Papers on transformations of warfare and conflict presented at EISS conferences and workshops, newest first. 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z https://eiss-europa.com/feeds/themes/transformations-of-warfare-and-conflict.xml European Initiative for Security Studies https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-ai-driven-cloud-monitoring-and-cyber-situational-awareness-in-european-digital-i 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Prof. Daniela Mechkaroska Prof. Ervin Domazet

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, combined with IoT systems through digital interconnection, create virtual environments that merge with physical spaces. The new operational capabilities that these transformations bring to European digital ecosystems create security challenges, governance issues and societal concerns. Existing research on AI-based security solutions focuses on their technical performance, but neglects the effects that these systems have on cyber situational awareness and decision-making, as well as regulatory compliance. This paper examines the improvement of cyber situational awareness through AI-powered cloud monitoring systems and visual analytics tools operating in distributed cloud-IoT environments. The study explores human-AI teamwork in automated systems by analyzing data collected from experimental monitoring platforms and intelligent traffic analysis scenarios to show how this collaboration enables early detection of anomalies and helps people understand cyber events, while organizations work together to respond to security incidents across their shared networks. The analysis explores the practical aspects of governance and operational aspects of European digital environments by assessing their technical performance. The assessment assesses data governance, model transparency and privacy protection, system interoperability, and accountability. The paper, through its interdisciplinary approach, which connects cybersecurity engineering with digital governance and security studies, shows that AI monitoring systems function as socio-technical systems that guide the way organizations assess strategic risks and develop their policies. The results show that critical digital ecosystems in Europe require comprehensive frameworks that combine cutting-edge analytics with governance systems designed to maintain transparent operations for trusted and resilient implementation of intelligent surveillance technology. The research work establishes its value to ongoing digital transformation studies through the connection of technological progress to both practical aspects and organizational elements that drive research development.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-anticipated-failure-why-states-go-to-war-un-der-prepared 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mariya Grinberg

Why do states engage in wars for which they are un(der)prepared? Specifically, why do states enter wars when they have good reason to expect that they will not be able to achieve their strategic objectives with their chosen war plans? To understand why states would go to war with flawed plans, we need to know two things: (1) what options to modify the flawed initial war plan were available, and (2) how states pick among their available options. I argue that civilian-military buck-passing restricts the options states have to modify their war plans. Furthermore, the limits on a state’s latent power and the extent of its actualized military power affects how the state selects among their restricted options. These arguments are illustrated through an examination of German war planning in World War II. Germany revised their war plans to fix expected flaws for Fall Gelb, but went to war with a plan known to be flawed in Operation Barbarossa.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-conceptual-inquiry-into-military-deep-operations-a-framework-for-analysis 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mr Martijn Rouvroije Martijn Rouvroije

The resurgence of large-scale conventional war in Europe and the frequent use of long-range strike weapons in the Russia-Ukraine conflict have revived European interest in deep-precision-strike (DPS) capabilities. In response, several European nations have expanded budgets and efforts to acquire or develop DPS weapon systems, seeking to enhance or diversify their strike capacity. Prevalent debates tend to centre on the weapons and delivery platforms themselves, whilst neglecting the wider operational context in which they operate. This article proposes an operational framework for deep operations that is independent of any particular DPS system. By inferencing from military doctrine and concepts, it offers a comprehensive conceptual basis for understanding DPS. The framework is intended to aid scholars, policymakers and practitioners in analysing, comparing, and shaping DPS capabilities and tactics beyond the conventional suite of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, long-range rocket artillery, or hypersonic boost-glide vehicles. It also highlights integration challenges across joint forces.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-disclosure-and-duplicity-how-technology-influences-international-competition 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Tristan Volpe Prof. Jane Vaynman

How do states manage information when building military capabilities? Some weapons are developed openly while others are concealed within secret programs or disguised behind civilian cover. This article introduces arming strategy as a new dependent variable, arguing that two technology attributes shape the disclosure and deception choices critical to information management: fragility (ease of degrading military advantages upon exposure) and distinguishability (difficulty of separating military from civilian applications). Together, these variables generate four optimal strategies that maximize returns on military power while minimizing costs: reveal, conceal, obfuscate, or distort. Large-n qualitative analysis across the complete universe of modern military technologies provides strong support—most cases show states converging on predicted strategies. The results identify generalizable mechanisms linking technological characteristics to predictable information strategies across diverse historical contexts. The framework enables scholars and practitioners to assess how the features of emerging technologies will affect future international competition.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-domestic-politics-and-military-aid-to-ukraine-explaining-disclosure-policies-in 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Marius Ghincea Wolfgang Minatti

Why have France and Germany adopted divergent – and shifting – policies on disclosing their military aid to Ukraine? We argue that domestic politics, not international signaling or political culture, best explains this puzzle. We theorize that leaders use transparency as a legitimation tool to manage audience costs when their policy preferences diverge from a hawkish public. Conversely, when leader and public preferences align, policymakers revert to strategic ambiguity. Using a most-similar comparison of France and Germany, employing qualitative Bayesian reasoning, we find strong support for our argument. Germany shifted to transparency under Chancellor Scholz following domestic pressure, a policy reversed by Chancellor Merz once preferences realigned. France maintained secrecy while elite and public opinion converged, only partially disclosing aid after domestic criticism. Our findings highlight domestic legitimation strategies in shaping foreign policy secrecy and contribute to the literature on secrecy in foreign policy and on military assistance to Ukraine.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-fortifying-the-eastern-flank-leveraging-historical-lessons-to-create-effective-d 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Alexander Lanoszka Dr Michael Hunzeker

In early 2024, Poland and the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announced plans to put up fortifications along their eastern frontier. Yet one lesson that analysts might draw from contemporary experience is that defensive systems of the sort planned for parts of NATO’s so-called Eastern Flank have little to no utility except for sapping precious resources that could be spent elsewhere. We argue that this skepticism towards fortifications is misguided even though defence establishments must be attuned to the risk of catastrophic failure. A conventional defensive system must have depth and enable the ability to go about counteroffensives. A major reason for the historical failures associated with fortifications is because defenders either did not match the imagination of their adversaries or neglected the value of depth and counterstrike options. For those considering how to fortify the Eastern Flank, they must pair static defences with operational as well as organizational dynamism. We offer a framework for how to think about effective defence systems and use various case studies, two of which are drawn from the First World War, to substantiate our argument. We conclude by teasing the implications of our analysis for how Poland and the three Baltic countries can create effective defence systems.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-normalisation-to-strategic-stabilisation-geopolitisation-of-the-pristina-be 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Filip Ejdus Alexandra Prodromidou Faye Ververidou Sonja Stojanovic Gajic

This paper applies a geopolitisation lens to the Pristina–Belgrade Dialogue, examining how geopolitics have affected the normalisation of the dialogue and to what extent the deterioration of the geopolitical situation in the world opens the space for an alteration in related measures within the broader transformation of the EU enlargement process. Initially framed as a technocratic and depoliticised process aimed at functional normalisation and rule-based convergence, the dialogue has increasingly been reframed as a strategic instrument in the EU’s response to contemporary security challenges. The paper argues that this transformation is driven by the re-emergence of hard geopolitics in Europe, particularly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has recast the Western Balkans as a zone of strategic vulnerability, as well as the latest shift in US foreign policy and security priorities and its subsequent rift with its traditional allies, including the EU. As a result, EU conditionality in the dialogue has evolved from a primarily normative mechanism into a tool of geopolitical stabilisation, prioritising containment of external influence, regional security, and alignment over legal clarity and democratic consolidation. The paper highlights the importance for the Union to balance between short-term stability and entrenching status ambiguity, undermining the EU’s normative credibility. The paper uses data collected from in-depth interviews from officials in Kosovo, Serbia and EU institutions inside the framework of the GEO-POWER-EU project.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-platforms-to-networks-the-political-hurdles-of-transitioning-to-data-centri 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mr Dumitru-Catalin Vasile

