Journal on Baltic Security

This article addresses the hybrid challenges to the maritime security of the European Union. While hybrid threat issues are generally extensively reported in scientific literature, the authors point out that their integration with EU maritime safety issues represents a novel study strategy. The article contends that the maritime space is crucial for the prosperity and safety of EU Member States. The authors suggest potential applications for using the maritime environment as a site for hybrid impacts. The results of the conducted research are essential in determining the directions in which EU security and safety policy and those of the various Member States will develop. Attention to the possibility of using maritime spaces for hybrid warfare is a necessary condition for an effective response. Proper threat identification requires monitoring and cooperation of many actors.

Contemporary global power competition has turned the world into a hybrid battlefield. In modern battlefield, authoritarian regimes have the strategic advantage of being irresponsible, reckless and aggressive. This advantage is combined with the ability of the authoritarian regimes to find cheap and effective - short of war - solutions for achieving geopolitical objectives. In past decades authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China have been actively applying hybrid strategies against the Western dominated rules based international system. Those strategies are being constructed based on identification and utilization of the vulnerabilities of the democratic political systems, institutions and societies. Pandemic crisis caused by unpredictable and unprecedented spread of the mutated new Corona virus, have underlined vulnerabilities and opened up new possibilities for the hybrid warfare. The pandemic influences every power on the global stage, but will COVID-19 be a turning point for the Euro-Atlantic Security environment?