Editor's note: Intelligence leak exposes U.S. spying, on friends and foes alike. The U.S. Spy Empire: Unmatched and Unprecedented is a three-part series analyzing how Washington's massive espionage operations are threatening the world, crippling the country's long-term interests, and hurting Americans' human rights. The second instalment examines why Washington's 'hybrid warfare' – including cyber war – is a hidden crisis threatening its hegemony.

Dozens of documents have emerged online revealing how the U.S. is spying on both its adversaries and allies. Officials in several countries, according to media reports, are now trying to assess the damage resulting from the leaks. Washington's massive espionage activities are seen by many as a form of hybrid warfare in the 21st century.

What is hybrid warfare?

America's war game has long gone beyond hot conflicts that take military operations as the mainstay. After the Cold War, the country, as the unipolar hegemon, became even bolder in carrying out interventions overseas and developed what is known as "hybrid warfare" that uses all dimensions of state power and is more secretive in approaches.

It uses more covert, deceptive and dangerous methods, such as intelligence wars, political wars, diplomatic wars, trade wars, financial wars, tech wars, cyber wars, legal wars and psychological wars to attack international rivals, destabilize foreign societies, topple foreign governments, and seize political and economic interests.

This new form of warfare is diverse in pattern and intensity. It is built on America's military strength and what the country has achieved through hot wars, but transcends the traditional framework of military confrontation with its pattern and intensity totally dependent on America's national interests. The disastrous consequences it entails such as panic, social disorder, economic crises, political division and civil wars are borne by the people in the target country.

A prominent feature of America's hybrid warfare is the strategy to break the enemy from within, meaning to clandestinely develop a fifth column in the target country under the cover of ideology and humanitarianism, with the aim to strike a blow to the country or even crush it through non-military means.

On the one hand, Washington, instigating propaganda and with financial support, tries to develop pro-America proxies among the political elites and authorities of the target country, nurture anti-government organizations within society, and remotely control the country's political and social agendas.

On the other, the U.S. exerts long-lasting ideological influence to erode traditional values and moral standards among people in the target country and reinforce their identity with American values – all in an attempt to make the public believe that Washington's intervention is a "just deed" where an advanced civilization tries to change a backward one for the better.

When the time is ripe, Washington can collude with the fifth column to put economic, political, diplomatic and psychological pressure on the target country, escalate its social and political malaise, stage mass unrest and even overthrow its government.

If none of this works, the U.S. military may force its way into the country in the name of protecting human rights, democracy and commercial freedom or tackling weapons of mass destruction.

Attack on all fronts

In the past 50 years, the tentacles of America's hybrid warfare have been felt on all fronts. The U.S. has played a role in almost all conflicts, chaos, fears and crises across the world. According to statistics from the China Society for Human Rights Studies, between the closing year of World War II and 2001, out of the 248 military conflicts that had occurred in 153 countries and regions, 201, or around 81 percent, were started by the United States.

The Middle East was undoubtedly the hardest hit region. From the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, to the Arab Spring, the U.S. turned the region into a testing ground for its hybrid warfare.

Central Asia has been a playground for the American-style hybrid warfare, too. Between 2003 and 2005, anti-government forces in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan mounted mass protests at the instigation of the U.S., leading to regime change.

Another target of Washington's hybrid war efforts is Latin America, where the "Latin America Autumn" orchestrated by Washington in 2019 led to wide-spread chaos.

Southeast Asia was not left untouched either. Washington's political intervention in countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar has never stopped, at times even resulting in civil wars.

The top targets of America's hybrid warfare at the moment are apparently China and Russia. On Russia, the U.S. has launched propaganda campaigns through international media and online platforms to tarnish its international image and disturb social and political ideologies within the country. In addition, it actively supported the political opposition and social activist groups in finding the opportune time to stir up trouble, and imposed various economic sanctions to wreck Russia's economic and financial systems.

America's hybrid war efforts against China, which have been going on for decades, have become increasingly aggressive over the past few years. From clamping down on Huawei-represented Chinese high-tech firms to unilaterally starting trade and tech wars; from muddling the South China Sea in the name of freedom of navigation to spreading rumors about human rights in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region; from fueling and funding unrest in Hong Kong to repeatedly using the Taiwan question as a bargaining chip against China, the U.S. cooked up one tactic of hybrid warfare after another in an attempt to destabilize China, slow down its development, and curb its influence on the global arena.

Crises looming large

The world has suffered from the American hybrid warfare too much and for too long. While many countries and societies are plunged into the quagmire of conflicts, Washington profits from their misery.

However, while hybrid wars have helped the U.S. to contain its rivals, they are also nibbling away at the foundation of American hegemony. For all the short-term benefit the U.S. has reaped, just as much long-term damage is inflicted upon itself.

First, hybrid warfare has weakened America's international prestige and accentuated its dwindling confidence. While hybrid wars are said to bring about democracy, better human rights and social progress, they usually end up with political decline, humanitarian disasters and social decay. This in turn hollows out the basis of American values, making people doubt Washington's empty promises and grand rhetoric.

Hybrid wars running rampant indicate that hypervigilance and the abuse of deterrent power is the signature of America's international existence and its mentality in dealing with international relations. As a result, its imagined enemies far outnumber the real ones. Such a sense of insecurity will only grow with the fall of American hegemony, wearing down Americans' confidence and further polarizing its political landscape.

Second, hybrid warfare has set many countries against the U.S., and driven Washington and its allies apart. Across the world, victim countries of open or secret U.S. intervention and manipulation are not in the minority. America's hybrid warfare, seen as a stumbling block for these countries' development, has drawn vehement international criticisms and will inevitably lead to ever bitterer hatred.

Even America's Western allies are taking preventative steps to shield themselves. According to media reports, in 2021, France's Ministry of National Education established Le Laboratoire de la République. It's a values-based think tank with a mission to shield France from color revolutions and to prevent the import of wokeism – a form of identity politics that pitches ethnic groups against each other, from the United States.

Furthermore, seeing their own global interests hurt by America's hybrid war efforts, American allies, for instance, the European Union, have begun to seek greater diplomatic and military autonomy, leading to the technical disintegration of the hegemonic alliance system.

Third, hybrid warfare has bred global terrorism and intensified the clash of civilizations. It will eventually backfire at the U.S. As the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev points out, it is America's hybrid warfare in the Middle East that has led to the emergence of terrorism and Islamic extremism.

Terrorist attacks on American homeland are to a large extent a result of the clash of civilizations provoked by Washington. Ironically, America's more recent counterterrorism wars, rather than eliminating terror attacks, spread terrorism across the world. Nurtured by the U.S., terror threats will remain a scourge for the U.S.

Lost in the clash of civilizations, America will be heading towards an even more uncertain destiny. Perhaps, this is exactly what this "city on a hill" that honors American exceptionalism fears the most.

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