The Russian Federation is at war with the West. Pretending this is not the case or obfuscating the character of the conflict with delicate semantic constructions does not make it any less so. Russia has established strategic objectives that violate the sovereignty of its neighbors and threaten the stability of the international system. It has selectively deployed tools from the full range of state power, including the overt and covert use of force, to achieve those objectives. Yet this simple realization eludes many in the West, particularly those who are far from the geographic points of physical contact. If they did acknowledge Russia’s aggression, many Westerners would demand an immediate response...

The articles in this special edition of the Combating Terrorism Exchange (CTX) discuss current and future uses of Special Operations Forces, particularly the best use of SOF in a pre–Article V scenario—that is, before invoking the “collective defense” clause that permits resort to armed force according to the stipulations of the original North Atlantic Treaty.

The articles in this special edition of the Combating Terrorism Exchange (CTX) discuss current and future uses of Special Operations Forces, particularly the best use of SOF in a pre–Article V scenario—that is, before invoking the “collective defense” clause that permits resort to armed force according to the stipulations of the original North Atlantic Treaty.

Many people assume that Russian aggression toward Ukraine began early in 2014, when largely peaceful anti-government protests in Kiev turned violent, and Russian forces without insignia subsequently crossed into eastern Ukraine to support a separatist uprising there. A close examination of the events that led up to that period shows, however, that Russia had been carrying out not only information operations, but also other clandestine and special operations against Ukraine for more than a decade...

The Russian Federation’s near-bloodless annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, for the second time in Russian history, was achieved mostly by means of operations carried out by Russia’s special operations forces (Voiska Spetzialnogo Naznacheniya, or Spetsnaz). After undergoing a period of reforms following the transition from Communist to democratic rule, the Russian Spetsnaz proved to be a salient strategic asset for Russian political and military leaders and emerged as a credible threat for the countries of Russia’s near abroad...

From the splitting off of South Ossetia and provocations against Estonia to the annexation of Crimea, the Russian Federation is on the offensive (for more details on these events, see the articles by Dayspring, Danylyuk, and Atay in the first section of this issue). What hampers NATO from mounting an effective deterrent response to recent Russian aggression? I offer the following (partial) answer to this puzzle: the Russian threat falls outside of NATO’s strategic “habit." In other words, legacy assumptions, norms, and behavior patterns drive NATO’s inability to respond to the threats posed by Russian activity, and these legacies have been entrenched through decades of environmental conditioning and discourse...

The “little green men” took the world by surprise when they appeared at a Crimea airport on 28 February 2014 and sparked renewed concerns about Russian foreign political ambitions. Who would be Russia’s next target, and what could small neighboring countries do to deter and counter the hybrid threat from the East? Special Operations Forces could play a key part in small nations’ counter-hybrid warfare in the future. Elaborating on the work of a recent US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) study, I believe SOF should form the core of a new multidisciplinary unit acting as a grand strategy enabler for a small nation, guiding and coordinating its counter-hybrid warfare efforts...

After more than a decade of expeditionary operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO alliance and many European nations in particular have recently started to refocus their defensive efforts back on their own national territories. This is partially due to the reemergence of an aggressive Russia, with its “new” approach to warfare, and to the rise of ISIS, the violent and multifaceted terrorist organization that has conducted a number of spectacular attacks on European soil over the last two years...

The Russian model of hybrid warfare has been designed to blur the lines between war and peace. Recent Russian hybrid campaigns in Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine have demonstrated to the world that Russia is highly adept at advancing its objectives through its own unique brand of hybrid warfare. To counter and deter the new Russian threat, NATO must reconfigure its own hybrid warfare approach toward a more proactive collective defense. NATO’s currently reactive collective defense paradigm, characterized by routine conventional military exercises and the forward positioning of military equipment and rapid reaction forces throughout Europe, is simply no longer effective at deterring Russian aggression. NATO should move to a proactive defense approach with a robust irregular warfare component to complement conventional diplomatic, military, and economic deterrence efforts...