Modern military strategy is undergoing a paradigm shift, moving away from a "platform-centric" model defined by the capabilities of individual assets such as tanks, fighter jets, and carriers toward a "network-centric" model prioritizing connectivity, data fusion, and multi-domain integration. While the operational necessity of this transition is widely accepted, this paper argues that the primary obstacles to achieving actual data-centric warfare are not technological, but profoundly political and institutional. This study analyzes the "politics of transformation" by identifying three distinct sources of friction that hinder the shift from hardware to software-defined defense. First, it examines the political economy of defense procurement, arguing that existing industrial bases and legislative funding models are path-dependent, favoring high-visibility legacy platforms over less tangible network architectures. Second, it addresses inter-service bureaucratic politics, highlighting how data-centric warfare requires a level of interoperability that threatens the budget autonomy and cultural identity of individual military branches. Finally, it explores the sovereignty paradox, where the necessity of allied data-sharing conflicts with national political imperatives to maintain strict control over sovereign information infrastructure. By viewing military transformation through the lens of organizational politics and civil-military relations, this paper demonstrates that "networking" a military is a governance challenge as much as a technical one. It concludes that without significant reform in how political actors value, fund, and oversee defense acquisitions, Western militaries risk possessing advanced sensors that cannot communicate with one another, rendering them structurally unprepared for high-intensity, data-driven conflict.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-precision-to-existential-risk-hypersonic-weapons-and-the-erosion-of-the-con 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mr Tahir Azad

Recent hypersonic weapon technology advances have changed military power, challenging conventional and nuclear warfare distinctions. Hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles, promoted as precision, speed, and deterrence, are compressing decision-making timelines, circumventing missile-defence architectures, and blurring strategic stability-underpinning escalation thresholds. This paper examines how hypersonic weapons break the conventional–nuclear divide and introduce existential risk even without nuclear payloads. The paper has three main points. First, hypersonic weapons undermine warning and response systems, increasing pre-emptive action and launch-on-warning incentives. Second, their integration with advanced intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and emerging AI-enabled command-and-control systems increases misperception, automation bias, and accidental escalation, especially in fragile deterrence regions. Third, prestige politics, defense-industrial competition, and perceived vulnerability drive hypersonic development, similar to nuclear arms racing. The paper uses the Ukraine war, the May 2025 India–Pakistan confrontation, and the Iran–Israel escalation to demonstrate how missile defence saturation, drone integration, and precision-strike doctrines are accelerating offensive dominance. Hypothesising hypersonic weapons as a “conventionally armed strategic force” with WMD-like effects contributes to military innovation and strategic studies. The paper sheds light on how emerging technologies are changing global security environments and complicating arms-control and risk-reduction efforts by placing hypersonic weapons at the intersection of conventional military innovation and existential security risk.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-rogue-states-to-russia-how-threat-perceptions-drove-congressional-support-f 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Frank Kuhn

In 2020, the United States deployed the W76 2 low-yield nuclear warhead on its ballistic missile submarines, marking a pivotal shift in a contentious, three decade Congressional debate over the role of low-yield nuclear weapons in U.S. nuclear policy. Congress first banned research and development on such weapons in 1993, partially repealed that prohibition in 2004, and then authorized an operational capability in 2018. Drawing on the Congressional record, policy documents, and contemporaneous media reporting as samples of elite discourse, this article examines why legislative approval emerged only in 2018, despite sustained interest in low-yield nuclear weapons within the U.S. defense establishment. The analysis shows that changing threat perceptions were decisive: When U.S. national security discourse emphasized rogue states and terrorism, legislators viewed the strategic rationale for low-yield nuclear weapons as unconvincing and their potential employment against non nuclear adversaries as reckless. As great power competition reasserted itself—especially concerns regarding limited Russian nuclear first use—the defense establishment could successfully reframe low-yield capabilities as necessary for credible nuclear deterrence, enabling Congressional authorization. The article concludes that as long as strategic competition with other major nuclear powers structures U.S. nuclear weapons policy, political support for expanding nuclear response options is likely to endure.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-influence-as-strategic-infrastructure-china-nato-and-competition-below-the-thres 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Sara Russo Mrs Giulia Biselli

Strategic competition is increasingly unfolding below the threshold of armed conflict, where influence over perception, legitimacy, and coordination might determine the outcomes without the use of force. While widely acknowledged, influence is still treated as an auxiliary component of military and political strategy, framed through information operations or psychological warfare. Furthermore, recent debates appear to have been affected by conceptual inflation, whereby the heavy use of ‘war’ terminology has obscured influence as a distinct strategic arena. This paper aims to fill this gap through a case study that analyses how China and NATO conceptualise influence as a strategic practice that affects cognition, understood not as individual psychology but as a collective environment in which decisions are made. China and NATO’s strategies are compared as contrasting approaches to the use of influence to exercise power: China's Three Warfares strategy treats cognition as an object of long-term conditioning to limit adversaries’ coordination and advance China’s objectives without open conflict; conversely, NATO approaches cognitive warfare from a defence perspective, emphasizing counter-parts analysis, resilience and ethical considerations. This comparison reveals that the distinctions between China and NATO are not based on technology or capabilities, but rather on their strategic thinking, which appear to be characterized by a conceptual asymmetry. Because cognition underpins collective sensemaking, interaction between organizations employing different strategic logics may generate misalignment. The latter can result in mismatched comprehension leading to delayed responses, coordination difficulties, and, in situations of persistent competition, an increased risk of escalation. This paper aims to demonstrate that overlooking cognition as a core strategic variable risks missing how advantage is created in alliance-based security systems long before any force is used, which may produce far-reaching consequences for grand strategy, military planning, and international cooperation.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-learning-from-ukraine-the-west-must-be-prepared-for-positional-warfare 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Baptiste Alloui-Cros Giles Moon

Western land-warfare doctrine remains rooted in a manoeuverist logic, assuming that even against peer opponents NATO forces can bypass strongpoints and win through rapid operational breakthroughs. This paper challenges that assumption, arguing that the positional character of the Russo-Ukrainian war is not an exception but rather the likely outcome of any protracted modern conflict fought under near-parity conditions, and that Western forces are insufficiently prepared for this possibility. We begin by clarifying what makes positional warfare distinct from other forms of warfare: high-tempo combat along largely stable fronts in which belligerents “lean on” defended lines through repeated, localised attacks that yield limited territorial change. We then derive a theoretical expectation from widely accepted Clausewitzian logic and test this expectation against the post-1945 record of interstate territorial wars. Using the Correlates of War interstate war dataset (through 2010), we show that every long-durée modern territorial war devolved into positional warfare. Our findings carry both operational and political-strategic implications: operationally, that western doctrine, training, and force design should prepare for positional warfare and that failure to do so poses a serious risk to western militaries’ ability to win against a peer opponent. Politically and strategically, our analysis suggests that over-emphasis on a manoeuvre-centric mindset and expectations of a quick win risks fostering miscalculations before a conflict, as well as aggravating civil-military frictions further once war drags on.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-nato-as-an-innovation-hub-how-emerging-and-disruptive-technologies-are-reshaping 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Vasiliki Plessia Aravani

