Month: December 2025

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Liminal Warfare in the 21st Century

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Liminal warfare, what is it? The term itself sounds strange. The combination of “liminal” and “warfare” comes off awkward, perhaps even contradictory. The term warfare implies clarity—enemies, commanders, battles, beginnings, and endings. Liminal, by contrast, refers to what exists in between. So what does liminal actually mean, and why does it matter for understanding how war is conducted today?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word liminal derives from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold” or “boundary.” More broadly, it refers to something relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. In other words, it describes a state of being in between, a passage rather than a destination, akin to a doorway or a hallway rather than a room.

From this root emerges a related but distinct concept: liminality. Liminality, like liminal, derives from the same Latin root limen (threshold). While the two terms appear similar on the surface, they are not identical. Liminal describes a position or quality of being in between, whereas liminality refers to the condition itself—an ambiguous, transformative “betwixt-and-between” state that exists during periods of transition.

Think of it this way: liminal is an adjective. It describes something that exists on a threshold—between states, categories, or conditions, such as a liminal phase or a liminal conflict. Liminality, by contrast, is a noun. It refers to the condition or state of being on that threshold—the enduring in-between-ness itself.

Liminal: simple examples

  • A hallway: not a room, but a space between rooms.
  • Dawn or dusk: not fully day or night.
  • An airport terminal: not home, not the destination.
  • The moment after you quit a job but before you start the next one.

These are all liminal spaces or moments—defined by what they are between, not by what they are themselves.

Liminality: simple examples

  • Waiting months for immigration papers, when life is effectively on hold.
  • A prolonged government shutdown.
  • A ceasefire that never becomes peace.
  • Being “engaged” for years without either marrying or separating.

Here, the issue is not the moment itself, but the enduring condition of uncertainty.

In short, liminal modifies what something is like; liminality names the state or process of being in between.

So what is Liminal Warfare? (Origin)

Liminal warfare is a strategic concept developed by Dr. David Kilcullen in response to Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. Kilcullen demonstrates that Russia used modern hybrid tactics—ambiguity and the blending of conventional and unconventional methods—to operate in the “threshold” (liminal) zone, achieving political goals while bypassing traditional post-Soviet military methods and adapting to counter Western dominance.

In 2014, Russia seized Crimea using ambiguous forces—often referred to as “little green men.” Conventional military units, special forces, local proxies, and information operations were blended to create chaos and uncertainty about what was happening. This, in turn, triggered a natural response to the who, what, when, where, why, and how scenario. Political institutions and Western governments hesitated to respond decisively, allowing Russia to achieve its objectives without triggering open war. This invisible and mostly silent operation exemplifies liminal warfare: acting in the threshold between peace and war, exploiting cognitive and political ambiguities to achieve strategic aims.

Theory

At first glance, liminal warfare reminded me of the Chinese game of Go and the Russian concept of Deep Battle. That instinct felt right—but only partially, and only if those analogies are treated with care.

Liminal warfare resembles Go in its logic and Deep Battle in its mechanics, yet it cannot be reduced to either. It is better understood as a hybrid strategic grammar, borrowing from both while operating in domains neither was designed to address fully. In other words, it lives around—and within—the perceived shadows of the mind.

Some may find this phrasing more poetic than analytical. If so, it is worth recalling that war—whether kinetic or non-kinetic—has always operated within perceptual and cognitive shadows: the spaces in which conflict is recognized, interpreted, misinterpreted, and ultimately acted upon.

Sun Tzu gives us a useful entry point if we split one famous line in two:

“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill.”

On the surface, this is a statement about kinetic success—conventional warfare measured in engagements won and forces destroyed. Victory is real, but it is still bounded by battle. Moreover, just because one wins the battle does not mean one has won the war.

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

This is something else entirely. Here, the battlefield is no longer physical terrain but perception, cohesion, legitimacy, and decision-making. The enemy is not defeated by force, but by being rendered unable—or unwilling—to fight at all. This is liminal warfare: conflict conducted in the space before open war, where outcomes are decided without crossing the threshold that would make violence unavoidable. Furthermore, this line establishes that once the enemy’s liminality has been identified—once the fault lines in organization, authority, or perception are located—a liminal approach can proceed.

