HYBRID THREATS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW NATO OVERARCHING CONCEPT

This article deals with aspects of newly emerging security challenges that military theoreticians and authors of security and defense strategic documents name ‘Hybrid Threats’. They currently present a significant challenge for the Alliance and its interests. Hybrid Threats involve adversaries (including states, rogue states, non-state actors or terrorist organizations) that may employ a combination of actions in an increasingly unconstrained operating environment in order to achieve their aims. Hybrid Threats may consist of a combination of every aspect of warfare and compound the activities of multiple adversaries. Experience from current operations has demonstrated that adversaries can now conduct hostile actions through a broad array of conventional or non-conventional means, methods and procedures, having a favorable outcome against a NATO force that is technologically and militarily superior. Cognition of the scale and complexity of future threats has demanded a development of an overarching Capstone Concept1 for the NATO Military Contribution to Countering Hybrid Threats (MCCHT). This Concept articulates the unique challenges posed by current and future Hybrid Threats and explains why these challenges may require NATO to adapt its strategy, structure and capabilities for the next twenty years.