Politics of Hybrid Warfare: The Remaking of Security in Czechia after 2014 3031327020, 9783031327025

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CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Politics of Hybrid Warfare The Remaking of Security in Czechia after 2014 Jakub Eberle · Jan Daniel

Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations Series Editors

Michal Onderco Erasmus University Rotterdam Rotterdam, The Netherlands Monika Sus Center for International Security Hertie School Wroclaw, Poland

CEEPIR, the foundational book series of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA), is an interdisciplinary forum for scholarship that straddles traditional and novel approaches, advancing cutting-edge scholarship in global international relations. The series invites proposals in the spirit of epistemological and methodological pluralism and in a range of traditional and innovative formats: research monographs, edited collections, textbooks and Pivots which aim at succinct and timely scholarly interventions. The editorial focus is twofold: (1) The CEEISA book series retains its long-standing objective to sustain and showcase excellent research in and on Central and Eastern Europe. We are interested in innovative scholarly perspectives on contemporary social and political transformations in the region, in how knowledge is produced about such transformations, and in how Central and Eastern Europe interacts with the wider European and global contexts. We are interested in advancing the scholarly discussion between Central and Eastern Europe and the discipline more broadly. In cooperation with CEEISA, we maintain a subseries of works which received distinction of excellence by the Association (e.g. the best doctoral dissertation, the best paper at the CEEISA convention, the best thematic panel). (2) We seek in particular outstanding empirical work which advances conceptual and methodological innovation in International Relations theory, European Studies and International Political Sociology, particularly when related to Central and Eastern Europe. We welcome novel research techniques and approaches that explore diverse sites and engage diverse challenges of contemporary world politics. As a devoted team dedicated to excellence and timeliness in the editorial and peer review process, we rely on the support of Palgrave Macmillan, and liaise with the Journal of International Relations and Development to develop a platform for scholars who can reinvigorate existing research in global international relations. For a correct copy of the proposal form, please contact Isobel Cowper-­ Coles, Editor for International Studies, at isobel.cowpercoles@ palgrave.com

Jakub Eberle • Jan Daniel

Politics of Hybrid Warfare The Remaking of Security in Czechia after 2014

Jakub Eberle Institute of International Relations Prague, Czech Republic

Jan Daniel Institute of International Relations Prague, Czech Republic

ISSN 2947-7980     ISSN 2947-7999 (electronic) Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations ISBN 978-3-031-32702-5    ISBN 978-3-031-32703-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Contributor: Vova Pomortzeff / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

Our interest in the politics of hybrid warfare started as a small distraction back in 2016, driven by our unease with security debates in Czechia. At that time, we certainly did not expect that it would develop into a major research project, which consumed a great share of our time for the following six years. It led us to numerous conference papers, invited lectures, university courses, journal articles, as well as public controversies, finally culminating in this book. None of that would be possible without the generosity, dedication, trust and support of a broad range of individuals and institutions, to which we would like to express our gratitude. Above all, we are thankful to those who supported us most directly through their help with our research: Petr Burda, our most diligent project manager and a great friend, who has been with us throughout the whole project cycle. We would further like to thank our research assistants: Natálie Jančíková, who has been with us the longest and supported us with her first-class work as well as friendly feedback; Danila Naumov and Petr Fena, who both helped us cope with our monstrous media archive; and Florentia Vasileiou, who made the final stretch of our writing much less stressful. Our gratitude also goes to Vojtěch Bahenský, Michal Smetana, Jonáš Syrovátka and Dagmar Vorlíček, colleagues and friends who read and commented on the bulk of the manuscript at a very short notice. Other colleagues have contributed with their encouragements, criticisms, comments or suggestions at different stages and in different forms. This includes, in no particular order, Petr Kratochvíl, Vít Dostál, Václav v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kopecký, Ty Solomon, Maria Mälksoo, Anna Pospěch Durnová, Ondr ̌ej Ditrych, Ondr ̌ej Císar ̌, Linda Monsees, Anatoly Reshetnikov, Mark Galeotti, Chris Browning, Xymena Kurowska, Dirk de Bièvre, Jorg Kustermans, Philipp Lausberg, Jakub Záhora, Vladimír Handl, Daniel Šitera, Ondr ̌ej Slačálek, Sanna Strand, Anna Kvíčalová, Jana Vargovčíková, Viacheslav Morozov and Saskia Stachowitsch. We have also benefitted from the environment of multiple organisations. In the first place, this concerns our professional home, the Institute of International Relations Prague, but also other institutions that hosted us during the years: the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, the Center for Transnational Studies, Foreign and Security Policy (ATASP) at the Free University of Berlin, the Chair of Eastern European History at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, the Orient Institut Beirut and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. We would also like to thank all our interviewees, who gave us their time and shared with us their observations, although many of them are at odds with the normative project of this book. On a personal level, Jakub dedicates this book to Jana and František, with eternal gratitude for all their generosity and love, especially in the final months of the preparation of this book. Jan dedicates the book to May, with gratitude for her love and an endless appreciation of her support and understanding through many missed and rescheduled plans in the final writing phase. Earlier version of Chap. 2 was published by the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences as Daniel, J., & Eberle, J. (2018). Hybrid Warriors: Transforming Czech Security through the ‘Russian Hybrid Warfare’ Assemblage. Sociologický c ̌asopis/Czech Sociological Review, 54(6), 907–931. Earlier version of Chap. 5 was published by SAGE Publishing as Daniel, J., & Eberle, J. (2021). Speaking of hybrid warfare: Multiple narratives and differing expertise in the ‘hybrid warfare’ debate in Czechia. Cooperation and Conflict, 56(4), 432–453. We thank both institutions for allowing the reuse of the original journal articles, which have been both reworked extensively. Finally, we are grateful to the Czech Science Foundation, which supported the research leading to this book by its Standard Grant no. 19-12081S, ‘Transforming Security in the Age of Uncertainty: Understanding the Rise of Hybrid Warfare in the Czech Republic’ (2019–2022). In Prague, 27 March 2023

Praise for Politics of Hybrid Warfare “This book offers a much needed critical perspective on the discourses and practices of ‘hybrid warfare’ by innovatively mobilizing approaches from critical security studies and International Political Sociology. By centering the manifold societal processes and actors that are involved in constructing ‘hybrid’ threats, the authors re-politicize allegedly neutral and objective security debates and show how they can promote a war-mindset with far-reaching sociopolitical consequences. Moreover, through careful contextualization within distinct Central European (dis-)continuities, this important analysis furthers the agenda of de-centering security studies from a unique and hitherto underexplored positionality.” —Saskia Stachowitsch, Central European University “In Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Jakub Eberle and Jan Daniel confront the pressing questions of geopolitics and hybrid warfare in the 21st Century. Eberle and Daniel carefully unpick the politics of ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse, the positioning of its advocates, and the assemblages through which this notion has come to dominate our understandings of democracy, peace and war in modern Europe. They uncover how politics has been performed through discourses of hybrid warfare, in the Central European state of Czechia. This book is a must-read for any scholar set upon tackling the ambiguities of hybrid warfare, or understanding how international discourses permeate the domestic politics of European states.” —Charlotte Heath-Kelly, University of Warwick

Contents

1 Introduction: The Problematic Politics of ‘hybrid warfare’  1 2 Liminal  Insecurities: Crises, Geopolitics and the Logic of War 29 3 Formation:  Emergence of the ‘hybrid warfare’ Assemblage in Czechia (2014–2016/17) 59 4 Politicisation, Institutionalisation, Internationalisation: The Czech ‘hybrid warfare’ Assemblage in 2017–2021 99 5 Differentiation: Three Main Narratives of ‘hybrid warfare’143 6 Boundaries:  Expertise, Authority and Contestation in the Czech ‘hybrid warfare’ Debate173 7 Conclusion: Reclaiming Politics from the Logic of War203 List of Interviews223 Index225

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About the Authors

Jakub  Eberle is Senior Researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague. He studied international relations at the University of Warwick, University of St. Andrews and Charles University in Prague. His professional interests involve IR theory, critical security studies, Czech and German foreign policy, politics of Central Europe, social theory and debates about hybrid warfare. He is the author of Discourse and Affect in Foreign Policy: Germany and the Iraq War (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of International Theory and German Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2022), as well as published articles in International Political Sociology, International Studies Review, Political Psychology, Political Geography and elsewhere. Jakub is also an assistant professor at the Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE). Jan Daniel  is Senior Researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague. His research concerns links between international discourses of peace and security and their manifestations in local practices and politics, with regional focus on the Middle East and Central Europe. He has been a visiting researcher at the European University Institute, Orient Institut Beirut and American University of Beirut. He has published on political sociology of peace interventions or narratives of hybrid warfare, and his research has appeared in Cooperation and Conflict, Political Psychology or Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. He is one of the editors of Revolutionaries and Global Politics: War Machines from Bolsheviks to ISIS (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)

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Abbreviations

ANO Akce nespokojených občanů (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) BIS Bezpečnostní informační služba Č eské republiky (Security Information Service) CEE Central and Eastern Europe CNN Cable News Network Č SSD Č eská strana sociálně demokratická (Czech Social Democratic Party) CTHH Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats EEAS European External Action Service EU European Union EV European Values GDP Gross Domestic Product GRU Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation HN Hospodářské noviny HW Hybrid Warfare INGE Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union, including Disinformation IR International Relations KGB Committee for State Security LGBT+ Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender MEP Member of the European Parliament MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs MP Member of Parliament NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NGO Non-governmental Organisation

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ABBREVIATIONS

NÚKIB Národní úřad pro kybernetickou a informační bezpečnost (National Cyber and Information Security Agency) ODS Občanská demokratická strana (Civic Democratic Party) PSSI Prague Security Studies Institute SPD Svoboda a přímá demokracie (Freedom and Direct Democracy) TOP09 Tradice Odpovědnost Prosperita (Tradition Responsibility Prosperity) US United States

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Problematic Politics of ‘hybrid warfare’

This book tells the story of how the once unfamiliar and technical concept of ‘hybrid warfare’ (HW) became both a widespread buzzword and the cornerstone of a new understanding of (in)security in Czechia after Russia’s first aggression against Ukraine in 2014. It chronicles where HW came from, how it spread and, above all, what effects it had on the Czech society and why the broad proliferation of HW should be considered a problem, one relevant also beyond our case study. Equipped with concepts and methods from International Political Sociology, Critical Security Studies and Critical Geopolitics and on the basis of large-scale archival and interview research, we want to problematise the sense of utter normality that is now linked to a number of HW-related assertions such as that the West is in a ‘hybrid war’ with Russia and that Russia’s ‘hybrid’ actions, especially misinformation campaigns, are a fundamental threat to our democracies. Thereby, we want to turn the spotlight on the politics of ‘hybrid warfare’—a process through which security becomes understood as constantly endangered by often invisible threats and in which virtually any social issue can be presented as part of a civilisational, war-like confrontation with Russia. Put differently, we are asking how come that we started to care so much about issues such as propaganda, misinformation and the connected political upheavals and began to casually link them to Russia’s supposedly ‘war’-like actions. All of that even after we have been all too vividly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_1

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reminded how the carnage of an actual war in Europe looks like after Russia’s second aggression against Ukraine in 2022. This is not because we would not consider Russia a major threat to European security and beyond (of course we do) and would not be worried by the often-­troubling developments in Western democracies (of course we are). It is our concern, though, that these pressing and legitimate issues we are facing are not made any more resolvable by looking at the world through the prism of ‘hybrid warfare’. To the contrary, the uncompromising friend/enemy optics implied in the logic of war and its continuing expansion into democratic politics further contribute to the polarisation of our societies and hamper democratic debate. Now, what is ‘hybrid warfare’? Very different definitions have been offered, ranging from a combination of conventional and unconventional methods on a battlefield, all the way to essentially non-violent means of subverting societies via spying, corruption and information campaigns. The conceptual literature on the matter concludes that the concept is ambiguous and vague, and can even be stretched to include all possible problems, military and social alike (e.g. Almäng, 2019; Bahenský, 2018; Fridman, 2018). While we do engage with these debates at multiple points in this book, we deliberately avoid providing an authoritative definition of our own. For us, the definition itself is part of the problem. Consequently, our research is not concerned with what ‘hybrid warfare’ is, but rather how and why it is used as a shorthand for certain problems and what social and political effects this creates. Put differently, our interest is not with ‘hybrid warfare’ as a notion that could tell us something about the world, but we approach it as a discourse that does something to the world (Campbell, 1998; ÓTuathail, 1996). Through the creeping extension of the logic of war into wide areas of social life, it changes the way we do politics, as well as how we relate to each other within our societies. It is for this reason, as well as to signal our distancing from the ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse, that we use the term in inverted commas (except when we use the abbreviated form—HW). We also use HW as an umbrella concept that subsumes the related or derivative notions of ‘hybrid war’, ‘hybrid threat’, ‘hybrid influence’ and others, as these have mostly been used interchangeably both in Czechia and in the broader transnational discourse (for the latter see Fridman, 2018). Crucially, by understanding ‘hybrid warfare’ as a world-shaping discourse, we also want to point out its contingency. As any discourse, HW is socially constructed. In simple terms, HW is just one among many possible ways how to understand problems like (mis)information, democratic

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decline or social polarisation. This is not to say that these problems do not exist, but that there is no inherent reason why they should be seen primarily as results of a broader geopolitical confrontation with Russia (or geopoliticised, as we will call it later) or even a part of a certain kind of war (warified). Different understandings are possible. Moreover, given that the HW discourse has a number of worrying side-effects, as we will show throughout the book, we suggest that it is high time to question its premises and search for alternatives. Our aims, therefore, are both normative and analytical. In the normative aspect, our aim is to disrupt the normality of the HW discourse in Czechia and beyond, rediscover its strange and problematic character, and start thinking possible alternatives. In the analytical aspect, our aim is to explicate a range of problems related to the rise, functioning and effects of the HW discourse. While the empirical research in this book focuses on the case of Czechia, we believe that the relevance of our arguments is broader, as the politics of ‘hybrid warfare’ is a transnational phenomenon (see Fridman, 2018; Orenstein, 2019). First of all, the case should be of wider interest, because Czechia was one of the pioneers, presenting a faster and also stronger response than many other EU/NATO countries (Jankowicz, 2020). In this sense, it presents a ‘laboratory’, in which we can observe the dynamics behind the HW discourse in an amplified form. Second, the HW discourse in Czechia emerged in an interplay of distinctly domestic social issues with regional as well as global trends. By focusing on these broader problems, such as the tendency to approach politics through the uncompromising logic of war or the habit of viewing the world through East/West lenses, we directly speak also to other contexts in which these trends are present. Third, by analysing politics of HW from within a Central and East European (CEE) country, one that is rarely analysed in detail, we contribute to the calls for decolonising knowledge about the region and including CEE voices and their distinct expertise in broader European debates (Krulišová & O’Sullivan, 2022; Mälksoo, 2021, 2022). This book is structured as a series of interventions, which are tied together by an overarching logic, yet each of them could also be read on its own as each tackles a specific aspect of the politics of ‘hybrid warfare’. This introductory chapter does three things. In the first part, we outline what we mean by the HW discourse and, above all, why we consider it strange and problematic. Second, we present our key contributions, concepts, methods and arguments. Third, we provide a brief overview of the chapters that follow.

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Problematising ‘hybrid warfare’: A Strange and Counter-productive Discourse By the end of the 2020s, ‘hybrid warfare’ became an established concept through which national and international institutions in Europe and North America understood security threats and explained them to their publics. What started as a contested and problematic notion in US military science debates in mid-2000s (more on this below) rose to prominence after Russia’s first aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and developed into a central notion in broader policy debates (Bahenský, 2018; Fridman, 2018). This was true for NATO and EU, as well as their individual member states (albeit in different ways and to varied extents). The vague idea of ‘hybrid’ slipped from policy parlance into strategic documents: including, among many others, NATO’s Strategy on NATO’s Role in Countering Hybrid Warfare (adopted 2015, see Rühle & Roberts, 2019), EU’s Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats (European Union, 2016) or Czechia’s National Strategy for Countering Hybrid Interference (Ministry of Defence, 2021). It also gave rise to new institutions tasked with dealing with the matter, for example NATO’s Counter-Hybrid Support Teams, the EU Hybrid Fusion Cell or Czechia’s Centre against Hybrid Threats. However, in Czechia, ‘hybrid’ became much more than a favourite buzzword of security bureaucrats and policy wonks, as it spilt into the everyday parlance of much broader societal discourses (although this still means especially the discourses of the educated urban elites). Consider the following two examples from summer 2022. One day in July, the daily E15 came out with a frontpage dominated by a dramatic statement: ‘Czechia slept through hybrid war. It won’t know how to counter Russian disinformation until this autumn’ (E15, 2022). To the best of our knowledge, this frontpage created no controversy—even though there are many reasons why it should be considered problematic or at least strange. How can we miss an ongoing war waged against us? Why would somebody call ‘disinformation’1—certainly a nuisance and a problem—a part of ‘war’, 1  In what is now a classic distinction, misinformation refers to any information that can be considered false, while disinformation is a much narrower term, generally referring to misinformation spread knowingly and with the intent to do harm (Wardle & Derakshan, 2017). The problem with the latter term is that intent is notoriously difficult to judge and harmful information is often spread unknowingly. Additionally, in the Czech debate, the label ‘disinformation’ became an overshared buzzword, with only very few people actually paying some attention to definitions. For this reason, we prefer to use the more general concept of misinformation, as it allows avoiding speculation about intent. In contrast, and similarly to our approach to ‘hybrid warfare’, we use ‘disinformation’ in inverted commas to signal that this is the language of actors that we would like to distance ourselves from.

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after five months of watching Ukraine and seeing what the carnage and brutality of full-scale war actually look like? And why would someone argue in such dramatic terms that Czechia is lagging behind, when it has actually been considered as one of the most active EU/NATO members in relation to HW and has already created several institutions to tackle this problem? Only a few weeks later, when debating same-sex marriage, the journalist Silvie Lauder argued that gender and LGBT+ issues are so polarising also because they are ‘a significant part of hybrid war, which Russia fights with the West’, suggesting that opposing same-sex marriage is effectively aligned with the interests of Russia (Kabrhelová, 2022). Countering this on Twitter, the conservative activist Roman Joch claimed that it is actually the other way round and that ‘to insist that [marriage is for all], is part of Putin’s hybrid war’, rather than to oppose it (Joch, 2022). Now, is it not problematic that a debate on how to legislate contested social issues like same-sex marriage is immediately linked to the notions of ‘war’ and Russia’s supposed interest? Is it not strange that the accusation of somehow ‘playing with Putin’ can be mobilised equally against people making the exact opposite arguments? Is not worrying that such discourse makes the question of citizen rights and the democratic debate around them hostage to broader visions of great power geopolitics? These anecdotes illustrate a broader problem, which presents a starting point for this book: the previously unknown notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ became commonplace in Czech public debates at some point after 2014 and it is now liberally used in relation to all sorts of issues. When discussing divisive questions like same-sex marriage, social polarisation, media literacy or democratic decline, it has become utterly normal to paint them as part of ‘hybrid warfare’, with Russia presented as the culprit stoking discord and unrest within the society. This practice of viewing disputes over social issues through the logic of war—what we will call warification—is now widespread across the discourses of politicians, security bureaucrats, academic, journalists, NGO activists and social media commentators. It is authorised by a thick body of knowledge that ostensibly backs it up, from official documents presented by EU, NATO and national governments, through investigative journalism, to think tank and academic analyses of the spread of falsehoods on social media. This ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse can be most generally outlined as a series of claims and assumptions, that together create a specific understanding of (in)security. First, the West—as a civilisational entity held together by culture and values—is seen as being at war, in which Russia is the prime enemy (sometimes together with China). Second, this is a different kind

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of war, one that is not necessarily—or even at all—led by conventional means on clearly demarcated battlefields. It is undeclared, insidious and even invisible. It is happening here and now—and as the often-repeated line of HW proponents goes, we may even not be aware of it. Third, such ‘hybrid war’ follows essentially subversive aims. It wants to compromise our state institutions, erode our democratic governance, fuel discord and polarisation, question our values or even destroy our shared sense of reality. Four, it uses multiple means, usually with little or no violence involved: hacking and cyberattacks, spying and strategic corruption, supporting anti-establishment parties and movements. Above all, and especially in Czechia, the emphasis has been put on the information dimension, particularly in the form of spreading misinformation and propaganda. Therefore, ‘hybrid war’ is often effectively understood as ‘information war’. Fifth, the enemy works with and through local actors, be they direct agents and collaborators, or mere unwitting ‘useful idiots’ without any direct links to Moscow (or Beijing). This means that activities that are ostensibly responding to domestic grievances are inherently suspicious, as they can potentially serve the interests of the enemy—without even knowing it. For many in Czechia, but also in the broader Transatlantic space, ‘hybrid warfare’ became simply a neutral and objective description of the world ‘as it is’, as well as a label that can be thrown around without much care for its validity and impact. It is precisely this sense of normality and neutrality that we challenge in this book. Instead of taking it at face value, we problematise this discourse, by which we mean demonstrating that it constitutes an analytical and normative problem worthy of attention (Glynos & Howarth, 2007, p. 116). In particular, we argue that the spread of ‘hybrid warfare’ into broader societal debates is highly surprising, as the term was originally used only in specialised military debates (and with a different meaning). More importantly, we show that some of the assumptions on which it is based do not really hold water or may even lead us astray with respect to both facing off the challenge from Russia and resolving the broader issues troubling our societies. At its worst, the HW discourse has unintended yet adverse side-effects, for instance by fuelling social polarisation rather than dealing with it. We will now unpack these problems in turn.

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‘Hybrid warfare’: A ‘lab leak’ from Military Debates First of all, we should find it puzzling and highly surprising that ‘hybrid warfare’ gets routinely mentioned in debates about social issues like same-­ sex marriage, history education or media literacy, given that the term comes from an explicitly military context. As shown by the most comprehensive study on the matter (Fridman, 2018), HW initially gained traction in US military debates in mid-2000s, particularly in relation to the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Frank Hoffman, the military thinker credited with the spread of the term, used it essentially to make sense of the different means and methods used in combat. For him, HW was the combined use of ‘a full range of modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formation, terrorist acts that include indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder’ (Hoffman, 2009, p. 36). This understanding, which was embedded in broader discussions about changing nature of warfare, had very little to do with geopolitical rivalries or political disputes within peacetime societies. Instead, Hoffman was focusing on different ways of using violence in the context of an ‘actual’ war, analysing ‘problems that could be solved by the military’ (Fridman, 2018, p. 44)—rather than, say, questions of political institutions or societal values. Therefore, Hofmann’s definition was still a relatively narrow one—and yet, it was already criticised within expert circles as too ambiguous (Fridman, 2018, pp. 102–103). However, HW was not to remain another temporarily fashionable term used by a small community of military intellectuals. While the original expert debate had largely died in late 2000s, the concept experienced an unexpected ‘resurgence’ and spill-over into broader discourses, especially in the aftermath of Russia’s first aggression against Ukraine in 2014 (a process analysed by Fridman, 2018). From the metaphorical military ‘lab’, HW soon ‘leaked’ to much larger audiences (for the metaphor see Musgrave, 2021), transforming itself in the process.2 A very different and much broader idea of HW gradually emerged through a series of translations and appropriations by military strategists, intellectuals and politicians in NATO-linked circles and in Russia alike. Instead of a combination of ways of warfare, HW became understood essentially as a geopolitical strategy, ‘a combination of hard and soft power in confrontations between two 2  In this respect, it is worth recalling also the public life of a similarly freely and broadly used notion, the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and the by-and-large futile attempts of the author to stop its misleading usage (Galeotti, 2019a). See also Chap. 3.

