European Strategy in the Era of Hybrid Warfare

In an era of increased global competition and emerging security challenges, this book critically analyses hybrid warfare, NATO and EU strategies against it, and the growing need for an improved EU security strategy to counteract it.

Empirically researched with interviews from defence experts, this book examines the weaponization of energy and technology sectors from Russia and China, who rely on hybrid campaigns to destabilize the security of Western democracies. From this, it presents a new conceptualization of the two key contemporary transitions — energy and technology — in what is described as the “energy-resources-technology” security nexus. This new framework builds on the fact that the transition to renewables is putting energy security under strain, creating new vulnerabilities that have led to this nexus becoming one of the main battlegrounds on which hybrid warfare is carried out. In the face of these new challenges to European security, the book argues a need for Europe to revisit its strategies and collective defensive response by strengthening transatlantic and civil-military cooperation, as well as investing in dual-use technologies, to be able to globally compete at the energy-resources-technology security nexus.

This book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and advanced students in the fields of international security, hybrid warfare and war studies, strategic studies and international relations more broadly. It will also be of interest to European defence decision- and policy-makers.