Warm War: a New Paradigm for the Twenty-First Century

This thesis investigates the concept of Warm War as a persistent mode of international competition, characterized by the synergistic use of hybrid and cognitive instruments operating in the grey zone between peace and open conflict. The central research question is whether this condition represents the new paradigm of the contemporary global landscape. The study first establishes a clear terminological framework. It then employs a multi-domain analytical approach to trace the evolution of hybrid tactics, cognitive warfare, and grey-zone dynamics from their twentieth-century foundations to their full operationalization in the twenty-first century. The analysis demonstrates how technological acceleration and globalization have enabled the systemic integration of these tools, establishing the human mind and societal cohesion as primary battlegrounds. The outcomes reveal that the current state is neither a “hot war”, as conflicts remain formally under the threshold of declared hostilities, nor a “cold war”, given today’s environment of extreme dynamism and mutability. It is through this analytical prism that the thesis ultimately posits the emergence of the Warm War as the new normal of the twenty-first century.