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rival political actors’ (Fridman, 2018, p. 107). Gradually, the military and hard-power elements were de-emphasised and the core of the HW idea shifted to ‘non-military actions that undermine the political legitimacy of an adversary, rather than physically destroying it’ (Fridman, 2018, p. 118). By 2015–2016, NATO and Russia essentially shared a very similar understanding that the other party was waging a ‘hybrid warfare’ against it, with the aim of destabilising institutions, values and societies, and that this was done mostly via non-violent activities, especially in the information sphere. It was from these NATO/Russia contexts that HW made its way to Czechia (as we will show in detail in Chap. 3). In this sense, the Czech discourse is a part of broader international developments. At the same time, existing studies (Jankowicz, 2020; Syrovátka, 2021) and our own observations and interviews conclude that ‘hybrid warfare’ and, especially, ‘disinformation’ were particularly salient concerns in Czechia. While Fridman shows how HW made its way from specialised discourses into broader political and expert security debates, we argue that this process actually went even one step further in Czechia. If we consider HW as a metaphorical ‘lab leak’ from military science, it appears that the Czech society provided a particularly favourable environment for its spread. It also continued ‘mutating’ in the process, leading to further stretching of its already ambiguous meanings. As a result, in Czechia, HW can now be used by a broad range of social actors in debates about problems that are not conventionally viewed through the lenses of security or geopolitics: for example same-sex marriage, populism, media education, values, identity or the past. The fact that it has become utterly normal to use an originally highly specialised military term for social issues should be strange enough in itself. However, it gets even more problematic when ‘hybrid warfare’ has been so much emptied of its content that it can now stand for almost anything and everything that we may feel threatened by. This is particularly unfortunate given HW’s association with foreign meddling, which implies that almost any social dispute can be potentially seen as driven by the hand of a foreign power. The Supposed Dangers of HW To start addressing the ‘so what?’ question, the HW discourse should be seen as problematic not only because of its malleability and the militarisation of social issues implied in its use but also because many of its

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assumptions do not hold water when confronted with empirical evidence. Start with the idea that HW is highly dangerous, because its insidious means are effective in undermining societies from within and making them susceptible to the interest of the enemy. Had it been the case that ‘Czechia slept through hybrid war’, as printed on the frontpage mentioned earlier, we should expect the population to become more critical of NATO and EU, swing towards anti-Western or pro-Russian politicians in elections and fail to stand up decisively against Russia’s aggressive policies. However, there is not much to prove such expectations—and, very often, the tendency has been the exact opposite in the period since 2014. Starting with public opinion, which should show us the impact of HW influence most directly, there is little evidence that Russia was successful in swaying the Czech public. Sympathy towards Russia and the Putin regime remained a minority issue throughout the whole period. Even before the 2022 war, Russia constantly polled among the ‘least likeable’ countries (second only to China), with only 20–27% finding it somewhat likeable (CVVM, 2022a). Vladimir Putin was distrusted by 70% of Czech respondents in 2021 and whole 84% after the beginning of the 2022 war, in both cases scoring lowest from the list of leaders (CVVM, 2022b). In contrast, satisfaction with NATO membership remained in the steady zone of 56–58% in 2014–2020 (up from 50% in 2013), with a massive uptick to 73% after Russia’s second aggression in 2022 (CVVM, 2022c). Trust in the EU, as measured by the Eurobarometer survey, fell under 30% in 2015–2016, but it recovered and fluctuated around an upward curve since then, peaking around 50% in 2021. Similarly, Russia’s activities did not lead to a change in voting behaviour to the benefit of the Kremlin, as no such change could be observed. Candidates that could be somehow painted as ‘pro-Kremlin’ or ‘anti-­ Western’ neither enjoyed a sustained pattern of growth nor managed to take over Czechia’s politics in the period following 2014. The support of openly pro-Russian parties, such as the Communist Party (KSČ M) or the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), stagnated or declined. The same can be said also about forces that are not ‘pro-Russian’ per se, but for various reasons flirted with agendas that could be legitimately seen as soft on Russia or anti-EU.  This includes the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) movement of the oligarch and former Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, or the now marginalised Social Democrats (Czech Social Democratic Party; Č SSD). Granted, the most visible and most successful politician expressing pro-Russian views, President Miloš Zeman managed

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to retain his mandate in 2018. But even he did so with a much lower majority than in his first run in 2013. In contrast, it was the decidedly and explicitly ‘pro-Western’ and tough-on-Russia forces that staged a comeback in the early 2020s. The conservative Spolu (‘Together’) coalition won the 2021 parliamentary election with a ‘We belong to the West’ slogan, forming a government with similarly oriented liberal and centrist parties. In the 2023 presidential election, a decidedly ‘pro-Western’ former NATO Military Committee Chief, Petr Pavel, scored a clear victory with a record-­ breaking majority after facing off Babiš in the run-off. Finally, there is also little to back up the expectation that Czechia would fail to stand up against Russia’s aggressive policies. In fact, the country never significantly deviated from the EU/NATO mainstream since 2014, often being on its hawkish side. This remained the case even during critical moments of the Zeman Presidency. While Zeman, following his general softer stance on Putin’s Russia, tried to force a different course of action, the Babiš government joined in on the collective expulsion of Russian diplomats in response to the Skripals poisoning in 2018. In the aftermath of the 2021 revelations regarding the involvement of Russia’s military intelligence in the explosion of an ammunition depot near the Czech village of Vrbětice (more in Chap. 4), the same government—after same wavering, admittedly—expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, basically stripping down the formerly outsized embassy only to its very basic functions. After Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Prague became one of the most important supporters of Kyiv, even being the very first state to deliver tanks (Vojáček, 2022). Czechia was active in pushing forward tough sanctions and embraced the largest number of Ukrainian war refugees per capita in the world. Importantly, this was not only a government policy. The Czech society played a major part: hosting refugees in their houses, putting Ukrainian flags on display in their windows or collecting funds for humanitarian aid and weapons to be sent to Ukraine. In sum, the developments in Czechia—a country portrayed by leading proponents of the HW discourse as a ‘laboratory’ in which the Kremlin supposedly tests its efforts (Alvarová, 2017, p. 86)—do not provide much evidence for the alarmist expectations about the impact of Russia’s meddling. While there is no doubt that Czechia has been the target of Russia’s spying, hacking, strategic corruption or misinformation activities, it did not turn away from the EU/NATO, did not swing towards politicians advocating such a course and repeatedly stood up against the Kremlin in practice. This may be surprising for those who believe that ‘a cyber

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campaign directed from Moscow could change reality’ (Snyder, 2018, p. 106). Yet, it is very much in line with a growing number of studies from different countries around the world that put forward sober and sceptical conclusions regarding the possibility of (mis)information campaigns to alter perceptions or sway voting behaviour (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Eady et  al., 2023; Lanoszka, 2019; Lazer et  al., 2018; Radnitz, 2022; Syrovátka, 2022). … and the Real Problems At the same time, the HW discourse should not be seen as problematic only because its assumptions do not seem to work in practice but also because it hampers our understanding of the problems we undoubtedly face. Especially after full-blown war was unleashed against Ukraine in 2022, it should be clear that the HW discourse obscured the character of the threat that Russia posed to its neighbours, Europe and the international order. For most of the last decade, the HW prism saw the danger as coming from the Kremlin’s insidious meddling, ‘reflexive control’, interference in election processes, cyberattacks or misinformation campaigns (e.g. Orenstein, 2019; Snyder, 2018). Already before the war, even some NATO experts and employees were sceptical about the utility of such ideas, arguing that HW ‘undermines strategic thinking’ and hampers constructive debates over how to deal with Russia (Caliskan, 2019; Caliskan & Liégeois, 2020; Libiseller & Milevski, 2021; Rühle, 2019). Instead of providing a useful guidance, these voices saw HW as a distracting buzzword. Sadly, the aggression against Ukraine vindicated especially those who claimed that the HW discourse is based on misreading Russia’s strategy and, as Fridman prophesied, ‘we all will be “surprised” in a few years when Russia will deploy an intervention force to “protect” its interests abroad’ (Fridman, 2019, p. 109). While much of the West was chasing the spectre of ‘hybrid warfare’ and seeing the threats in troll farms and ‘fifth columns’, the Kremlin instead started a major conventional war with its tanks, missiles and artilleries. It is by these very traditional, ‘non-hybrid’ means that unimaginable suffering was unleashed on Ukrainians—whose unified resistance, in contrast, demonstrates the failure of years of Russian meddling in subduing the nation. Arguably, the HW discourse in general did very little to help the West foresee these events, let alone prepare for them (although it might have helped Ukraine prepare its own information

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offensive directed towards the West that had been indispensable for maintaining the vital support of EU/NATO members). Furthermore, when it comes to social issues within the Czech society (and, by extension and to different extents, also within other Western societies), we believe that the HW discourse can even be counter-­ productive and make things worse. One thing where we agree with the HW discourse is that all is not well in Western societies, as demonstrated by a long list of problems, including social fragmentation, democratic decline, erosion of trust and growing citizens’ alienation from the state. In the HW discourse, these issues are often linked together as results of HW activities of foreign powers or at least vulnerabilities ready to be exploited by them. From our view, this is highly problematic, as such move depoliticises genuine social problems (e.g. functioning of state institutions, identification with the state, memory politics, cultural issues), making them instead the object of security management. Put differently, what would otherwise constitute legitimate political discussions, for example concerning immigration, EU membership, same-­ sex marriage or social justice, becomes viewed as illegitimate and non-­ authentic results of foreign interference. In the war-like, friend versus enemy logic of the HW discourse, grievances or social criticism cannot be engaged at face value and treated according to their substance. Instead, such voices are measured according to the extent to which they allegedly align with the interest of the Kremlin, while their proponents are scoffed at as ‘desolates’, ‘deprivants’, ‘Kremlobots’, ‘fifth column’ or ‘useful idiots’. Given that the Czech society is genuinely divided around questions such as relationship to the past, the EU or immigration (Buchtík et al., 2021), the HW optics effectively demonises large parts of the population and further contributes to the very social polarisation that it sees as resulting from foreign meddling. This prevents identifying the deeper roots of the dissatisfaction with both the government of the day and the political order as such (Charvát, 2023), let alone resolving the underlying problems. As long as grievances are not considered genuine and legitimate, there is indeed no place for addressing them via reform: instead, they are treated as caused by foreign influence that needs to be prevented, misinformation that needs to be debunked or lacking critical thinking that needs to be taught. Given that the interests of the Kremlin are often understood in extremely general and nebulous terms; for example as stoking division and discord, this means that virtually anything can be somehow linked to them

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as a supposed result of HW, as demonstrated by the exchange over same-­ sex marriage. This creates an atmosphere of permanent suspicion that eats away the space for an open, often conflictual, yet respectful debate that is arguably essential for the healthy functioning of a democratic society. Instead, trust is replaced with a creeping ‘red under every bed’ mentality (Fridman, 2018, p. 3), in which ‘the ethics of total war’ can be potentially applied ‘even to the smallest skirmish’ (Galeotti, 2019b, p. 8). Arguably, the unintended consequence of the HW discourse is the creation of societies that are highly anxious and polarised, constantly fearing their fellow citizens who might turn out to be vehicles of insidious ‘hybrid’ influence, rather than unified and resilient in the face of the threat posed by Russia and the genuine domestic problems.

Explicating the ‘hybrid warfare’ Discourse in Czechia, 2014–2021 The previous section already developed two of the central arguments of this book. First, that ‘hybrid warfare’ should be treated as a constructed and contingent discourse, rather than a neutral and objective description of the world. Second, that this discourse is not helpful in facing the threat that comes from Putin’s Russia and even counter-productive in dealing with social issues like polarisation, distrust or the spread of misinformation. Through these arguments, we have sought to deconstruct and repoliticise the HW discourse. Put differently, by pointing out to the ‘lab leak’ origins and extreme vagueness of the terms, as well as the failure of its key assumptions, we aimed to open space for thinking political alternatives. Yet, this was only the beginning. We do not only want to deconstruct and critique but also explicate the social processes that enabled the rise of the HW discourse in Czechia. Thereby, we contribute to the critical literature on ‘hybrid warfare’ (Bahenský, 2018; Caliskan & Liégeois, 2020; Fridman, 2018; Galeotti, 2019b; Mälksoo, 2018) by providing an empirically rich case study of the development of the HW discourse in one country, focusing on the intersection of specifically domestic as well as broader transnational processes that together made this possible. Thereby, we speak also to other contexts, in which politics has been viewed as ‘militarised’, ‘weaponised’ or captured by ‘culture wars’ (Barša et  al., 2021; Brooks, 2017; Davies, 2019; Galeotti, 2022; Stavrianakis & Stern, 2018).

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As our analysis has a distinctly Central and East European (CEE) dimension, which will be grasped through the idea of East/West liminality, we speak also to the established literature on CEE geopolitics (Cadier, 2019; Kazharski, 2022; Kuus, 2007; Neumann, 1999) and the more recent debate on the need to decolonise knowledge on CEE (Krulišová & O’Sullivan, 2022; Mälksoo, 2021, 2022; O’Sullivan & Krulišová, 2020). To this purpose, we utilise and connect a range of concepts from International Political Sociology, Critical Security Studies and Critical Geopolitics that allow us to bring together three different dimensions of the problem: first, the socio-linguistic level of language, which we grasp mainly through discourse and narrative. Second, the socio-material dimension of practices and interactions, which we capture through the notion of assemblage. Third, the socio-psychological level of identity, affect and emotions, which we analyse through the framework of ontological (in)security. By bringing together these literatures and by utilising them in detailed and extensive empirical research, we aim also at a broader and more general contribution to critical scholarship in IR and human geography, especially the three fields listed above. Key Concepts and Arguments We have already suggested that ‘hybrid warfare’ should be understood as a discourse. Yet, discourse is a term that is used in very different ways (e.g.  Herschinger, 2016; Holzscheiter, 2014). In this book, we understand it as a ‘system of meaning’ that organises (more precisely: produces) relations between key concepts through which we define security, identity and our relationship to the world (Howarth, 2005; Howarth & Torfing, 2005). Approached through this lens, HW discourse is organised around the central notion of ‘hybrid warfare’, which functions as an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau, 1996)—a term that holds the discourse together by functioning as its ‘centre’ that determines other relations and that is flexible enough to be filled with different contents. To illustrate this point, ‘hybrid warfare’ organises the relations between different actors by dividing the political space into a strict friend/enemy binary and presenting Russia and the West as the key political actors, situating the two in a relationship of war-like confrontation. This duality then creates an easy and recognisable grid for the insertion of other actors along a ‘pro-Western’/‘pro-Russian’ axis, whilst the central concept of HW remains vague and defined only in broad strokes.

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Therefore, discourse is a necessarily general and broad notion, which can hold together multiple different, even contradictory narratives. If discourse presents the organising structure, narrative is best understood as a more specific story through which actors relate to the world (Bueger, 2013; Selbin, 2010; Wagenaar, 2011). In this sense, narratives are ways how actors utilise the discursive structure and make it their own, thereby also reproducing their identity and the broader discourse itself. We will show that the Czech HW discourse was further developed by three main narratives, which presented markedly different stories of what the exact nature of the HW threat was, who or what should be protected from it, what responses were desirable and what knowledge counted as legitimate. While all sharing certain basic assumptions, these narratives had very different emphases, ranging from fortifying defence institutions to teaching media literacy. This had the dual and paradoxical effect of both further stretching and diluting the notion of HW, as it could progressively accommodate new meanings and issues, and contributing to the power of the broader discourse, as new people and agendas were welcome to join. While discourse and narrative help us explain the rise, construction and contestation of ‘hybrid warfare’ as a security issue, we reach to the concept of assemblage to show also how exactly this process happened and who participated in it. Thereby, we complement the socio-linguistic focus of discursive and narrative approaches, from which we borrow the idea that politics is primarily a struggle over meanings, with the socio-material emphasis on how these meanings are embedded and pushed forward through practices and interactions in concrete institutional and material contexts.3 We understand assemblage as a networked constellation of actors and their socio-material contexts, which temporarily coheres around similar interests, fears and ideologies, personal relations, technologies and physical meeting points (Bueger, 2018; Dittmer, 2017; Müller, 2015). The HW assemblage, therefore, is defined as the loose network of 3  It could be argued that the distinction between discourse and assemblage is unnecessary, as the concept of assemblage already contains linguistic elements and, in turn, there are approaches suggesting that the notion of discourse contains also the totality of social and material relations (e.g. Laclau & Mouffe, 2001). We broadly agree and we do not want to draw any ontological boundaries between the necessarily intertwined aspects of language, social practice, affect/emotion and materiality. Our point is a pragmatic one and the distinction between discourse and assemblage is purely practical, as we believe it enables to better organise our research by dividing it into different aspects and discussing each of them and in turn (for a similar approach see Müller, 2013).

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­ oliticians, officials, journalists, activists or academics, meeting in workp shops and communicating via messenger apps, working together to push forward HW-related agendas. The HW discourse can be seen as providing the shared purpose and defining the coherence of the assemblage, while, in turn, the assemblage reproduces the discourse and pushes it forward to new audiences via its collective agency exercised by a whole range of practices: designing policies, organising conferences, writing journalistic and academic outputs, tweeting and sharing. The assemblage constantly evolves so that we can see both its gradual institutionalisation (e.g. in the emergence of HW-related institutions) and internal differentiation (based, among other things, on the different HW narratives). If assemblage helps us to account for the socio-material processes that sustained the discourse and pushed it forward, the concept of ontological security is essential for understanding the socio-psychological conditions under which the HW discourse could flourish in the first place. Ontological security is principally a state in which subjects (collective or individual) maintain an understanding about their place in the broader world and their continuous existence in time and can relate to others on the basis of trust (Giddens, 1991; Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2017; Laing, 1960). The absence of ontological security leads to confusion and anxiety, triggering the need to re-establish one’s sense of self via the production of narratives and discourses that would re-create cognitive and affective order. We will show that the rise of the HW discourse in Czechia was made possible by the destabilisation of the optimistic post-1989 narrative in the short period of 2008–2013. This triggered a sense of crisis and ontological insecurity, opening space for discourses and narratives that would promise to ‘resolve’ this frustrating experience and re-establish a sense of order. We further argue that this sense of crisis was particularly salient and painful in the Czech (and broader CEE) contexts, as it exposed and resonated with deeper local and regional ontological insecurities. We explain them around the idea of liminality, which presents our starting point for unpacking the socio-linguistic, socio-material and socio-psychological dimension of the problem. Liminality is simply defined as a vulnerable ‘in-­ between zone’, not belonging fully to any of the established categories through which social life is ordered (Mälksoo, 2012). The sense of crisis in Czechia, we suggest, was fuelled also by the (self-)understanding of Central and Eastern European identities as being stuck between the desirable ‘West’ and the despicable ‘East’ (Krastev & Holmes, 2019; Kuus, 2007; Zarycki, 2014). This was further amplified by the broader global

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anxiety about the blurring boundaries between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ (Davies, 2019; Galeotti, 2022; Mälksoo, 2012). Consequently, we argue, the sense of ontological insecurity coming from the dislocation of the post-1989 discourse was reinforced also by this experience of dual liminality, which triggers chronical anxiety about one’s own position between East and West, war and peace. The rise of HW discourse can be seen as an attempt to resolve these liminal anxieties. To put the concepts together into an overarching argument, the rise of the HW discourse in Czechia was made possible by the emergence of a ‘void of meaning’ in the aftermath of the dislocation of the post-1989 optimistic discourse (Barša et al., 2021; Nabers, 2009). The success of the HW discourse, by which we mean the way how it gradually spread within the security circles as well as to broader societal arenas and materialised in government policies and institutions, can be attributed to a range of factors. First, it was flexible enough to accommodate different narratives within its broader discursive structure. Second, it was pushed forward by the hard and sustained work by the actors gathered within the HW assemblage. Third, it could respond to the sense of crisis by effectively mobilising existing cultural tropes to offer the promise of ‘resolving’ the vulnerabilities of the dual—East/West, war/peace—liminality and restoring ontological security. As the connecting devices between these arguments, we offer the two notions of geopoliticisation and warification. These are discursive strategies, through which different actors and issues are represented as either part of a geopolitical confrontation between the West and Russia (geopoliticisation; see Cadier, 2019) or part of an ongoing war (warification4). Taken together, they constitute the central pillars of the HW discourse, which both warifies social issues, for example by presenting misinformation as part of a hybrid or information ‘war’, and geopoliticises them, for example by presenting this ‘war’ as a civilisational struggle between the West and Russia. Yet, these strategies also both have their roots in broader transnational discourses, for example the recurring debates about Central Europe’s ‘Westernness’ (Kuus, 2007; Neumann, 1999) or the t­ ransformation of war 4  Our notion of warification is indeed similar to the established concept of securitisation, that is construction of something as a security issue (the classical reference is Buzan et al., 1998). By using warification, we want to highlight that it was the specific notion of ‘war’ that became so dominant in the HW discourse. And war is indeed an extreme and particular version of (in)security. Therefore, warification can be seen as a more specific subcategory of the broader problem of securitisation.

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and peace (Davies, 2019; Mälksoo, 2012). This also enables us to offer our insights about the role in geopoliticisation and warification in politics as generalisable, open hypotheses to be tested in other contexts. Crucially, the two strategies bear the promise of resolving the frustrating uncertainties of the dual liminality—by applying the logic of war to politics via warification and rushing to ‘the West’ via geopoliticisation. By constantly reiterating these strategies, that is by geopoliticising and warifying new issues in new contexts, actors gathered in the assemblage continuously reproduce the HW discourse, as well as reconfirm their own position within the assemblage. Research Design, Methods, Data The arguments in this book are not only based in theory but also grounded in extensive and multi-method empirical research, lasting over six years and including dozens of interviews and participant observations, as well as thousands of pages of textual sources of different sorts. In generating, organising and interpreting this data, we relied on interpretive and critical methodologies, which became established in international relations (IR) and related disciplines over the last decade (Aradau et al., 2015; Salter & Mutlu, 2013; Shepherd, 2013). The central idea unifying this broad tradition is that methods are ‘performative rather than representative’ (Aradau et al., 2015, p. 15); they are devices through which we intervene in the social processes that we are trying to make sense of. These interventions, then, are necessarily incomplete and partial—as there are always more people to talk to, more questions to ask, more texts to read and more angles to consider. The selection of methods and data, then, is driven above all by the research questions and the overall aims of the project, the concepts within which it is embedded, and, indeed, subjective biases grounded in our critical stance towards the HW discourse. This meant that we prioritised those aspects of the HW debate in Czechia that could help us explicate the structuring and development of the HW discourse and the assemblage that reproduced and relied on it, as well the political effects and normative issues linked to it. Therefore, this book does not claim to present a complete picture about everything related to ‘hybrid warfare’ in/and Czechia in 2014–2021. Rather than that, it should be read as a focused case study driven by the following research questions: How did the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’ manage to establish itself as a new way of understanding

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security? What are the political effects, and why should we be cautious about the whole idea of HW? In answering these questions, we have relied on a broad range of interpretive, mostly qualitative methods. These can be broadly sorted into methods of (1) data collection/generation and (2) data interpretation. With respect to the former, we collected or generated our data in four main ways. First, we conducted approximately 50 in-depth, semi-­ structured interviews with actors somehow involved with the HW assemblage: diplomats, officials, security bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, academics, NGO activists, representatives of think tanks and donor organisations. These were done mostly in-person between spring 2017 and spring 2022, with a handful conducted online. Most of them were with representatives of Czech institutions, yet approximately a dozen of them were internationally affiliated respondents. Based on prior agreement, some were recorded and later transcribed, whilst from others we only took notes. All interviewers were assured of anonymity with respect to the information they shared with us. Second, we collected an extensive archive of HW-related texts for the period of 2014–2021. Most systematically, we used the Anopress database for monthly monitoring of Czech media, using the keywords ‘hybrid warfare’, ‘hybrid threats’ and ‘information war’. This generated up to more than a hundred returns every month. Our research assistants then went through this rough data and created annotated reports of ca 50–150 pages for each month within the period, totalling thousands of pages. We also conducted similarly systematic search for debates in the Czech Parliament, whose transcriptions are freely available online. This was then complemented by an archive of all official documents adopted on the matter in Czechia within the timeframe—government strategies, intelligence service reports and similar. As primary data, we also read and analysed the approximately ten books published on HW-related matters in Czechia in the timeframe. Dozens of other documents were added by scraping websites and social media feeds of NGOs, political parties and individual actors. For international links, we conducted a systematic review of documents published by EU and NATO and relied on an extensive reading of secondary literature. Third, with the help of our research assistants, we did a basic biographical analysis of the key actors in the Czech HW assemblage. Grounding our selection in insights gathered by interviewing and reading, as well as through the systematic collection of line-ups of speakers at all HW-related

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events in Czechia in the timeframe that we were able to get hold of (partially relying also on dataset from Rychnovská & Kohút, 2018), we created spreadsheets with basic publicly available information about the speakers and events. Fourth, we used additional ethnographic methods. The first of them was participant observation at approximately 20 public events related to HW, from which we generally took notes. In the last phase of the research, we also wrote two reflective essays to account for our experience while researching the project. Thereby, we tried to formalise our own affective states, positions and biases, hopefully adding an extra level of reflexivity into the writing. To make sense of the data gathered in these various ways, we used a combination of two basic methods. First, we conducted interpretive mapping to determine the shape and developments of the HW assemblage. Thereby, we combined the different data about the actors and the development of their activities and mutual relationships in time in a way similar to historiographic methods. This allowed us to capture the structuring of the assemblage and its transformations over time, the results of which are most visible in Chaps. 3 and 4. Second, we deployed the methods of narrative and discourse analysis. In narrative analysis, as the first step, we read the texts so as to identify patterns and grasp them via the notion of the key basic stories that are told about the meaning of HW, the character of the threat, etc. In the second step, more akin to traditional discourse analysis, we focused on the key underlying patterns, assumptions and logics that make these narratives possible and hold the broader discourse together. The results are most visible in Chaps. 2, 5 and 6. Clarifications Before we proceed further, three preliminary clarifications are in order. First of all, at no point do we suggest that Russia under its current leadership is not a threat for its neighbours, European security or the international order as such. What we challenge, though, is the idea that the HW discourse constitutes a helpful understanding of the Russian threat (which we see as being more about tanks, missiles and cyberattacks on infrastructures, and less about misinformation, trolling and societal values) and useful guidance for responding to it appropriately. Relatedly, we do not claim that everyone who ever engaged with HW-related issues contributed to the proliferation of the problematic HW discourse that we criticise in this

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book—to the same extent or even at all. We are not only aware of but also respect and admire the activities of, to give two examples, military officials working hard to bolster Czechia’s defence against threats old and new, or NGO activists trying to develop better understanding of the current information ecosystem among children in schools or senior citizens. For us, the key question is how this can be done without resorting to the geopoliticised and warified discourses of HW. We have met many officials, journalists, activists and academics who show that this is perfectly possible, demonstrating that, for example, cybersecurity can be bolstered and the risks of misinformation explained without jumping on the alarmist HW bandwagon and contributing to its adverse societal side-effects. Second, there are important questions related to our own positionality towards the HW assemblage and the implications of this for our research. We clearly do not consider ourselves as part of the assemblage, as we do not share the assumptions of the HW discourse. We are not included in its online message groups and generally do not get invited to its key events, and we would certainly not be recognised as members by its key actors. To the contrary, we have even been involved in minor public controversies following the presentation of some of our findings in the form of op-eds or media appearances (e.g. Eberle & Daniel, 2019; Kurfürst, 2019)—and indeed heard our fair share of criticism in personal or social media conversations. At the same time, we remain part of the rather small ‘Prague bubble’, meaning that we know many of the actors analysed in this book in some personal capacity. While some of them consider our work as counter-­ productive and even undermining Czech security interests, others have been open to conversations and even appreciative of the input we made. Therefore, we consider ourselves to be in an ambiguous and ambivalent relationship to our research object, both being close to it, and often feeling alienated and detached. Third, there is the problem of access, as national security is indeed often a closed-door and/or classified process (see Pallister-Wilkins et al., 2020). We have neither taken part in any classified debates nor actively sought any classified information (if this was included, it is based on the numerous media leaks). However, the emphasis of this book is on the inevitably public politics of security, by which we mean the social and discursive process through which the meaning of security is reproduced and remade within the society. Therefore, while on a personal level, we would certainly be interested in being the proverbial fly on the wall during secret meetings, this is not what our research is about primarily. For a certain idea of

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security to be accepted, for example as being endangered by an ongoing yet invisible ‘hybrid war’ waged by Russia, it is the public contestation that is essential, at least in a democratic state like Czechia. It is primarily this process that we unpack in this book.

Outline of the Book The book is organised into seven chapters, which together tell the story of the rise of the ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse in Czechia, as well as follow certain organisational and even chronological logic. At the same time, each of them focuses on different aspects of the problem and offers a different angle, meaning that the chapters can also be read in a different order or as individual pieces in their own right. Chapter 2 further develops some of the key conceptual arguments of the book, especially in relation to the socio-psychologic dimension of the rise of the HW discourse. It discusses liminality and its relation to ontological (in)security and uses these concepts to carve out the key notions of geopoliticisation and warification that are used to connect the arguments of the book together. The chapter also looks at the pre-history of HW in Czechia, showing that the rise of the discourse was made possible by a range of crises that shook up the society in the brief period of 2008–2013. Chapters 3 and 4 offer a deep and detailed empirical dive into the formation and further development of the Czech HW assemblage, thereby focusing explicitly also on the socio-material dimension. Chapter 3 first elaborates on the concept of assemblage and then looks at the initial period of 2014–2016/17, outlining the gradual and decentralised emergence and establishment of the HW assemblage in Czechia. Chapter 4 then covers its rapid expansion in 2017–2021, focusing on increasingly formal institutionalisation of HW in Czechia, its increasing instrumentalisation in domestic politics, as well as its growing internationalisation. It also offers a closer look at the key issues and events that defined the HW agenda in the country, such as the role of misinformation in the elections of 2017/2018, local ‘memory wars’ of 2019–2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Vrbětice affair of 2021. Chapters 5 and 6 provide closest look at the socio-linguistic dimension, as well as highlight the internal differentiation and unclear borders of the assemblage. This is done by zooming on narrative contestations of what HW is, what should be done about it and what counts as expert knowledge on these matters. Chapter 5 captures the internal differentiation of

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the assemblage, showing that the Czech HW discourse consisted of three main narratives, each of them offering a very different, even contradictory view about the exact nature of the HW threat and what should be done about it. Chapter 6 then looks at how the boundaries of the assemblage were maintained and redrawn in debates around what counts as valid HW expertise. Using the examples of security intelligence reports, journalistic practices as well as academic criticism of HW, it shows that ideas concerning HW expertise are highly unstable and disputed within and beyond the assemblage. Chapter 7 ties together the arguments and wraps up the book by providing explicitly normative lessons, driven by our desire to reclaim politics from the more general logic of war, of which the politics of ‘hybrid warfare’ is one particular example. We first discuss some of the more focused lessons, suggesting that HW should be dismantled, language de-­ weaponised and East/West thinking abandoned. Second, we argue that this may require more fundamental rethinking of politics around the ideas of slowness, vulnerability and democratic conflict.

