Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: The emerging practices of the EU and NATO
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
What are the ethical pitfalls of countering hybrid warfare? This article proposes an ontological security-inspired reading of the EU and NATO’s engagement with hybrid threats. It illustrates how hybrid threat management collapses their daily security struggles into ontological security management exercise. This has major consequences for defining the threshold of an Article 5 attack and the related response for NATO, and the maintenance of a particular symbolic order and identity narrative for the EU. The institutionalisation of hybrid threat counteraction emerges as a routinisation strategy to cope with the “known unknowns”. Fostering resilience points at the problematic prospect of compromising the fuzzy distinction between politics and war: the logic of hybrid conflicts presumes that all politics could be reduced to a potential build-up phase for a full-blown confrontation. Efficient hybrid threat management faces the central paradox of militant democracy whereby the very attempt to defend democracy might harm it.
Original language | English |
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Journal | European Security |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 3 |
Pages (from-to) | 374-392 |
Number of pages | 18 |
ISSN | 0966-2839 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 3 Jul 2018 |
Externally published | Yes |
- Faculty of Social Sciences - hybrid warfare, ontological security, resilience, EUROPEAN UNION, NATO, International Relations theory
Research areas
ID: 284504813