Possible scenarios of terrorist attacks in Republic of Poland in the context of hybrid threats (original) (raw)
Related papers
Terrorism and Political Violence, 2020
This article examines the origins, structure and role of the Polish counterterrorism system, which is then set against the rising threat posed by state and non-state actors employing hybrid warfare tools. We demonstrate the usefulness of anti-terrorist regulations, not only in counteracting terrorist groups, but also in the thwarting of operations engaged in by various entities waging hybrid warfare. We argue that lessons learned from the international struggle against terrorism can contribute to the development of proper prescriptions that seek to tackle hybrid threats. Extensive anti-terror instruments and measures implemented since 2016 are among the key elements in the contemporary defense and security doctrine being pursued by Poland. However, while the new regulations have provided intelligence agencies with strong powers that markedly enhance their capabilities regarding the recognition of hybrid threats, the same flexible legal regulations, subject to broad interpretation, may also serve a partisan agenda, and thus endanger the rule of law.
Internal security, 2020
The national security policy of a free and democratic Poland stands out for its enduring principles and goals. It has assured Poland of a historically exceptional security standard based on, among other things, the North Atlantic Treaty guarantees. The national security strategies that the Republic of Poland had adopted first in 1992 and then in 2000 reflected a continuity of the Polish national aspirations in this respect.
The issue of terrorism in Poland’s state emergency regulations
Studia Politologiczne 2015, vol. 38, p. 106-119.
This article concerns terrorism and Polish state of emergency regulations. The goal of the article is to examine the definition of terrorism threats in the Polish Constitution ratified April 2, 1997 and in the Act dated 18 April 2002 on the State of Natural Disaster, Act dated 21 June 2002 on the State of Exception and Act dated 29 August 2002 on Martial Law. The entirety focuses on the foundations for declaration the above states of emergency. In addition to those states of emergency, it references emergency measures. The article analyzes whether terrorist activities comply with the foundations for invoking and the utility of emergency measures in combating terrorist threats. POL Artykuł dotyczy terroryzmu oraz polskich regulacji stanów nadzwyczajnych. Jego celem jest sprawdzenie, w jaki sposób zagrożenia terrorystyczne zostały określone w konstytucji z dnia 2 kwietnia 1997 r. oraz w ustawach: z dnia 18 kwietnia 2002 r. o stanie klęski żywiołowej, z dnia 21 czerwca 2002 r. o stanie wyjątkowym oraz z dnia 29 sierpnia 2002 r. o stanie wojennym. Całość skupia się na przesłankach zastosowania wymienionych stanów nadzwyczajnych. Poza nimi odnosi się do środków nadzwyczajnych. W artykule przeanalizowano zgodność działań o charakterze terrorystycznym z przesłankami zastosowania oraz przydatność środków nadzwyczajnych do zwalczania zagrożeń terrorystycznych.
Moving out of the blizzard: Towards a comprehensive approach to hybrid threats and hybrid warfare
Hybrid Warfare: Security and Asymmetric Conflict in International Relations, 2021
The unifying purpose of this volume has been to address the array of security challenges arising in the contemporary volatile security environment, characterized above all by an increasingly blurred distinction between war and peace. In this inherently complex and increasingly ambiguous environment, the concepts of hybrid threats and hybrid warfare, henceforth HT&HW, are helpful in both structuring an understanding of the nature of the threats we are facing and the strategy and modus of potential adversaries. Thus, the volume has pursued a comprehensive view of the threats as well as the existing tools and means to counter them. This focus puts the spotlight on the nature of the threats and adversaries and the challenges they pose to Western democracies. However, it fundamentally boils down to the question of the capacity in Western-style democracies and Western security institutions to confront HT&HW, by comprehending the particular vulnerabilities in their societies and addressing them, as well as devising responses to hostile measures by external actors. The particular vulnerabilities and limitations, as well as advantages of Western democracies, call for particular approaches in this environment. Open societies built on the normative foundations of the rule of law, human rights and democracy, necessarily protective of the freedoms of speech, association and the press, need to devise solutions that not only preserve these fundamental freedoms but also draw on their particular strengths. As has been demonstrated in previous chapters, this work is well underway, in the form of numerous entities tasked with analysing and addressing the problem. 