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CHAPTER 2

Liminal Insecurities: Crises, Geopolitics and the Logic of War

This chapter presents the first step in our analysis, focusing on the conditions of possibility that enabled the rise of the ‘hybrid warfare’ (HW) discourse in Czechia after 2014. We show that this discourse emerged as a response to earlier processes and events unfolding roughly between 2008 and 2013. In this short period of time, the Czech society had to cope with a series of disorienting crises, whose origins, characters and scales differed. Yet, in their combined impact, they challenged the optimistic post-1989 identity narrative based on the adoption of liberal democracy, market economy and Euro-Atlantic integration—what others called the ‘return to the West’ (Slačálek & Šitera, 2022, p.  134). This produced a sense of social unease and created discursive space that could be filled by new political projects. When Russia first attacked Ukraine in 2014, the HW discourse emerged from this confusion and crisis, taking advantage of this opportunity to redefine how (in)security is understood in Czechia. There was nothing inevitable about the success of the HW discourse, but the social dislocations of 2008–2013 made it possible, as they created the structural conditions in which the discourse could resonate with broad audiences. In order to situate and ground these claims, we bring in the concept of liminality and theorise the connections between the HW discourse, the crises of 2008–2013, as well as more general problems facing the Czech society. In simplest terms, liminality is a condition of dwelling in an © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_2

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insecure ‘in-between zone’, not belonging fully to any of the established categories through which social life is ordered (Mälksoo, 2012). Czech society, we suggest, has found itself in such an uncertain liminal condition in two ways simultaneously. First, self-identifying as part of ‘Central Europe’, it is positioned in an ambiguous place on the East/West geopolitical axis. While not Eastern (anymore), the Czechs are also repeatedly frustrated by their failures to achieve a ‘properly’ Western status (whatever that means). Second, as part of a general global condition, the Czechs have now found themselves also in the chronically uncertain situation, in which war and peace are increasingly blurred. This results from the application of new technologies for the purposes of hostility and conflict, resulting in real or imagined risk such as cyberattacks, spying or information warfare, which are being constantly reminded to populations via traditional and social media (Davies, 2019). This dual liminality—neither East nor West, neither war nor peace—is frustrating the need to maintain a reasonably stable sense of identity to be able to cope with the challenges of the modern world—what the literature refers to as ‘ontological security’ (Giddens, 1991; Laing, 1960). Put simply, ontological security is a state in which subjects (collective or individual) maintain an understanding about their place in the world and their continuous existence in time and can relate to others on the basis of trust. While ontological (in)security is a general problem, we suggest that the pressures of dual liminality make Czechs and Central and Eastern Europeans (CEE) particularly prone to ontological insecurity, as they make it particularly difficult to develop a stable sense of identity. The series of crises experienced between 2008 and 2013 only further amplified these underlying ontological pressures, leaving highly anxious societies in their wake. We suggest that the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’ emerged as an attempt to seek ontological security by utilising two more general strategies that aim at ‘resolving’ the dual liminality: geopoliticisation and warification. In these strategies, ontological security is sought by identifying with ‘the West’ and rejecting anything ‘Eastern’ (geopoliticisation; see Cadier, 2019) and/or conceptualising increasing number of social issues as part of ongoing ‘war’ rather than ‘peacetime’ matters (warification). Geopoliticisation and warification, which later coincided in the HW discourse, bring highly disturbing negative side-effects, as argued in the previous chapter. In the end, jumping on the bandwagon of geopoliticisation and warification and fighting a ‘hybrid war’ may end up making our

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societies less resilient, our political cultures less democratic and our defence planning less effective. Yet, it also brings the appealing prospect of ontological security gained in the identity of a Western ‘hybrid warrior’ fighting away the existential dangers coming from ‘the East’. The success of the HW discourse was therefore made possible also by its tapping into this promise of ontological security that was provided by the more general strategies of geopoliticisation and warification. The chapter proceeds in four steps. In the first section, we develop the notions of liminality and ontological (in)security, arguing that the Czech society has found itself in the anxiety-inducing condition of dual liminality: between the East and the West, as well as war and peace. Second, we elaborate on the crises of 2008–2013, showing how domestic, regional and international developments were intertwined in their making and how they further destabilised the Czech society. Third, we elaborate on the East/West liminality and the attempts to resolve it via geopoliticisation, that is by presenting social issues as consequences of broader geopolitical struggles. Fourth and finally, we focus on the war/peace liminality and how the attempts to resolve it via warification contribute to the disturbing situation when ‘everything became war’ (Brooks, 2017).

Liminality and Ontological Insecurity The principal theoretical argument of this chapter is that the social conditions in which the ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse could emerge and flourish can be explicated through the concept of liminality. Originating in anthropology, liminality refers to an ‘interstructural position’ (Beech, 2011) of being stuck ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner, 2017 [1969]) established structures and categories. For example, liminality captures those conditions when it is not possible to clearly establish if one should be treated as a man or a woman, if a certain territory belongs to one state or another, or if we are living in times of war or peace. Liminality refers to the uncertainty and ambiguity (Beech, 2011, p. 287; Mälksoo, 2012, p. 481) of people trying to function—individually or collectively—in a world in which they ‘are neither one thing nor the other’ (Beech, 2011, p. 286). The idea of liminality as something outside and/or in-between classifications carries significant social and political consequences, as it challenges the categories and structures through which the world functions. Without being able to establish if an individual is a man or a woman, it is not possible to activate the network of gender scripts, social rules and even legal

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obligations that hold gendered orders together. Without being capable of deciding if a state is at peace or at war, we cannot correctly answer even the very basic political questions, including under what conditions it is acceptable to kill a human being. Orders are based on a degree of clarity, of knowing ‘what’s what’ so that this can be sedimented into structures, regulated by rules and overseen by political authority. In contrast, liminality presents the ‘in-between situations and conditions where established structures are dislocated, hierarchies reversed, and traditional settings of authority possibly endangered’ (Mälksoo, 2012, p. 481). Therefore, liminality challenges the established orders. For Rumelili (2012), the whole dynamics of political life can essentially be understood as a dialectical struggle between the structure and its attempts to reassert itself over the threats posed to it by liminality. Given that individual and collective identities are anchored in social structures, those who found themselves in liminal situations are likely to be under significant psychological stress. Research in organisational studies demonstrated liminality’s ‘negative psychological consequences’ (Beech, 2011, p.  287), showing how liminality ‘significantly disrupt[s] one’s internal sense of self or place within a social system’ (Noble & Walker, 1997, p. 31 cited in Beech, 2011, p. 287). This is further supported by studies demonstrating the stress to well-being of people in situations that can be interpreted as somehow in-between: non-binary persons stuck between the two broadly accepted sexes (de Graaf et  al., 2021; Thorne et al., 2019), ex-combatants trying to transition from war to peace (López et al., 2015; Themnér, 2011) or immigrants searching for identity between their old and new homelands (Simich et  al., 2009; Yakushko et al., 2008). In IR, similar arguments have been made in the blooming literature on ontological (in)security (Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017; Giddens, 1991; Kinnvall, 2004; Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020; Laing, 1960; Mitzen, 2006; Steele, 2008). This body of work is concerned with the socio-­ psychological processes that enable subjects—individuals, societies or states—to ‘cope’ under the conditions of late modernity. To be able to function, subjects need to develop ‘a centrally firm sense of [their] own and other people’s reality and identity’ (Laing, 1960, p. 39). Ontological security denotes the self-understanding as ‘an entity, with continuity in time and a location in space’ (Laing, 1960, p. 40). Put differently, ontological security is about subjects knowing who they are, where they come from and how they relate to others.

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Yet, in the radically uncertain late modernity, this requires significant effort, as self-identity becomes ‘a reflexive project’ in need of constant management (Giddens, 1991, pp. 5, 32). Facing the plethora of crises and challenges, subjects are at perpetual risk of ‘being overwhelmed by anxieties’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 37), which threaten their orientation in the world and even very existence as subjects.1 To ‘bracket’ them away and be able to cope (Giddens, 1991, p.  37), subjects develop mechanisms through which they maintain a reasonably stable sense of social reality and their place within it. These include biographical narratives that construct identities through linguistic or visual discourse, routines and rituals that guide everyday behaviour without having to even think about it and patterned relationships to significant others (Berenskoetter & Giegerich, 2010; Kinnvall, 2004; Mitzen, 2006; Steele, 2008). Put simply, ontological security is about seeking order to repress anxiety and be able to cope in the world, which includes developing a sense of agency and control over events (Giddens, 1991).2 From this perspective, liminality and ontological (in)security are closely related (Rumelili, 2012). As long as liminal situations are defined by ‘instabilities in the social context, the ongoing ambiguity and multiplicity of meanings’ (Beech, 2011, p. 288), they also make it very difficult for subjects to develop coherent identities and the ‘protective cocoon’ of routines that would enable them to ‘get on with the affairs of day-to-day life’ 1  The fundamental threat anxiety poses to subjective coherence also makes it different from fear (while the line between the two is rarely clear and is backgrounded in our framework). In this classical distinction that builds on Freud, fear is understood as an already ‘rationalised’ emotion related to a particular object—a spider, a violent partner, etc. Anxiety, in contrast, is a much deeper and much more ambiguous affective state that cannot necessarily be linked to a particular object and, therefore, it is much more difficult to deal with it, hence its paralysing character (Giddens, 1991, p. 44; Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020). 2  Ontological security studies is a broad church with complexities and internal controversies that cannot be dealt in this book (for recent overviews see Croft & Vaughan-Williams, 2017; Gustafsson & Krickel-Choi, 2020; Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020; Klose, 2020). We do not aspire to provide a theoretical contribution to this literature, as we have already done so elsewhere (Eberle, 2019; Eberle & Daniel, 2022; Eberle & Handl, 2020). Instead, we downplay the differences and use the key elements of the ontological security framework as building blocks for our examination of the HW discourse. This having said, our approach is closer to the psychoanalytically and post-structurally flavoured end of the spectrum, which questions the very possibility of achieving a durable state of ontological security, considers insecurity as the norm and focuses instead on the processes of ontological security-seeking, including their pathologies and failures (e.g. Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022; Mälksoo, 2019; Rossdale, 2015; Vieira, 2018).

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that defines ontological security (Giddens, 1991, p. 40). To the contrary, their condition is likely to be insecure and anxious, as the liminal position of being ‘not quite here, not quite there’ is prone to serve as a constant reminder of the uncertainty of their existence as subjects and fragility of the world as such. This does not mean that only liminals feel ontologically insecure. However, they are more likely to experience ontological insecurity more strongly and/or more often. At the same time, liminality does not need to have exclusively negative effects, as the shattering experience of insecurity and anxiety can also serve as a catalyst for change (Zevnik, 2017). Experiencing the cracks in existing structures may prompt the liminal subjects to act—and perhaps even transform the whole structure in consequence. As Rumelili puts it, liminality potentially ‘shifts the locus of agency from the established to those who are ambiguously positioned by the structure. It elevates the status of liminals from objects that are sought to be moulded by the agents of structure into one of the established categories, into subjects that challenge and subvert the structure’ (Rumelili, 2012, p. 497). However, as Rumelili herself shows, the direction and effects of such agency are by no means predetermined. Liminals can indeed adopt subversive strategies, ‘seek[ing] to convert the ambiguity of their position into an asset, and to challenge the existing social categories’ (Rumelili, 2012, p. 503). On the other hand, they may as well adopt conservative strategies ‘that reinforce and reproduce the existing social categories’ (Rumelili, 2012, p. 503), often by trying to ‘escape’ from the liminal position and identify with one of the existing categories. The HW discourse in Czechia is mostly built around these conservative strategies, as we will show later. In the rest of the chapter, we build on this conceptual debate to argue that the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’ in Czechia was made possible by the underlying conditions of dual liminality. First, between East and West, due to the uncertain and ambivalent relationship of Central Europe towards ‘the West proper’, whose nature was reopened again by Russia’s aggressive policy and the multiple crises of the West itself. Second, between war and peace, because of the blurring of the two categories due to far-reaching changes in warfare, technology and politics. The feelings of disorientation and uprootedness then resonated also with the after-effects of series of crises happening between 2008 and 2013, which undermined some of the key pillars of post-Cold War order. The emergence of the HW discourse can be read as an attempt to escape from the liminal condition and reclaim some sense of agency.

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Times of Crises: Czechia in 2008–2013 In his book on ‘hybrid war’ between Russia and the West, Mitchell Orenstein suggests that ‘many of us in the West are suffering from an intense sense of dislocation in politics. If you feel that politics has suddenly gone crazy, this book is for you’ (Orenstein, 2019, p. 1). Very similarly, Nina Jankowicz’s bestseller, How to Lose the Information War, argues that there is a ‘crisis of truth and trust Western democracy currently faces’ (Jankowicz, 2020, p. xxvii). While offering different views on causes and consequences, Orenstein and Jankowicz share a key idea, which has also become the underlying assumption of the HW discourse: that there is a link between Russia’s activities such as spying, hacking, corrupting elites and spreading misinformation, and the political crisis of the West. To give another prominent example of this assumption, Timothy Snyder’s recent writing is ripe on claims like ‘Russia’s candidate became the president of the United States’, and ‘Brexit was […] a sign that a cyber campaign directed from Moscow could change reality’ (Snyder, 2018, pp. 10, 106). We are very much on board with the suggestion that the sorry state of many Western democracies and what has become known as ‘hybrid warfare’ are closely related. Yet, we also wish to challenge and complement— rather than reject completely—the narrative that sees Russia’s actions as a leading cause of our ‘politics gone crazy’. In fact, there is little research that would back up Snyder’s claims about the ability of Moscow’s—or anyone else’s—cyber campaigns to ‘change reality’, at least as long as this means significantly swaying public opinion or deciding election through the spread of propaganda and misinformation. In contrast, a number of studies claim that such effects are modest at best and extremely difficult to measure in any case (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Altay et  al., 2023; Lanoszka, 2019; Lazer et  al., 2018; Miró-Llinares & Aguerri, 2021; Radnitz, 2022). A study directly focusing on Czechia’s 2021 parliamentary election concluded that ‘exposure to misinformation did not seem to play an important role in the voting decision’ (Syrovátka, 2022), leading the authors to rethink their assumptions in a rather dramatic manner: ‘We ceased viewing misinformation as a cause of voting behaviour, and instead understand it as a consequence. In other words, the acceptance of false statements is just another way how to reinforce an already formulated position’ (Syrovátka, 2022). At the same time, the HW discourse clearly plays an important political and ontological function (Mälksoo, 2018). Building on the arguments

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from the previous section, we suggest that the HW discourse should be read as a response to already existing crises and a compensatory attempt at a ‘resolution’ of deeper insecurities stemming from the liminal condition. It is important to realise that Czech society had to absorb a series of overlapping crises in the time of only very few years between 2008 and 2013. The origins and scopes of these crises were different, with some of them being purely domestic and others having a European or even global character. However, they all contributed to the shattering of Czechia’s optimistic post-1989 identity narrative, which was defined by embracing the trinity of market capitalism, liberal democracy and a ‘return to the West’ in the form of Euro-Atlantic integration (Holy, 1996; Slačálek & Šitera, 2022, p. 134). This led to new discursive projects trying to make sense of the situation. ‘Hybrid warfare’, the subject of this book, then became one of them, as we will show in the following chapters. The first ‘constellation of crises’ (Vaughan-Williams, 2021) that seriously disturbed Czechia’s post-1989 self-understanding arrived in 2008–2009. It is at this very moment that Orenstein, echoed by many articulators of the HW discourse, starts his story about ‘Russia’s hybrid war on the West’, presenting the crisis above all in geopolitical terms. In particular, he points to an open letter warning about Russia that was written to Barack Obama from (and on behalf of) Central and Eastern Europe in July 2009 (Orenstein, 2019, pp.  8–9). Signed by leading post-­ communist politicians, including the Czechs Václav Havel, Alexander Vondra, Luboš Dobrovský and Karel Schwarzenberg, the document spells out the anxiety perceived at the time: ‘All is not well either in our region or in the transatlantic relationship. Central and Eastern Europe is at a political crossroads and today there is a growing sense of nervousness in the region […] we are not certain where our region will be in five or ten years time’ (‘An Open Letter to the Obama Administration from Central and Eastern Europe’, 2009). This ‘nervousness’ and uncertainty were driven largely by geopolitical factors: Russia’s renewed aggressiveness, as testified by the 2008 war with Georgia, and Obama’s intentions to re-orient US foreign policy away from Europe. In Orenstein’s reading, it ‘was clear to many CEE leaders by 2009 that Russia had launched an all-out hybrid war on their region, hoping to detach it from the West’ (Orenstein, 2019, p. 9). Yet, pursuing his disarmament and ‘restart’ agendas with Russia, the Obama administration ignored the pleas and unceremoniously cancelled a missile defence project it had inherited from its predecessors, whose parts were supposed to be

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based in Czechia and Poland. By the foreign policy and media elite in Prague, the missile defence deal was seen as a strategic and even civilisational anchor to the US. Given this identity-based understanding, one that was correctly labelled as ‘melodramatic’ (Ditrych, 2021), it is not surprising that Obama’s cold response was met by ‘panic – one cannot really call it by a different name, [which] was quickly replaced by emotional pleas in which the darkest visions and traditional geopolitical realism resurface’ (Hynek & Stritecky, 2010, p. 184). Facing resurgent Russia, ‘an influential part of the Czech political and intellectual elite succumbed to anxiety’ (Drulák, 2012, p. 79). Yet, without underplaying the importance of geopolitical discourses, it was hardly the case that Czechs had nothing else to be worried or anxious about in 2008–2009. In fact, this was the time when the society was hit by at least two other crises, with neither of them having much to do with Russia, geopolitics or security in the traditional sense. These crises also amplified the feelings of alienation and discontent that may have been overlooked, but were always present on the margins of the otherwise optimistic post-1989 discourse (Charvát, 2023). First was the global economic crisis. Absorbing the full hit in 2009, Czechia’s export-driven economy experienced the worst year (superseded only by the pandemic year of 2020), losing almost 5% of GDP (‘Czech Republic GDP Growth Rate 1991–2022’, n.d.) and recording the second-­ highest annual increase of unemployment on record (‘Czech Republic Unemployment Rate 1991–2022’, n.d.). The economic crisis also made it painfully clear that Czechia was a ‘dependent market economy’, in which local industries largely perform cheap and secondary tasks for their West European owners (Nölke & Vliegenthart, 2009). Panicking in the crisis, these companies often halted their investments in Central and Eastern Europe to support their businesses back home, leading to a temporary freeze in convergence (‘catching up’) with West European standards (Vliegenthart, 2010). Realising the blunt failures of Western economic elites and having to bear the consequences of the mistakes of others, it is not surprising that many Czechs and other Central and Eastern Europeans were increasingly disillusioned with the economic system and the political class that promoted it (Krastev & Holmes, 2019, p. 21). Apart from the very material consequences, there was also another dimension: as the promises of ‘free market’ and ‘catching up’ presented key pillars of the post-communist order, encountering its failures must have also been strongly disorienting

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in ontological security terms. Indeed, for Krastev and Holmes, this fallout of the global economic crisis marks the beginning of the downfall of ‘the Age of Imitation that began in 1989 and came to end sometime between 2008 and 2016’ (2019, p. 188). As a leading Czech liberal journalist put it, this really was a ‘crisis, which changed Czechia more than we had been able to realise at that point’ (Šídlo, 2022). Second, apart from being hit hard by global dynamics, Czechia was struggling also with a domestic political crisis of its own. At the time when Havel and others were drafting their letter to Obama, the country was already in the middle of a constitutional stalemate. The fall of the centre-­ right government of Mirek Topolánek resulted in an impasse and the country spent over a year in political limbo, governed by a caretaker technocratic government. As two Czech political scientists put it, ‘a growing amount of people lost trust in politics during this time, which opened space for the rise of new political parties and protest movements,’ leading to a broader ‘crisis’ in ‘Czech party democracy’ (Havlík & Mejstr ̌ík, 2021, pp. 101, 106). This is reflected in opinion polls, showing that satisfaction with political situation fell into single-digit area, with only 8% satisfied in April and November, and 5% in September 2009 (CVVM, 2009). This sentiment was shared also by intellectuals participating in the emergent ‘crisis’ discourse. Petr Fiala, a political scientist and later leader and Prime Minister for the conservative ODS party, wrote about an ‘approaching crisis of democracy’ (Fiala, 2009). Petr Drulák, an IR scholar and later Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Social Democrats (Č SSD), demanded nothing less than a revolution that ‘would wipe out today’s corrupt political system and its representatives without resorting to violence’ (Drulák, 2009). In sum, by the end of 2009, Czech society had experienced shocks that shattered trust in both national (parties, parliament, etc.) and transnational institutions (market capitalism, European security order), putting pressure also on ontological security. Yet, while geopoliticisation was present as ontological fix—as witnessed by the 2009 letter to Obama—it had not become dominant until Russia’s first aggression against Ukraine in 2014 (when it also coincided with warification). Instead, anxiety and frustration were channelled on domestic targets, especially in the form of the ‘anti-corruption’ discourse aimed against large parts of the political class (Havlík & Voda, 2018; Naxera, 2018). Yet, the following years were not any easier, as the closely intertwined economic and domestic political crises never really ceased.

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When the general election finally arrived in June 2010, it marked a fundamental break in the country’s politics. The duopoly of ODS and Č SSD that characterised Czech politics from mid-1990s was finished, as the parties lost staggering 25% compared to 2006, from which they never recovered. Eventually, another centre-right, ODS-led government was put together, this time under the leadership of a new Prime Minister Petr Nečas. Both the significantly weakened ODS and its main partner, TOP09, won the election on the dual platform of austerity and anti-corruption. The government’s agenda provided a long list of spending cuts in the name of ‘budgetary responsibility’ and, rather expressively, promised to ‘start cutting out the cancer of society – corruption’ (Government of the Czech Republic, 2010, pp. 2, 3). Yet, mired by another series of crises, many of them of its own making, the Nečas government only amplified the already existing socio-economic tensions and spectacularly failed in its mission to root out corruption and restore political trust. As far as the economy is concerned, things went from bad to worse for the EU in 2010–2012, culminating in a near-collapse of the Euro (Tooze, 2018). After a short-lived recovery in 2010, Czechia’s economy plunged into recession again and did not bounce back until 2013—marking the longest recession since mid-1990s (Č T24, 2013; Novinky, 2013). Czechia performed significantly worse than all neighbouring states in this respect (World Bank, n.d.). Unemployment remained high for the country’s standards, oscillating around 7% in the whole 2009–2013 period (‘Czech Republic Unemployment Rate 1991–2022’, n.d.) and real wages decreased in both 2012 and 2013 (‘Czechia’, n.d.). The Nečas government responded by staying firm in its austerity course, which only further hit the economy and contributed to the slow pace of recovery (Tesárková & Mejstřík, 2013). This opened space for the revival of the until-then rather pacified trade unions, which were able to mobilise some of the biggest demonstrations since 1989 (Č TK, 2012). With respect to the ongoing crisis of domestic politics, the Nečas government was from the beginning plagued by infighting, corruption scandals and instability, which was later accompanied by the collapse of its third member, the anti-corruption Public Affairs (VV) party. Trust in political institutions hit the ground once again, with only about one in ten Czech citizens trusting the government and the parliament at the lowest point in late 2012 and early 2013 (CVVM, 2012, 2013). Satisfaction with the political situation fell back into single digits in 2011 and stayed there

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through 2013, most of the time with only 3–5% declaring themselves as satisfied (ibid.). Put simply, by early 2013, the Czech society found itself both under the biggest economic hardship since the transformation of the 1990s and in a state of deep alienation from the crumbling political structures. These insecurities were capitalised upon by new actors, typically—and often misleadingly (Barša et al., 2021)—labelled as ‘populists’. In early 2013, Miloš Zeman, a former Č SSD Prime Minister, staged a political comeback and won the first-ever direct presidential election on an anti-establishment platform, promising to become ‘a president for the lower ten millions’ (Č TK, 2013). The Nečas government collapsed months later, when the police stormed the Prime Minister’s offices and accused his closest aide (and later wife), Jana Nagyová, of corruption and abuse of power (BBC News, 2013; Lopatka & Muller, 2013). While the internally riven Social Democrats came first in the subsequent election, the biggest winner was the billionaire running on an anti-elite technocratic platform, Andrej Babiš, who came close second and became an important player in a new centre/centre-left government. With traditional parties reduced to shadows of their former selves and the duo of Zeman and Babiš ascending to key positions, this was a different political system than the one that shaped Czechia for the preceding 20 years. The proponents of the liberal elite that had dominated Czechia’s post-communist transformation were now out of power and outnumbered by the ‘populists’ and oligarchs that were increasingly prepared to challenge key aspects of the optimistic post-1989 story. Importantly, liberals’ loss of institutional political power was accompanied also by a decline in their symbolic power due to profound changes in the media landscape. Hit by the economic crisis, West European companies sold most of Czechia’s leading media houses to local oligarchs, with Babiš being only the most visible and worrying case. Many of these new owners would throw their weight behind conservative, ‘populist’ or oligarchic agendas, which prompted years of tectonic shifts in the media landscape (Kotisova & Císařová, 2023; Slačálek & Šitera, 2022; Štětka, 2012). This was further supported by the ascent of social media that diminished the influence of traditional newsrooms. The ‘most dynamic’ period of increase in social media use in Czechia occurred between 2009 and 2012, with a hike from 5% to 31% (Czech Statistical Office, 2021).