The literature on military diffusion has traditionally treated alliances as transmission paths through which nationally developed military technologies are disseminated among allies. In this view, NATO is exclusively portrayed as a forum for standardization and doctrinal coordination rather than also a site of military innovation. This paper revisits this understanding by examining organizational and governance changes within NATO following the adoption of its post-2021 Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) strategy. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), the paper explores how the technological characteristics of EDTs, namely their dual-use nature and reliance on distributed, largely privatized innovation ecosystems, are reshaping how military innovation is organized and strategically coordinated through NATO. The analysis traces this shift through interpretive qualitative analysis of program architectures and research outputs of NATO’s Innovation Initiatives, including the post-2021 NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) Collaborative Programme of Work (CPoW) and the launch of the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) Challenge Programmes. The study shows that EDT-driven interdependencies in scientific expertise and innovation ecosystems are altering transatlantic innovation dynamics, encouraging NATO to institutionalize new forms of engagement with civilian scientists and private-sector actors. These changes have also supported the extension of NATO’s innovation initiatives into structured cooperation with the Alliance’s Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) partners. The paper contributes to a better understanding of how the contemporary changes in the character of innovation are driving institutional change within NATO, positioning the Alliance not merely as a diffusion mechanism for national capabilities, but as a hub through which transnational military innovation linkages are shaping patterns of military capability development.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-revisiting-multi-domain-operations-a-historical-reflection-on-the-respective-rol 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Dr Samuel Zilincik Dr James Horncastle

NATO’s new operational concept Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) assumes combining various military and non-military tools is essential and beneficial for winning future wars. In this article, we offer a historical perspective to enunciate the MDO’s underlying philosophy. Specifically, we argue that combining tools is not inherently necessary nor beneficial, and that prioritisation of one tool can prove contextually meaningful. To substantiate our claim, we describe how prioritisation prevailed over combination in different historical contexts and especially in the Russian-Ukrainian war (2014-2025). Our argument does not imply that prioritization is always preferable, nor that it will prove decisive in future warfare. However, it suggests that NATO should treat prioritisation seriously, and avoid assuming that it will automatically prevail over its adversaries merely by virtue of combining tools. In addition to its practical implications, the argument also improves our theoretical understanding of grand strategy, strategy, and tactics, thus contributing to the current academic debates on these subjects.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-selling-the-future-of-war-discursive-power-and-military-innovation 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Nicolas Krieger

How do ideas about military technology become politically influential? This paper sets out to examines how competing visions of military technology emerge, gain dominance, and shape German defence planning. It focuses on public debates surrounding ‘classic’ (armour, artillery, etc.) and innovative military technologies (autonomous weapon systems, AI targeting, UAS/UGV, etc.), and analyses whether shifts in discursive prominence are reflected in formal defence planning and procurement decisions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s Zeitenwende. The paper advances an ideational political economy account of military innovation. It argues that under crisis and uncertainty, narratives structure how security problems are defined and which technological solutions appear urgent and legitimate. Private actors, like neo-defence start-ups, promote solutionist narratives presenting innovation as strategically necessary and economically efficient. Through discursive coalitions and epistemic authority claims, certain ideas structure agenda-setting and prioritization in defence planning and procurement while others remain marginal. Empirically, the paper combines large-scale text analysis through Discourse Network Analysis, document analysis, and elite interviews. The core dataset includes roughly three million German newspaper articles (2020-present), defence strategy documents, procurement decisions, capability programmes, and defence firm materials. I trace narrative evolution with Discourse Network Analysis, identify coalitions, and measure shifts in idea dominance (classic versus innovative military technologies), linking these temporally to defence decisions, to demonstrate how ideas become politically influential. This paper aims to answer how competing ideas about military technology shape agenda-setting and procurement in German defence policy and makes three contributions. Empirically, it provides the first systematic, longitudinal mapping of military innovation framing and prioritisation in German defence debates since 2020. Theoretically, it demonstrates how ideational power and solutionist narratives shape security sector prioritization. Methodologically, it shows how discourse network analysis can connect large-scale public debate to defence planning, with implications for understanding how commercially driven narratives influence national security policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-sending-the-wrong-signals-when-armaments-worry-allies 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Tim Thies

While the role of armaments, and in particular forward-deployed military forces, as signals of reassurance is well-established in the scholarly literature, existing research has not explored when and why armaments may worry allies. In this paper, I consider disagreements between allies about the right armaments by the patron for the defense of a client as symptoms of defense misalignment, reflecting deeper disagreements about the preferred way of warfare among allies. The article proposes a novel theory of armaments as signals of defense misalignment to explain how certain types of armaments can prove contentious between allies. In essence, armaments can trigger conflicts between allies by transforming abstract defense strategies, drafted by political logic, into tangible, material capabilities. As armaments resolve the contradictions and pin down the ambiguities, deliberately included in the strategy for political reasons, they bring the underlying conflicts, stemming from allies’ divergent security interests, back to the fore. I offer a typology of characteristics that render armaments particularly prone to reveal instances of defense misalignment, and I test my theory through case studies on intra-NATO disputes about the role of nuclear forces for the alliance’s defense during the Cold War. My findings are particularly relevant to the context of European defense today. A better understanding of the role of armaments in revealing instances of defense misalignment is essential for safeguarding political cohesion between European NATO allies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-telegram-in-russia-s-information-strategy-evidence-from-serbia 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Anna Seliverstova

Digital platforms have become central arenas of contemporary geopolitical competition, blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the physical, the informational and the political. This paper examines Telegram as a key element of Russia's contemporary information warfare and influence operations, focusing on its role in shaping political discourse in Serbia. While Telegram has often been portrayed as a neutral or even emancipatory communication tool due to its encryption and resistance to state censorship, this paper argues that the platform has been effectively integrated into state-aligned information operations, functioning as a semi-informal extension of Russian strategic influence. Drawing on an original dataset of over 140 pro-Russian Telegram channels operating in Serbia, the study combines network analysis, discourse analysis, and agenda-setting theory to map how narratives related to the war in Ukraine and domestic electoral politics are constructed, amplified, and localised. The findings demonstrate that Telegram enables a dense, transnational propaganda ecosystem that operates beyond traditional media regulation, leveraging platform affordances such as anonymity, rapid reposting, and low moderation to shape public agendas and political perceptions. Rather than relying solely on official state media, Russian influence is diffused through a hybrid network of media outlets, individual influencers, and radical political actors, allowing for plausible deniability and narrative flexibility. The paper contributes to debates on digital transformation and power by showing how digital infrastructures function as strategic assets in contemporary international politics. It highlights the political consequences of platform governance gaps and the growing importance of messaging applications in cyber-enabled influence campaigns. By situating Telegram within broader discussions of digital sovereignty, hybrid warfare, and information security, the paper speaks directly to ongoing debates about the global, political, and societal implications of digital technologies in the information age.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-the-self-reliance-dilemma-in-conventional-weapons-when-does-india-innovate-inste 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Ms Yagnyashri Kodaru

Most national defense industries face a dilemma between technological self-reliance and (inter)dependence. While indigenously building weapons increases self-reliance, it can come at the cost of economic and technical efficiency. Conversely, interdependence helps a state integrate into global innovation/production networks and potentially access the most advanced weapons, but forsakes self-reliance for short-term efficiency gains. How do states act in such a dilemma, especially when acquiring large, technologically complex platform weapons systems? Despite being a major rising power, India’s defense industry remains surprisingly understudied in this regard. In this paper, I argue that domestic *belief coalitions* comprising political, military, and technocratic actors shape how India navigates its self-reliance dilemma. In a comparative case study of advanced warship and main battle tank procurement in India, I identify and test the causal role of *techno-nationalist, techno-strategic, and techno-epistemic beliefs* in shaping a higher level of technological self-reliance in naval warfare than in land warfare. My analysis draws on expert interviews with high-level Indian military officials and technocrats, as well as political speeches, policy documents, and strategic doctrines. My findings show that the breadth and robustness of coalitions of different technological beliefs can facilitate defense indigenization and self-reliance or, conversely, entrench existing dependencies by shaping what is seen as feasible and desirable. This paper challenges mainstream systemic and structural explanations of defense technological self-reliance, while enriching sociological and ideational political economy approaches to military innovation and defense studies. My focus on domestic beliefs opens the black box of decision-making in the Indian defense industry, offering an actor-centric perspective on the conditions and drivers that have shaped varied outcomes of the self-reliance dilemma in conventional weapons procurement. India’s emerging role as a significant security and defense industrial actor especially raises the empirical relevance of this research.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-vectorial-analysis-of-hybrid-warfare-directionality-interaction-and-systemic-eff 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Fabio Duarte

