Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Mot bakgrund av en breddad och allt mer komplex hotbild mot Sverige och en ambition att stärka den svenska totalförsvarsförmågan har regeringen och Regeringskansliet på senare år skjutit till nya medel och försvarsanslag till det militära och civila försvaret, inklusive den militära Säkerhetstjänsten. De har även tagit fram ett antal nya lagar och regler som på olika sätt syftar till att vägleda säkerhetstjänstens verksamhet och stärka landets motståndskraft mot olika säkerhetshot inom ramen för totalförsvaret.

Denna antologi har till uppgift att utifrån olika perspektiv analysera hur moderna hotbilder, ny teknik, lagstiftning, natomedlemskap och krav på samverkan med andra myndigheter och företag kommer påverka den militära säkerhetstjänstens och säkerhetsunderrättelsetjänstens verksamhet i framtiden. Antologin är skriven av några av Sveriges ledande experter på området i syfte att beskriva de utmaningar som den militära säkerhetstjänsten och säkerhetsunderrättelsetjänsten står inför samtidigt som totalförsvaret och krisberedskapen i Sverige återuppbyggs.

Några av de frågor som ställs i antologin är hur och i vilken utsträckning det försämrade säkerhetsläget i vårt närområde, ny säkerhetsskyddslagstiftning, ambitionen att stärka det svenska totalförsvaret och Sveriges medlemskap i Nato kommer leda till att säkerhetstjänstens arbetsuppgifter förändras i framtiden? Slutsatserna från denna antologi är säkerhetstjänsten och säkerhetsunderrättelsetjänsterna i Sverige står inför ett paradigmskifte där det kommer vara nödvändigt att modernisera organisationen och implementera ny teknik för att anpassa sig till den digitala eran. Även vikten av intensifierad internationell samverkan kommer spela stor roll för säkerhetstjänstens möjligheter att bedriva ett effektivt arbete på nationell nivå i framtiden. Det multilaterala samarbetet är här för att stanna även om det är svårt och bygger på förtroenden mellan stater som inte alltid finns.

Introduction

Instability and uncertainty characterize today’s security environment and this produces multidimensional challenges when it comes to mitigating hybrid threats. Hybrid threats can arise as a result of anything from changed conditions in the political landscape or shifts in relative power, to technological developments or something as simple as access to the internet. As a result, today a state actor with few resources can achieve great effects in a third country’s security environment using a toolbox that combines military and non-military means of power projection. A modern hybrid adversary can use an array of methods simultaneously to achieve its strategic goals, from traditional mechanized combat and cyberattacks, to propaganda wars and funnelling money to terrorist groups, to give just a few examples. An actor – state or non-state – can use assaults, subversion, disinformation, cyber intrusions or any other criminal act, to influence, spread fear or create mayhem.[1] Plausible deniability makes it very difficult to determine who the antagonist is in such an environment.[2]

Today’s hybrid conflicts include a spectrum of complex hybrid threats and warfare and require better intelligence than traditional conflicts. Hybrid conflicts are intelligence intensive because they generate considerably larger amounts of information on asymmetric threats.[3] A hybrid warfare operation is based on the intelligence it collects. The boundary between an ordinary military intelligence service and a civil security intelligence service tends to be blurred in hybrid warfare operations. This is a relationship that places special demands on the intelligence service and its practitioners as well as its customers. The aim of this chapter is to analyse bilateral intelligence challenges and the initiatives that have taken place in recent years, both within Europe and in international military operations, to combat the phenomena mentioned earlier.

Before moving on to a discussion on current multilateral intelligence cooperation, however, this chapter first provides an interpretation of the hybrid threat concept and discusses the concept of ‘hybrid antagonists’. There then follows a discussion on current multilateral intelligence cooperation to address hybrid threats within the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations (UN). Finally, the conclusions outline seven challenges facing the international intelligence community in terms of analysis and organization.

What is ‘multilateral intelligence collaboration’?

A multilateral agreement is an accord among three or more parties, agencies or national governments.[4]

There is currently no consensus on the definition of multilateral intelligence. For the purpose of this chapter we will use the definition of Walsh (2010) who suggested that it is ‘the collection, protection, and analysis of both publicly available and secret information, with the goal of reducing decision makers’ uncertainty about a foreign policy problem’.[5]

So multilateral intelligence collaboration is an accord among three or more agencies or national governments working together to collect, protect and analyse information to reduce decision makers uncertainty about a foreign policy.

