NATO`s Civil–Military Cooperation (CIMIC) Key Leaders Conference 2019, organised by the Civil–Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence (CCOE) and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), took place during May 27–30 at the premises of the Albanian Ministry of Defence in Tirana.
The conference focused on an in-depth evaluation of how CIMIC could better support NATO`s efforts to combat emerging hybrid threats and to improve resilience through cooperative civil preparedness building.
The conference was attended by almost 100 representatives from national Civil–Military Cooperation communities and discussed topics such as future strategic security challenges, NATO`s contribution to countering terrorism and projecting stability overseas, and effective defence capacity building options through lessons identified from different institutional and regional perspectives.
Special attention was given to NATO`s view of future civil affairs and the challenges of developing a whole-of-society approach as an essential basis for deterrence and a cornerstone of the forthcoming CIMIC Vision 2025.
ICDS Research Fellow Ramon Loik, one of the key experts invited, focused his presentation on the complex mechanisms of hybrid influencing and on options for comprehensive chain-of-resilience building from a cross-sectoral perspective.
He emphasised the identification and targeting of societal vulnerabilities, dependency-building strategies, and the logic of ´weaponising´ such dependencies and power projection mechanisms as important factors for systematic risk analyses and the development of effective counter-measures. He also presented a capability-based resilience building model based on analytical examples from Estonia`s experience as a tool for enhanced CIMIC opportunities planning.