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Maps of Fear: Geopoliticisation and East/ West Liminality Reading the developments in Czechia between 2008 and 2013 through the lens of ontological security, we suggest that the society had to cope with strong socio-psychological pressures stemming from a series of crises. Taken together, these dislocated the key pillars of the post-1989 narrative, producing a ‘void of meaning’ (Nabers, 2009, 2015). This brought both the anxiety of not knowing what will follow and the opportunity to fill the void with content. One of the broader discourses that re-emerged to provide this content and attempted to play an ontologically stabilising role was the centuries-old civilisational geopolitics that divides the world between ‘the West’ and a series of other ‘civilisations’ (Kuus, 2007; Toal, 2017). Facing uncertainty, reinforced by the liminal East/West (self-) positioning, many in Czechia rushed to geopolitics, especially those in the liberal corner that dominate both foreign policy and intellectual circles. Civilisational geopolitics then became a key repertoire of resources for the HW discourse, which would borrow its key themes and actualise them in the post-2014 context. Periodic ‘returns of geopolitics’ into public debate are common in times of uncertainty (Browning, 2018; Guzzini, 2012, 2016; Vaughan-­ Williams, 2021). As Guzzini argues, geopolitics is ‘particularly well suited to respond to such an ontological anxiety, since it provides allegedly objective and material criteria’ for understanding politics (Guzzini, 2016, p. 18). Put simply, the appeal of geopolitics lies in the promise that it will deal with the anxiety of the unknown by covering it over with well-worn arguments basing politics on allegedly objective phenomena like the nature of climate, the richness of natural resources or the distance from civilisational centres. Guzzini draws on the Critical Geopolitics tradition that understands geopolitics above all as discourse that tries to make sense of ‘the world’ by constructing it through geographic categories. Critical Geopolitics deals with ‘how states see the world, how they spatialize it and strategize about the fundamental tasks of the state’ (Toal, 2017, p. 10). It is about socially constructed ‘maps of pride and pain’ (Dijkink, 1996) that draw boundaries and divide friends from enemies. As such, the force and allure of geopolitical discourses comes from their social acceptance. While a good starting point, this argument needs to be developed further to account for the specifically Czech and broader CEE context. In light of the region’s East/West liminality, the relationship between

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civilisational geopolitics and ontological security is more ambiguous than Guzzini would have it. The dominant geopolitical discourse in the region has long been that of a ‘return to Europe’, a version of East/West geopolitics in which ‘the West’ is portrayed as a superior civilisation and CEE’s cultural home, while Russia is Orientalised and presented as an existential threat (for classical studies, see Kuus, 2007; Neumann, 1999; Todorova, 2009). On the one hand, such discourse brings in the promise of ontological security, as it enables Central and Eastern Europeans to ‘resolve’ their troubles by identifying with ‘the West’ and blaming Russia for the societal woes and mishaps. On the other hand, however, as soon as these East/West maps are invoked, it becomes painfully clear that the position reserved for CEE is that of subordinate, endangered and inherently insecure liminality. It never quite belongs to the ‘properly Western’ core: it is an ‘an eternal borderland of Europe’ (Mälksoo, 2010, p.  75), a ‘semi-­ periphery’ that is ‘simultaneously “inside” and “outside” Europe’ (Zarycki, 2014, p.  3) or a ‘waiting room between Eastern Europe and Europe proper’ (Kuus, 2007, p. 16). The position of liminality then enables distinct ways of dealing with the ‘void’ by redefining political issues with the help of the civilisational East/West discourse, which we will call internalisation of the East/West divide, restoration of the crumbling East/West structure and role-reversal that claims special agency and even superior position for the liminals. These are all variations on the discursive strategy of geopoliticisation, that is representing all sorts of social and political issues as primarily geopolitical problems (Cadier, 2019, p. 71), and pinning them down on an imagined East/West axis. This is a fundamentally conservative and reinforcing strategy of dealing with liminality, as it does not offer any novel and creative—let alone emancipatory—solutions, but mostly reproduces the underlying civilisational discourse. In the remainder of this section, we discuss these three variations in turn, showing that they all have deeper roots, yet all were then picked up and furthered through the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’. By building upon civilisational geopolitics in general and adopting these three ways of geopoliticisation in particular, the HW discourse could gain social acceptance as it spoke to meaningful and affective patterns sedimented deeply in the collective memory (also Eberle & Daniel, 2019). The first way is internalisation, in which the supposed East/West confrontation is drawn into the national politics as a key sense-making device. As a consequence, issues traditionally understood as domestic politics are

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redescribed as part and parcel of broader civilisational struggles. Varying problems and controversies, including questions of socio-economic redistribution, the accessibility of public services or media literacy, are discursively transformed into geopolitical issues. Consequently, civilisational lenses are used for orientation in local ‘culture wars’. If ‘culture wars’ are about ‘the shift in the public debates from conflicts over policies and their objectives to those over identities and values’ (Barša et  al., 2021, p.  10, orig. emph.), geopoliticisation via internalisation portrays these identities and values in East/West terms. In turn, this transforms domestic identity conflicts—and perhaps even domestic politics per se—into civilisational geopolitics by proxy, where anything seen as rational and moral becomes ‘Western’—and the opposite gets identified with the ‘barbarism’ of ‘the East’. Importantly, class dimension underlies this way of using East/West geopolitics, as ‘Westernness’ is a distinctly elite and exclusive attribute. ‘The elites, in particular their liberal pro-Western sectors, usually depict themselves as being part of the West, but being forced to co-exist in the same state, on the same territory with the “masses” who are, in fact, not yet in Europe’ (Zarycki, 2014, p. 84).3 These ‘backward masses’ are then not treated as respectable opponents within a pluralist society, but rather essentialised and even demonised, as displaying ‘different types of “eastern” influences and heritages’ (Zarycki, 2014, p. 84). This trope is strongly present in the HW discourse, where these supposedly ‘backward’ and manipulable ‘masses’ play a prominent role as a source of danger. To give an example, a widely read popular book on HW refers to the lower classes as ‘provincial Czech[s]’ with ‘utter disinterest in what is happening abroad’ and ‘socially deprived people’, whose absence at the ballot box is a ‘real blessing for any democracy’ (Alvarová, 2017, pp. 62, 194). A patronising relationship emerges, in which the ‘the main task of the liberal elite may be defined in terms of the need to re-educate Euro-skeptic masses’ (Zarycki, 2014, p. 88). This idea, namely that the mutual misunderstanding is not caused by genuine political differences, but rather the lack of

3  As the quote from Zarycki shows, there is also a strong temporal aspect to this way of using civilisational geopolitics, as ‘the West’ is understood as a desirable future, whilst ‘the East’—often labelled as ‘communist’—stands for the unattractive past (Cadier, 2019; Zarycki, 2014). Thereby, movement towards ‘the West’ becomes portrayed also as a movement forward in time (Krastev & Holmes, 2019, p. 26).

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education, morality or even worth of the other side, is then a key pillar of various narratives within the broader HW discourse (see Chap. 5). The second way is that of attempted restoration of Western identity, which is based on the assumption that present social problems are caused by not being Western enough. In this logic, more Westernisation is needed to overcome the problems facing Czech society. Therefore, more effort is needed to finalise the forward movement towards the desirable West (Krastev & Holmes, 2019, p. 26). Such geopoliticisation via restoration is essentially a mirror image of the anti-Western offensive of the national-­ conservative ‘anti-liberal turn’, as known above all from Hungary and Poland (Barša et al., 2021, p. 8). Where national conservatives respond to the same Western crises and the exhaustion of Central and Eastern Europe’s imitation efforts by forming ‘an anti-Western counter-elite’ and symbolically rejecting ‘Brussels’ and even liberalism as such (Krastev & Holmes, 2019, pp. 14, 34), pro-Western restorationists do the opposite: they recycle the narratives of Western superiority and own desire to belong to it as a way of escaping from the liminal position. This becomes one of the refrains of the HW discourse, in which Czechia’s ‘Westernness’ becomes one of the key desired attributes. As the Christian Democrat leader, Marian Jurečka, put in a Facebook post: ‘I do not want to live under the influence of an Eastern regime […] We deserve more. The Czech Republic belongs to the West!’ (Jurečka, 2021). Third and relatedly, Czechs and other Central and Eastern Europeans can deal with the pressures of East/West liminality through role-reversal (Mälksoo, 2010, p. 124), in which they claim a special—even superior— authority on Western identity. Instead of being a distant and subordinate periphery, CEE articulators ‘position[…] themselves among the vanguard if defending “European values”’ (Mälksoo, 2010, p. 136). Redressing past traumas as supposedly timeless ‘lessons’ for current policies (‘Munich’, ‘Yalta’), usual East/West hierarchies are upended, as CEE presents itself as possessing ‘the maturity and the will to stand up by the values that their Western European neighbours essentially lacked’ (Mälksoo, 2010, p. 145). The HW discourse is rich on such statements, in which proximity to and experience with Russia is cited as a source of authority vis-à-vis the more sceptical Western voices. In this vein, Orenstein praises the signatories of the letter to Obama who, in his reading, recognised ‘that Russia had launched an all-out hybrid war on their region’, as the ‘canaries in the coal mine for the West, a valuable early warning system that, unfortunately, was not heeded’ (Orenstein, 2019, p.  9). On the one hand, through

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role-reversal, Central and Eastern Europeans are able to reclaim agency, which brings the promise of ontological security and even a positive and emancipatory potential. On the other hand, it remains questionable whether this potential is really fulfilled. In the HW discourse, this agency is rarely used for critical questioning of the structure of civilisational geopolitics. Instead, it merely reverses the hierarchy, as CEE societies now present themselves as the ‘tutors’ lecturing their West Europeans ‘pupils’ (Jacoby, 2001). To sum up, while the three overlapping variations on the geopoliticisation strategy offer their distinct solutions to the insecurity-inducing experience of East/West liminality, their results are mixed at best. Internalisation can bring some fleeting sense of security by ‘explaining’ political polarisation as derivative from a much bigger struggle between civilisations. This helps bracket away all sorts of social issues, as these are not seen as legitimate concerns or grievances. At the same time, this also portrays the ‘Eastern other’ as being already within the society, bringing in the highly anxious assumption that we are always only ‘one election away from electing a pro-Russian government’ (Orenstein, 2019, p.  145). Restoration brings the optimistic promise that everything will be fine if only we try harder to become more Western. Yet, its realisation is blocked by the problems within the West itself and the fact that remaining ‘not quite’ fully Western is also a matter of CEE’s structural position and the lack of recognition by ‘proper’ Westerners that cannot be easily overcome. Relatedly, role-reversal brings the promise of agency and even superiority that appears to overcome the second-rate status of the liminals. Nevertheless, it also generates the repeated frustration with other Westerners, who do not happen to share the same views, bringing the question whether the West is actually still worth ‘looking up to’ (Rohac, 2016).

Everything Becomes War: Warification and the War/Peace Liminality The second aspect of the dual liminality that has amplified the Czech society’s feelings of ontological insecurity relates to the increasing blurring of the war/peace boundary. In broader transnational debates, the idea that war/peace distinction has been ‘gradually weakening for over a hundred years’ (Davies, 2019, p. xii) has been present already for decades. It was prominent within the 1990s military literature that preceded the initial

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formulation of the concept of ‘hybrid warfare’ (Fridman, 2018, pp. 11–30). The debate was then mainstreamed above all in the aftermath of the declaration of the ‘war on terror’ and the following interventions. Suddenly, Western publics realised that their states appeared to be locked in endless ‘policing wars’ with nebulous enemies in the form of ‘insurgents’ and ‘terrorists’ (Holmqvist, 2016), which were usually undeclared and had little respect for distinctions between wartime and peacetime. In light of these developments, it is no wonder that states and societies across the world were ‘made increasingly nervous by the difficulty of establishing where war begins and ends, and how to define an enemy’ (Davies, 2019, p. 43). In contrast to civilisational geopolitics, these war/peace anxieties were arguably localised into the Czech discourse chiefly only after 2014. The disturbing experience of the war/peace liminality calls for ontological fixes, often resulting in conservative strategies that ‘reinforce and reproduce the existing social categories’ (Rumelili, 2012, p.  503). This typically means attempts at ‘escaping’ the in-betweenness by extending the logic of war into areas that would otherwise be considered as peacetime politics. This leads to the expansion of the uncompromising friend/ enemy logic to a growing array of social issues and/or to linking them together as part of a broader war-like confrontation. We will use the term warification to capture this discursive process through which potentially ‘everything becomes war’ (Brooks, 2017) and ‘politics is becoming increasingly framed and approached in quasi-militaristic terms’ (Davies, 2019, p. xvii). Granted, other concepts could be used interchangeably, with ‘militarisation of politics’ (ibid.) and ‘weaponisation of everything’ (Galeotti, 2022) being the best candidates. Our choice is largely a matter of semantics, as the notion of ‘war’ has had a distinct flavour and been more present in the Czech HW discourse than similar concepts. In this sense, warification extends and specifies the ideas of securitisation, as it can be understood as a discursive construction of an issue as part of war, which is indeed a particular and rather extreme form of security. Warification is further manifested in, as well as driven by three key points, which concern technology, speed and weaponisation of language. First of all, insecurities concerning the war/peace boundary are often linked to technology. ‘As society has been flooded by digital technology, it has grown harder to specify […] what is peaceful dialogue and what is conflict’ (Davies, 2019, p. xii). As long as computer networks, information infrastructures or even the smart phone in our pocket can be attacked by the enemy, the usual categories of ‘here’ and ‘there’ make little sense

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anymore. Consequently, due to its growing reliance on cyber and information networks, current global politics can be defined as permanently ‘stuck in the in-between zone of war and peace’ (Mälksoo, 2012, p. 492). A first vicious spiral emerges, in which technology-related anxieties feed the need for warification practices, as ‘something must be done’ about the danger posed by technologies, whereas the warification of ever broader areas of social life makes us anxious about an ever-increasing range of technologies (on this also Jacobsen, 2020). These motives are strongly present also in the Czech HW discourse, as manifest, for example, in debates about the stealthy yet allegedly strong corrosive influence of ‘disinformation websites’ and ‘chain mails’ (Chaps. 3, 4 and 6). Second, the disturbing idea that we cannot be sure if we are at war or not, also means that speed becomes of crucial importance (Davies, 2019), as being slow risks being too late, at least in this logic. The habit of responding immediately is then further embedded also in the accelerated information economy, based on the constantly updated feeds and mobile devices ready to be checked and used at all times. Yet, the need to respond quickly has its price, as ‘[i]mpulsive reactions can be paranoid and aggressive’ (Davies, 2019, p. 223). While the pressure of the war/peace liminality feeds the perceived need to be constantly alert, the propensity to act fast is ‘making us increasingly combative […] The speed of knowledge and decision making becomes crucial, and consensus is sidelined in the process’ (Davies, 2019, p. xvi). This creates a second vicious spiral, in which warification amplifies the tendency to act fast, whereas fast action is more likely to be aggressive and warified. More profoundly, this also leads to the valuation of a very particular type of knowledge—the highly instrumental ‘knowledge for war’, in which speed matters over accuracy, controlling the world is more important than representing it and the ‘goal is victory, not consensus’ (Davies, 2019, pp. 124, 133). In the Czech context, the warification of social issues was often fuelled by impulsive over-reactions to relatively minor skirmishes, as shown in Chap. 4, and it also led to the valuation of the highly divisive ‘war knowledge’ that leaves no room for doubt and connects especially the ‘hard core’ of the HW assemblage (see Chaps. 3 and 6). Third and relatedly, the extension of the logic of war via warification manifests itself through weaponisation of language. In this practice, ‘words become like weapons, selected for their impact, both on one’s own side (who need to be enthused and enraged) and on the other (who need to be demoralized and hurt)’ (Davies, 2019, p. 148). Echoing and extending

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the ‘culture wars’, language is used to paint the other side in degrading, even dehumanising terms. In the Czech HW context, this can mean ‘traitors’, ‘agents’, ‘Kremlobots’, ‘fifth column’, ‘collaborators’ or even ‘cockroaches’ (see especially Chaps. 5 and 7). Conflict is hardened, as what is called into question, following the ‘culture wars’ logic, are identities and values (Barša et  al., 2021, p.  10, orig. emph.), or even the moral and human worth of the respective parties. Debate over policy becomes practically impossible in the presence of warified discourses, as these tend to result in ritualised exchanges between uncompromising positions of predetermined friends and foes. A third vicious spiral emerges, in which warification leads to the proliferation of weaponised language, whilst the presence of weaponised language further fuels the ongoing extension of the logic of war. Similarly to geopoliticisation, the appeal of warification lies in its promise of restoring ontological security. While the idea that war should make anybody feel more secure may sound paradoxical, ontological security literature has long developed this point. People may prefer the experience of a ‘stable sense of self’ that comes from facing an enemy over uncertainty even when this means more profound material danger (Mitzen, 2006). As Mälksoo shows, ‘escaping’ from the war/peace liminality by labelling all sorts of actions as a form of (hybrid) war and linking them to Russia as the traditional enemy has enabled NATO ‘to reproduce its cognitively “knowable” world’ (Mälksoo, 2018, p. 380). From this perspective, it becomes understandable why everything should suddenly become ‘war’ in the HW discourse. The anxiety stemming from the presence of all sorts of unpleasant social issues and the uncertainty of how to respond to them are pushed away if these are portrayed as part and parcel of ‘war’. There is no longer room for discussion, hesitation or paralysis, as the imperative is to fight, albeit usually not by conventional means. In the words of a leading Czech HW-related figure: ‘This war begins in the head and it is also in the head where it must be fought. We lost the first key battle, but must win the war. Our kids could lose absolutely everything in it’ (Alvarová, 2017, p. 147). Importantly, there is also a strong affective aspect to the dynamics of security-seeking via warification. ‘Part of the seduction of war, at least in the imagination, is that it offers a type of togetherness and shared sentiment’ (Davies, 2019, p. 211). War creates the ‘rally around the flag’ effect, leading to intense feelings of belonging, excitement and collective solidarity. Injecting heroic fantasies into societies struggling with fragmentation, disillusionment or even boredom, ‘war becomes a cure for a social malaise’

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and ‘a means for restoring our ability to act’ (Kustermans & Ringmar, 2011, pp. 1775, 1791). In this fashion, warification brings the promise of repressing the unpleasant and paralysing experience of anxiety and replacing it with a sense of agency, purpose and a range of pleasant emotions. The elements are present, for instance, in self-narratives of Czech civil society actors, who report feelings of satisfaction, gratitude, fulfilment, pride or joy as resulting from their ‘awakening’ and ‘standing up’ against ‘the Kremlin’ (e.g. Janda, 2017; see Eberle & Daniel, 2019). Summing up the argument in this section, the war/peace liminality is ‘resolved’ by an escapist, conservative strategy of warification, through which political issues are constructed as part of ‘war’ and the uncompromising logic of war gets extended into ever more areas of social life. As we have suggested throughout, warification presents a constant risk for democratic politics. While ‘ordinary’ rules, including the maintenance liberal rights and safeguards, are guaranteed in peacetime, ‘war is considered a break from normal peaceful relations where alternative laws take over “ordinary” laws’ (Angstrom & Widen, 2015, p.  14). While democratic politics has its due processes, war opens the space for a ‘state of exception’ (Agamben, 2021) in which these can be suspended and curtailed. In extreme cases, as know from the ‘War on Terror’, all sorts of otherwise unacceptable measures become possible, from all out mobilisation to extensive surveillance. In the case of HW in Czechia, the consequences have fortunately been much less severe so far, consisting above all in making public debate on security matters extremely difficult, promoting a tunnel-vision mentality that hampers decision-making, as well as bypassing conventional liberal democratic processes by promoting governance through informal networks of ‘like-minded’ actors. However, there are also reasons to be sceptical about how warification performs is ontological security function. Just like civilisational geopolitics cannot really manage to durably ‘escape’ from the East/West liminality, warification can also provide only temporary fixes at best. While it may create a sense of belonging, its ‘us versus them’ logics deepens the very social divisions that the HW discourse itself sees as a security risk prone to be exploited by foreign powers. If ‘all politics becomes reduced to the potential build-up phase for a full-blown confrontation’, as is arguably the case in the HW discourse (Mälksoo, 2018, p. 386), then almost anything can potentially be treated as the first shot, especially in the context of our overreliance on potentially vulnerable technologies. If speed is paramount and parts of the society are portrayed as ‘traitors’, the ‘nervous states’ of

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‘constant and heightened alertness’, accompanied with routinised over-­ reactions, become the default mode of social life (Davies, 2019, p. xii, et passim). Like the border fences supposed to make Europeans secure from the ‘migration crisis’ that only ended up creating ‘bunkered societies’ and perpetuating the ‘very anxiety […] that they purport to address’ (Vaughan-­ Williams, 2021, p. 7), the warified HW discourse provides only ephemeral moments of ontological relief while risking damage to social cohesion and democratic politics (for a more detailed theoretical elaboration, see Eberle & Daniel, 2022).

Conclusion Security discourses do not emerge out of thin air. On the contrary, they need a certain mixture of social conditions, in which they can thrive, and available cultural resources, which they can build upon. In this chapter, we have traced the conditions of possibility that facilitated the rise of the ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse in Czechia. We pointed out the crucial role of the social dislocations in the years that preceded Russia’s first aggression against Ukraine in 2014. We have also shown that the Czech society has found itself in the condition of dual liminality, defined by a highly uncertain position between the East and the West, on the one hand, and war and peace, on the other hand. This experience of intense ontological insecurity then created the opportunity for new political discourses, which was taken up by the HW discourse that was gradually forged after 2014. The HW discourse was then able tap into the underlying liminal insecurities, as it could adopt and capitalise upon broader discursive strategies—geopoliticisation and warification—that ostensibly promised an escape from the liminal condition. While these conditions made the rise of the HW discourse possible, they present merely the first step in our analysis. The arguments in this chapter help us account for why the Czech society was experiencing ontological insecurity, which made it prone to accept new and rather radical discourses, as well as how the HW discourse ‘clicked’ into deeper cultural patterns. Yet, this in itself would not suffice, as other competing discourses could have taken advantage of the same conditions. The notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ might as well have remained a niche term used mostly in obscure bureaucratic and expert debates. The fact that it did not and became an important—even dominant—way of understanding insecurity in Czechia post-2014 was due to the hard work of bureaucrats, journalists,

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politicians, activists or academics that pushed in on the agenda. It is this work that we will turn to in the following two chapters.

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CHAPTER 3

Formation: Emergence of the ‘hybrid warfare’ Assemblage in Czechia (2014–2016/17)

This chapter covers the period between Russia’s attack on Ukraine in early 2014 and the publication of the National Security Audit in December 2016 and the debate in the weeks that followed. This was a period of a profound transformation of HW in Czechia, from a little-known professional notion to a key concept in national security discourse. By the first days of 2017, the geopoliticised and warified ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse was firmly entrenched in Czechia, as well as internationally. Yet, nothing of this existed in early 2014—not only before but also for months after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February that year. While ‘hybrid warfare’ had certain presence in NATO debates (Fridman, 2018), the concept had been virtually unknown in Czechia’s political, media and broader public debates and existed merely as a peripheral topic on the pages of specialised journals (Kubeša & Spišák, 2011; Zůna, 2010). Many of those who would become leading actors in the following years had not yet engaged—substantially or even at all—with issues that would later define the HW agenda. Often, they had not even known each other or interacted on a regular basis. We will argue that the HW discourse was able to capitalise on the ontological insecurity in Czech society, fill the ‘void’ left by the dislocation of the optimistic post-1989 discourse and achieve this transformation due to the agency and sustained effort of a particular group of actors. While the conditions of possibility were there, someone had to do the hard work to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_3

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use them. We will call this group the HW assemblage: an informal and open network of different actors (politicians, government officials, journalists, activists, influencers, academics) held together by similar interests, fears and ideologies, as well as professional and personal relations, and even the materiality of information technologies and physical meeting points (Bueger, 2018; Dittmer, 2017; Müller, 2015). Non-existent in 2014, the HW assemblage formed itself in the course of the following months and years in a process of co-production with the HW discourse: the HW discourse defined the purpose and membership of the HW assemblage, while the HW assemblage, in turn, reproduced and pushed forward the HW discourse. Gradually, its basic assumptions were developed into more sophisticated narratives, which were imprinted into official documents and exported into the public debate. Eventually, they materialised in institutions that emerged in parallel to the informal networks of the HW assemblage. Importantly, and to contradict some of the foreseeable criticism, we do not claim that there was some sort of an organised conspiracy or a masterplan behind the rise of HW in Czechia. Actually, we argue the exact opposite. For its most part, this process was neither centrally organised, nor linear, nor predictable. Instead, it was marked by profound contingencies, as things could have turned otherwise on multiple occasions and the HW discourse and assemblage could have had a very different shape—or perhaps even not really play a major part at all. Many of the key actors (especially in civil society) did not know what to do or even had a comprehensive idea what they were doing. Often, they just felt that something had to be done and tried their best to be part of it. It is from the often spontaneous and uncoordinated activities that the assemblage emerged, repeatedly relying on creative improvisations and ad hoc actions of both Czech and international actors. This produced synergic effects—people getting to know each other, meeting in workshops, setting up chat groups on messenger apps—that gradually led to the self-organisation of what became the HW assemblage. We develop this argument in five steps. In the first section, we introduce the concept of assemblage. After that, we use it to track the emergence of the HW assemblage in three chronological sections organised according to the years that followed: 2014, which was characterised by mostly uncoordinated efforts to reflect and respond to Russia’s aggression; 2015, which was decisive in putting the issue on the top of the agenda of both European and Czech security communities. Finally, 2016

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(spilling into the first days of 2017) marked the condensation of the assemblage and the formulation of an organised state response. In the fifth section, we revisit these developments from a more structural perspective, focusing on the key actors and their mutual connections.

Assemblage: Decentred Agency in the Production of (In)security Assemblage thinking has its roots in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who wanted to capture the networked, decentralised and often unruly character of late capitalism. Often borrowing also from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), assemblage has become an established concept in anthropology (Ong & Collier, 2005), human geography (Dittmer, 2017; Müller, 2015) and IR (Abrahamsen & Williams, 2011; Acuto & Curtis, 2014; Bueger, 2018). As Acuto and Curtis (2014) observe, though, this has not produced a unified school. Instead, assemblage is used in a variety of manners, ranging from philosophically oriented readings to pragmatic ways that see it as an interpretive lens or a methodology. The following paragraphs do not dive deeper into these conceptual debates, as there is neither space nor need for it (but see Acuto & Curtis, 2014; Müller, 2015). Instead, we offer a creative appropriation that uses assemblage primarily as an analytical device that allows us to do three things. First, to organise the variety of different ‘data’ gathered by interviewing actors, browsing websites and social networks, reading documents and media articles, or creating databases of events or message groups and their participants. Second, to meaningfully account for interactions (formal and informal, structured and decentralised) between very different actors (national vs. transnational, governmental vs. non-governmental) that pushed forward the HW agenda in Czechia. Third, to pursue a theoretically informed critical intervention into the debate on HW, highlighting the contingent nature of the interactions as well as their all-too-often occurrence outside the established processes and platforms of liberal democratic governance (for a similar approach see Abrahamsen & Williams, 2011; Sassen, 2006). We define assemblage as a relational and networked constellation of different actors and their socio-material contexts, which temporarily coheres around particular narratives, interests or affects. It is ‘a mode of ordering heterogeneous entities so that they work together for a certain

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time’, where these entities can be ‘humans, animals, things and ideas’ (Müller, 2015, pp. 28–29). As an example, modern city can be seen as an assemblage: it is a dynamic and ever-changing complex of material structures (buildings, railways, pipelines), humans in a variety of social roles (inhabitants, commuters, tourists), as well as specifically urban tastes, desires and identities. Similarly, the Czech HW assemblage is a constellation of humans in different roles (officials, journalists, activists) that relies on material means enabling their interactions (physical venues, online message groups and the apps that host them). It coheres around shared anxieties concerning Czechia’s political developments and creates the HW discourse to make sense of them, which then, in turn, defines the political purpose of the assemblage. Furthermore, assemblage is an arrangement of ‘different entities linked together to form a new whole’ (Müller, 2015, p.  28, emph. added). In other words, it is only in their particular connections and interactions that the elements gain their specific function, effects and a certain quality. In this sense, the assemblage as a whole is much more than the sum of its parts. It is only the inter-linking and resonance of, let’s say, people, buildings and transport infrastructures, industrial and service-based economies, and urban lifestyles that together creates the modern city. Similarly, it is only through their coalescing in workshops and messenger groups, based on shared sense of insecurity and similar ideological backgrounds, that the disparate members in the Czech HW assemblage were able to even start working together to push a discourse that successfully filled the ‘void’. While the assemblage exercises agency, this is not based in a rationally driven individual, but rather emerges from these relations and their synergic effects. To elaborate further, we understand assemblage above all through three key characteristics (Bueger, 2018; Dittmer, 2017; Müller, 2015). First, assemblages consist of relations of exteriority between their elements. As already suggested, relations are at the very centre of assemblage thinking, which argues that individuals, collectives, structures and objects become who—or what—they are only in their mutual relations. At the same time, all elements bring to the assemblage their own particular quality, which means that they ‘cannot be reduced to their function within the assemblage’ (Dittmer, 2017, pp. 9–10). The (ever-changing) whole constantly shapes its parts, as much as the (ever-changing) parts continue to re-model the whole. Moreover, elements often take part in more than one assemblage at the same time and enable the influencing and circulation of

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discourses and practices between these different assemblages (Abrahamsen & Williams, 2011; Acuto & Curtis, 2014, pp. 7–8). This is precisely what exteriority means: that an assemblage makes interaction possible, yet its elements still retain some autonomy. This will be clear in the HW assemblage, which could develop also because of actors bringing in their expertise and authority from different contexts. Second, assemblages are ‘productive of novelty’ (Dittmer, 2017, p. 10). Through the formation of an assemblage, new realities emerge: the assembling of a modern city constructs a whole new way of living as well as novel material constellations of air, water or soil pollution. Loughlan et al. (2014, p. 43) note that security assemblages form around newly identified security threats, while they at the same time shape the understanding of the appropriate form of security. As we will document, the emergence of the Czech HW assemblage made possible a new understanding of security threats and policies to address them. From all the possible responses to the accumulated anxieties within the Czech society, the construction of a discourse around the until-then obscure idea of ‘hybrid warfare’ via the strategies of geopoliticisation and warification was only one contingent option. Crucially, this production of novelty is an ongoing process, as assemblages ‘are constantly becoming otherwise as elements come and go’ (Dittmer, 2017, p. 10). We will show that this is indeed the case also for the HW assemblage, which underwent profound transformation in the years covered in this book. Third, in contrast with more rigid concepts like social structures or governance networks, assemblages are ‘open systems with elements constantly entering and leaving’ (Dittmer, 2017, p. 10, emph. added). This also makes them ‘impossible to delimit’, meaning that for the analyst ‘the only possibility is to attempt to describe trends in their relational space over time’ (Dittmer, 2017, p. 10). In our case, this was happening all the time: for example a new NGO project emerged only to disappear quietly, a politician lost an election and with it also interest in the topic, or a once prominent analyst went to study overseas. The transnational character of the HW discourse then added another dimension of this openness, as relations between actors in different states are indeed often more difficult to maintain (as well as to identify and monitor). Therefore, rather than trying to falsely seal its porous borders in our analysis, we focus on describing the core elements and relations within the Czech HW assemblage and the key events that moved it forward.

