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Hybrid warfare – how to counter it?

In this NUPI Podcast episode, a panel of experts takes a closer look at the challenges posed by hybrid warfare in liberal democracies.

EXPERT INSIGHTS: Three experts - Senior Research Fellow Njord Wegge (NUPI), Hanna Smith (Strategic Planning and Responses for the NATO-EU Center of Excellence, Helsinki) and Lieutenant Colonel and lecturer Geir Hågen Karlsen (Norwegian Defence University College) discuss hybrid threats and the challenges facing liberal democracies in this NUPI Podcast episode. 

Foto: Ane Teksum Isbrekken/NUPI

EXPERT INSIGHTS: Three experts - Senior Research Fellow Njord Wegge (NUPI), Hanna Smith (Strategic Planning and Responses for the NATO-EU Center of Excellence, Helsinki) and Lieutenant Colonel and lecturer Geir Hågen Karlsen (Norwegian Defence University College) discuss hybrid threats and the challenges facing liberal democracies in this NUPI Podcast episode. 

Foto: Ane Teksum Isbrekken/NUPI

Over the last few years, and especially in the wake of Russian actions in Ukraine, hybrid warfare - sometimes referred to as hybrid threats—has gained a tremendous amount of attention both in Europe and worldwide.

NATO, the EU, and individual nations including Norway, have devoted considerable time and resources to better understand and respond to the challenges posed by hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare thus intentionally blurs the distinction between peace and war by operating outside our perceptions of war as a violent clash of force, and by challenging our understanding of the beginning and end of hostilities.

On 31 October, NUPI and the Norwegian Atlantic Committee organized a seminar on the challenges hybrid warfare brings, and what we should do to counter them.

The expert panel was made up of Hanna Smith, Director of Strategic Planning and Responses for the NATO-EU Center of Excellence in Helsinki, Geir Hågen Karlsen, Lieutenant Colonel and Lecturer, the Norwegian Defence University College and Njord Wegge, Senior Research Fellow, NUPI. Wegge presented findings from the research project MCDC - Countering Hybrid Warfare.

Did you miss out on the event? Tune into NUPI Podcast to listen to the presentation and the panel discussion:

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Themes

  • Defence
  • Security policy
  • NATO
  • Conflict

Fact

Hybrid threats

  • Coordinated and synchronised action, that deliberately targets democratic states’ and institutions systemic vulnerabilities, through a wide range of means (political, economic, military, civil, and information).
  • Activities exploit the thresholds of detection and attribution as well as the border between war and peace.
  •  The aim is to influence different forms of decision making at the local (regional), state, or institutional level to favour and/or gain the agent’s strategic goals while undermining and/or hurting the target

Source: Hybrid CoE