As the United States resets in the wake of previous security challenges and assesses future dangers, the risks posed by strategic hybrid threats deserve increased contemplation and deliberation. This article presents a new theoretical framework for addressing such, defining them as the product of principal-agent relationships in which intentions and capabilities are forged into novel hazards. Using Iran, the availability of likely proxies (notably Hizballah), and U.S. vulnerabilities to computer network attacks, the authors construct illustrative examples of how hybrid threats could threaten both the national security and national interests of the United States. They also offer a model (based on the concept of a war council) with which response efforts on the part of public and private sector actors at the local, state, and Federal levels of governance could be organized and managed

In-conflict state building generates unbalanced civil-military relations in the host state due to an inevitable civil-military gap. Building civilian institutions cannot match the trajectory of progress in building military institutions. The civil-military imbalance creates structural risks to the democratization of the state. In Kabul, a widening civil-military imbalance poses increasing risks to Afghanistan’s post-2014 future. In Bagdad, the civil-military imbalance has enabled a gradual monopolization of control over the security forces by Prime Minister Maliki, stoking fears of a predatory Iraqi state. The article explains the civil-military gap and its risks, examines Iraq and in particular Afghanistan, and presents steps on how to make unbalanced civil-military relations conducive to democratization by shaping the political role of the military.

Operational experiences in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya have driven NATO to evolve first the concept of Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) and later the much broader Comprehensive Approach. As the Alliance implements the Comprehensive Approach, it must take care to link doctrinally the nascent concept of Civil-Military Interaction (CMI) to a new understanding of CIMIC, whereby NATO focuses on its core business of ensuring security while pursuing necessary civil-military interaction in an open and flexible process that spans the politico-strategic, operational, and tactical levels.