264 Against the backdrop of the existing overload of overlapping concepts coined or reintroduced to capture the nature of the contemporary security environment, and the controversy surrounding their use, the volume has refrained from attempts to invent new labels or engage at length with the conceptual debate. Instead, we have settled for the use of HT&HW as unifying themes for the volume in an attempt to move the discussion away from how phenomena are supposed to be termed to how they can be understood and addressed. As demonstrated by the range of contributions, there is undoubtedly much to be said on this topic. In this light, a particular contribution of the volume is the unified effort of academic scholars and practitioners, from different fields, to provide a common perspective on HT&HW, based on experiences from a wide set of empirical contexts. For this purpose, the volume was structured into three parts, each providing a distinct perspective on HT&HW. This was intended not only to allow scholars and practitioners, as well as thematically and area-focused authors, equal chance to present their perspectives in their own right. The aim was also to create synergy effects between the different areas of expertise. The first part gathered perspectives of key Western collective security actors represented by the two international organizations with primary responsibility for upholding the Western security community, NATO and the EU, as well as the single largest and most influential security actor, the United States. With a common point of departure in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, all three actors have faced a necessary reevaluation of their conceptualizations of adversaries, threats and countermeasures. Indeed, the key challenge posed by the events in 2014 was the ambiguity and obscurity of events taking place on the ground, raising serious questions regarding if, when and how to respond to similar attacks against NATO or EU members, below the threshold of actual armed attack. Both NATO and the EU have since devised a series of detection and response mechanisms focused on providing early warning and attribution of aggressive actions, as well as deterrence and retaliation. The reactions can be summarized as a common realization of previously unidentified weaknesses in Western societies and joint efforts to close these gaps. Given the composite nature of the threats at hand, the responses need to be organized according to the same principles, integrating societal sectors as well as states. Another important takeaway from these chapters is the importance of knowing your adversary. Whereas identifying and attributing threats produces reactive responses, proactively addressing existing vulnerabilities in order to build resilience requires awareness not only of what an adversary does but also why. In this regard, it becomes pertinent to view the world through the adversary’s eyes in order to identify strategic objectives and ways to achieve them as well as the adversary’s vulnerabilities. The validity of this perspective becomes particularly salient in the second part focused on the tools and means employed to conduct and counter-hybrid warfare. Indeed, the analyses of the approaches of major actors associated with HT&HW in a Western perspective, Russia and China, reveal that the conceptual overstretch accompanying these labels, considered a problem in the Western debate, instead functions as an asset in the strategic thinking of these challengers to the Western security order. In Russia, gibridnaya voina, with its inherent assumption that most of the West’s international activity aims to undermine Russia one way or another, functions as a rhetorical 265device for identifying domestic or external threats and interpreting these as parts of the West’s concerted offensive against Russia. In Chinese writings on the topic, the range of methods associated with HT&HW amount to a comprehensive, cross-domain spectrum denoting perceptions on threat, response and operationalization of hybrid warfare. These increasingly fluctuating borders between the different means associated with HT&HW are apparent in the analyses of information, cyber, intelligence capabilities and the military – indeed, it is questionable to what extent binary divisions into military/non-military or kinetic/non-kinetic means make sense in the current security environment. All the more so since binary thinking regarding the threat risks reproducing itself into the response, thus counteracting the proactive, comprehensive societal approaches deemed necessary to counter HT&HW. This point is further va lidated by the contributions in the third section, presenting case studies of the United States, Taiwan, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Iran and Catalonia – demonstrating how the tools and means of HT&HW have been put to use and countered in a diverse set of empirical contexts. The problem of defending against adversaries and hostile actions that – very consciously – operate in the grey zone, below the threshold of actual war, is a recurring theme in these studies. And even if deterrent capabilities in the sense of military force may be very strong, as in the case of the United States, divided responsibilities between civilian agencies and the military, based on perhaps outdated understandings of war and peace, place limitations on the ability to respond. The contrast could not be more apparent when compared to China’s policies against Taiwan, which amount to a concerted, sophisticated and strategic combination of means, which nevertheless does not (presently) include the active use of military force. The point that strategies involving HT&HW are enacted out of a perceived necessity to challenge Western military supremacy by other means is underscored by the example of Iran, which has, due to the perceived existential threat posed by the United States, devised a strategy of guerrilla warfare, in