The concepts of 'hybrid warfare' and 'hybrid threats' have expanded into a wide, heterogeneous set of typologies, primarily centred on instruments and actors. As the range of activities labelled “hybrid” continues to grow, existing approaches increasingly struggle to explain how diverse hybrid actions combine, interact, and generate systemic effects below the threshold of direct armed conflict. This article introduces a vectorial analytical framework for the study of hybrid warfare, conceptualising hybrid actions as directed coercive vectors operating across one or multiple domains and targeting specific institutional subsystems. Building on existing hybrid-threat taxonomies, the framework models each activity according to its direction, magnitude, temporal profile, and degree of coordination with other vectors. This vectorial approach enables systematic differentiation between unidirectional, bidirectional, and multidirectional forms of hybrid pressure and provides a structured means of analysing their cumulative and non-linear effects. Rather than proposing a new definition of hybrid warfare, the article advances a meso-level analytical model that bridges descriptive typologies with decision-oriented analysis. The framework is illustrated through empirical vignettes drawn from contemporary and prospective hybrid-threat target arenas, demonstrating its utility for comparative analysis, simulation and scenario development, and the structured assessment of institutional resilience.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-working-in-the-margins-can-small-state-special-operations-contribute-to-deterren 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Troels Burchall Henningsen

Many observers believe that Special Operations Forces (SOF) and special operations have been relegated to the margins by the return of deterrence and defence as the dominant military purpose for the militaries of European small states. SOF may find its niche within counter-hybrid warfare, as a flexible response unit to strategic shocks in the Global South, or provide the joint force with valuable, but not indispensable, intelligence based on special reconnaissance. While accepting that conventional and nuclear forces are the bedrock of deterrence and defence, this paper aims to explore how European small-state SOF units may contribute to deterrence posture and, ultimately, to conventional defence. Recognising that SOF should conduct only operations that create operational or strategic effects, the analysis departs from deterrence theory to develop a method for identifying how SOF may be utilised to create the most outsized deterrence effects. Based on empirical examples from the Russian force posture in the Baltic Sea, the analysis provides concrete examples of how special operations may threaten Russian vulnerabilities and create operational and strategic dilemmas, thereby increasing the cost of aggression and lowering the probability of Russian success. The paper argues that the value of European small state SOF will increase if the US pivot towards the Americas and the Indo-Pacific region results in US airpower, intelligence, and targeting capabilities declining in Europe. To compensate for the lopsided conventional balance, the ability to conduct special operations targeting key nodes in Russian A2/AD bubbles, to reduce the Russian navy's freedom of manoeuvre, and to organise stay-behind networks to target Russian targets in the deep becomes a much more valuable addition to the deterrence effect of the joint forces. Moreover, the paper argues that European SOF should develop its deterrence communication to blend overt and covert activities, creating doubt and imposing dilemmas on Russian decision-makers.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-belgium-s-defence-policy-after-the-invasion-of-ukraine-a-free-rider-s-business-a 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Michelle Haas Tim Haesebrouck

Belgium is widely known as one of NATO’s most persistent free riders, deprioritizing military investments for decades. Successive budget cuts have left its armed forces weakened and ill-prepared for major geopolitical shifts. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine significantly disrupted the European security order, raising the question: to what extent did this external shock lead to a substantive shift in Belgium’s defence policy? While Belgium swiftly condemned the invasion and aligned with NATO and EU-led initiatives structural constraints - underinvestment, a fragmented political system, and a political elite largely disengaged from defence matters - prevented a substantial policy shift. This paper argues that, despite the external geopolitical shock, policy responses remained largely confined to a traditional reliance on multilateralism and minimal military spending. Although the war prompted minor adjustments, such as a stronger focus on NATO’s Eastern flank over its previous attention to the Sahel, these changes were not transformative. Initial plans to reach the NATO norm of 2% GDP in defence spending by 2035 remained in place, with acceleration to 2029 occurring only after a new federal government took office in 2025. Geographic security and longstanding political inertia continue to limit meaningful adaptation to a shifting security landscape. By examining this case as an example of entrenched free riding, this paper contributes to broader debates on military burden sharing, the ability of smaller states to adapt to shifting geopolitical realities, and the resulting challenges for intra-European defence cooperation.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-can-european-defence-cooperation-build-european-deterrence 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Fotini Bellou

Is the European Union capable of developing a credible European deterrence? This question is more pressing than ever, particularly in light of the second Trump administration and its inclination toward unilateralism. As the war in Ukraine approaches its third year, the EU’s efforts in defence cooperation have intensified—but have they been effective in meeting the evolving security demands? The return of high-intensity, technologically advanced conventional warfare to the European continent has underscored the urgency of collective defence preparedness. Even before February 2022, EU member states had embarked on efforts to deepen interstate defence cooperation and, to some extent, defence integration. However, these initiatives have been cautiously readjusted to address the new strategic realities. Russia’s war against Ukraine has not only tested European security but has also brought direct threats to neighboring EU states. In response, EU member states have acknowledged—at least on paper—the necessity of multi-domain defence capabilities, culminating in a commitment in November 2023 to enhance their collective military readiness. Yet, has this shift translated into tangible progress toward European deterrence? Have EU states adequately responded to both the new defence imperatives and Ukraine’s calls for support? This paper assesses the EU’s progress by examining shifts in its strategic culture, actual responses to the war in Ukraine, and changes in defence priorities and military spending. It suggests that while EU member states have taken steps to enhance defence cooperation and provide moderate military assistance to Ukraine, these efforts have yet to translate into a more ambitious strategy with a meaningful deterrent impact. There's a need for a fundamental transformation in European defence thinking and capability-building—one that extends beyond the current trajectory. If deterrence is the ultimate goal, merely strengthening cooperation will not suffice; a more profound shift in strategic culture and operational readiness is essential.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-does-preeminence-in-emerging-and-military-technologies-matter-for-international 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Zakir Rzazade

International relations literature on status and prestige demonstrates that states tend to seek technological capabilities and premier weapon systems to shape and improve their international status and prestige. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether such efforts are worthwhile and serve the purpose of enhancing status and prestige. I attempt to address this question through a conjoint survey experiment conducted with a representative sample of 1,000 American nationals. I use artificial intelligence, uncrewed and autonomous systems, and aircraft carriers as attributes for emerging and military technologies, alongside other factors that are shown to be relevant to a state's status and prestige. Through a conjoint design, I aim to explore whether the level of advancement in AI and possession of such technologies improve status and prestige in international politics. Besides, I also intend to test several other hypotheses regarding the source of technology possession and also, based on attitudinal factors such as familiarity with AI, confidence in defense and military AI, and techno-skepticism. Moreover, my design differentiates status and prestige as distinct concepts, which allows a more nuanced understanding of each phenomenon and its interaction with technology. Findings will contribute to a better understanding of the role played by emerging and military technologies in status- and prestige-seeking efforts, informing the respective literature in IR and security studies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-geopolitical-europe-the-european-union-as-a-signaling-actor-in-the-russia-ukrain 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Nicolas Blarel Niels Van Willigen