Conclusion / Forward-Looking

Liminal warfare challenges the traditional understandings of conflict. It operates in the ambiguous space between peace and war, manipulating perceptions, disrupting decision-making, and exploiting organizational vulnerabilities. While Russia’s actions in Crimea illustrate its practice in a regional context, the concept has broader implications for the 21st century. Understanding liminal warfare prepares us to recognize, anticipate, and respond to conflicts that do not follow conventional rules—and opens the door to exploring how other global powers, including China, approach this strategic space.


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National Security Strategy of the United States of America

Trump’s National Security Strategy of the United States of America document is short-sighted in its long-term strategic architecture, but not necessarily short-sighted in the tempo of modern conflict, where political and military incentives often reward rapid repositioning. Adaptability over consistency carries significant political advantages. Yet even when adaptability is prioritized over fixed positions, one can still be consistent in one’s adaptability. In this way, adaptability itself becomes a coherent and recognizable strategic posture, providing a framework for action that is both flexible and systematically applied.

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The Day After: The Peace No One Is Prepared For

What happens after the war ends in Ukraine—and it will—is the one subject most policymakers skirt, and perhaps with good reason. Because the day after is not a celebration, it is a reckoning.

Ukraine will not return to what it was in 2021. It will awaken to something far more unsettling: a society exhausted by war, disillusioned with its leaders, and divided by conflicting visions of what the country was supposed to become, regardless of political identity. The sentiment of betrayal by politicians who overpromised, by allies who underdelivered, by a strategy sold as inevitable victory, will fester. When that happens, the external enemy evaporates, and the internal enemies become visible.

Paraphrasing James C. Davies: nations don’t break from weakness, but from the collapse of the expectations they were led to believe—often for someone else’s agenda. Ukraine risks entering a postwar environment defined not by Russian aggression, but by Ukrainian fragmentation—regional mistrust, ethnic resentments, ideological vendettas, and political scapegoating—basically a hellscape that will affect all facets of life. That is how Balkanization begins: not through secession, but through the mentality of it. The idea that one’s real enemies live closer than Moscow has already taken root. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that “close” doesn’t just mean political factions or regional divisions within Ukraine. It also means the people who fled. When millions sought refuge in places like Poland, France, Germany, and elsewhere, they escaped the war physically—but they will return to a country transformed, hardened, and angry.

Those who stayed and fought may look at those who left not as fellow citizens coming home, but as outsiders who abandoned them when everything was on the line. Resentment is a powerful force, especially in a society held together by shared suffering. And when the war ends, those refugees will walk back across the border not to open arms, but to suspicion. They will be seen as people who missed the crucible, who didn’t carry the burden, who didn’t bleed with everyone else — yet now expect to reclaim the full privileges of citizenship.

This is how social fractures deepen: not only between east and west, soldier and politician, nationalist and pragmatist — but between those who endured and those who escaped. The enemy “close by” becomes not just the internal divisions born from war, but the distrust of those returning from safety to a nation that no longer sees them as the same.

But the internal fractures are only half the story. The other half is what leaves the country entirely.

This war has produced a generation of men who know nothing but combat. Many will return home to an economy that cannot absorb them—no jobs, no prospects, and no reason to embrace a peace that feels like defeat. That is when the training they received, the weapons they carried, and the networks they formed become a different kind of currency.

When the war ends, Ukraine—and Russia—will not simply demobilize soldiers. They will release them into a global marketplace where violence is both a commodity and a career. What emerges next is a conflict market for mercenaries: a worldwide, often illicit, and highly lucrative trade in private military services, where hardened fighters are hired for combat, security, training, or political enforcement.

Peace creates unemployment. The world provides opportunities. This market thrives on instability, and it will eagerly absorb thousands of men who have spent years learning the trade of war. For these veterans—Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, and foreign volunteers (Colombian)—their experience becomes a portable skill set. Whether for money, purpose, or simply because peace offers them nothing, many will migrate into this shadow economy of conflict zones stretching from the Sahel to the Caucasus to the Middle East. Here, violence is no longer tied to national defense. It becomes transactional.

Ukraine will face a double blow: a country struggling with its identity at home while fueling instability abroad. The front lines may stop moving in Ukraine, but the war will continue—in the identities people cling to, and in the fighters who take their craft elsewhere. The tragedy is not merely that the war could have been avoided. It’s that its consequences will outlive the signatures on any peace agreement.

The day after is not peace.