bit limited, yet nonetheless still manageable. As such, anticipating cross-border incursions, or utilizing discipline not to respond to Azerbaijani provocations, or constructively utilizing the European Observer Mission in high-risk border areas, are all examples of de-hybridization methods against unconventional and military dimensions. 

But in the domains of diplomatic, cyber and information warfare, Armenia remains acutely positioned to implement de-hybridization strategies to diminish the effectiveness of Azerbaijan’s attacks. The primary de-hybridization technique is known as conflict narration. Through the use of information and cyber warfare, Azerbaijan had succeeded, until most recently and with the collapse of its caviar diplomacy, to not only control but also dominate the narrative on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Within the realm of hybrid warfare, it had not only excelled at weaponizing conflict narration to bolster its diplomatic capital and strategic advantage, but at the same time, leveraged this advantage against Armenia in the international arena. More so, its success within the information and cyber domains had allowed Azerbaijan, the aggressor, to actually paint Armenia as dangerous and revanchist. Synchronized with its unconventional and military tactics, Azerbaijan utilized the information and cyber domains from 2020 to 2022 to successfully invade and occupy large swaths of sovereign Armenia, with very little punitive response from the international community. More so, exploiting its success in the unconventional and military domains, it applied kinetic diplomacy (an unconventional mechanism) in the attempt to coerce Armenia to acquiesce to its maximalist demands. Fused with this coercive approach was, again, the synchronized application of cyber, informational, and diplomatic assaults against official Yerevan.  

In observing the systemic and synchronized nature of Azerbaijan’s hybrid warfare strategy, a de-hybridization stratagem would dictate a surgical neutralization of any one of the given domains within the synchronized process. Namely, since the various domains must be implemented in unison to produce the maximum outcome, the rupturing of one domain will obstruct the effectiveness of the overall hybrid assault, thus diminishing its effectiveness. Within this framework, Armenia’s ability, for example, to challenge Azerbaijan’s dominance of the conflict narrative through its Western pivot and policy of diversification, is an example of de-hybridization. While Azerbaijan, for example, may still be superior in engaging in information and cyber warfare, it no longer enjoys diplomatic dominance within the domain of conflict narration, as Armenia’s Western pivot has diminished the effectiveness of Azerbaijan’s diplomatic arguments (i.e., Armenia is a Russian vassal; Armenia is an occupying force; Armenia is a military threat to Azerbaijan, etc.): simply put, Western capitals no longer believe Azerbaijan’s arguments, thus rupturing its dominance of the narrative on the conflict. 

Similarly, in the endeavor of de-hybridizing conflict narration, Armenia need not, for example, undertake cyber attacks against Azerbaijan, but rather, it only needs to bolster its cybersecurity, thus denying Azerbaijan of its objectives. In this context, the same methodocity applies to information warfare: Armenia need not engage in a tit-for-tat with Azerbaijan, but rather, it must establish its own method of delivering information, shaping and framing the discourse at hand, and as such, neutralize Baku’s information warfare by simply denying its perceptivity; if there’s a diminished number of individuals that believe the misinformation coming out of Baku, very this very diminishing, the effectiveness capacity decreases.         

The overarching approach of de-hybridization, and the secret to its success, is the counter-intuitive structure of its methods — it doesn’t confront the enemy to weaken it, rather, it neutralizes or diminishes the enemy’s attack without having to attack back. By virtue of denying the enemy of achieving its objectives, it denies the enemy of success, and as such, diminishes the effectiveness of the enemy’s hybrid warfare capabilities. More so, it forces the enemy to utilize more resources, while it does not need to increase its own resource allocation. De-hybridization is always cost-effective in relation to developing and implementing hybrid attacks, which are by nature more resource-intensive. To this end, success in hybrid warfare is not defined by “defeating” the antagonistic state by undertaking counter hybrid attacks, or winning at the hybrid warfare game by instituting more hybrid attacks. It is actually the opposite: as long as the antagonistic state does not achieve what it has set out to achieve through its hybrid warfare approach, the defending state has won. For this reason, within the domain of non-linear warfare, and the asymmetrical nature of the conflict, advantage is not defined by achieving parity, but rather, by succeeding to deny the stronger actor. If the attacks don’t work, then the attacker has lost. For Armenia, in the realm of hybrid warfare, a successful defense is a case of successful denial, and to this end, de-hybridization can offer Armenia an acute advantage against Azerbaijan’s waging of non-linear war. 

Examining the Context

EVN Security Report