Journal on Baltic Security

As the global competition for the mastery of artificial intelligence (AI) intensifies, militaries are assessing AI’s future role for the conduct of warfare. Our article analyses and compares recent Chinese and Russian (academic) debates on the impact of AI for warfare, and for the prevailing ‘paradigm of warfare’. By paradigm of warfare we mean a socially constructed conception, shared within a state or among a group of states, on the prevailing characteristics of warfare and on the nature of military power. This includes ideas concerning technologies and operational approaches, the nature of military threats, and even legitimate uses of military force. We argue that the paradigm of warfare stands on a limited number of ‘core assumptions’, which can be distilled from a manageable sample of research data. In our article we analyse and compare the core assumptions prevalent in Chinese and Russian debates, through the role of AI, and discuss whether a shared paradigm of ‘intelligent warfare’ is emerging between the states.

Professional Military Education faces a fundamental challenge: preparing leaders to collaborate effectively with AI capabilities that evolve faster than curriculum cycles, in operational contexts still being defined, against adversaries who conceptualise AI through different strategic logics. This editorial introduction frames the Journal on Baltic Security special issue on Artificial Intelligence in Professional Military Education, presenting a distinction between command functions (requiring human judgment) and control functions (amenable to AI augmentation) that emerged from collaborative exploration among Baltic-Nordic defence organisations and NATO institutions. Three patterns of effective human-AI collaboration – Strategic Sense-Making, Ethical Responsibility, and Adaptive Command – provide the conceptual thread connecting six diverse contributions spanning adversary paradigm analysis, technology survey, NATO cognitive infrastructure, gender and inclusion, practitioner reflection, and empirical framework development. The introduction identifies implementation gaps requiring continued attention and points toward future collaborative work addressing practical solutions for PME institutions navigating AI integration.

This article analyses Estonia’s strategic response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, emphasising the revival of the total defence concept. The authors argue that it is a shift in Estonia’s deterrence posture – from deterrence by punishment to deterrence by denial that has been pushing this revival. Since the 2010s, Estonia transitioned away from a total defence posture towards a comprehensive defence strategy. This deterrence shift results in bringing back total defence. However, it merges the two defence concepts. Reemerging total defence efforts can be seen in the expansion of Estonia’s conventional defence capabilities, increased military spending, and investments in long-range precision weapons. This conventional focus has brought along a strong push in matters concerning resilience, such as societal preparedness at large and public education. These latter elements are shared among notions of both comprehensive and total defence.

Russian paramilitary operations, activities, and investments are on full display in sub-Saharan Africa, principally through the Wagner Group and its post-2023 successor Africa Corps. Pursuant to Russian grand strategy, the employment of such private military companies exploits natural resources, fuels ongoing conflicts, and promotes authoritarian regimes. Simultaneously, it seeks advantages for access, basing, and overflight while destabilising nations such as Mali, the Central African Republic, and Sudan. The Kremlin’s decisions, post Prigozhin-led mutiny, resulted in a paradigm shift of these organisations within sub-Saharan Africa creating various opportunities for the U.S. and their allies to erode Russia’s influence and reinforce a rules–based international order. This study may be of interest to the Baltic nations and Finland as NATO’s first line of defence against Russian advancement as well as the Caucasus and Moldova as potential targets of further Russian expansionism.

This article discusses Russia’s non-linear (hybrid) warfare concept. In order to fight a new generation war, Russia has created ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forces, which are used situationally depending on need. By employing a mentality of secrecy and ‘maskirovka’ and following its own rationale, Russia not only creates the concept, suggests a specific modus operandi, but also designs and establishes a system of command, control, and coordination for this new concept in warfare. Since the time that the Gerasimov Doctrine first articulated this concept in 2013, it is being used everywhere every day – both inside and outside of Russia. At the same time, it has taken the West too long to realise the novelty and shrewdness of this approach; an approach that requires constant vigilance.

Owing to the worsening security environment and the uncertainty of the security guarantees provided by the U.S., Europe needs to revise its strategy towards Russia going forward. To provide recommendations for a new strategy, this article in the first part considers Russian understanding of deterrence, analysing the conceptual differences with the Western though and emphasizing why it matters. The second part of the article looks at the Cold War past and considers the policy of containment as the conceptual basis for a new and revised strategy towards Russia. Conclusion includes recommendation for the policy makers on elements that the new strategy should include.

Abstract: Russia’s war against Ukraine has reignited discussions on resistance and total defence, influencing policy discourses and shaping national security documents. Nordic and Baltic countries, in response, have re-centred resistance in their national defence doctrines. This article critically examines the portrayal of total defence, resistance, and the role of society in these documents, highlighting the implicit assumptions of societal and individual agency. Despite presenting national populations as constructive agents essential for resilience and resistance, the analysis reveals a more nuanced reality. From Finland, to Sweden, to Lithuania, populations are positioned, whether through planning documents or political rhetoric, as indispensable defenders of their nations, with predetermined roles and expectations. This article argues that such dynamics, particularly the responsibilisation of individual actions in wartime, obscure the illiberal foundations of sovereignty inherent in the defence strategies of numerous liberal democracies.

This article explains the importance of the underwater critical infrastructure as a domain of hybrid warfare operations and the setting for increasing strategic competition. In addition, the article highlights the growing need for NATO and European Union (EU) defense cooperation in this area, particularly to respond to the strategic ambitions of the Russian Federation and its strategic partnership with China as revisionist powers. Taking a pragmatic case study approach, the article evaluates Russia’s current maritime doctrine and characteristic cases of undersea hybrid tactics with several operational examples of Russia’s undersea sabotage capabilities. This leads to outlining the emerging NATO–EU inter-organizational defense cooperation in protecting undersea infrastructure. The article concludes with policy advice that the Baltic states, as small open-to-sea member states, should take an active interest in the capability development of the undersea infrastructure protection in both NATO and EU formats.