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By analysing policymaking through the assemblage lens, focus moves away from the particular actors and institutions towards the processes in which they come together. Therefore, from an assemblage perspective, we first look at how these different entities—‘think tanks, political parties, universities, embassies, lobbying groups, media networks, and so on’ (Dittmer, 2017, p.  18)—are linked together into a web of relations through which they gain their agency (e.g. to articulate a policy). Policymaking is thus seen as a rather messy, decentralised and contingent process. The assemblage approach thus ‘emphasizes openness, dynamism, and self-organization’ (Dittmer, 2017, p. 9) and is ‘sensitive to short-term change’ (Bueger, 2018, p. 615), which allows it to grasp the often rapid processes through which policy issues are articulated and disarticulated through ad hoc coalitions of actors. This also makes it very useful for the study of the rise of ‘hybrid warfare’ in Czechia, which will unfold in the following part of the chapter and which was characterised precisely by these often informal interactions of alternating actors from different fields.

2014: Initial Shock, NATO’s Entrepreneurship and First Glimpses of Warification In early 2014, there were few signs that ‘hybrid warfare’ could become an important prism for understanding security and a conceptual glue holding together broad transnational coalitions of actors. This changed only gradually throughout the year, as Czech as well as European and US security intellectuals were trying to make sense of renewed confrontation in Eastern Europe. Therefore, in the first months after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Eastern Ukraine, there was little concerted action within Czech security policy circles. The HW assemblage was emerging only slowly and from a scattering of actors, practices and narratives. It was only towards the end of the year that the idea of HW started gaining limited traction due to the combination of NATO’s agenda-setting and occasional interest of certain Czech journalists. This is not surprising, as Russia’s advances were wholly unexpected by Czech diplomats, security professionals and civilian actors alike. As a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) official told us, ‘It was a shock. It was a shock and I must say that no one knew exactly what to do. Both at the ministry and in Europe. Helplessness.’1 Very similarly, a prominent 1

 Interview, MFA officer, 4 August 2020, Prague.

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military intellectual remembered how ‘the Russian Federation shocked the whole world. The unimaginable was broken into’ (Ř ehka, 2017, p.  199). Confirming this line, a leading NGO activist also recalled that ‘When Russia invaded Ukrainian territory in early 2014, we were surprised’ (Janda, 2017). As these examples from variously situated actors illustrate, existing interpretive frameworks failed to capture Russia’s actions and the new situation that followed from it. A ‘void of meaning’ (Nabers, 2009) emerged, creating a window of opportunity for actors, who had to find new ways to make sense of it. By pure coincidence, this window of opportunity was reinforced by changes in Czech domestic politics. New government was sworn in in February 2014, only weeks before Russia’s attack. Returning to power after seven years, the Czech Social Democratic Party (Č SSD) became the strongest member in the coalition, nominating the Prime Minister (Bohuslav Sobotka), Foreign Minister (Lubomír Zaorálek) and Interior Minister (Milan Chovanec). Coming with the ambition to ‘revive our foreign policy’ (Zaorálek & Drulák, 2014), the government set out to revise national security documents. First was to the Security Strategy, whose update was requested already in June 2014 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015b), with other documents following soon thereafter. The revision process was conducted through the usual bureaucratic sequence of creating working groups, producing drafts, consulting them between different departments (sometimes including also external experts), eventually compiling texts to be officially adopted by the government. This provided plenty of opportunities for intensified meetings between all sorts of actors, creating platforms for interaction and exchange of ideas and, later on, for setting ‘hybrid warfare’ on the agenda and embedding it in the official documents. While the government transition provided these platforms, conceptual entrepreneurship initially came from abroad, namely from NATO. It was the Alliance that was central in creating the transnational understanding that Russia’s actions in Ukraine were to be understood as ‘hybrid warfare’. As Ofer Fridman (2018) shows in detail, HW was used rather superficially, as a catchy label without much thought behind it at this point. Yet it transpired to NATO’s language during the summer, with Secretary General Rasmussen using it in public already in June 2014 (Fridman, 2018, p. 109). The adoption of the term by NATO and its subsequent diffusion to member states’ bureaucracies was facilitated by another contingency,

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namely that a NATO summit had been planned for September 2014. Under the new circumstances and at the peak of tensions with Russia, the Wales Summit became the first international high-level meeting that explicitly adopted the language of HW.  The  Summit declaration concluded that it ‘is essential that the Alliance possesses the necessary tools and procedures required to deter and respond effectively to hybrid warfare threats’ (NATO, 2014). This provided the concept with ‘real traction’ and triggered a ‘first wave’ of a European expert debate on ‘hybrid’ matters (Fridman, 2018, pp. 109–110). Fridman shows that this wave was ‘largely led by military thinkers from Eastern Europe’, citing examples mostly from Romania and Ukraine. In contrast, Czechs were reluctant or even silent at that point, with only a few authors (re)introducing the notion into the expert debate (Schmidt, 2014; Zelenka, 2014). But the term slowly started resonating within the military circles that were closely linked to NATO debates, as manifested in some early public statements of high-­ ranking officials (Czech Radio  – Radiožurnál, 2014). NATO’s Wales Summit played an important part also in spreading the notion into the public debate. It was around the summit that ‘hybrid’ started regularly appearing in the Czech media, most of the time without much reflection on its meaning and in relation to Russia’s actions in and against Ukraine (Gazdík, 2014; Weiss, 2014). In a parallel development, but without yet using the vocabulary of HW, Czech journalists slowly started articulating the idea that it is not only Ukraine but in fact the whole Europe (or NATO, EU, the West, etc.), that is in a ‘war’ of sorts with Russia during the summer and autumn 2014. Reviewing a book by Edward Lucas, one of the oft-cited and distinctly hawkish Russia experts, a Czech foreign policy journalist concurred that ‘we are most likely living in a new cold war’ (Ehl, 2014). Most prominent at this stage, though, was the right-wing media server Echo24, in particular the journalist Vladimír Ševela. In August, he provided the first comprehensive coverage of Aeronet, an opaque and relatively popular website publishing Russia-friendly views mixed with a heavy dose of conspiracy theories and straight-out misinformation. Trying to make sense of this website, Ševela already used heavily warified language, effectively spelling out the idea of HW without naming it: ‘It appears that the struggle [between Russia and the West] will be waged at multiple fronts. The media-information one is only one among them, first Russian paratroopers have already landed’ (Ševela, 2014).

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As far as broader public awareness and civil society mobilisation are concerned, the key event came in November 2014. As part of commemorations of the Velvet Revolution, a public happening was organised. Meeting at the site of the 1989 crackdown on peaceful protesters, the participants displayed red cards to symbolically distance themselves from the Russia-friendly President Miloš Zeman, who had been in office since 2013. The abovementioned Aeronet website falsely accused the US Embassy of staging the event and thereby meddling into Czech politics, a claim that was subsequently appropriated and spread further also by a series of mainstream outlets and politicians (Echo24, 2014; Kundra, 2016a, p. 161). A number of our respondents from media, civil society and public service recalled that this was the first time they realised the power misinformation can have and that this constituted a trigger that pushed them to get involved.

2015: Expansion, Domestic Entrepreneurship and Warification Unbound If 2014 had laid the groundwork based on NATO’s entrepreneurship, 2015 brought a shift towards the formation of a distinctly Czech assemblage with internal dynamics of its own. Domestic actors have stepped up, especially within media and civil society, and started pro-actively shaping the process, instead of just responding to impulses from abroad. The concept of ‘hybrid warfare’ became familiar in the public discourse, but its use and meaning now shifted from describing conflict in Ukraine towards the notion that it is Europe/the West as a whole that is targeted by Russian HW. In this understanding, Czechia was suddenly ‘under attack’ and ‘at war’ with Russia, too. A more alarmist, heavily geopoliticised and warified version of the discourse emerged, in which almost everything could be articulated as somehow connected to Russia’s interests, intentions or activities. Thereby, HW became a direct security issue for Czechia, epitomised above all by covert Russian influence operations and the broad and undifferentiated category of ‘pro-Russian’ websites and social media accounts. Granted, this shift in the Czech debate was still embedded in broader developments within the transnational discourse. As Fridman (2018, p. 113) shows, it was precisely in 2015 that a new idea was taking hold in the European policy circles, in which HW was suddenly understood as a

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carefully elaborated Russian strategy, allegedly spelt out in the mythical (yet, in fact, non-existent) ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’.2 NATO and EU worked on the issue throughout the year, with NATO developing its own counterHW strategy (Rühle & Roberts, 2019) and EU launching its East ­ StratCom Task Force for countering Russia’s information operations. Nevertheless, the rise of the Czech HW discourse was increasingly driven by domestic developments responding to local anxieties. The key steps included the adoption of the warified discourse by bureaucratic and military circles in the early months of 2015 (and, later, intelligence services), the increase of interest of mainstream media and civil society, and the ‘migration crisis’, which gave another impetus to the developing HW assemblage. Bureaucratic and Military Circles: Shift to Warification On the bureaucratic level, the Czech government started the year by presenting an updated Security Strategy. While the document mostly reprinted the wording of the previous version from 2011, it brought one key change. HW was not only included but even made it straight to the top of the list of threats, coupled with an emphasis on propaganda and misinformation and an implicit yet clear reference to Russia: Some states seek to achieve a revision of the existing international order and are ready to pursue their power-seeking goals through hybrid warfare methods combining conventional and non-conventional military means with non-military tools (propaganda using traditional and new media, disinformation intelligence operations, cyber-attacks, political and economic pressures, and deployment of unmarked military personnel). (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015a, p. 13)

2  The (mis)understanding that Russia was implementing a ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’, a term coined by Russia expert Mark Galeotti, was omnipresent in the HW discourse at one point. In the atmosphere of surprise and anxiety stemming from Russia’s actions, an incoherent article by Russia’s chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, published in an obscure military journal, was misread as a blueprint for Russia’s actions against the West. All of that despite the fact that it presented a superficial analysis of Western warfare, rather than a Russian doctrine, and that there was little original thinking in it (Fridman, 2019; Galeotti, 2019). Galeotti himself repeatedly apologised for introducing the term.

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This was the state authorities’ first direct mentioning of ‘hybrid’ in an official document, yet also one that did not really elaborate on it. HW was not yet conceived as a direct threat to Czechia, but rather as endangering the ‘security of allies’ and the ‘international order’ upon which the country relies (ibid: 10, 13). As one official involved in the drafting remembers, the inclusion of HW was not accompanied by any controversy, perhaps also because it was understood as referring to the situation in Ukraine, rather than signifying a broader conflict.3 This conception was supported also by the Defence Minister, Martin Stropnický, who affirmed in a TV interview that Russia’s ‘information activities’ were indeed a security issue, yet repeatedly insisted that a ‘hybrid war’ was not taking place on a ‘European’ territory, reserving the term for Ukraine (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2015). While not yet in its most alarmist version, HW was out there in the official language, creating a point of reference for other actors. An important role was played by military officers/intellectuals, especially the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army, Petr Pavel and Special Forces general, Karel Ř ehka.4 Both attended the conference on ‘Future of Security, Security of the Future’, which was held shortly after the Security Strategy was published in the Czech Parliament and received significant media coverage (Blesk.cz, 2015; Lang, 2015; Ševela, 2015). Both also used their appearance to articulate HW as a direct threat to Czechia, thereby presenting important instances of the warification strategy. Arguing explicitly that ‘Russia bypasses our defence and leads a hybrid war’, Ř ehka went on to utter the highly echoed comment that ‘In a way, we are already at war, we just do not realise it or are not able to admit it’ (Lang, 2015; Ševela, 2015).5 Adding urgency, Pavel likened the Czechs to

 Interview, MFA officer, 28 August 2017, Prague.  Pavel was just finishing his term at that point, as he had already been elected as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee in 2014. He assumed the position at NATO in summer 2015 and stayed on until 2018. In 2023, he became Czechia’s President. Ř ehka also went to assume important offices, serving first as the Director of the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB 2020–2022), later taking Pavel’s old job as the Chief of the General Staff. 5  Interestingly enough, Ř ehka’s later book, Information War (2017), is much more nuanced, rather sceptical towards the utility of HW as a concept, and, as we would argue, even implicitly critical towards claims like those made by himself back in 2014. We elaborate more on these differing readings of HW in Chap. 5. 3 4

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‘the people on the deck of the Titanic’, ‘still dancing’ while the water is getting in (Ševela, 2015). Pavel went on to elaborate on these initial claims in a string of following media appearances, in which he cited the supposed ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ as a ‘theory of hybrid war’ that Russia was now putting into practice (Gazdík & Dolejší, 2015), explicitly claiming that Czechia, too, was under attack. Listing not only unmarked soldiers and militias but also ‘the use of information campaigns and economic and cybernetic space’, Pavel continued elsewhere: ‘These are all aspects most people would not describe as war, but it is war. And from this perspective we have already been dragged into it’ (Jirků, 2015). As demonstrated by such claims, high-ranking military personnel like Pavel and Ř ehka had now joined the nascent assemblage. From their position of authority, they reproduced the expansive version of HW discourse, in which Czechia itself was seen as directly ‘under attack’ and all sorts of issues were open for geopoliticisation and warification. Media and Civil Society: Growing Interest and Arrival of New Actors Through Spring 2015, the understanding of HW as an imminent threat, very often justified by references to the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’, started diffusing also to mainstream media, as well as the broader public sphere. In an interview with the newspaper Hospodářské noviny (HN), the former diplomat, Petr Kolář, repeated the refrain that ‘We are at war, let us not kid ourselves that [we are] not. Although it is usually labelled as hybrid warfare’ (Koutník, 2015). Columnist of the Reflex magazine concurred that ‘[w]e are subject to the initial phases of hybrid warfare’ (Bajgar, 2015). Another HN journalist then asked: ‘Does hybrid warfare really concern us as well? Much indicates that it does’ (Honzejk, 2015). Overall, the media articulation of HW and related issues intensified and so did the specialisation of reporting on the matter. Echo24 continued its coverage and was joined by a number of others. This included the niche investigative web projects Hlídací Pes and Neovlivní but also ever more mainstream actors, especially the liberal opinion-making weekly Respekt and its investigative journalist, Ondřej Kundra (Kundra, 2015). Simultaneously, the so far rather peripheral civil society gained on importance in the development of the assemblage. According to one academic account, the year 2015 marked the peak in Czech civil society’s

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activisation against misinformation and propaganda, with at least seven new initiatives emerging (Syrovátka, 2021, p.  235). Civil society actors generally took longer to absorb the shock of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and transform it into concrete actions. As one activist remembers, it took some time to realise what was going on, put together the limited resources and start thinking about meaningful activities.6 ‘We didn’t know much about it, but we wanted to do something,’ another activist concurs.7 This also had to do with the fact that NGOs and other initiatives in the country, particularly those in the field of foreign and security policy that would join and shape the HW assemblage, heavily rely on volunteering of university students. In such environment, resources like money, time, and know-how are scarce, but idealism and enthusiasm are plentiful. ‘We were only young students […] having some principles, ideals, values,’ one respondent recalls, highlighting the bottom-up nature of their interest and ‘punk’ ethos of their NGO: ‘ours was not a professional project, it was amateurish.’8 From this milieu of overlapping initiatives based in the two main university cities, Prague and Brno, and staffed mostly with students in their early to mid-20s, two figures emerged as the leading ‘speakers of the civil sector’ at this stage.9 First was Ivana Smoleňová of the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI), an established think tank with developed Transatlantic ties. Already in March 2015, Smoleňová published articles in prominent American (Forbes) and Slovak (Denník N) layouts, in which she wrote about Russia’s ‘information warfare’ and discussed the challenges facing those who would want ‘to counter a well-organized, billion-­ dollar propaganda push from Moscow’ (Smoleňová, 2015a, b). The other was Jakub Janda of the ‘European Values’ think tank (EV), at that point a small organisation promoting conservative views on European policy, internal security and migration. Janda would later become the person ‘[a]t the heart of this fight’ (Jankowicz, 2020, p. 171). At this stage, though, he and his organisation had a slower start, initiating their systematic activities only during the summer. Janda himself recalls that he only realised the salience of the Russian threat after attending a discussion with the former president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, in June 2015 (Janda, 2017),  Interview, former Czech think-tank associate, 5 March 2020, Brussels.  Interview, former Czech think-tank associate, 15 March 2017, Prague. 8  Interview, former Czech think-tank associate, 5 March 2020, Brussels. 9  Interview, two Czech think-tank associates, 15 March 2017, Prague. 6 7

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an anecdote that illustrates well the importance of transnational links for the constitution of the HW assemblage in Czechia. Other NGOs active in the matter included Jagello 2000, Association for International Affairs (AMO) or the People in Need, and mostly focused on analysing ‘pro-­ Russian’ and conspiratorial websites, debunking misinformation, and facilitating media literacy programmes. In the first half of 2015, civil society actions gained additional impetus (even a ‘turning point’10) through the mostly under-the-radar actions of Jakub Kalenský. A journalist by profession, Kalenský was lobbying the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support his candidacy into EU’s newly established East StratCom Task Force. Our respondents remember that Kalenský set up meetings with multiple Prague-based NGOs to develop networking, foster exchange of information (e.g. via message groups) and establish cooperation on HW-related matters, building partnership above all with the European Values.11 Kalenský’s eventual nomination to the East StratCom Task Force not only helped further raise awareness but also created a channel through which Czech actors—above all EV—could become visible and even set agenda in Brussels. Via informal, usually symbiotic relationships like these, the Czech civil society would transform from passive receivers of the HW agenda to its active co-producers at the European level. Intelligence Community: Getting Public Intelligence services, too, became suddenly outspoken in the unclassified versions of their reports. In September 2015, the Security Information Service (BIS)—whilst still avoiding the language of ‘hybrid’ (the term itself would appear one year later) but already following its warified logic— listed ‘Russian and pro-Russian propaganda’ as a major cause of concern. ‘Russia has been creating influence and propaganda structures in the Czech Republic over a long period of time. […] The Czech public was and is greatly influenced by Czech pro-Russian organizations and individuals using websites to present their interpretations of Russian stances’ (Security Information Service, 2015). To highlight the urgency of the matter, BIS considered this a part of a broader Russian masterplan to build  Interview, two Czech think-tank associates, 15 March 2017, Prague.  Interview, two Czech think-tank associates, 15 March 2017, Prague; Czech think-tank associate, 8 September 2017, Prague. 10 11

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a structure in Europe that could even ‘be considered as a return to the Comintern concept’ (ibid.). In this cascade of arguments, fringe websites were geopoliticised, as they were assessed as a part of a broader quasi-­ imperialist expansion. Only one month later, ‘alternative news websites’ were for the first time discussed also in the Ministry of  the Interior’s (2015) quarterly report on extremism. Migration as an Amplifier By autumn 2015, websites like Aeronet were thus publicly called out and often geopoliticised and even warified by key actors not only from the military and the government but also from intelligence services and the Ministry of the Interior. They also attracted attention by the media and civil society. At that very point, though, concerns related to Russia temporarily dropped on the national security agenda and were overshadowed by events related to the so-called migration crisis (see also Jankowicz, 2020). The arrival of high numbers of refugees on Europe’s shores and the EU’s unsuccessful attempts at reaching a common solution created fertile ground for the securitisation of migration that heavily dominated the public debate in Czechia (Kovár ̌, 2020). While this was certainly a Europe-­ wide issue, comparative surveys show that the Czechs were among those most concerned, seeing ‘immigration’ as the top issue facing both the EU (76%) and Czechia (47%), respectively (‘Standard Eurobarometer 84’, 2015, pp. 15, 17). In parallel, especially in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks of that year, terrorism was also revived as a key security threat in the public imagination, with 81% Czechs considering it a ‘major threat’ (CVVM, 2020). These were the highest values on record for securitisation of immigration and terrorism, signifying yet another crisis and source of insecurity for the Czech population. Public fears were sustained and co-produced by an omnipresent anti-migrant discourse, which was now articulated by leading media and politicians, President Zeman being the most visible example. Apart from that, anti-migration sentiments became one of the leading topics also for misinformation outlets, connecting it to the established as well as new figures on the nationalist far-right. Interestingly, given the prominence of the discourse in the mainstream, it was this misinformation-­ fringe that became perceived as core of the problem by the country’s security intellectuals. For a high-ranking official at the Ministry of the Interior, Benedikt Vangeli, it was ‘[d]isinformation and propaganda [that]

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radicalized half of the population’, so that it was now supposedly ‘willing to behead and prosecute small children just because they are Arabs’ (cited in Jankowicz, 2020, p. 170). Similarly, an activist told us that the migration crisis worked as a catalyst for the mass spread of misinformation in Czechia,12 ‘adding fuel’ to it, as one diplomat further argued.13 It was through its role in the radicalisation of society that the ‘migration crisis’ eventually contributed to the development of the HW assemblage. As Jankowicz (2020) shows, it was the government’s desire to reassure the population in light of fears linked to migration and terrorism that inadvertently created the infrastructures that led to the entrenchment of ‘hybrid warfare’. In the words of now a leading figure in the assemblage, Jakub Janda, the ‘government needed a process that showed the public that it took security seriously. […] To put it very pragmatically or opportunistically, the migration crisis actually helped the Czech Republic work on Russian disinformation’ (cited in Jankowicz, 2020, p. 175). This process was institutionalised in the unprecedented National Security Audit exercise, formally initiated by Prime Minister Sobotka in November 2015 on the grounds of defending against terrorism (Lidovky.cz, 2015). What started above all as a counterterrorism task motivated by the insecurity related to the ‘migration crisis’ quickly morphed into a crowning move that finalised the first stage in the formation of the Czech HW assemblage.

2016: The Assemblage Comes Together In 2016 the different activities clicked together and produced a synergic effect that pushed HW—in its expansive, strongly geopoliticised and warified version—on the top of Czech national security agenda. Using the platforms put in place by the National Security Audit, the assemblage gradually gained in size and on resources so that it was now able to influence policymaking, as well as shape public discourse in the country (especially towards the end of the year and in the first days of 2017). Four developments were particularly important here: the growing role of HW issues for EU/NATO, the impact made by the European Values and, above all, the publication of the National Security Audit, and the surrounding controversy over the creation of the Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH).  Interview, Member of the Czech Elves, 31 August 2020, Prague.  Interview, MFA officer, 11 August 2020, Prague.

12 13

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EU, NATO and Growing Transnational Exposure of HW First, at the international level, 2016 was the year when HW-related issues became prominent in the transnational Euro-Atlantic political space. In April, EU published its long-awaited ‘Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats’ (European Union, 2016). A first comprehensive EU document of its kind, it outlined 22 actions that should be taken in response to ‘hybrid threats’, including the setting up of the EU Hybrid Fusion Cell (for intelligence sharing) and calling for the establishment of a ‘hybrid’ Centre of Excellence (for research and networking). NATO’s activities peaked at the Warsaw Summit in July, whose declaration even included an explicit link of HW to Article 5: ‘The Alliance and Allies will be prepared to counter hybrid warfare as part of collective defence. The Council could decide to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty’ (NATO, 2016b). The Warsaw Summit also produced the EU-NATO Joint Declaration on deepening strategic partnership, where ‘hybrid threats’ were presented as the first among issues with an ‘urgent need’ to tackle together (NATO, 2016a). However, ‘hybrid’ was becoming more prominent also due to events in key member states. In January 2016, the so-called Lisa Case broke out in Germany (see Schaubert, 2018). What started as a story in which a German-Russian minor, Lisa, falsely accused unspecified foreigners of rape, turned into an international spectacle. Russian state media as well as authorities, including Foreign Minister Lavrov, repeated the false account to accuse the German state of not being able to protect its citizens, a story that found certain resonance in a society divided by the arrival of refugees. This was followed by the British referendum on the EU membership in June and the election of Donald Trump in November, two campaigns that led to the defeat of the liberal establishment and that experienced massive deployment of propaganda and misinformation, as well as involvement of actors linked to the Russian state. These international developments created additional stimuli also for events in Czechia. EU and NATO actions pushed the issue ‘down’ through the bureaucratic pipeline and served as legitimising points, showing that ‘hybrid’ was indeed considered an important problem also by the allies. Russia’s involvement in the campaigns before the British referendum and the US elections then only fuelled the convictions that ‘we are at war’ and ‘something must be done’. This was often conveyed and mainstreamed also by continuing engagement with international (almost exclusively

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Anglophone) intellectuals, who articulated distinctly alarmist, geopoliticised and warified version of the HW discourse, such as Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder and Edward Lucas. They were often translated and reprinted, invited to conferences and, as one activist recalls, served as direct inspiration for local actors (see Chap. 5).14 Civil Society: Rise of the European Values Think Tank Second, this call to action was increasingly taken up by Czech civil society actors—NGOs, informal activist initiatives or academics. With at least six new activities to tackle misinformation joining the field, the boom continued also in 2016 (Syrovátka, 2021, p. 235). This was partially driven by the establishment of a funding scheme by the Open Society Fund Prague, which ran in 2016–2018 and supported many local NGOs involved in misinformation- and/or HW-related matters (Syrovátka, 2021, p. 238). What had originally been a niche occupied by few pioneering actors suddenly became a hot and crowded field. As two academics recall, suddenly there were ‘dozens of experts who had never heard of it before 2015’.15 Of this multitude, one actor clearly stood out—the European Values think tank, represented particularly by its Deputy Director (and later Director), Jakub Janda. Jankowicz (2020) and many of our interviewees agree that it was especially Janda’s hard-working, ambitious and hyperactive personality that played a key part in pushing the HW discourse, as well as connecting people with the assemblage (more on this in the next section). Towards the end of 2015, EV established its ‘Kremlin Watch’ programme, with the aim ‘to unveil and confront the respective tools of Russian Federation’s hybrid war against the liberal democratic system’ (European Values, n.d.-a). In Janda’s words, ‘[s]ince the beginning of 2016, things started rolling’ (Janda, 2017). EV began producing countless monitoring reports, newsletters, papers and policy recommendations, as well as organising events and appearing in the media. In the public sphere, EV were instrumental above all in pushing an unambiguously highly geopoliticised and warified version of the HW discourse. ‘In the Czech Republic, a political, economic and media disinformation campaign has been under way for a long time, which is a part of a hybrid war led by Russian Federation against Western democratic states,’ as one EV paper  Interview, Czech think-tank associate, 8 September 2017, Prague.  Interview, two Masaryk University academics, 7 September 2017, Brno.

