Abstract
The term 'hybrid warfare' was coined over a decade ago. Ever since, it was present in existing defence and security related debates, with notable rise to prominence after invasion of Crimea.
This apparent longevity of the idea of hybrid warfare starts to fall apart once the label and underlining concept are decoupled (see Gerring 2012). On the other hand, it cannot be claimed, that the label war reused for other concept, as newer authors continue to refer to old ones.
So the main question of the paper is how did the original concept of hybrid warfare, being close to counterinsurgency literature transformed to umbrella concept used to capture diverse actions, including trolls on the internet, cyber-attacks, migration, new emergent technologies, or football rowdies? The development is captured by analysis of iterations of concepts under 'hybrid warfare' label. Emphasis is put on influence of their previous scholarship or institutional interests and qualities of the concept iterations, especially regarding their differentiation and resonance (according to Gerring's framework for concept formation).
The aim of the article is to show how vagueness of concept definition coupled with label popularity and institutional demand lead to complete loss of meaning of 'hybrid warfare'.