large part performed by proxy forces and in areas outside Iran’s territory. In Spain, a concerted Russian information campaign aiming to fuel and broaden national divisions over the Catalonian referendum is a clear example of how actors employing HT&HW seek out and attack vulnerabilities in target countries that are nevertheless pre-existing and do not emerge primarily as an effect of external influence or aggression. Finally, the case studies also include (at least partially) successful examples of countermeasures against hybrid warfare. In the Baltics, the relatively low level of Russian hybrid activity is attributed partially to the low priority given to the Baltic States in Russian foreign policy, but also to a largely successful deterrence strategy combining military means and broad deterrence by denial below the threshold of an armed attack. Ukraine has, in the midst of an armed but covert attack against the country, proved capable of combining a conventional military response with a sustained informational campaign that has, despite the severe losses incurred, served to expose Russia as the aggressor and consolidated domestic cohesion as well as international support for the country. The result is a comprehensive view of what may be termed ‘hybridity’ that, rather than a static picture of actions and responses, provides a cross-sectional and cross-temporal understanding of the interaction between actors, threats, responses and results. Hybridity is a suitable label, having been used in the social sciences ‘to 266designate processes in which discrete social practices or structures, that existed in separate ways, combine to generate new structures, objects, and practices in which the preceding elements mix’.[1] Modelled below, the Hybridity Blizzard Model provides a picture of how ongoing or potential adversarial hybrid measures and responses to these dynamically impact long-term societal vulnerabilities and resilience.
Non-kinetic hybrid threats in Europe -the Portuguese case study (2017-18
Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy , 2020
Purpose-This paper aims to understand whether Portugal, being a relatively peripheral country-in political, economic and military terms-of Southwest Europe, was recently a target of hybrid threats. The prevalence of a specific type of threat was found. Thus, this paper analyses the non-kinetic hybrid threats in Portugal, in a temporary hiatus of two years (2017-À2018). Design/methodology/approach-This study has two parts: a conceptual analysis of hybrid threats created by us and, based on the typology previously presented, an analysis of the hybrid threats in Portugal between 2017 and 2018. The first part relied on source analysis, as the result of a desk review methodology, supported by monographs, declassified official documents and reports. The second part is also the result of source analysis, but more extensive. In addition to the desk review methodology, the study included semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders from the Portuguese security and armed forces, who asked not to be quoted. Media content analysis was also carried out-for trends and fact-check-mostly for the events related to the "narratives led operations" (for propaganda, misinformation, counter-information and strategic leaks). Findings-To date, Portugal-compared with other European states-has not been a significant target for hybrid threats. It is diluted in the Portuguese geopolitical dimension. Nevertheless, not escaping what is happening in Europe, it has also been the target of non-kinetic hybrid threats, especially in cyberspace. In the field of so-called "narrative-driven operations", there have been some occurrences-whether related to fake news, far-right movements or strategic leaks. In addition, cyberattacks from foreign groups for information and data gathering have increased in recent years, making governmental and private critical infrastructures more vulnerable. Research limitations/implications-One of the characteristics of hybrid threats is their difficult identification. Therefore, information is scarce, which has complicated the research, leading us to assume, in many cases, speculation about the threat. It should also be taken into account that, in the case of cyberspace, until 2018, 90% of the occurrences were not reported, and the study has dealt with only official numbers. Originality/value-It is not a policy paper. Although it neither points out national vulnerabilities to this type of threat nor makes procedural recommendations or considerations, it is fundamental in identifying the peculiarity of hybrid threats in a democratic state.
Multilevel Analysis of the 2021 Poland-Belarus Border Crisis in the Context of Hybrid Threats
Central European Journal of Politics, 2022
This article aims to provide a deeper context of the Poland-Belarus crisis, which is interpreted through the lens of hybrid threats and hybrid warfare. A multilevel analysis of the crisis assesses four dimensions: political, strategic, tactical, and operational. Emphasis is put on the executive (operational and tactical) dimensions, which are well suitable for analysing the effects of hybrid threats and hybrid warfare. The author argues that the crisis per se may be considered a hybrid threat, but in a broader context, it is a part and one of the tools of hybrid warfare. A DIMEFIL classification is proposed for analysing and designing tools for addressing hybrid threats and warfare.