The Foreign Service Journal, April 2019

30 APRIL 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL T oday, state and non-state actors are challenging nations, institu- tions and private companies through a wide range of overt and covert activities targeted at their vulnerabilities. Both NATO and the European Union refer to these as “hybrid threats.” Hybrid actors generally use subtle, far-reaching and opportunistic methods that seldom have a return address. In some cases, the attacks can be more brazen but take place in a gray zone in which the targeted entity has few good response options short of escalating the situation into armed conflict. These types of threats have been in existence for centuries, of course. What makes them different today is the fact that we have instant global communications and a globally con- nected system of finance and commerce. Though many refer to it as “hybrid warfare,” thus militarizing it, the phenomenon is much broader and more complex, requiring a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to address effectively. Since 2015 NATO and the European Union have begun to focus on this problem, which is already impacting the alliance. An Attack on Governance Hybrid threats are best understood as an attack on governance, specifically democratic governance. As Prussian military philoso- Chris Kremidas Courtney is a senior consultant for Strategy International. He has previously served as the multilateral interagency engagement coordinator for U.S. European Command, as director of training and exercises for the Hybrid Center of Excellence, as politi- cal adviser to the commander, NATO Training Mission–Iraq and as assistant political adviser to the commander, Joint Forces Command Naples. He has also served as chief strategist for U.S. Joint Task Force North, NATO policy planner at the U.S. Delegation to NATO and as deputy defense policy adviser for the U.S. Mission to the European Union. Mr. Courtney served for 22 years as a U.S. Army strategist and intelligence officer and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Globalization—the worldwide system of instant communication, finance and commerce—has given a dramatic boost to the phenomenon of hybrid threats, one of today’s central security challenges. BY CHR I S KREM I DAS COURTNEY ON NATO AT 70 FOCUS Working with NATO to Address Hybrid Threats