Hybrid warfare and hybrid threats today represent a fundamental political challenge. Within the world of security politics, international cooperation has become a central tool with which western nations face this threat. In utilizing international cooperation in order to face hybrid threats, one should however ask whether nationally implemented methods and understandings of this threat correspond with those of other nations as a prerequisite to joint operations against hybrid threats.
This study ventures to determine if a common understanding and approach to the issue of hybrid warfare optimizes our nations preparedness, protection and response by exploring whether Sweden and Norway have implemented the same understanding of current hybrid warfare and threats. It does so by applying a theoretical framework based on hybrid warfare theory.
By analyzing current intelligence reports, military doctrines and defensive planning, this study has found that implementation of hybrid warfare does exist in both nations. This study finds that a fundamentally likeminded understanding of hybrid threats has been integrated in both Swedish and Norwegian intelligence reports, military doctrine as well as defensive planning. Furthermore, this study finds the relative, equivalent integration of hybrid threats based on current hybrid theory establishes a prerequisite for future cooperation as well as achieving synergy by having a common threat understanding.
The study does however find that further research in the field of synergistic effects in military cooperation and strategic alliances such as that between Sweden and Norway is recommended. Future research is also recommended in order to determine whether the hybrid threat understanding transcends the nations armed forces and has been integrated on a higher political level. Furthermore, future research should delve deeper into hybrid warfare theory and its geopolitical relevance.