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 posed a significant challenge to European foreign policy. The war forced the EU to react and resulted according to some in a geopolitical shift in EU foreign policy. Several institutions and high-ranking officials, including the President of the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign Policy, argued that the EU should become a geopolitical actor that knows how to execute hard power. This paper explores one element of the supposed geopolitical turn in EU foreign policy. It analyzes the EU’s signaling (strategic communication) to Russia, the USA and NATO and aims to answer the question to what extent the signaling actually represents a geopolitical turn depending on the audience it is talking to.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-paradigm-paradox-how-emerging-cybersecurity-communities-moderate-eu-governance 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Hannah-Sophie Weber

While interaction between public and private actors is daily fare in European Union (EU) cybersecurity governance, two contrary paradigms pervade discursive rhetoric. On the one hand, a co-regulatory, inclusive allure of multistakeholderism. On the other hand, state-centric and autarkic ideas of digital sovereignty. Surprisingly little is known about links between – often informal – public-private interaction and high-level rhetoric. Given this: What explains public-private alignment behind contrary paradigms? This paper makes the case that overlooked everyday struggles over authority pre-empt better understanding of ordering processes around digital infrastructure. Integrating practice-theoretical thinking with cybersecurity scholarship, the paper introduces the framework of emerging cybersecurity community (ECC). The ECC framework enables a new understanding of the puzzling disconnect between the aligned everyday practices of interaction, and the contrary governance paradigms – sovereignist and multistakeholderist. The complementary theories congruence analysis helps juxtapose the Brussels effect with norm entrepreneurship theorising. Surfacing explanatory shortcomings of these alternative accounts for either hybrid public or private influence illustrate ECC’s utility for integrating both. The framework systematises cluttered understandings of interests, institutionalisation, and technopolitical interdependencies. Zooming in on the domain of EU cybersecurity governance offers a context-sensitive window for this paper as a point of departure for filling a broader gap in extant literature on public-private interaction across governance domains.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-the-delegation-of-defense-and-security-responsibilities-at-sea-in-historical-per 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Pieter Zhao

The maritime warfare and security environment of the 21st century is changing. The proliferation of non-traditional maritime security threats, such as piracy, maritime terrorism, and illegal fishing, combined with the emergence of gray-zone warfare at sea through irregular actors, attests to this change. As a result, the international norms surrounding the use of force at sea are evolving as well, as states are increasingly delegating defense and security capabilities, traditionally considered exclusively state or military terrain, to non-state, nonmilitary, and irregular actors. Current scholarship generally analyzes these examples in isolation and fails to consider the broader framework of the changing maritime warfare and security environment to identify the dynamics underpinning this development. Moreover, while current scholarship commonly assumes that these are novel phenomena, the historical record includes a long-standing tradition of non-state and irregular maritime warfare and security actors, including the privateers and mercantile companies of the early-modern period. As a result, these contemporary examples could be considered symptoms of a more significant 21st-century development, representing the historical dynamism surrounding the international norms of maritime warfare and security. My PhD research project aims to analyze this development by combining traditional historical methods based on written primary source material with international relations theory and expert interviews. As an example of applied history, the project aims to operationalize historical precedents to better inform current policymakers and military leadership about the maritime security challenges of the future.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-the-erosion-of-traditional-deterrence-space-as-a-case-study-in-military-transfor 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Raoul Cardellini Leipertz

This paper will examine the evolving interplay between legacy military technologies and emerging innovations, arguing that the transformation of the battlefield has reached a critical tipping point at which traditional doctrines are no longer adequate, and will do so by using space as a case study. As Cold War-era systems—constructed on static deterrence models—confront cutting-edge dual-use innovations such as autonomous satellite constellations, and cyber-enabled space operations, the security environment in space is undergoing a profound reconfiguration. Drawing on empirical analyses of state practises and legal frameworks from authoritative sources including the Woomera Manual, the MILAMOS Project, and the Tallinn Manual on Cyber Operations, this study provides a comprehensive assessment of how these new technologies disrupt conventional military effectiveness and strategic stability. The paper will first delineate the characteristics of legacy versus modern technologies, highlighting how historical systems have shaped deterrence through predictable and well-understood doctrines. In contrast, recent innovations introduce heightened unpredictability, diffuse the locus of control, and expand the pool of actors—encompassing non-state and commercial entities—thereby complicating attribution and response strategies. This analysis will expose critical vulnerabilities in current international legal regimes, which were originally devised for a markedly different technological era. The paper will propose a multi-pronged framework to bridge the gap between traditional and modern military capabilities, focusing on revising operational doctrines to incorporate real-time data analytics and adaptive response measures; and developing updated legal interpretations that reconcile existing treaty obligations with the realities of dual-use technologies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-the-strategy-of-subversion-national-security-between-warfare-and-diplomacy 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Henrik Breitenbauch Niels Byrjalsen

As world politics has shifted towards strategic competition, states increasingly navigate an international terrain marked by intensified, protracted political conflict. Here, subversion appears as a central, but not fully understood form of statecraft. Great powers find themselves interlocked in a subversive-countersubversive dynamic characterized by the employment of a mixture of military and non-military means with an intensity above the level of peaceful relations, but below the level of war. This dynamic highlights the role and character of subversion relatively to diplomacy and warfare. Accordingly, this paper examines subversion as a critical and distinctive form of statecraft. First, we situate subversion in relation to concepts that tend to shape, but also constrain, thinking on the link between subversion, diplomacy and warfare: coercive diplomacy, irregular, hybrid and political warfare, and gray zone conflict. Second, we argue that subversion is best understood in juxtaposition to warfare (as the statecraft of war) and diplomacy (as the statecraft of peace). Mirroring these more overt and well-defined forms of statecraft, subversion has distinct purposes, it has its own measures and tools, it is organized in a particular way and involves certain actors, and it is based on a unique set of justifications. Third, using illustrative examples from the conflict between the West and Russia and China, we analyze how the use of subversive and countersubversive strategies have significant consequences for the practice and logic of warfare and diplomacy. In a sense, subversion subverts other essential forms of statecraft. Fourth, we highlight the core challenges that subversion presents for the United States and Europe, respectively, especially as it pertains to the changing character and organization of defence and warfare. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of our theoretical exploration for emerging research on subversion, on conflictual statecraft, and on strategy in Western states.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-the-transparent-battlefield-and-its-implications-for-western-movement-and-maneuv 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Friso Stevens

Ever since the Gulf War, the Western way of war has been firmly anchored in network-centric combined arms operations and executing them with a Clausewitzian concentration of forces to disarm the enemy. For this dislocating attack to effect psychological shock and operational and tactical surprise, speed and agility in movement are essential. The undiminished belief in unrivaled AirLand supremacy in Western defense establishment circles notwithstanding, the Ukraine War suggests significant impediments to maneuver warfare, with Luttwak going as far as declaring it impossible. The key obstacle to breaking through is what has come to be called the “transparency of the battlefield.” Because the enemy can see, track, and lock on to a (moving) ground target in real-time, amassing a large enough force to overwhelm him––which takes time, space, and organization that can be detected––has proven challenging. With geospatial data from satellites, advanced radar systems, and precision surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles, a stalemate has ensued where a lot of the friction and attrition of one’s own fighting capacity occurs without even beginning to approach the frontline. One can think of first-person view loitering munitions and long-range precision fire in shoot-and-scoot counter-battery duels. This article answers three questions. First, how have technological innovations making the battlefield “transparent” impacted Western movement and maneuver warfighting? Second, has the defensive regained dominance in the tactical offense/defense balance? Third, if this is the case, what implications does this have for the European force structure (and procurement) and warfighting doctrine – should Europe move to attrition warfare premised on the strategic defensive?

