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Abstract: The question of what negotiation has to do with hybrid warfare was the starting point for Project Seshat, a project gathering a global group of academics and practitioners from many walks of life. Their shared interest is in exploring what the fields that fit generally within the concepts of “security” and “dispute resolution” have to offer each other in the context of hybrid warfare / grey zone conflict, and how these two “sets” of fields interconnect. In trying to better understand what hybrid warfare is, how it works, and how best to respond to it, negotiation and dispute resolution academics have been led to question some of the core assumptions and theories they generally rely on.
These reflections, we believe, raise a set of specific questions when we consider how lawyers think of and practice negotiation. In a recent discussion with the head of the cyber response group for a global law firm, that person told one of the authors that they “never negotiate with cybercriminals.” When asked whether this stance resulted in missed opportunities, the lawyer refused to move off his/her no-negotiation stance as if negotiation was incongruent with the means of handling these situations. In practice, engaging in negotiation in these contexts has resulted in positive outcomes and is one of several reasons the authors wish to explore the idea of negotiation within hybrid warfare in a more thorough and comprehensive way. The fact that targets of hybrid warfare attacks refuse to negotiate with their attackers does not mean that negotiation, as a process and as a set of skills, does not play a central role in the interaction. That is what we will demonstrate in this essay.
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