Hybrid warfare is a military strategy which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy, lawfare and foreign electoral intervention.
Although banned by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, you may now add Biological Warfare to hybrid warfare, in no uncertain terms. Hence the new doctrine is – Bio Attack, Cyber Attack, Kinetic Attack.
Biological warfare – also known as germ warfare-is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons are living organisms or replicating entities.
Cyberwarfare is the use of technology to attack a nation, causing comparable harm to actual warfare. There is significant debate among experts regarding the definition of cyberwarfare, and even if such a thing exists.
A trade war is an economic conflict resulting from extreme protectionism in which states raise or create tariffs or other trade barriers against each other in response to trade barriers created by the other party. Increased protection causes both nations’ output compositions to move towards their autarky position.
Including biological weapons in the hybrid war arsenal will upset all equations related to building military capabilities, defence spending, force structures, space warfare, offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, force protection, conventional and counter-terrorism operations and so on.
Bill Gates’ Prophecy
Bill Gates, talking about new forms of war and threats, in his TedTalks on 3 April 2015, explained that the disaster he worried about most was a nuclear war. “Today the greatest risk of global catastrophe is not nuclear weapons instead it is Bio-War or Bio-Terrorism in the form of virus. If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war, not missiles, but microbes. We have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents and invested little in a system to stop epidemic”.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has exposed how ill-prepared the nations are to deal with a virus attack. New strategies call for having epidemiologist, medical teams, volunteers, treatment approaches, health workers, good response systems, drugs and vaccines fit for various virulent pathogen, advanced research & development and to allocate a moderate budgets.
Cause and Effect
It was found that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they did not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan.
Irrespective of its origin, which is still not conclusively established, as much as Trump tweets about the “Chinese virus,” COVID-19 already poses immensely serious questions about biopolitics and bio-terror.
The working hypothesis of coronavirus as a very powerful but not Armageddon-provoking bio-weapon unveils it as a perfect vehicle for widespread social control – on a global scale.
Novel virus attacks can kill millions. They can cause disruptions in global oil and stock markets, trade, business, tourism and manufacturing industries. International airlines suspended their flight operations due to their ‘concerns’ about the virus spreading globally. Affected countries started pulling out their citizens from China and other badly affected countries. Borders were closed. Global supply chain and exports were affected.
The world economy is in danger of plunging into recession. Bloomberg estimates $ 2.7 trillion loss to global economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic. IMF and World Bank suspended loan recovery from eight countries.
Covering the Tracks
To avoid blame and responsibility over the coronavirus outbreak, China re-positioned itself. Beijing openly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stated on 15 February, by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference, said, “The root cause of all these problems and issues is that the U.S. does not want to see rapid development and rejuvenation of China, still less would they want to accept the success of a socialist country, but that is not fair, China has the right to develop,” Wang said during a discussion at the Munich Security Conference.
Wang’s comments at the Munich Security Conference followed those of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, both delivering back-to-back speeches accusing China of malignant activities.
Beijing carefully, incrementally shaped the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronavirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. President Xi Jinping said, on the record, that it was war. And, as a counter-attack, a “people’s war” had to be launched.
In a bid to parry accusations, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.” The gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 U.S. military.