14 15

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argued  (Janda & Víchová, 2016). On top of that, EV also played an important part via its less visible, backroom activities, as they soon set up close cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, with EV analysts being among the very few civilians invited to take part in the National Security Audit.16 Official Authorisation: Finalisation of the National Security Audit Third, the assemblage further shaped itself especially through the work on the National Security Audit, which ran through the whole year, to be eventually presented in public in December. The preparation took the usual form of a bureaucratic exercise, which, according to the official press release (Nováková, 2016b), involved more than 120 professionals from all across the state security apparatus, including also a handful of consultants from academia and NGOs. Coordination was placed in the hands of the Ministry of the Interior, which presided over almost a year of gatherings in different working groups, exchange of drafts, establishment of contacts and development of shared opinions. In May 2016, a conference was held to present preliminary conclusions. The recommendations already included the creation of the Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (Nováková, 2016a). By then, in the words of an official directly involved in the preparation, ‘there was no doubt that hybrid threats were the name of the game’.17 Finally, the complete report of the National Security Audit was presented on 1 December 2016. The document—a 140-page-long, dryly written and often disconnected text—was wrapped in the master narrative of ‘hybrid’, which thereby received further official authorisation as a dominant discourse of Czech national security. While the HW agenda was discussed throughout different chapters of the report (esp. ‘Foreign Power Influence’ and ‘Cybersecurity Threats’), the part on ‘Hybrid Threats and their Influence on the Security of the Citizens of the Czech Republic’ claimed to be the ‘overlapping’ and ‘coordinating’ chapter of the document (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 127). The report also provided an official articulation of the expansive version of 16  Interview, Ministry of the Interior official, 5 May 2017, Prague; Czech think-tank associate, 8 September 2017, Prague; Ministry of the Interior official, 18 September 2017, Prague. 17  Interview, Ministry of the Interior official, 18 September 2017, Prague.

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HW, one that is referred back to until this day. Using ‘hybrid threats’ and ‘hybrid warfare’ as synonyms (ibid., p. 127), it offers an extremely broad definition of ‘hybrid’, which can, arguably, accommodate almost any hostile activity that can be traced behind almost any social issue. ‘Hybrid threats’ are in the document presented as ‘a wide, complex, adaptable, and integrated combination of conventional and unconventional means, overt and covert activities, characterised primarily by coercion and subversion’ (ibid., p. 127). They can be ‘executed by military, paramilitary, and various civilian actors’ alike and extend across all sorts of ‘dimensions’, labelled as ‘Diplomatic/Political, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, Legal’ (ibid., p. 127). The Audit also clearly builds the link between the presence of misinformation and the supposed ‘war’ waged against Czechia, for example in arguing that ‘disinformation campaign […] as a manifestation of information warfare, falls within hybrid threats […] and thus constitutes one of the most serious threats’ (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 50). This is also explicitly geopoliticised by the link to the activities of ‘foreign powers’, of which Russia is mentioned in the first place. The highest urgency of the matter is then highlighted by the claim that the danger of ‘hybrid’ relies in its opacity and unknowability: ‘The principal risk to which a subject attacked by a hybrid campaign is exposed lies in the fact that they will not be able to identify the hybrid campaign – in time, in its full scale, or at all’ (ibid., p. 129). Providing a clear illustration of both geopoliticisation and warification, the ideas presented in the Audit became the defining points of a ‘hard core’ version of the HW discourse in Czechia (what we will call the counterinfluence narrative in Chap. 5), of which the newly established Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH) became an important official articulator. The other state body that produced a distinctly geopoliticised and warified story, at least at this point, was BIS, the most important of Czech intelligence agencies (whose reports, in turn, are cited in the Audit as resources, see also Chap. 6). In its Annual Report published in the autumn of 2016, BIS explicitly called out Russia’s ‘influence and information operations as part of its non-linear (hybrid, ambiguous, irregular, non-conventional) warfare’ (Security Information Service, 2016, p. 8). Similarly to the Audit, it also argued that ‘[p]ropaganda (disinformation, deception) must be assessed […] in the broader context of information and non-linear warfare’, a campaign that was presented as happening also in the countries of EU and NATO (ibid., 8–9).

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The presentation of the Audit was the high watermark of the constitution of the assemblage and the construction of HW as a major security concern. ‘Hybrid’ was now a key part of the language through which Czech national security was understood, a special institution was set up to address it, and this perspective had a strong backing of key political actors. Prime Minister Sobotka and Minister of the Interior Chovanec were present at the presentation of the Audit, making it a high-profile event. Multiple insiders made sure to highlight that the interest and support of these two leading Č SSD figures was genuine and continuous.18 Other members of the government adopted the language, too. Foreign Minister Zaorálek claimed that ‘hybrid war is led with the goal of breaking the information field, bring in uncertainty, mistrust’ (Hospodár ̌ské noviny, 2017). Defence Minister Stropnický, whom we cited as an example of a moderate discourse in an earlier section, now went as far with geopoliticisation and warification as to suggest that ‘Russia declared a disinformation war on us’ (Šafar ̌íková & Spurný, 2016). 2016/2017: Contesting CTHH and Setting the Main Lines of the HW Debate Fourth, the final days of 2016 and the first days of 2017 demonstrated that the geopoliticised and warified HW discourse would provoke heated opposition and, as such, play a divisive role in the society. This happened in the context of the debate about CTHH and the role of the state in reacting to HW more largely, which set the tone for the controversies in the following years (see Chaps. 4 and 6). The exchange was triggered by President Zeman, who criticised CTHH in his 2016 Christmas Address (Reuters, 2017). Zeman warned against the potential of ‘censorship’ by the Ministry of the Interior, dramatically comparing it to the eighteenth-­ century book-burning Jesuits19 and, in since often-repeated argument, declared that ‘we don’t need censorship, we don’t need thought police, we don’t need new Office for Press and Information [censorship office in communist Czechoslovakia  – note auth.], if we are to live in free and 18  Interview, NÚKIB officer, 23 June 2017, Brno; EU officer, 30 August 2017, online call; Ministry of the Interior official, 18 September 2017, Prague. 19  This refers specifically to the Jesuit priest Antonius Konias who compiled a list of forbidden books and was involved in destroying about 30,000 of them (Roberts, 2005, p. 69). It is a trope widely present in popular culture as well as nationalist and communist historiography of nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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democratic society’ (Zeman, 2016). In a personal attack on European Values’ Jakub Janda, Zeman dismissed the involvement of private actors in struggle against foreign influence and criticised the practice of naming and shaming assumed misinformation websites (Zeman, 2016). In his later interviews and statements, Zeman claimed that no one had a ‘monopoly on truth’ and added further criticism concerning the ideological bias of CTHH employees and their supposed lack of expertise (Ovčáček, 2017; Palička, 2017). Zeman’s attacks spurred reactions from the government, liberal journalists and actors active within the assemblage and beyond it. Prime Minister Sobotka, Minister of the Interior Chovanec or the Centre’s officials sought to downplay Zeman’s comments by stressing the limited character of CTHH’s work. According to their claims, the Centre would not be allowed to censor or remove online content and it would be used merely for monitoring and analysis. CTHH would proceed to debunking only if particular misinformation presented a threat for national security (Č TK, 2017; Kopecký, 2017). Public commentators and activists were more outspoken, interpreting Zeman’s criticism through the East/West geopolitical lens, supposedly revealing (once again) his sympathies or even links to the Kremlin. As one journalist put it, ‘there are only two explanations why someone would be concerned by warnings over disinformation: either he lacks basic survival instinct, or his interests are identical with the interests of the Eastern disruptors of Europe’ (Honzejk, 2017). A prominent commentator of Czech and Russian politics then bluntly stated that ‘the Czech President would never allow his Russian friend to be shamed’ (Mitrofanov, 2017). While debate on the purpose of the CTHH died down over the first weeks of 2017, it had lasting effects on the HW assemblage. First, the language of HW and key members of the assemblage, such as the European Values, became staples of political discourse, creating one of the dividing lines in Czechia’s ‘culture wars’. Second, Zeman’s attacks on the Centre, the politicisation of CTHH’s mandate and the subsequent toning down of CTHH’s political backing contributed to its limited public activity, which failed the expectations of many observers and actors alike (Colborne, 2017; Jankowicz, 2020, pp. 180–186; Vangeli, 2022, pp. 218–219). This led to mounting calls that the state is not doing enough to counter HW. The debate about CTHH also cemented the basic understanding of HW as a significant security concern and helped it to gain a foothold in the public debate. With basic cleavages between the proponents and oppo-

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nents of CTHH drawn, worries over HW became ready to be (re)used and (re)attached to new issues appearing in the public debate (see Chap. 4).

Doing the Assembling: Core Actors and Connections While the previous sections provided a chronological account, the remainder of this chapter turns to the actors who played crucial part in the construction and maintenance of the HW assemblage. This allows us to highlight the element of agency most explicitly, as we show that the emergence and further existence of the HW assemblage and the geopoliticised/ warified discourse around which it cohered were also results of strategic activities of certain actors. As assemblages are dynamic and ever changing, holding them together needs continuous work. This involves connecting different actors and other elements, providing them with a shared purpose via discourses and narratives, and constantly repeating the performance (Bueger, 2018). The following mapping identifies those who were at the centre of the HW assemblage and whose ‘work’ kept it together in the initial stage of 2014–2016/17. It does not represent a complete picture of the assemblage, but an overview of its core. While there were different types of actors—think tankers and NGO activists, academics, journalists, security bureaucrats—many of them were held together by a particular generational affinity. Of the eight people that, according to our data collection, made at least three public appearances dedicated to HW in 2014–2016, six were born in 1980 or later.20 European Values Think Tank The European Values Think Tank was identified by our interviewees as the most active Czech actor in HW-related agendas for three main reasons. First, they were highly visible in the media, which multiple of our interviewees attributed to the Deputy Director Jakub Janda’s hard-working and ambitious personality. Janda, essentially a self-made man in his early 20s, was quickly able to establish himself as a pundit on international 20  The eight most active public speakers were: Jakub Janda (think tanker), Ondřej Kundra (journalist), Ondřej Soukup (journalist), Jakub Kalenský (journalist/EU officer), Miloš Gregor (academic), Ivana Smoleňová (think tanker), Roman Máca (think tanker), Eva Romancovová (civil servant).

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politics, largely bringing the EV brand up with himself. Only for the year 2016, EV Annual Report claims 1001 media references (European Values, 2017, p. 4), a major achievement for then still a very small organisation. Second, EV outputs were characterised by a clear-cut anti-Russian ideological message based on both geopoliticisation and warification. This unambiguous character that could be linked to the broader East/West and war/peace discourses made it very easy to understand. EV representatives and written outputs liberally linked misinformation to warfare and casually labelled leading Czech politicians and other public figures—including President Zeman—as ‘Kremlin’s Trojan horses’ (Janda, 2016b), ‘useful idiots’ (Janda, 2016a) or worse. EV were able to engage a range of media actors in pushing this message through. Some of their texts were directly republished on web portals, such as Neovlivní and Echo24, while their key speakers were often cited by national media. Some of the reports were written and/or published jointly with other highly visible actors of the HW assemblage, such as the journalist Ondřej Kundra or the political communication researchers from the Masaryk University (MUNI), Miloš Gregor and Petra Vejvodová (Gregor & Vejvodová, 2016; Janda & Kundra, 2016). Third, EV were keen and able to work closely with policy makers. Gradually, they gained the essential role of initiating and maintaining connections between the diverse actors of the HW assemblage, functioning as its de facto hub and becoming an attractive partner for governmental actors. Thanks to their networking skills, EV became closely connected with several Czech and international agencies and policy figures.21 In particular, already in the spring of 2015, they started cooperating with Jakub Kalenský, at that time an active networker himself and a future Czech representative in the European External Action Service (EEAS) StratCom East team, who supported the further expansion of the EV network on the European level once he took the EEAS job. These international connections were later used by EV for reinforcing their position also back in Czechia, as they were able to connect foreign experts with Czech bureaucrats. The think tank established close cooperation with the team at the Ministry of the Interior that formed the core of the nascent Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH). Janda became a consultant in the National Security Audit process and other EV analysts worked with the 21  Interview, Ministry of the Interior official, 5 May 2017, Prague; NÚKIB officer, 23 June 2017, Brno.

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ministry on the development of counter-misinformation training scenarios.22 Through links like these, EV were able to enhance their credibility vis-à-vis media and civil society by posing as being ‘in the loop’ with the Czech government and international actors. Furthermore, EV have been highly active in organising seminars and roundtables, both public and closed. At least six smaller HW-related events took place in 2016 only and their participants included think tanks active in the area, media and officers of Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence and the Interior (European Values, n.d.-b). Together with the Ministry of the Interior, in October 2016 they organised the first Stratcom Summit, a high-profile event with participation of representatives of NATO, the US, Germany and Baltic states alongside Czech military and civilian government officers (European Values, n.d.-c).23 On a more mundane level, EV were among the primary contributors to the closed Facebook messaging group ‘Svědkové Peskovovi’ (‘Peskov’s Witnesses’, named in ironic reference to Putin’s press speaker Dmitry Peskov), which brought together more than 50 (as of 2017) influential figures from media, policy sphere and civil society. Through this message group—whose versions are operative until this day under different names mostly on encrypted messenger services—EV and Janda in particular established a more or less daily updated stream of curated communication.24 In sum, EV established themselves as one of the main assemblers and performers of the HW assemblage, a position they hold until present day. The organisation also underwent a profound transformation by linking itself closely to the HW agenda, developing from a small Czech think tank working chiefly on European policy to a large and increasingly internationalised actor focusing mostly on HW, Russia and later also China. Think Tanks and Masaryk University The scale of the assembling performed by EV was unparalleled, but other actors were also active, promoting the HW in public and linking the diverse types of actors together—while working outside of and sometimes 22  Interview, Ministry of the Interior official, 5 May 2017, Prague; Czech think-tank associate, 8 September 2017, Prague; Czech think-tank associate, 12 September 2017, Prague. 23  Interview, Ministry of the Interior official, 5 May 2017, Prague. 24  Interview, Czech journalist, 1 September 2020, Prague; Czech journalist, 24 May 2022, Prague.

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even competing with the EV-dominated centre of the assemblage. The Prague Security Studies Institute was an early player, with its researcher Ivana Smoleňová, also in her 20s, becoming a regular speaker on HW following her first media outputs in spring 2015, in particular her study of a ‘pro-Russian disinformation campaign’, which was later republished by connected think tanks and organisations (Prague Security Studies Institute, 2015; Smoleňová, 2016). PSSI positioned itself in its mission statement explicitly as an organisation which seeks to ‘deter and defeat hybrid warfare strategies and other forms of external aggression’ (Prague Security Studies Institute, 2017a). Even though it also dedicated a fair share of its activities to the niche area of ‘hybrid’ economic threats, PSSI still organised a series of events on the issue ‘pro-Russian’ information operations and information warfare on the internet. As manifested by its public outputs, PSSI activities were, compared to EV, less attached to Czech state security agencies and the institute relied rather on cooperation with Ukrainian and Central European activists, connections with the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and donors such as the Open Society Fund or the National Endowment for Democracy (Prague Security Studies Institute, 2017b, c). A distinct networking role was played also by Jagello 2000, a small but highly influential NGO from the city of Ostrava with close links to politics and defence industry, whose founding members include diplomats and politicians, even a former Prime Minister (Jagello 2000, n.d.; Stratilík, 2017). In the public sphere, the organisation is most visible due to its promotion of NATO and Czechia’s membership in it. In contrast to PSSI or EV, Jagello 2000 rarely published its own analyses. Instead, it acted as an intermediary between international organisations (NATO in particular), security experts and the wider public. It organised a series of expert workshops funded by NATO, which culminated in a report written by analysts from Masaryk University, one of the first elaborations on HW in the Czech context (iDNES.cz and natoaktual.cz, 2015; Kříž et al., 2015).25 The exercise and subsequent Jagello 2000 projects brought together a slightly different community than that formed around EV or PSSI, and attracted primarily Czech and international defence and security policy experts, academics and bureaucrats (see also natoaktual.cz, n.d.). Last but not least, the assemblage developed also due to the public outreach activities of a group of political communication researchers at  Interview, Masaryk University academic, 6 September 2017.

25

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Masaryk University (MUNI) in Brno centred around Miloš Gregor and Petra Vejvodová (later Mlejnková). They originally gained recognition and media presence, thanks to short-lived cooperation with EV on the publication of their analysis of manipulation techniques used by ‘pro-Kremlin websites’ (Fojtů, 2016). However, the MUNI group later distanced themselves both from EV and from linking their work specifically to the most explicitly geopoliticised and warified versions of the HW discourse, expanding their attention to issues connected to media literacy and misinformation in general (Golis, 2016, see also Chap. 5).26 While the focus of the group was less on policy advocacy, they remained strongly present in the public sphere as experts and educators with outreach well beyond academia, creating a source of expertise that was distinct from an alternative to EV and other think tanks. They also continued to cooperate with state agencies, such as the Ministry of the Interior or National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB), as well as civil society groups and donors.27 Importantly, the MUNI group was able to set up an alternative, Brno-based core of the assemblage by encouraging their students to engage in educational counter-misinformation activities. The most visible result of this is the student-run NGO Zvolsi.info, which was set up in 2016 and remains in business until today. Journalists The success of the increasingly geopoliticised and warified HW discourse would be hardly imaginable without journalists. While a number of them got involved, our respondents pointed primarily to the Respekt magazine’s Ondr ̌ej Kundra as a key player in the field. Since 2014, Kundra published several articles and a book dedicated to Russian covert operations, as well as agenda-setting investigations of Czech misinformation websites, Aeronet in particular (Kundra, 2015, 2016a, b). He has been a well-­ connected figure in state agencies, including key ministries, the police and intelligence services, often relying on sources from within the state apparatus, and cultivated close links also with civil society actors, with his work with EV already mentioned (on this, see also Chap. 6). Kundra’s role and exposure was important for the public performance of the HW discourse,  Interview, two Masaryk University academics, 7 September 2017, Brno.  Interview, NÚKIB officer, 7 September 2017, Brno; two Masaryk University academics, 7 September 2017, Brno. 26 27

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as he provided other actors and the issue itself with the legitimacy of a respected journalist from a leading national outlet. Around Kundra, a broader group amplifying the HW discourse emerged, consisting, first of all, of his colleagues from Respekt (e.g. Kundra & Spurný, 2016; Macháček, 2014; Spurný, 2015). However, it extended also to the related Hospodářské noviny (e.g. Petr Honzejk and Martin Ehl, who were already mentioned), with which Respekt shared their newsroom and parent company. Naturally, Kundra and Respekt were not the only ones who picked up this topic. Our interlocutors noted also the extensive and continuous investigative coverage of Russian misinformation and influence networks pursued by the Neovlivní website throughout 2015 and 2016. While it could not match the national influence of Respekt, its articles dedicated to uncovering ‘pro-Russian’ websites resonated within the assemblage and helped to keep the issue on the agenda. The portal also compiled a database of ‘pro-Russian content in Czechia’ (Neovlivni.cz, 2016). Similar role was played also by the investigative portal Hlídací Pes, which has maintained a section dedicated to mapping Russian activities in the country (HlídacíPes.org, n.d.) and regularly republished studies on the topic. These two outlets were much smaller, yet their specialisation and concentrated focus on the HW agenda enabled to play and outsized part especially in the early phases of the assemblage’s formation. Security Bureaucrats The last—but by no means least—of the most important actors that moved the assemblage were government employees who supported the HW agenda within the structures of the state and in some cases also through cooperation with civil society. The first group, one that played a decisive role in the assemblage, was the initial CTHH team around the Ministry of the Interior officers Benedikt Vangeli and Eva Romancovová, whom our respondents identified as the key figures. While the core of their workload took place in the backstage, Vangeli and Romancovová also became public faces of the state HW policy. Both established close working relationship with EV, which became a central axis around which much in the HW assemblage revolved. Vangeli, Romancovová and their collaborators attended EV events, liaised with the think tank to organise foreign study trips and conferences and shared information and experience with EV’s

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foreign and domestic contacts.28 However, the connections of this group extended also to other civil society actors, such as PSSI, Masaryk University and various journalists. The team at the ministry was responsible for the chapter on ‘Foreign Power Influence’ in the National Security Audit, which was written in collaboration with EV (in turn, EV repeatedly praised the Audit in public). Second, a group of high-ranking military officers, among others the Special Forces General Karel Ř ehka, became early promoters of the notion of HW as a threat operating on the Czech territory. Ř ehka appeared also in events organised by EV, occasionally commented on HW in national media and even wrote a chapter on the matter in a book on the nature of change in the contemporary societies (Krejčí, 2016; Ř ehka, 2015).29 Another important military figure was Petr Pavel, then Chief of the General Staff, who gave a series of interviews important for agenda-setting in 2014/2015 and appeared in conferences organised by EV or Jagello 2000. Besides military officers, the team of civilian planners and bureaucrats at the Defence and Strategy Division of the Ministry of Defence, acting under the auspices of Deputy Minister Jakub Landovský, was also often mentioned by our interlocutors. Ministry of Defence bureaucrats were also responsible for drafting the ‘hybrid threats’ chapter in the National Security Audit. While never cutting ties, many of the military actors developed growing scepticism towards the EV/CTHH core and their narratives, thereby maintaining a degree of autonomy within the assemblage. The third and least visible group was composed of cybersecurity experts of the National Security Authority, which was later transformed into the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB). This group was responsible for the ‘Cybersecurity Threats’ chapter in the National Security Audit, which is rather technical and less geopoliticised and/or warified compared to those drafted by the Ministry of Defence and, especially, Ministry of the Interior. Accordingly, they were identified by our interlocutors as important supporters of a low-profile, bureaucratic, technical and educational approach. Their role in the assemblage was thus confined mostly to backdoor bureaucratic negotiations and they were 28  Interview, Ministry of the Interior officer, 5 May 2017, Prague; NÚKIB officer, 23 June 2017, Brno; Czech think-tank associate, 8 September 2017, Prague. 29 ̌  Rehka also published a more recent book on the matter, Information War (2017). As already mentioned, the book version deviates from the identity-based warified framing and embraces a military-centred narrative of HW instead (see Chap. 5).

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sceptical of the public and alarmist approach associated with EV and CTHH. NÚKIB staff also forged close connections to Masaryk University, none the least because of their shared location in Brno. This collaboration took the shape of lecturing at the university, providing researchers with access and information, as well as recruiting personnel from the ranks of the university students.30

Conclusion In this chapter, we have mapped how the Czech HW assemblage was formed from plethora of different actors in the aftermath of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Over the three years, it attracted a growing number of members from the state apparatus, civil society, academia or the media, as well as matured around multiple cores. Most important was the collaboration between the Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats, the Security Intelligence Service, European Values and journalists like Ondřej Kundra. Sharing a particularly geopoliticised and warified version of the HW discourse, these were collectively able to set the tone for the transformation of the understanding of (in)security in the country. While especially NATO played an important part in encouraging the localisation of the transnational HW discourse in the Czech context, this would not happen without the activities of these core actors, who, in turn, created a local version that was increasingly diverging from NATO’s military focus. The ‘leak’ kept ‘mutating’ with its movement further from the original military ‘lab’. At the same time, large parts of otherwise like-minded actors did not share the hawkish and alarmist approach of this core, leading to a growing differentiation of the assemblage, which will be analysed in the following two chapters. One of our key aims was to highlight the agency of the actors within the assemblage, even though this should be understood rather as collective and decentred, resulting from contingent and often spontaneous and uncoordinated responses—and not as some sort of an organised conspiracy. This argument presents also an entry point for our normative critique, as it demonstrates that there was nothing natural or purely reactive in the way how the Czech assemblage responded to the threat posed by belligerent Russia. It is not difficult to imagine that things could have been—and 30   Interview, NÚKIB officer, 23 June 2017, Brno; NÚKIB officer, 6 September 2017, Brno.

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still can be—otherwise. Alternatives were clearly possible and available, as demonstrated also by the varying developments in neighbouring countries (see, e.g. Syrovátka, 2021). Therefore, there is no reason why we should remain stuck within the parameters of a HW discourse defined by 2016/17, given all the problematic aspects discussed in Chap. 1. Furthermore, concerning are also the ways how the HW discourse was entrenched within the state institutions. This often happened through informal processes and channels—workshops, closed-door meetings, message groups—in which actors were involved based on ideological affinity and personal connections rather than institutional membership or a conventional source of expertise and authority. Granted, policies were eventually authorised by the government. Yet, this bypassing of standard procedures presents a worrying slide towards policymaking outside the scope of conventional democratic controls, legitimised through the exceptionalist notion that ‘we are at war’.

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Kundra, O., & Spurný, J. (2016, January 5). Zemřel architekt hybridní války a strůjce ruského útoku na Krym. Týdeník Respekt. https://www.respekt.cz/ politika/zemrel-­strujce-­r uskeho-­utoku-­na-­krym-­a-­architekt-­hybridni-­valky. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Lang, V. (2015, February 17). Pocit bezpečí je iluze, v podstatě už jsme ve válce, varovali čeští odborníci. Novinky.cz. https://www.novinky.cz/domaci/ clanek/pocit-­b ezpeci-­j e-­i luze-­v -­p odstate-­u z-­j sme-­v e-­v alce-­v arovali-­c esti-­ odbornici-­278736. Accessed 4 Mar 2021. Lidovky.cz. (2015, November 23). Sobotka požádal ministra vnitra o bezpec ̌nostní ̌ https://www.cssd.cz/aktualne/prave-­ted/sobotka-­pozadal-­ministra-­ audit CR. vnitra-­o-­bezpecnostni-­audit-­cr/. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Loughlan, V., Olson, C., & Schouten, P. (2014). Mapping. In C.  Aradau, J. Huysmans, A. Neal, & N. Voelkner (Eds.), Critical Security Methods. New Frameworks for Analysis (pp.  23–56). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.432 4/9781315881549-­2 Macháček, J. (2014, September 17). Co udělá Západ, když Rusko vyvolá v Pobaltí maskirovku. Týdeník Respekt. https://www.respekt.cz/audit-­jana-­machacka/ co-­udela-­zapad-­kdyz-­rusko-­vyvola-­v-­pobalti-­maskirovku. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. (2015, March 23). Ministr obrany Martin Stropnický hostem por ̌adu Hyde Park Č T24. https://mocr.army.cz/ informacni-­servis/forum/ministr-­obrany-­martin-­stropnicky-­hostem-­poradu-­ hyde-­park-­ct24-­108137/. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. (2015a). Security Strategy of the Czech Republic. http://www.army.cz/images/id_8001_9000/8503/Security_ Strategy_2015.pdf. Accessed 1 June 2020. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. (2015b, February 4). Vláda aktualizovala Bezpec ̌nostní strategii Č eské republiky. https://www.mzv.cz/jnp/ cz/udalosti_a_media/archiv_zprav/rok_2015/tiskove_zpravy/ x2015_02_04_vlada_aktualizovala_bezpecnostni_strategii.html. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic. (2015, October 20). Extremismus: Souhrnná situac ̌ní zpráva 3.c ̌tvrtletí roku 2015. www.mvcr.cz/soubor/ souhrnna-­situacni-­zprava-­za-­3-­ctvrtleti-­roku-­2015.aspx Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic. (2016). National Security Audit. http://www.mvcr.cz/cthh/soubor/national-­security-­audit.aspx. Accessed 1 June 2020. Mitrofanov, A. (2017, January 11). Očima Saši Mitrofanova: Prezidentova osina v zadku  – Novinky. Novinky.cz. https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/komentare-­ ocima-­sasi-­mitrofanova-­prezidentova-­osina-­v-­zadku-­40020932. Accessed 18 Feb 2023.