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-we-are-peers-now-states-relations-with-violent-non-state-actors-that-became-stat 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Ido Gadi Raz

The relationship between states and violent non-state actors (VNSAs) has been widely explored in International Relations and Security Studies over the past two and a half decades. Scholars have examined state-VNSA dynamics through frameworks of sponsorship, alliances, delegation, and proxy warfare, as well as through conflict and rivalry. However, a growing yet underexplored phenomenon is the transformation of some VNSAs into state or sub-state actors after gaining territorial control and governance capabilities. Cases such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, and various rebel groups in Syria illustrate how VNSAs can transition into sovereign entities, thereby reshaping their international roles. This article investigates how such transformations affect their relationships with states. Do states that previously supported a VNSA continue their backing once it assumes statehood? Do adversarial states reconsider their stance toward the newly established state actor? Based on a within-case analysis of the Taliban in Afghanistan after the 2021 takeover and the existing literature on state-VNSA dynamics, this study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the evolving interactions between states and VNSAs that turned into state or sub-state actors. Furthermore, it identifies the mechanisms that drive change or continuity in these relationships.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-what-s-got-you-so-worried-the-replicator-initiative-and-us-techno-anxieties-in-a 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Tom Watts

Focusing on the case of the Replicator Initiative, first announced in September 2023, this paper (re)examines the drivers behind the Pentagon’s push to accelerate the development and deployment of AI systems in support of its focus on great power competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Despite experimenting with AI associated technologies since the 1950s, it has only been since the institutionalization of great power competition as the focus of American defense planning during the first Trump administration that “attributable” autonomous systems have been prioritized in the Pentagon’s military innovation efforts. This paper generates new insights into this apparent puzzle by drawing from the International Relations (IR) literatures on military innovation, emotions, and ontological security. This provides a framework for developing the study of techno-anxiety as a constitutive feature of American foreign and security policy - one that is mirrored by, but analytically distinct from, the techno-opportunism highlighted in many existing accounts. Through this intervention, this study traces how American military anxieties about AI extend beyond fears of "killer robots" to encompass a broader set of geopolitical and affective concerns about the future—specifically, apprehensions about the unknowable effects of technological development on the combat effectiveness of the American military, the durability of the rules-based international order, and existing understandings of American national identity. These findings suggest that the Replicator Initiative is not merely intended to deter a potential PRC military attack on Taiwan by 2027. It is also rooted in a deep unease about what the rapid pace of technological change could mean for America’s place in the world and perception of self.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-total-defence-and-transformations-in-the-making-of-european-security 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Joakim Berndtsson Andreas Kruck Moritz Weiss

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has become abundantly clear that territorial aggression and large-scale international war are back in Europe. The conventional narrative in research on European security policymaking holds that this provides an impetus for the (re-)building of centralized coercive capacities within “positive” security states. With the return of territorial aggression, the idea of the state as *the* key provider of national security seems to be back. At the same time, European states – first of all Nordic and Baltic vanguards, but also Continental European countries – have reinvigorated “Total Defence” (TD) or “comprehensive security” concepts. TD reflects a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society” concept of security policymaking that aims at extensive cross-sectoral collaboration. Against the backdrop of these seemingly contradictory trends, we ask: How do evolving threats shape European ways of organizing national security and how do the resulting organizing concepts impact on the authority foundations and policy instruments of European security states? Bringing together research on TD and types of security states, we argue that contemporary territorial and hybrid threats drive the (re-)emergence of TD as an organizing concept for the making of security in Europe. TD in turn entails decentralized and pluralist notions of epistemic authority and regulation-based policy instruments to orchestrate diverse public and private experts. Thus, contemporary security threats and ensuing TD concepts contribute to regulatory security statehood and network-based security governance. Our key contributions are to specify the links between 1) types of security threats and the (re-)emergence of TD and 2) between TD and the evolving authority foundations and policy instruments of European security states. We thereby challenge the conventional narrative of centralized state capacity-building in a reshuffled European security landscape on theoretical grounds and by referring to ample illustrative evidence from the Nordic, Baltic and Continental European countries.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-ai-private-corporate-experts-and-the-competence-control-dilemma-in-military-inno 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Andrea Johansen Andreas Kruck

Presented at EISS 2024. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-artificial-intelligence-and-non-linearity-an-analysis-of-the-limitations-of-stat 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Alessandra Russo

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to have a deep transformative effect on the character of war. While discussions on military AI predominantly centered on the implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), empirical evidence highlights that AI applications extend beyond the notion of “killer robots”, especially in the form of decision-support and Lethal Targeting Assistance software. This is shown in these systems’ increasing presence in contemporary conflicts, as exemplified by the Russo-Ukrainian war and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. However, the existing body of literature in Security Studies investigating military AI usually falls short of comprehensively understanding the functioning, advantages, and limitations of statistical learning-based algorithms underpinning current AI systems. This hinders the effective study of military AI and often leads to tendencies of technological determinism and overestimation of AI’s actual role and capabilities in warfare. This research seeks to address this pitfall by integrating Strategic Studies literature with knowledge from the field of Machine Learning to understand whether current AI systems are capable of facing war on their own devices. This research aims to demonstrate the limitations of statistical learning-based AI in warfare by drawing on Security Studies literature to identify the set of capabilities required to effectively address the inherently nonlinear and chaotic nature of warfare. Subsequently, these capabilities will be tested against the heuristics and main tenets of Machine Learning. By doing so, this research provides technically informed insight into the suitability of AI in warfare, shedding light on its actual limitations and potential. The central argument posits that current AI systems are not ready to be deployed autonomously and without human judgment, as they rely on an inductive type of reasoning based on dataset analysis that is ill-suited to face the complex and unpredictable nature of warfare.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-business-power-and-the-quiet-politics-of-military-innovation-in-cyberspace 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Moritz Weiss

This paper seeks to investigate whether and how cybersecurity firms have possibly gained business power over democratic governments in the digital age? First, we propose an interaction-oriented view to approach the public-private coordination of how to secure cyberspace. Public and private actors need to agree on policies; and the one with lower costs of non-agreement arguably achieves the more desired outcomes. Second, we suggest a baseline model that combines two conditions shaping these costs of non-agreement and thus business power: (I) Do cybersecurity firms have either a specific expertise or a large amount of general resources at their disposal? (II) Is power bargaining either exercised through more formalized coordination (e.g. civilian markets) or rather through informal arrangements (e.g. military markets)? Third, we engage in an empirical stock-taking exercise of mapping the private suppliers of USCYBERCOM since 2018. We gathered more than 250 contracts from https://www.usaspending.gov/ to reveal USCYBERCOM’s most important contractors; to identify the most relevant services and to assess the extent of competition on these markets. Moreover, we explored the suppliers’ geographical location as well as their attributes and the primary markets that they were involved in. By drawing on this extensive empirical evidence, we suggest that the substantial share of non-competitive tendering increasingly normalizes quiet politics; and, therefore, provides manifold opportunities for the possibly ‘unwarranted influence’ of business power on how to secure cyberspace. In sum, this paper seeks to contribute to both the better understanding of funding innovative military technologies and the more generalizable politics of public-private coordination in international security in the digital age.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-hybrid-axis-of-evil-policing-of-organised-crime-and-state-threats-in-global-port 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Yarin Eski

