ABSTRACT
The chapter reflects on emerging global tensions and security threats. Of particular interest are non-kinetic threats employed below the threshold of war. Here, malign actors seek to exploit an adversary’s critical vulnerabilities. Protecting values like national cohesion, political trust, and societal resilience are therefore important. These are key ingredients in the confidence-based contract between the citizens and the state. By targeting this social fabric, liberal democracies’ ability to operate as one cohesive unit is undermined. The chapter, therefore, scrutinises the paradox where Western democracies possess some of the world’s most sophisticated forces, while also being some of the most vulnerable entities when it comes to hybrid threats internationally. Within a context of grand strategy and crisis management, the chapter reflects on an analytical framework enabling modern states to organise and interpret a broad variety of complex empirical variations systematically and coherently. Of particular interest is defining who oversees effective response efforts and how political and administrative agencies may cooperate inside an operational framework where roles, responsibilities, and authorities are separated and delegated throughout a hierarchical and parliamentary chain-of-command.