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Müller, M. (2015). Assemblages and Actor-Networks: Rethinking Socio-Material Power, Politics and Space. Geography Compass, 9(1), 27–41. https://doi. org/10.1111/gec3.12192 Nabers, D. (2009). Filling the Void of Meaning: Identity Construction in US Foreign Policy After September 11, 2001. Foreign Policy Analysis, 5(2), 191–214. NATO. (2014, September 5). Wales Summit Declaration Issued by NATO Heads of State and Government (2014). NATO. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/ natohq/official_texts_112964.htm. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. NATO. (2016a, July 8). Joint Declaration by the President of the European Council, the President of the European Commission, and the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO. https://www.nato.int/ cps/en/natohq/official_texts_133163.htm. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. NATO. (2016b, July 9). Warsaw Summit Communiqué Issued by NATO Heads of State and Government (2016). NATO. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/ natohq/official_texts_133169.htm. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. natoaktual.cz. (n.d.). Projekty IC NATO  – 2016. natoaktual.cz. https://www. natoaktual.cz/projekty/Iprojekty-­ic-­nato-­2016. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Neovlivni.cz. (2016, November 7). Databáze proruského obsahu od A-Z –. Neovlivni.cz. https://neovlivni.cz/databaze-­proruskeho-­obsahu-­od-­a-­z/. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Nováková, L. (2016a, May 12). Premiér s ministrem vnitra pr ̌edstavili první návrhy Auditu národní bezpečnosti. Ministry of the Interior. https://www.mvcr.cz/ clanek/premier-­s-­ministrem-­vnitra-­predstavili-­prvni-­navrhy-­auditu-­narodni-­ bezpecnosti.aspx. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Nováková, L. (2016b, December 1). Premiér a ministr vnitra představili finální text Auditu národní bezpečnosti. Ministry of the Interior. https://www.mvcr. cz/clanek/premier-­a-­ministr-­vnitra-­predstavili-­finalni-­text-­auditu-­narodni-­ bezpecnosti.aspx. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Ong, A., & Collier, S.  J. (2005). Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Wiley. Ovčáček, J. (2017, January 10). Prezident republiky prǐ jal Milana Chovance. https://www.hrad.cz/cs/pro-­m edia/tiskove-­z pravy/aktualni-­t iskove-­ zpravy/prezident-­republiky-­prijal-­milana-­chovance-­5-­13118. Accessed 18 Feb 2023. Palička, J. (2017, January 8). Zeman varoval prě d „ministerstvem pravdy“. Je to horší než samy dezinformace. Expres.cz. https://www.expres.cz/zpravy/ m i l o s -­z e m a n -­c e n t r u m -­p r o t i -­t e r o r i s m u -­a -­h y b r i d n i m -­h r o z b a m . A170108_155759_dx-­zpravy_pali. Accessed 18 Feb 2023. Prague Security Studies Institute. (2015, June 9). The Pro-Russian Disinformation Campaign in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. https://web.archive.org/ web/20160723184459/http://www.pssi.cz/publications/39-­t he-­p ro-­ russian-­disinformation-­campaign-­in-­the-­czech-­r epublic-­and-­slovakia.htm. Accessed 7 Jan 2023.

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Prague Security Studies Institute. (2017a, February 8). About Us. https://web. archive.org/web/20170208150455/http://www.pssi.cz/about-­us. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Prague Security Studies Institute. (2017b, March 16). Russia’s Influence Activities in CEE. https://web.archive.org/web/20170316213251/http://www.pssi. cz/russia-­s -­i nfluence-­a ctivities-­i n-­c ee/economic-­r elations-­b etween-­t he-­ visegrad-­countries-­and-­russia. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Prague Security Studies Institute. (2017c, March 16). Economic Relations Between the Visegrad Countries and Russia: Before and After Ukraine. https://web. archive.org/web/20170316213251/http://www.pssi.cz/russia-­s-­influence-­ activities-­in-­cee/economic-­r elations-­between-­the-­visegrad-­countries-­and-­ russia. Accessed 7 Jan 2023. Ř ehka, K. (2015). Válka, jak ji (ne)známe. Nekonvenční vedení války: kde začíná, kdy si ho všimneme a jak se můžeme bránit? In Povaha zme ̌ny: Bezpec ̌nost, rizika a stav dnešní civilizace (pp. 206–229). Vyšehrad. Ř ehka, K. (2017). Informac ̌ní válka. Academia. Reuters. (2017, January 4). Czech ‘hybrid threats’ Center Under Fire from Country’s Own President. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-­ czech-­security-­hybrid-­idUSKBN14O227. Accessed 18 Feb 2023. Roberts, A. (2005). From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Švejk: A Dictionary of Czech Popular Culture. Central European University Press. Rühle, M., & Roberts, C. (2019). NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats. In The Alliance Five Years After Crimea: Implementing the Wales Summit Pledges (pp. 61–70). Nato Defense College. Šafar ̌íková, K., & Spurný, J. (2016, December 10). Ubrání nás česká armáda? Týdeník Respekt. https://www.respekt.cz/tydenik/2016/50/ubrani-­nas-­ ceska-­armada. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Sassen, S. (2006). Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton University Press. Schaubert, M. (2018, October 9). Der ‘Fall Lisa’. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. https://www.bpb.de/themen/migration-­integration/russlanddeutsche/271945/der-­fall-­lisa/. Accessed 4 Jan 2023. Schmidt, N. (2014). Neither Conventional War, Nor a Cyber War, but a Long-­ Lasting and Silent Hybrid War. Obrana a strategie, 14(2), 73–86. Security Information Service. (2015, September 4). Annual Report of the Security Information Service for 2014. https://www.bis.cz/public/site/bis.cz/content/vyrocni-­zpravy/en/ar2014en.pdf Security Information Service. (2016, September 1). Annual Report of the Security Information Service for 2015. https://www.bis.cz/public/site/bis.cz/content/vyrocni-­zpravy/en/ar2015en.pdf

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Zeman, M. (2016, December 26). Vánoc ̌ní poselství prezidenta republiky Miloše Zemana. https://www.hrad.cz/cs/prezident-­cr/soucasny-­prezident-­cr/vybrane-­ projevy-­a -­r ozhovor y/vanocni-­p oselstvi-­p rezidenta-­r epubliky-­m ilose-­ zemana-­2-­13103. Accessed 18 Feb 2023. Zůna, P. (2010). Kritický pohled na koncept hybridních válek, 19(3), 33–45. https://www.vojenskerozhledy.cz/kategorie-­c lanku/teorie-­a -­d oktriny/ kriticky-­pohled-­na-­koncept-­hybridnich-­valek

CHAPTER 4

Politicisation, Institutionalisation, Internationalisation: The Czech ‘hybrid warfare’ Assemblage in 2017–2021

If the previous years were defined by the formation of the HW assemblage and establishment of the core tenets of the HW discourse, the period from 2017 was instead marked by institutionalisation of the assemblage, its more active connections with international partners and its closer entanglements with national political debates.1 The establishment of the Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH) and gradually also other dedicated agencies, committees, working groups, coordination frameworks and civil society platforms manifested its transformation into increasingly institutionalised structures. The notion of HW also continued its expansion into the media and broader societal debates, in many cases simply as synonymous to ‘disinformation’. Developments in Czechia were reinforced also by what was happening in other EU/NATO states. In the context of the 2018 Salisbury poisoning of the Skripals and other incidents, diverse variations of the HW discourse became more resonant also on the international level, including in EU policies (Datzer & Lonardo, 2022; Pamment, 2020).

 We employ the notion of politicisation here not in the sense of the Copenhagen School but rather in the sense of Neal’s attention to how security issues enter the political arena and came to be dealt with by a range of political actors in institutionalised policy frameworks and beyond them (Neal, 2019). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_4

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At the same time, the Czech assemblage expanded in size, also due to rise in public interest and influx of the funding dedicated to the topic, and enrolled new actors. If in the previous period HW attracted mostly specialised journalists, security policy professionals and think tankers, diversity increased significantly since 2017. The assemblage now included a range of other actors, from civil society initiatives promoting digital media literacy among elderly people to local politicians fighting geopoliticised ‘memory wars’ (Belavusau et al., 2021). The expansion of the assemblage led also to broadening of its focus. Gradually, HW became attached to education of contemporary history and the lack of its knowledge among high school students, election manipulation or supposed foreign influence in research and higher education. Thereby, HW discourse travelled further, from specialised think-tank workshops to parliamentary debates, university lecture halls, TV screens and a growing number of investigative articles and op-eds in mainstream media. However, this led also to increasing fragmentation of the assemblage according to different areas of specialisation, approaches to tackling HW or ideological affinities. In this chapter, we take stock of this proliferation of the HW discourse in several areas of social life. We highlight its widening to ever-increasing set of issues and actors as well as its close entanglement with Czech political debate. As the HW discourse gained widespread notoriety, its central tenets were constantly kept on the public and media agenda, only to be further elevated to the very centre of public attention when a new issue caught the attention of the assemblage. For instance, the reverberations of the Skripals poisoning and subsequent squabbles between the President Zeman and Czech counterintelligence service brought briefly Russian intelligence activities into the spotlight of the public debate (Kundra & Spurný, 2018; Mareš et  al., 2020, pp.  27–28). Later, the focus moved rather to the annual visits of the Night Wolves biker gang or the disputed removal of the statue of the Soviet general Ivan Konev from one of Prague squares. In this sense, the assemblage worked in a pulsating rhythm, expanding its activity whenever there was a new issue to include or a new controversy to address, but constantly keeping the HW discourse in the public sphere. These highly medialised disputes between opposing political camps, that were in many cases initiated by statements or other symbolic moves

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by Russian officials, also demonstrated that the HW became a prominent part of a political struggle. For some actors, it now served as a useful tool of personal branding and both pro- and anti-Russian politicians did not shy away of jumping on HW-linked controversies. The overuse of HW tropes led also to increasing casualisation of the HW label, which was used ever more freely in the media and political debate and has been increasingly disassociated from military force. In parallel, events like the Skripals poisoning or the Konev Affair, which strongly resembled the paradigmatic ‘Memorials War’ of 2007 between Russia and Estonia (Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022), symbolically connected Czechia to events elsewhere and thereby reproduced the view of that a coordinated HW campaign against the West was indeed going on. Due to the growth and complexity of the HW assemblage in the period from 2017 to 2021, we outline its development by attending to the three main themes which defined this period and which we will proceed to investigate in the following order. First, we zoom more closely on four events which reignited the debate and media interest in HW and shaped the contours of the debate as well as the nature of the assemblage. These are the concerns about ‘disinformation’ around the elections of 2017 and 2018, the politicisation of the HW discourse in 2018 and 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic and, finally, the 2021 revelations about Russia’s role in an earlier subversive attack on Czechia’s territory in Vrbětice. By charting the evolution of the assemblage through these events, we highlight the normalisation of the HW discourse as an interpretative framework that has been constantly present in the public debate, while shooting on top of the agenda during several crises. Second, we look at the institutionalisation of the assemblage within the state apparatus as well as among diverse parts of civil society. We unpack the strategies of distinction and specialisation in the increasingly crowded field of civil society actors. Third, we outline the internationalisation of the assemblage and the multiple links that were established to Central European, European and international levels, as Czech representatives started to make a distinct mark on transnational discourses and policies.

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Elections, Protests, Epidemics: Normalisation of HW and Branching of the Assemblage Hopes, Frustrations and ‘Disinformation’: The Elections of 2017 and 2018 In late 2017 and early 2018, Czechia held its two most important elections, choosing first its representatives in the lower chamber of the parliament (October 2017), and later the President (January 2018). Both votes took place for the first time since Russia’s aggression of 2014 and, indeed, for the first time after the surprising results of the Brexit referendum and the US elections of 2016. The elections represented one of the crucial moments for the salience of the issues of HW and ‘disinformation’ in the public debate, for their connection with Czech politics and for geopoliticisation and warification in general. In this respect, the debates on elections, ‘disinformation’, HW and alleged Russian support to illiberal and populist parties or candidates (such as Zeman, Babiš’s ANO party or the far-right) helped to colour the political debates for the years to come. In the geopoliticised HW logic, the results of the elections, which put Andrej Babiš into the office of the Prime Minister and kept Miloš Zeman as the President, were often interpreted as a victory of ‘pro-Russian’ parts of the society. For the disappointed liberal and right-wing camps, the result appeared to confirm the power of ‘disinformation’, fuelling the anxiety of future disasters looming if nothing is done. On the one hand, this made HW increasingly synonymous with misinformation. On the other, it gave a new boost to the HW assemblage as its activist parts rallied against the supposed takeover of the country and worried, in the words of one our interviewee, about ‘losing the sailing course’ guiding the Czech identity and foreign policy.2 Consequently, the electoral period came to be seen as a moment of potential counterattack against Russia’s influence. The threat of electoral manipulation had been raised multiple times through 2016–2017 (Č TK, 2017a; Janda, 2017; Máca & Víchová, 2016), although it has been picked up in the public debate especially after the parliamentary elections. Protection of the voting process fell under the auspices of the CTHH, for whom it was initially supposed to be one of the core parts of its mandate (Klímová, 2017), only to be later dedicated to a different unit (Rovenský, 2017). Still, the CTHH publicly warned about 2

 Interview, MFA officer, 11 August 2020, Prague.

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the potential impact of misinformation on elections and stressed that it was prepared to react to malign activities that would threaten the electoral process (Č T24, 2017). The non-state part of the assemblage kept the issue on the public agenda as well. European Values came with the suggestive statement that the ‘Czech Republic is expected to be the most intense battleground for Russian meddling efforts, especially during the presidential election’ (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2017b), demonstrating that the election process itself could now be the subject of both geopoliticisation and warification. Expecting some form of misinformation to play role during the elections, the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) started a specialised programme The Czech Elections in the Era of Disinformation that was supposed to map the known misinformation sources and investigate their behaviour (Cemper, 2017). The results of the parliamentary poll strengthened the liberal and right-­ wing concerns about Russia’s influence on Czech politics. ANO’s victory, combined with a broad array of conservative, protest, nationalist populist, communist, social democratic and liberal parties that all entered parliament, produced a fractious political landscape. The following political deadlock was resolved only by indirect support of the indisputably pro-­ Kremlin Communist Party for the minority government of ANO and Č SSD (Czech Social Democratic Party). The results were (justifiably) seen as a bitter loss of fragmented centrist and right-wing liberal parties. For some commentators, this was the result of HW.  Petr Honzejk of Hospodářské noviny warned that ‘the atmosphere in the Czech society is unnoticedly moving in the direction that is not against the wishes of the Kremlin strategists’, and in consequence, he worried that the Czechs were losing a ‘hybrid conflict’ with Russia (Honzejk, 2017). A veteran of right-­ wing politics Miroslav Kalousek saw the situation in even bleaker terms, when he claimed that ‘we have lost the information war with Russian intelligence services, and we perhaps have not even realized that we are waging it’ (Vilímová, 2017). Through comments like these, democratic vote ceased to be seen as an outcome of legitimate concerns or preferences. Instead, it was portrayed as geopoliticised and warified result of a ‘war’ led by Russia. The tense atmosphere between the two elections was further stirred by two reports that widely resonated in the public sphere. The Annual Report of the Czech counterintelligence service BIS in October 2017 outlined a broad array of Russian influence and ‘hybrid’ operations happening in the

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country (Security Intelligence Service, 2017, p. 11), playing an important validating role for the HW discourse (see Chap. 6). PSSI then published a study on ‘disinformation’ during the 2017 parliamentary elections (Syrovátka, 2017) that came to be seen as yet another proof of the malicious use of misinformation in Czech politics.3 The PSSI research focused on the false allegation about the supposedly planned misuse of lithium mining revenues by then Social Democratic government which appeared just before the parliamentary elections. Published first on the misinformation website Aeronet.cz, it was recycled by social media profiles of the far-right Party of Direct Democracy and later even by Andrej Babiš. The ‘Lithium Controversy’ then became a frequently cited example of the power of misinformation and HW (Ehl, 2017). The two rounds of presidential elections then brought misinformation and the potential Russian interference in the process even more strongly to the public spotlight. Fears over their role were voiced from within the assemblage and beyond (Ehl & Dragoun, 2017; Janda et al., 2018; Cílek et al., 2017), including Zeman’s contenders in the elections. Jir ̌í Drahoš, Zeman’s highest polling rival, lamented that ‘the public opinion during the Czech Parliamentary elections was influenced by media connected with a Russian intelligence service’ (Břešťan, 2017) and such activities were a ‘threat for democracy’ (Č TK, 2017b). However, this was refuted by BIS, which stated that it was not aware of any sustained foreign misinformation campaign (Č TK, 2017b). Eventually, Zeman narrowly defeated Drahoš in the second round of elections by 150,000 votes and a 3% margin (France 24, 2018). Subsequent news reports and commentaries highlighted Zeman’s closeness to Russia and the misinformation aiming at Drahoš (Doležal, 2018; Dragoun, 2018; European Values Center for Security Policy, 2018c). On the more alarmist end of the spectrum, European Values assessed that ‘Moscow and its operatives can celebrate’ and that the elections were ‘strongly influenced by massive wave of half-truths, lies, and disinformation’ that helped Zeman to win the contest (Kubátová, 2018). Especially the so-called chain emails (frequently forwarded emails) became a new and frequently cited issue for both security agencies and civil society organisations, such as the nascent Czech Elves (Elpida, 2018; Skoupá, 2018b). The diagnosis of the post-electoral situation was often linked to mobilising appeals, driven by the notion that something needed to be 3

 Interview, Czech think-tank associate, 14 January 2020, Prague.

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done. In the geopoliticising words of the European Values, ‘we do not aim to settle with the fact that our country will be dragged by some politicians to the authoritarian East’ (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2018d). A range of new initiatives were established over the following months to address the problems of media literacy, social polarisation, isolation and alienation, and—more or less explicitly—also the Russian influence that these social vulnerabilities supposedly enable or attract. Hybrid War and Czech Politics: From the Parliamentary Floor to a Prague Square Due to the double elections, the HW discourse became closely entwined with political debates between the fragmented liberal, centrist and right-­ wing opposition to the ANO-Č SSD government on the one side and the followers of the President Zeman and anti-establishment parties on the other. For some, HW became a tool of personal branding that enabled them to distinguish themselves in the political field, as well as a matter of personal ideological conviction. In result, HW came to be routinely discussed at the parliamentary floor. It also became strongly associated with several contentious moments that featured a Russian connection and often a strong aspect of memory politics. The most visible among these were the annual visits of Russian ‘Night Wolves’ biker gang or the heated debate over the monument of the Soviet General Ivan Konev at a square in the Prague 6 district. In the parliament, HW arguments became rather frequent. For instance, the leader of the liberal Pirate Party, Ivan Bartoš, argued for increasing the education budget by claiming that people ‘don’t possess knowledge literally needed for survival in 21st century, which is also loosely connected with the defence against disinformation, with surviving the hybrid war’ (Chamber of Deputies, 2018a). HW also became part of the political rhetoric used by the opposition to attack the Babiš government. MP Vít Rakušan criticised Babiš’s reluctance to call Russia a threat by saying that ‘our intelligence services are talking about hybrid attacks from the side of the Russian Federation […] I am asking you, if you as the Prime Minister do understand the Russian hybrid attacks, the information war that the Russian Federation wages against the Czech Republic, as a real threat’ (Chamber of Deputies, 2018b). Similarly, MP Jan Lipavský called out Babiš on his foreign policy record, arguing that ‘we are part of hybrid war, continuous cyber conflict, we are under the attack by disinformation

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campaigns […] And we are under the influence of diverse influence campaigns from abroad, primarily from Russia and China. So, what is the Government doing?’ (Chamber of Deputies, 2018c). The intersections between national cleavages and international politics of HW then came out strongly during several high-profile incidents. The first of them concerned the annual May visits of the ‘Night Wolves’ biker gang (see Harris, 2020), supposedly commemorating the advance of the Red Army in World War II. These rides became one of the flashpoints for the HW debate, because the gang was perceived, to cite Petr Pavel, then the Chairman of NATO Military Committee, as ‘part of Russian hybrid strategy, tool of a disinformation campaign and a symbol of twisted values’ (Prchal, 2018). The bikers were periodically greeted by local pro-Russian groups and politicians, often associated with President Zeman, whilst spurring heated condemnation by opposition politicians and public protests. These have at times turned into scuffles at particular Night Wolves’ stops (Č TK, 2019a; Mareš et al., 2020, p. 40). The entanglement of the HW assemblage with national and international politics came out even more strongly during the controversies surrounding the removal of the monument of Soviet general Ivan Konev—depicted on the cover of the book—from one of Prague’s squares. The statue was installed in 1980 to commemorate the liberation (or ‘liberation’ for some) of 1945. However, it was often perceived rather as a symbol of the Soviet domination over Czechoslovakia, and even Soviet imperialism more largely due to Konev’s role in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956 (Č T24, 2015). The calls for the removal of the memorial have grown in response to the Russian aggression of 2014. Following a defacement of the monument in November 2014, the municipality decided to attach an explanatory plaque detailing the controversies concerning Konev’s military career to the statue (Ludvík, 2015). The plaque was installed on 21 August 2018, in commemoration of 50 years since the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. In response to another defacement in August 2019, the municipality stated that it would not clean the statue anymore and that it instead intends to move it to the premises of the Russian Embassy (Novinky & ̌ CTK, 2019). The proposal was rejected by the Russian side, while individuals connected with far-right and pro-Russian groups started to clean up the statue by themselves, only to be restrained by police from doing so (European Values, n.d.). By mid-September 2019, the dispute escalated into several theatrical demonstrations by the supporters of the statue. These included

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President Zeman’s spokesman and notorious online troll, Jiří Ovčáček, the then Social Democrat MP Jaroslav Foldyna and various communist and far-right politicians, who were met by several counter-­demonstrations. Petitions from both sides followed and so did the involvement of both Russian and Czech politicians, trading invectives and accusing each other of illegitimate interference (Č TK, 2019b). The dispute over the statue was quickly framed as an instance of HW by the mayor of Prague 6 and member of the liberal-conservative TOP 09, Ondřej Kolár ̌. Reacting to the accusations by the Russian embassy and insults appearing on social media, he claimed that ‘we have lost patience. We do not want Prague 6 to be the battlefield where Russia leads a hybrid war against us anymore’ (Vondráček, 2019). This language, geopoliticising and warifying the dispute and embedding it into the broader HW discourse, soon became one of the main ways of framing the situation by both sides of the confrontation. As Jakub Kalenský, a prominent figure of the HW assemblage, argued, the monument was just the ‘latest battlefield in the Russian information war against us’ (Šafar ̌íková, 2019). The Konev controversy demonstrated the intimate relationship of the local and the international in the politics of ‘hybrid war’. Local actions were quickly linked to matters of international importance and/or ascribed to supposed foreign puppet-masters, effectively denying local activists any agency. As the Respekt magazine put it, battle lines of HW crossed the borders and various demonstrations and scuffles around the Konev’s monument have made the local ‘fifth column’ and various figures connected to it very visible—‘like a parade of the local pro-Russian scene under the shining sun’ (Šafaříková, 2019). Mayor Kolář then called those cleaning the monument as ‘most likely some Russian trolls who have heeded the calls of the Russian embassy’ (Deník, 2019). The trope of a supposed ‘fifth column’ consisting of far-right nationalists, communists, pro-Russian activists and fringe contrarians has gained increased resonance and helped to solidify the argument that Russian agents or at least ‘useful idiots’ were present inside Czechia. ‘The Czechs who defend the Konev’s monument are helping Russia in its hybrid war against democracy. Some of them because their eyesight have been blinded, some purposefully,’ as one commentator put it (Mitrofanov and Novinky, 2019). The Konev Affair continued to reverberate well into 2020, when the statue was finally removed in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown and, together with the overall politicisation of the issue, has had several lasting effects on the HW assemblage. It contributed to the atmosphere of

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anxiety, where even unconfirmed rumours about a Skripal-style Russian poison attacks on local politicians, could be made broadly believable (see Chap. 6). The scuffles and demonstrations at the site of the monument, similarly to the incidents surrounding the Night Wolves’ visits, came to be seen as a manifestation of a growing threat of the ‘fifth column’ inside the country (Novotný, 2020; Romancov, 2020). The Konev Affair, as well as the Night Wolves visits and parliamentary debates, also manifested how the HW discourse become increasingly a means to define identities of political actors. As such, attitude towards HW became a marker of distinction in the Czech political debate and it represented one of the cleavages dividing the centrist liberal actors from the illiberal parties and movements. Put differently, the government versus opposition cleavage became increasingly geopoliticised and warified. Covid-19: From a Hybrid Threat to a Social Problem If the preceding sections represented mostly distinctly Czech (or Czech-­ Russian) incidents, the HW framing of various Covid-19 related issues shows the intersection of the Czech HW discourse and a truly global phenomenon. The pandemic boosted the attention given to HW and misinformation in Europe and worldwide. In Czechia, Covid-19 became quickly geopoliticised, warified and drawn into the concerns of the HW assemblage. Thereby, the HW discourse was further stretched by the incorporation of new issues, such as supplies of medical equipment or vaccine misinformation. These developments led to a plethora of new initiatives aimed at Russia as well as other foreign actors, particularly China. At the same time, the pandemic also highlighted new dimensions of the HW agenda, especially the social—rather than security and geopolitical— dimension of misinformation. This led to a further differentiation within the assemblage, fuelling some of its inner tensions. The pandemic was from the start connected to the HW framing by actors both in Czechia and elsewhere. For instance, Chinese and Russian influence campaigns were discussed as the security issue of utmost importance at the highest levels of EU and NATO (Carrapico & Farrand, 2020; Reding & Wells, 2022). Figures such as the Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg expressed warnings about misinformation campaigns and singled out Russia and China as actors that ‘try to undermine the cohesion of NATO allies’ (Jozwiak, 2020). A leaked EEAS report stated that ‘Pro-­ Kremlin media outlets have been prominent in spreading disinformation

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about the coronavirus, with the aim to aggravate the public health crisis in western countries’ (Rankin, 2020). Former President of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted that ‘China and Russia have started an information war with the West’ (Tusk, 2020). Although these early statements helped to geopoliticise the virus by connecting health-related anxieties and social upheavals with malign foreign influence, the pandemic contributed also to their parallel dissociation. Over time, concerns over misinformation often turned inwards and started to accentuate the impact of domestic actors and social media platforms (Pamment, 2020; Rohozińska, 2021).4 Both of these diverging European trends—broadening of the geopoliticised HW frame to China, on the one hand, and its loosening by foregrounding domestic players, on the other hand—left their mark also on the Czech HW discourse and on the shape of the HW assemblage. In Czechia, the arrival of Covid-19 in early 2020 intersected with the HW discourse and the aftershocks of the Konev Affair. The awareness of Chinese influence operations has been also raised by some parts of the HW assemblage, even if not to a comparable degree to Russia (Janda et  al., 2019; Zelenka, 2021). The discursive context was thus prepared when the media first raised concerns about Russian ‘disinformation campaigns’ and the ability to face them in February 2020 (Vlach, 2020). The HW framing of the pandemic quickly prevailed. It started to seem that the EU and NATO were ‘losing the information war with Russia and China due to the slow and insufficient reaction of most their members to the pandemic’ (Ehl, 2020a). According to the widely reported research by Czech data analysis company Semantic Visions, the first misinformation came to the Czech Republic from a news site managed by the Russian Ministry of Defence (Č TK, 2020). However, it was above all Chinese information campaigns that sought to shift the blame for the spread of the virus to the West—a method presented as one of ‘tried and tested hybrid warfare’ (Hendrych, 2020)—that initially gained more attention. Chinese HW was represented as going beyond misinformation, as it included also coercive ‘mask diplomacy’ (Verma, 2020), supposedly contributing to the strengthening the already existing covert Chinese influence networks (Bartoníček, 2020). Yet, this did not present a particular novelty for the HW assemblage, as the 4  Interview, European think-tank director, Brussels, 2 June 2022; EU Officer, Brussels, 3 June 2022.