Since, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, particular concerns exist about disruptinon of energy supplies and transportation systems, including global ports, such as the Port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). While threats to critical infrastructures are not new (e.g. attacked ports during WWII), the contemporary situation is different: (digital) technology plays a key role in hybrid warfare, making the potential fallout for ports even bigger. The Netherlands has key global ports, including the Port of Rotterdam and Northe Sea Canal Area. These ports handle shipping and are important for energy distribution (NCTV, 2017). An attack on these ports could lead to a ‘serious social disruption’ for the Netherlands (NCTV, 2017, p. 1), and Europe more broadly. Especially the Port of Rotterdam has concerns due to more sanctions against Russia (Port of Rotterdam, 2022), and subsequently asks for a ‘digital anti-aircraft defence’ to fend off possible Russian cyberattacks in the port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). However, it remains unclear whether (cyber)attacks on ports can be attributed to other state actors, as well as that it remains unclear what really counts as an act of hybrid war and what role European maritime ports play in hybrid warfare. Hence, port policing should focus on a hybrid warfare scenario, next to the well-embedded tackling of organised crime; but is it status quo? This paper aims to dig into this question, using ethnographic date gathered between April 2022 and March 2023 in the Dutch ports of Rotterdam and the North Sea Canal Area/Port of Amsterdam. Moreover, this paper shall focus on the hybridized policing of organized crime and state/hybrid threats in the global port environments. There will be a focus as well on what hybridized policing as a topic implies for the interdisciplinary cross-pollination of criminology and security studies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-the-eternal-promise-of-missile-defense 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Sanne Verschuren

Why do states continue to invest in military technologies that are ineffective or simply do not work? Despite nearly 70 years of research and development in the United States, missile defense continues to face high, if not insurmountable, technological challenges, is financially burdensome, and has resulted in negative outcomes for strategic stability. Hence, this paper asks: What explains the continued and widespread support for missile defense among Americans policymakers? Contrary to common arguments about American cultural features, public appeal, and organizational politics, I contend that the persistence of missile defense can be explained by two conditions: technological malleability and a framework of ignorance. In a context of deep uncertainty and high complexity, technology is malleable, meaning that policymakers can envision it to serve many different purposes and thus have some benefit for everyone. At the same time, discussions about technology take place under a framework of ignorance, which enables policymakers to overlook, downplay, and deny the costs associated with missile defense. This creates the illusion that investment in the technology is relatively cost-free. Using original interview and archival evidence, I contrast two crucial cases: the entrenchment of national missile defense during the Obama Administration (2008-2016) with the decision to limit the development and deployment of missile defense under the ABM Treaty during the Nixon Administration (1969-1972). Not only does this paper introduce two novel concepts—technological malleability and ignorance—into the study of international relations, but it has also important implications for other emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cyber technology, that are bound to shape warfare in critical ways.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-winning-the-battle-of-adaptation 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Kristen Harkness Marc DeVore

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 inaugurated a high-intensity prolonged conventional war that has since become stalemated. Recent Russian and Ukrainian offensives have failed to achieve meaningful territorial advances. The fate of the war increasingly hinges on each sides’ ability to adapt and innovate—particularly for Ukraine where the early loss of territory and dependence on western aid create vulnerabilities for strategic loss in a context of military draw. This project is collecting extensive new data on how Ukrainian military adaptation collected from research trips to Ukraine, compilation of open sources, and interviews with Ukrainian experts and decision-makers. Early analysis suggests that Ukraine’s approach to adaptation largely depends on the decentralized efforts of individual military units collaborating with a dense network of civil society organizations. For example, Ukraine’s success innovating drones that inflict disproportionate damage on Russian forces is a case in point. Drones collective and amateur workshops have led the way modifying commercial drones for military operations. Civil society organizations then spearheaded the training of 35,000 Ukrainian drone pilots. Close informal relations between individual military units and these outside actors have fostered rapid feedback loops between soldiers at the front and technicians in the rear. However, there are drawbacks to Ukraine’s decentralized approach including that policymakers lack adequate mechanisms for identifying and funneling resources to the most successful developments. Limited resources are also dispersed across multiple organizations that duplicate one another’s efforts.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-cognitive-warfare-as-part-of-society-a-never-ending-battle-for-minds 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Robin Burda

Russia has been attempting to influence politics and society in various European and NATO countries in recent years, aiming at the minds of the citizens. Decades ago, Jacques Ellul (1973) described propaganda as a social phenomenon that grows within society and is intrinsically intertwined with it. In recent years, a new concept has been emerging and is even being described as the sixth operational domain – Cognitive Warfare (Cluzel 2021). The implications on the information domain were not yet explored in depth. Without a look back into the historical experience, it is impossible to assess what should be done in the long term by organizations such as the EU or NATO in the information environment. As Cognitive Warfare can be considered a relatively new phenomenon, albeit not dissimilar to Ellul's (1973) view of propaganda, the experience of nations involved in protracted conflicts of the 21st century, including Russia's hybrid warfare campaigns, is invaluable. Therefore, an inductive approach is utilized to draw inferences from available data from such countries. One of the nations used for the analysis is the Czech Republic, a country with a quite significant pro-Russian segment of society, which Russia has exploited for many years. The other is Ukraine, which is now in a full-out war but has been a victim of Russian hybrid warfare since at least the 2010s. The paper aims to assess the importance of continuous effort of organizations such as NATO or the EU in the cognitive, human-oriented domain. I expect the Czech and Ukraine's experiences to show that being on the defence in the cognitive domain might prove to be a mistake with a significant impact on the future of democracy for any country.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-must-the-drone-always-get-through-coercion-and-one-way-attack-uavs-in-ukraine-an 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Marcel Plichta Ash Rossiter

Do low-technology weapons have an underappreciated coercive quality in international relations? Existing theories of coercion (and more specifically compellence) in international security literature, we argue, over-privilege threats from small numbers of exquisite weapons, such as modern ballistic missiles. Because exquisite weapons are difficult to manufacture quickly, scholars judge their coercive value on their survivability against enemy defenses. If exquisite air defenses can intercept an exquisite missile, for example, that system’s coercive quality is diminished; the potential victim can sit comfortably in the knowledge that the would-be attacker could not immediately build more. This paper shifts the focus away from exquisite systems to low technology systems, specifically one-way attack (OWA) drones. Until now, scholars have argued that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) do not coerce because they are too vulnerable to modern air defenses to threaten a state adversary. With masses of weapons that are inexpensive, simple to manufacture, and easy to proliferate to allied actors, would-be attackers are less daunted by the costs of attacking – and, crucially, potential victims must now judge if they can sustain a long-term defense. By leveraging new data on OWAs through the empirical cases of Yemen and Ukraine, we show how simple offensive weapons that can be manufactured en masse may have more power to coerce or compel than analysts typically accredit to them.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-complexity-of-the-grey-zone-the-experience-of-military-intelligence-on-nato 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Bram Spoor Sebastiaan Rietjens Erik De Waard

Conflicts are increasingly complex. As a result, much is being written on e.g. the changing character of war, the blurring between peace and war and the weaponization of means outside the conventional military domain. Often these developments are described as grey-zone or hybrid warfare and are examined at the level of war. Very little, however, is known on how military personnel on the ground experience this complexity in their daily work. This paper contributes to filling this gap. It focuses on the experiences of the Multinational Corps North-East in Poland and the Baltic States against the background of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Belarusian migrant crisis and NATO’s response to these and other challenges on its north-eastern flank. The research is based on extensive data collection, including more than 50 semi-structured interviews with NATO military intelligence personnel at various levels (corps, division, battlegroup) as well as numerous observations during the 4 field visits the authors made. The analysis is structured around the personnel’s perception of the operational environment, their comprehension of complexity and how NATO has organized intelligence for dealing with such complexity. The conclusion draws on the nexus of complexity science and organizational theory to reflect on the organizational validity of military intelligence with regard to complex problems.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-shock-of-the-old-in-the-russo-ukraine-war-misunderstanding-continuity-change 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Brendan Flynn

