ICDS Research Fellows Piret Pernik and Henrik Praks participated at the George C. Marshall Centre Seminar “Hybrid Warfare and Collective Defence” that was held on 23-24 February 2017 in Bucharest, Romania.
Henrik Praks was among the speakers at the panel session titled “NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence: Progress and Issues in the Baltic Sea Region”. He emphasised the need for credible implementation of the Warsaw Summit decisions on the establishment of Enhanced Forward Presence. He outlined a number of challenges this poses, including those related to the command and control structure and the possible role of the battalions in “grey zone” situations. He further highlighted the risks posed by expected Russian disinformation and propaganda efforts aimed at discrediting the Allied troops.
Piret Pernik spoke at the session “NATO-EU Cooperation and Resilience Against Hybrid Threats”. She described how the concept of resilience has been applied in the cyber security and defence context. She highlighted that in the official strategies and documents of NATO and the EU the term has been used inconsistently and it has not yet bore fruit as a strategic approach. Piret highlighted Estonia’s best practices in fostering societal and cyber resilience. She also discussed recommendations made by various scholars and researchers on how to enhance resilience in NATO and the EU, and project it forward to partner countries.
The event brought together participants and speakers from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Ministries of Defence, armed forces, national security units and intelligence, as well as scholars and researchers from universities, think tanks and other academic establishments. 70 participants from the so called Bucharest Format countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria) attended the seminar.