The international security environment has in recent years evolved into a volatile and increasingly grey zone of war and peace. Security challenges arising from hybrid threats and hybrid warfare, henceforth HT&HW, are today high on security agendas across the globe. However, despite the attention, and a growing body of studies on specific issues, there is an imminent need for research bringing attention to how these challenges can be addressed in order to develop a comprehensive approach towards identifying, analysing and countering HT&HW. This volume supports the development of such an approach by bringing together practitioners and scholarly perspectives on HT&HW, by covering the threats themselves as well as the tools and means to counter them together with a number of real-world case studies.

Over time the grey zone between peace and war has grown considerably, underscoring the necessity of understanding hybrid warfare and related threats. Russia’s actions in Ukraine have manifested this paradigm, being a good example of the problem in thinking about war and peace as binary categories. How does a country or group of countries deal with threats and aggression in this grey area, such as ‘little green men’ that appear in uniform but without national denomination and refuse to tell where they come from, election-influenced operations or cyberattacks, to mention but a few possible actions.

By uniting the knowledge of both practitioners and scholars, the volume aims to identify the existing tools for countering HT&HW, as well as experiences from a wide set of empirical contexts. Mirroring this, the project is a cross-sector collaboration between the Department of Military Studies and the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS) at the Swedish Defence University. The former represents an academic environment where research and teaching are intertwined in a range of subjects including War Studies, Military Technology and Military History. The latter is a national centre within the Swedish Defence University tasked with developing and disseminating knowledge about asymmetric threats within the context of societal security and resilience.

This volume focuses on the challenge posed by HT&HW to Western democracies, and their ability to address it. Western democracies are not only the type of states most frequently targeted by hybrid measures, but also the most vulnerable. By virtue of being open, pluralistic and liberal societies with freedom of the press and rule of law, Western democracies display both inherent weaknesses that can be targeted and inherent constraints – in particular through the rule of law and basic freedoms – that limit the scope for defensive actions. These vulnerabilities are increasingly recognized by Western governments, which have developed a range of entities to address them, although coordination in many instances remains weak. The later sections outline the growing significance of HT&HW on the security agendas of Western democracies and the challenges they imply, as well as the entities these states have established in response. Although neither list is complete, they provide an overview of the current situation. The final sections provide an outline of the volume’s structure and a summary of each chapter.

Intelligence service as a method to produce analytical reports has always been controversial within the UN as the use of secret information raises ethical dilemmas linked to espionage and impartiality. As a result of this critical approach, UN missions throughout history have lacked their own capacity for intelligence gathering and analysis. Instead, they have had to rely on the intelligence capability of the troop contributing countries. This has created ad hoc solutions and made it difficult for peace missions to manage their own personnel’s security and to create peace and stability in the field of action. However, the UN’s critical approach to conducting its own intelligence service changed fundamentally when the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in July 2017 adopted a new Peace Keeping Intelligence Policy in peacekeeping operations. The decision resulted in sharp protests from both colleagues and member countries. Does this mean that the UN has now become a player in the global intelligence community? This report attempts to describe the UN’s reform efforts and analyses what future challenges and consequences this may have.

Syftet med rapporten är att förklara innebörden av begreppet antagonistiska hot i en lokal kontext, samt beskriva hur begreppet kan tillämpas i olika sammanhang, exempelvis vid Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskaps (MSB) risk- och sårbarhetsanalyser (2019) och i lokala lägesbilder.

Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredksap har finansierat rapporten inom ramen för Polismyndigheten, Noa/UC-Västs projekt – Ökad lokal krisberedskap till att motverka organiserad brottslighet, social oro, antagonistiska hot och händelser av betydelse för totalförsvaret tillsammans med Malmö Universitet, som syftar till att motverka organiserad brottslighet, social oro, antagonistiska hot och händelser av betydelse för totalförsvaret.

Kapitel:

• Inledning - Henrik Häggström och Hans Brun
• Organiserad brottslighet och våldsbejakandeextremism som antagonistisk hot - Amir Rostami
• Salafistiska nätverk och antagonistiska hot - Magnus Normark
• Samtida högerextremism, antagonistiska hotoch dess inverkan på lokalsamhället - Helene Lööw
• Kollektivistiska strukturer och sedvanerätt: En viktig aspekt av antagonistiska hot - Per Brinkemo
• Antagonistiska hot och rättsliga utmaningar - Hans Brun
• Avslutande diskussion - Henrik Häggström och Hans Brun