Does the Ukraine war mark the arrival of novel, disruptive technologies (HIMARS/precision artillery fires, online crowdsourcing of weapons, drone swarms, citizen OSINT, cyber-militias, etc.) which augur an era of democratisation of ‘open source warfare’ (Cronin, 2019, Boyle, 2020, Palavenis, 2022) that challenges the centrality of states in the international system as once monopoly providers of coercive technologies? Alternatively does the war reveal remarkable continuities as regards specific old and legacy military technologies in determining battlefield outcomes? This paper adapts and applies David Edgerton’s *Shock of the Old* (2006) perspective together with the wider literature on technology and war to probe question of technological determinism in shaping war outcomes (Walton, 2019; Roland, 2016; Raudzens, 1990). Three arguments are advanced here. Firstly, despite all the hype about ‘charismatic’ weapon systems (HIMARS, Leopards) the war so far is notable for the much wider and effective use of legacy systems, many of Soviet or late Cold War NATO origin, and some of indigenous Ukrainian design. Secondly, it is argued we should make a distinction between observable outcomes that technology facilitates at the strategic, operational or tactical level of war, contrasted with the subjective political and wider social perceptions lavished on a few advanced ‘hyped’ weapon technologies. The former is often complex and difficult to document, while the latter is often more politically significant than it is militarily important. Finally, states and their militaries remain central in the production, sharing and refining of war technologies even if private non-state actors gain much of the limelight.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-united-states-and-the-eternal-dream-of-missile-defence 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Sanne Verschuren

Why and how do states decide to develop different weapon systems within a similar domain of warfare? For example, why does the United States invest in ever-more expansive forms of national missile defense, while France briefly dabbled in such matters and the United Kingdom has been reluctant to do so? Contrary to the assumption in the existing literature that states know the future threat environment and are able to develop suitable military technology in response to it, I argue that ideas, particularly those about the future, play a critical role in shaping states' decisions about military technology. Because the future is unknown, domestic actors imagine radically different future states of the world. These ideas—what I call “images of warfare,” consisting of actors' construction of future threat environment and their theory of victory—shape actors' preferences for weapons systems. Not all of these ideas, however, are equally influential. In order to transform their ideas into actual capabilities, actors need to build cross-cutting coalitions within the broader defense community around their “imagined security interests.” The ability of these actors to build such a coalition and funnel their ideas through the state's decision-making process is shaped by the political opportunity structure, more specifically the level of openness of the relevant institutions. I explore these dynamics through an in-depth case study of the development of missile defense capabilities in the United States from the 1980s until the mid-1990s.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-winning-by-adapting-battlefield-adaptation-in-the-long-russo-ukrainian-war 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Marc DeVore Taras Fedirko Kristen Harkness Michael Hunzeker

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 inaugurated a high-intensity conventional war whose duration exceeds most comparable conflicts since the Korean War. Many of the wars scrutinized by Western militaries—such as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (19 days), 1982 Falklands War (72 days), 1991 Gulf War (42 days) or 1998 Kosovo War (78 days)—pale in their duration to the one currently unfolding. The length of this war, in turn, has elevated a hitherto less critical factor—battlefield adaptation—to a position of primary importance. Our research compares draws upon unique data including interviews with mid-level Ukrainian commanders and information provided to us by Ukraine’s state-owned defense manufacturer (Ukoboronprom) and the British MoD’s lessons learned team. To preview our conclusions, both sides have demonstrated some capacity for adaptation. However, Ukraine’s aptitude for adaptation has far outstripped Russia’s because it empowers both bottom-up adaptation by soldiers and mid-level officers as well as top-down adaptation led by the military’s senior leadership. Ukraine’s military—enabled by civil society—is demonstrating a high capacity for both bottom-up and top-down forms of battlefield adaptation. Ukraine’s company and battalion commanders, in particular, enjoy significant leeway to experiment and oftentimes draw upon civil society organizations for equipment or technical expertise they need. Oftentimes individual units’ creativity in adapting to the circumstances they face exists in a state of creative tension with the General Staff’s efforts to generate larger and more standardized formations. Russia’s combination of a fragmented command structure and rigidly top-down command culture has, meanwhile, stifled bottom-up adaptation. What adaptation Russia has demonstrated is therefore overwhelmingly of the top-down nature. Pivotal decisions to target civilian infrastructure, mobilize larger formations and compel lesser quality (Wagner or DNR/LNR) infantry to provide the sacrificial “first wave” in assaults all fit this pattern.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-drone-use-in-ukraine-claims-and-implications 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z James Page

Presented at EISS 2022. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-military-politics-on-the-battlefield-strategy-and-effectiveness-in-war 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Carrie Lee

Huntingtonian norms that advocate for a sharp divide between military strategy-making and its execution are increasingly being challenged today. While much of the analysis has focused on the implications for civilian control and democratic health, less attention has been paid to their implications for battlefield effectiveness. Those that do address effectiveness in war overwhelmingly cite the emergence of 'gray zone warfare' and modern war as the forces behind the need to re-evaluate the civil-military relationship. This article uses an historical lens to argue that the Huntingtonian norms have, in fact, never been effective at ensuring battlefield success for three reasons. First, military strategies must be tied to political objectives, even and especially as they change over time. Second, the ends-ways-means strategy-making process requires integrating both decisions about resources – a fundamentally political decision – and military objectives. Third, in democracies, military leaders must be aware of the constraints that public opinion places on elected leaders and ensure that military strategies can sustain public support for victory. Using evidence from the invasion of North Africa during World War II (also known as Operation Torch), the paper shows that even in the most conventional conflicts, the most effective military commanders are those who take the political constraints and strategy-making process seriously.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-technology-as-status-anchor-how-russia-perceives-artificial-intelligence 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Anna Nadibaidze

Presented at EISS 2022. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-un-hyping-hypersonic-weapons 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Dominika Kunertova

Cruise missiles and boost gliders that can travel faster than five times the speed of sound along an unpredictable trajectory have been portrayed in the public discourse as the game changer that will transform the global security environment and disrupt strategic stability. But then physics gets in the way and makes them appear less fast and agile than advertised. Their main advantages – speed, maneuverability, and accuracy – can be inhibited by limitations of flying hypersonic in the atmosphere. As military effectiveness and technical reliability of these weapons is uncertain, the magnitude of their disruptive effect remains a known unknown. The United States, Russia, and China’s heavy investments in hypersonic offensive capabilities manifest their great power rivalry and status seeking behaviour. Although it looks like China is getting FOBSsessed about evading American missile defences and Russia keeps polishing its Avangard glider, what we observe is a competition to become the first to achieve a technological edge, a political tool of great powers for demonstrating technological prowess and prestige. This is far from stating that hypervelocity weapons are not dangerous. Technological competing for pride can spiral into arms race, increase the risk of misperceptions, and contribute to nuclear build ups. Instead of musing about revolutionary technology and overestimating the capabilities of hypersonic weapons, it is important to look beyond the hype (and perhaps stop labelling a standard MARV-ed ballistic missile hypersonic). The hype cycle concept developed by the sociology of technology adoption can help avoid exaggerating short-term expectations and form a better understanding of the time and resources required for hypersonic and other emerging and disruptive technologies to mature. In the short to mid terms, the most tangible effect of hypersonic weapons will likely be the need to improve sensors on existing layered defence systems and make them more integrated and continent-wide.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-autonomous-weapons-systems-in-international-law 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Verena Jackson

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2021-dynamics-of-cyber-proliferation 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z 2021-09-03T12:00:00Z Max Smeets

Presented at EISS 2021. No abstract on file yet.