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Chinese campaigns were supposed to be performed in unison with the Russians (Zelenka & Prchal, 2020). Thereby, the problems of Covid-19, China and mask diplomacy could be simply subsumed under the already established HW discourse. ‘Mask diplomacy’ was gradually superseded by (Russian or Chinese) ‘vaccine diplomacy’ (Kazharski & Makarychev, 2021) and misinformation concerning vaccines. Actors such as European Values warned that among the ‘disinformation’ coming from Russia, ‘the issue of vaccines is much more frequent’ (Ehl, 2020b). Concerns over the use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine as a potential HW tool of its own also gained traction, as Prime Minister Babiš and President Zeman signalled their willingness to negotiate with Russia about Sputnik V (Kundra, 2021). As anxieties over the slow rollout of the vaccination campaign grew, the CTHH’s Benedikt Vangelli argued that Russian vaccine diplomacy (and diplomacy more generally) ‘is one of the key channels that is used for hybrid influencing’ (Ř eháková, 2021b). The debate on vaccines as a form of HW gradually slowed down as the Czech Republic secured supplies of Western-produced vaccines through Spring 2021 and the attention shifted back to misinformation hindering the vaccination rollout. Broadening HW to account for pandemic and vaccine misinformation spurred new ways of thinking and talking about countermeasures. When first restrictions were imposed in mid-March 2020, attention to misinformation quickly climbed up the ladder of the governmental and civil society priorities. At the start, the CTHH was supposed to provide a remedy (Vodrážka, 2020). However, as the pandemic progressed and it became clear that the reaction to the coronavirus misinformation requires different types of expertise than the CTHH or any other actor had, the campaign enrolled new actors. This included also private actors previously connected with the HW assemblage, such as Semantic Visions (Prchal & Tvrdoň, 2020; Valášek & Dragoun, 2020). The increase of interest in misinformation throughout the pandemic resulted in differing accents on the sources of the problem, some of which were more distant from the geopoliticised and warified HW framing than others. For some, Czechia continued to be ‘a victim of an information war’ waged by Russia and China (Alvarová, 2021). For one conservative journalist, Russia was still the main problem, as the ‘anti-mask hysteria and the polarisation of society […] is a fully organised Russian information attack against the West in the framework of the undeclared hybrid war that Putin has been waging for years’ (Doležal, 2020). In a slightly more

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measured tone, the director of the Semantics Visions claimed that ‘not every disinformation is coming from Russia, but the traces of the [Russian] messages are clearly visible’, although ‘the majority of the disinformation content is published by manipulated Czechs’ who ‘have become victims of many years of Russian disinformation efforts’ (Vrábel in Ř eháková, 2021a). This continued to be the main problem also for Benedikt Vangeli, who argued that ‘people definitely have their own opinions. The problem is that they are often forming them on the basis of the long-term influence of disinformation campaigns, significant part of which is led from the abroad’ (Ř eháková, 2021b). However, the pandemic brought also the parallel and opposite process of disassociating misinformation from the HW discourse. In the words of a critical journalist, ‘the idea […] that fake news is only a thing of “Putin’s agents” is being shattered a bit’ (Rychlíková, 2020). Her quote was specifically referring to a widely circulated sociological study prepared by the STEM agency (Hor ̌ejš et al., 2020) that turned the attention away from geopolitics and towards the actual motivations of Czechs to share misinformation. STEM specifically argued that ‘the group of spreaders is vast, very diverse and it needs greater attention, if the countermeasures to mitigate the impact of disinformation are to be successful’ (Hor ̌ejš et  al., 2020). STEM later followed up with further research papers, in some cases published in cooperation with other civil society actors active on the margins of the HW assemblage (STEM, 2021). Whereas one of these studies also gained significant traction in the media for its claim that about 40% of Czechs believe in some sort of ‘disinformation’ (Ciroková, 2021; Deník, 2021), it also explicitly distanced itself from the HW discourse: ‘We can encounter Covid-19 disinformation that came to the Czech society from China or Russia, however most of the mistrust in this area has domestic roots’ (STEM, 2021, p.  4). In these and following outputs, STEM pioneered a distinctly sociological and data-supported approach to the issue, to a large extent disassociated from the HW discourse (e.g. Buchtík et al., 2021). The Vrbětice Attack: Hybrid Warfare or State Terrorism? The April 2021 revelation of the role of the Russian intelligence agency GRU in the 2014 Vrbětice ammunition warehouse explosion marks the end of our analysis of the development of the HW assemblage. The explosions, which killed two employees of the warehouse and damaged a huge

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surrounding area, were for a long time treated as a mysterious accident (for an English overview of the case, see Hutt, 2021). This changed when Prime Minister Babiš announced on 17 April 2021 that according to Czech security agencies the explosion was likely the work of the GRU Unit 29155, which had been previously connected with the poisoning of the Skripals (Č T24, 2021). The revelations sparked a diplomatic row with Russia, followed by mutual expulsion of diplomats and an official listing of Czechia as a state hostile to Russia (The Economist, 2021). The shock caused by the news gave a new impetus to the debate on HW and provided a ‘reality check for those doubting’ its existence, in the words of Petr Matouš, key advisor on ‘hybrid threats’ to the Prime Minister (Světnička, 2021). However, at the same time, the revelation brought very little change to the debate or to the shape of the HW assemblage. In spite of the seriousness of the issue and the fact that it showed Russia’s threat in the very violent and rather traditional form of a military sabotage, there was little reconsideration of the key assumptions of the HW discourse. Instead, Babiš’s announcement revealing the suspected perpetrators started a heated debate on how to label the attacks in Vrbětice and whether it was sufficient to call it a ‘hybrid war’. After an initial period of confusion, though, the debate on HW returned to the shape established over the previous years and continued to emphasise misinformation and influence operations. The Russian involvement in the attacks was, with the notable exception of President Zeman (Kopecký, 2021), largely accepted for a fact. The controversy was rather about how to label the act itself. Members of the conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) party suggested that the notion of ‘hybrid war’ was not sufficiently strong. In the words of the party leader, Petr Fiala: ‘We have awakened to the new security situation of the Czech Republic. It is clear that our country does not face only cyberattacks, information war, but that Russia does not shy away from violent acts. It became clear that we must call what happened in the right terms: It is state terrorism’ (Dolejší and Č T24, 2021). Similar words were then used also by other politicians from the opposition, including the President of the Senate, Miloš Vystrčil, or the chair of the Chamber of Deputies’ defence committee, Jana Č ernochová (Č ernochová, 2021; Dolejší and Č T24, 2021). The terrorism label was eventually adopted even by Babiš, whose first reactions rather sought to downplay the act (Echo24, 2021). However, the ‘state terrorism’ label has since been rejected by investigative authorities, who cited its lack of legal grounding, by the academic

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community, and it was avoided even by the Czech counterintelligence agency’s report mentioning the revelation (Bahenský & Karmazin, 2021; ̌ CTK, 2021a; Kundra & Spurný, 2021). Moreover, the shock was in a matter of weeks superseded by already established HW narratives. The focus moved to debate a potential ‘treason’ committed by President Zeman, who was portrayed as ‘continuing to work for Kremlin’ (Fendrych, 2021) as he questioned Russia’s role in the event (Č TK, 2021c). Using well-­established tropes, Zeman, according to the commentator Petr Honzejk, ‘acted exactly according to the hybrid warfare textbook’ (Honzejk, 2021). The ‘treason’ narrative started to resonate even more when a leading news website, Seznam Zprávy, accused the Minister of the Interior, Jan Hamáček, of an intention to cover up the Russian involvement in the Vrbětice attack in exchange for supplies of the Sputnik V vaccine (Kroupa & Ciroková, 2021). Nearly overshadowing the actual attack with the intensity of debate that it instigated, the accusation has since been muddled in conflicting interpretation of Hamáček’s intentions and words uttered in private and even classified meetings. The revelations about Vrbětice and the following debate in some respect ‘put an end to the hybrid warfare agenda’—or rather any debate on it—as provocatively argued by one of our interviewees.5 The event led to a significant escalation in the political conflict between the Czech Republic and Russia and provided evidence to support the reading of mutual relations as a state of war—a ‘hybrid’ one that can spill over into real acts of violence (Kurfürst, 2022, p. 374; Nerad, 2021; Vlach, 2021). At the same time, the debate on the impact of Vrbětice did not concern only external Russia’s violation of Czech sovereignty. Following the established understanding of HW as a domestic struggle against pro-Russian traitors (see Chap. 5), the debate quickly turned inwards. Thereby, focus returned to the already well-known local actors potentially supporting Russia with narratives that aim to ‘deflect the attention, confuse and create chaos’ about what actually happened in Vrbětice (Šalounová & Loudová, 2021). Despite the massive effects of the Vrbětice revelations on Czechia’s foreign and security policy, where the Babiš government now shifted towards a hard-line against Russia, the internal debate on HW fell back to its previously established tracks.

5

 Interview, Czech journalist, 24 May 2022, Prague.

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The Institutionalisation of the Assemblage and Specialisation of Its Members Building on the groundwork of the preceding years and the flourishing of the HW discourse in broader public sphere, the period from 2017 to 2021 was marked by stabilisation of the HW assemblage in a range of institutional structures. New agencies focusing on HW and/or ‘disinformation’ were established in the key ministries, Armed Forces or parliament. This process was slower and more cumbersome than it had been originally envisioned by some (Vangeli, 2022). However, the gradual institutionalisation of the HW assemblage within the state apparatus continued to keep its concerns on the state’s agenda, facilitating the reproduction of the HW discourse.6 Certain institutionalisation happened also at the level of civil society, as some of the main driving actors of the previous period increasingly professionalised their agendas, attracted more stable funding and grew in size. At the same time, new actors entering the assemblage had to compete within an already crowded field, which made some of them focus on topics that had not been covered by the assemblage yet.7 This process connected HW to a range of new issues and contributed to the salience of the topic in the public debate. In this section, we will sketch these developments by outlining the main actors active in both state and non-state parts of the HW assemblage. State Institutions Concerns about HW grew significantly within the state apparatus, but the government’s will to invest political capital in the issue had been somehow shattered. Both Sobotka’s and Babiš’s cabinets deemphasised their counter-­HW campaigns following debates over CTHH’s role in the opening months of 2017 (Jankowicz, 2020, pp. 190–194; Vangeli, 2022, pp.  218–219).8 This resulted in a rather fractious proliferation of the assemblage within the state apparatus, which started to gain pace only in 2019 and 2020. With the notable exception of the BIS (Paďourek &  Interview, MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague.  Interview, Czech think-tank associate, 14 January 2020, Prague; Former Czech activist and think-tank associate, 14 October 2020, online. 8  Interview, MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague. 6 7

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Kovařík, 2022), the state part of the HW assemblage was driven rather by loose groups of dedicated people within the institutions (security bureaucrats and members of the Armed Forces) than by the official leadership or the institutions as such. Besides taking part in several coordination mechanisms (for their criticism see Vangeli, 2022, pp. 215–217), some of these security bureaucrats also formed informal cross-institutional coordination platforms that supported the state part of the assemblage and shaped the agenda on the national as well as European levels.9 The lack of political support has arguably impacted the activities of the CTHH as well as the implementation of some of the key HW-related recommendations from the National Security Audit. Although the government adopted the National Security Audit Action Plan in May 2017 and established coordination mechanisms on ‘hybrid threats’ (Government of the Czech Republic, 2017), other recommendations, such as the establishment of dedicated cells at different ministries, were not materialised (Vangeli, 2022, pp.  209–214). Lower focus on the agenda was visible within the Ministry of Defence, which was tasked with coordinating HW issues (Vangeli, 2022, p.  209).10 CTHH itself then continued to be an object of ongoing political skirmishes (Jankowicz, 2020, pp. 190–194).11 Although the Centre continued its work and its head, Benedikt Vangeli, became one of the main public faces of the state’s counter-HW agenda, the Centre’s public outputs became scarce. Rather, the locus of the Centre’s activities moved inwards, focusing on depoliticised routines such as capacity-building, monitoring and other non-public tasks (Cápová, 2017; Janáková, 2018; Prchal & Zelenka, 2018). One of the key roles continued to be played by the Security Information Service (BIS). The agency was broadly perceived as taking HW the most seriously, also according to a survey of Czech and Slovak security community (Paďourek & Kovařík, 2022). In the public, BIS periodically warned about the dangers posed by HW in its Annual Reports, which have become an important reference point for HW debates (see Chap. 6). Moreover, BIS has been strongly present in the public sphere, thanks to its director Michal Koudelka, who became known for his resolute warnings. For instance, during a conference on the protection of European elections, 9  Interview, two MoD officers, 12 August 2020, Prague; MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague. 10  Interview, two MoD officers, 12 August 2020, Prague. 11  Interview, MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague.

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Koudelka claimed that ‘it is not a question if Russia uses a disinformation campaign, but how it will do it’ (Golis, 2019b). He has been frequently called to testify in the parliamentary committees or speak in the public conferences to raise awareness (Sviták, 2019). Koudelka’s role has been strongly politicised also due to his disagreements with President Zeman and attempts of the government to promote Koudelka to the rank of general, which were blocked by the President (Č TK, 2021b). Several other actors kept the attention to HW in the state apparatus alive. In August 2017, the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB) was officially created. The agency grew significantly, while keeping staff that was active on the HW during the process of the formulation of the Audit. Focusing mostly on cybersecurity and aiming to ‘defend the Czech cyberspace from all the threats, irrespective where they are coming from’ (Gazdík, 2020), it came to be perceived as one of the driving forces of the HW assemblage in the area of more technical cybersecurity-­related issues (Vangeli, 2022, pp. 211–212). This was publicly recognised when Karel Ř ehka temporarily left the army to head the Agency in March 2020 (Magdoňová, 2020a). The Armed Forces also built its own capacities for detection of and reaction to HW (Vangeli, 2022, p. 212). Among others, the Army established the Information and Cyber Forces Command, responsible for a wide range of issues from cybersecurity to misinformation and strategic communication, within the General Staff in 2019. Although its head, Miroslav Feix, frequently stated his distaste to the notion of ‘hybrid war’, he nevertheless admitted that ‘there is definitely Russian hybrid influencing happening’ and the Command will be paying attention to it (Br ̌ešt ̌an, 2019). The Command was dislocated in Brno in a close proximity to NÚKIB, local universities and cybersecurity industry, complementing the local branch of the HW assemblage (Havlík, 2020). The years 2019 and 2020 then brought several new governmental initiatives. The more tangible steps were done with the arrival of new, younger group of bureaucrats to the Ministry of Defence, who were well versed in the HW agenda due to their previous education and institutional experiences. This resulted in the drafting and subsequent adoption of the long-planned National Strategy for Countering Hybrid Interference in 2021 (Horák, 2021).12 The document codified the assumptions of a distinctly military and technocratic approach to countering HW (see Chap.  Interview, two MoD officers, 12 August 2020, Prague.

12

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5) and outlined key vulnerabilities in the areas of national values, economy and security. Things were moving also at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which appointed the former Permanent Representative to NATO, Jiří Šedivý, as the Special Envoy for Resilience and New Threats with the task to coordinate the areas of strategic communication and ‘countering disinformation’ in 2019 (Zelenka, 2019). While Šedivý left the position (that subsequently ceased to exist) the following year, strategic communication and resilience against misinformation and hybrid threats retained a notable presence at the MFA. Although fragmented in different departments, HW concerns helped to establish new strategic communication and coordination capabilities.13 Finally, ‘hybrid’ got an increased attention also at the Office of the Government,  which in 2021 appointed the advisor to the Prime Minister, Petr Matouš, as the head of the coordination unit on ‘hybrid threats’. The unit brought together representatives of most of the governmental parts of the HW assemblage and contributed to its further stabilisation (Magdoňová, 2021a). The institutionalisation of the HW assemblage took place also at the level of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament as the MPs active on the matters established the Permanent Commission on Hybrid Threats in 2020. MP Helena Langšádlová, one of the main supporters of the HW agenda, described the task of the Commission in the following words: ‘we want to analyse what the state is doing to increase its resilience against the hybrid threats’ (TOP 09, 2020). The Commission brought together several MPs already active within the HW assemblage. Thereby, it supported the HW agenda on the political level and became an institutionalised platform for meetings of representatives of the state part of the assemblage (Magdoňová, 2021b). While it was only one of many platforms, it illustrates well the increased institutionalisation of the HW assemblage inside the state apparatus. Civil Society The non-state part of the HW assemblage grew as well. While the initial expansion of the number of civil society organisations involved with ‘disinformation’ peaked in 2016, it started to grow again in 2018. In sum, this made Czech civil society the most active on the issue in the whole Central Europe (Syrovátka, 2021).  Interview, MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague.

13

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The European Values (EV) think tank, rebranded as European Values Center for Security Policy in 2019, remained one of the core actors of the assemblage, as well as one with a particularly geopoliticised and warified approach to HW. In this period, EV abandoned their previous focus on counterterrorism and migration and became primarily oriented on HW agenda, aiming to ‘defend Europe especially from the malign influences of Russia and China’ (European Values Center for Security Policy, n.d.). This move was concluded in 2019 when the founding director, Radko Hokovský, left the think tank, Jakub Janda assumed his place and the EV broadened its focus also to Chinese ‘hybrid threats’ (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2019, pp. 3–4). While increasingly present on the international level, the EV remained visible also in the Czech debate. This took the form of a plethora of publications, newsletters and regular monitoring analyses that made EV a frequently cited authority in both national and international media, achieving hundreds of mentions each year (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2018a, 2019). Important was also their annual closed-door Stratcom Summit (rebranded as European Values Summit in 2022), which managed to bring together many Czech and international figures and politicians active in countering HW (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2023). In result, the EV got involved in broad array of different projects in Czechia as well as abroad and became a well-established institution of the non-state part of the assemblage. The significant growth of their core team that nearly doubled between 2017 and 2021 (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2017a, 2021), including the hiring of senior figures (e.g. former diplomats) and the professionalisation of EV activities, contrasted with the previous period, when the EV pushed the HW agenda rather on personal basis performed by their then leading managers Janda and Hokovský. EV also became recognised as an important player at the international level, bringing thus the Czech HW assemblage into the international sphere.14 While EV transformed completely, some other non-state actors instead specialised by focusing on niche issues to carve their place in the increasingly crowded arena. We already noted the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) initiatives oriented on mapping ‘disinformation’ during election periods, which represents an example of such gradual specialisation and 14  Interview, European think-tank director, 2 June 2022, Brussels; MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague.

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strategic distinction by an actor that had been active in the assemblage since its beginnings (see Chap. 3).15 While being involved in several other international networks in the CEE and beyond, PSSI sought to distinguish itself also by its programme on economic influence of foreign powers. This was done by already existing activities, such as the promotion of a special software and university scholarship focused on mapping foreign economic influence (Nadace  OSF, 2018; The Prague Security Studies Institute, n.d.). Having a more comprehensive profile than EV, PSSI instead invested in developing a specialised research and expert identity, where HW was only one among many tackled issues. A highly distinctive and visible role in the HW assemblage started to be played by the Czech Elves, a brand new online vigilant volunteer organisation (the name signals their opposition to ‘pro-Russian’ internet ‘trolls’). Modelled after the example of the Baltic states, the Czech Elves were established in 2018, partly in result of the shock posed by ‘disinformation’ during the presidential elections of 2018 (Skoupá, 2018a). In particular, the Elves pointed to the so-called chain emails that fell under the radar of the state and media monitoring systems. By mapping them and engaging in a range of other counter HW activities, such as counter-messaging or even active disruption of the misinformation scene (see Klečková, 2022, pp. 10–13), the Elves sought to ‘build a sort of defence line in the digital space against the proliferation of disinformation narratives, that are primarily supporting the pro-Kremlin viewpoints’.16 The Elves remained a primarily anonymous movement that comprised volunteers from private sphere, civil society and—by the Elves’ own accounts—also members of the state security apparatus. Thereby, they complemented the European Values in playing the crucial role of maintaining the assemblage by connecting different actors and cultivating their relations, although in a secretive fashion. In many of their outputs, Elves took a particularly combative, geopoliticised and warified approach defined by the desire ‘to protect our state and fight the Russian propaganda’ (Skoupá, 2018a). The Czech Elves managed to carve a distinct space within the HW assemblage by approaching media and selected organisations within the security apparatus.17 Consequentially, their reviews of disinformation narratives started to be published by some of the leading news  Interview, Czech think-tank associate, 14 January 2020, Prague.  Interview, Member of the Czech Elves, 31 August 2020, Prague. 17  Interview, Member of the Czech Elves, 31 August 2020, Prague. 15 16

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media and their official public faces, Bob Kartous and Vít Kučík, became sought-after talking heads (Č eští elfové, 2023). The Elves thus combined an expert role, as they engaged in monitoring, with an activist, combative approach and extensive networking. The HW agenda also attracted many individuals without an institutional background. Among several freelance journalists or tech experts who started to proselytise warnings about HW, probably the most distinctive position was achieved by Alexandra Alvarová, a former PR consultant, journalist and communication advisor to a small conservative political party (Alvarová, 2017, pp. 20–24). Alvarová started to publish on HW as an independent expert in online outlets, loosely affiliated with the conservative and Christian-democratic milieu. In 2017 she published a book The Industry of Lies: Propaganda, Conspiracy and Information Warfare (Alvarová, 2017) that was reprinted again in 2019 and 2022. The book, described as a key eye-opening text on the HW by one of our journalist interviewees,18 took a decidedly light and non-academic style, as Alvarová described herself as ‘a propagandist. A seller of ideas’ (Alvarová, 2017, p. 11). Alvarová subsequently started to frequently appear in the media as a commentator and analyst (e.g. Alvarová, 2019, 2020; Rozsypal & Luptáková, 2019) and embarked on several lecture tours. Her status was validated by appearances at expert HW conferences (e.g. Senate of the Czech Republic, 2019), invited lecture for the MFA’s Diplomatic Academy, or inclusion in an edited volume that featured leading HW experts from academia, civil society and security apparatus (Kurfürst & Paďourek, 2022). Alvarová mastered the art of popular communication and, by her activist and alarmist style (see also Chap. 5), became one of the most radical voices of the Czech HW assemblage. Particular identity at the side-lines of the assemblage was crafted also by initiatives working on media literacy and critical thinking. These varied in their relationship to the core actors of the HW assemblage, as well as in their adoption of the more strongly geopoliticised and warified versions of the HW discourse (see Chap. 5). Still, they all played some role in keeping HW and, in particular, misinformation on the agenda. Researchers known already from the initial period, especially the Brno-based political scientist Miloš Gregor, continued their involvement. Gregor himself was frequently interviewed in the media and even co-authored a short-lived Czech TV show on misinformation and media literacy (Strakatý, 2019). Besides, he  Interview, Czech journalist, 19 September 2019, Prague.

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also went on working with student-run projects such as Fakescape, which aimed to promote a gamified approach to media literacy education (Fakescape.cz, 2022; Syrovátka, 2021, p. 239). Several other student-run or student-centred initiatives, such as Stužák (founded in 2017) or Euforka (founded in 2019), were set up to tackle the issue of misinformation by enhancing outreach to youth based on promoting critical thinking and media literacy skills—or simply better information (Stužák, 2021; Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2019). Run typically by volunteer university students, these initiatives contributed to a wider trend of personal activism on HW issues.19 Besides media education of the youth, the digital media literacy of senior citizens, who were perceived as the main recipient of chain emails, started to gain an increased prominence on the side-lines of the assemblage (Syrovátka, 2022, p.  228). Civil society organisations such as Transitions or Elpida thus started to design programmes oriented specifically on seniors with the intention to ‘not only describe what fake news is, but also how good and responsible work with information looks like’ (Golis, 2019c) Although not being always directly associated with HW as such, various civil society initiatives contributed to spreading the awareness of misinformation and HW more largely among diverse groups within the population and supported the establishment of a less geopoliticised and warified approach to tackling disinformation (see also Chap. 5). At the same time, they benefitted from increased awareness of HW created by the assemblage. Enrolling actors from multiple areas of social life, the HW assemblage now branched also into the business community. The company Semantic Visions and its head František Vrábel became arguably the most visible and active business actor. Vrábel established himself as a frequently cited authority on HW due to the ability of his company to analyse big data and supposedly trace misinformation narratives in ‘90 percent of worldwide news content’, or ‘more than million articles a day from more than 600 000 sources’ (Golis, 2019a). Relying on this, Vrábel presented himself as able to identify when the ‘disinformation rocket is incoming’ (Honzejk, 2018), as he put it in one interview, using characteristically warified language. Apart from Vrábel’s role as a media commentator, Semantic Visions also directly cooperated with both state and non-state parts of the HW

 Interview, former local activist and think tanker, 14 October 2020, online.

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assemblage. For instance, Semantic Visions worked for some time with state institutions on monitoring misinformation and developing state strategic communication during the Covid-19 pandemic (Prchal, 2020). Vrábel, together with Bob Kartous of the Czech Elves, also became founders of the Nelež initiative, another prominent instance of business involvement in HW (NELEŽ, 2020). This was announced in February 2020 to connect business actors with activists and limit advertisement on misinformation websites, which were selected, among other methods, also by using the Semantic Visions software. As ‘disinformation’ ‘divide society and confuse opinions’ so that it would become ‘easily controlled’ (NELEŽ, 2020), limiting advertising was supposed to protect the society by raising awareness and draining the income of misinformation websites.

Internationalisation of the HW Assemblage The growth of the Czech HW assemblage involved also its increasing internationalisation. Non-state actors within the assemblage got increasingly involved in transnational networks and projects which allowed them to reach to international funding and tap into debates that could be later localised back into the Czech context. Several individuals and institutions of the state part of the assemblage also became present in international arenas. Whereas the awareness of HW as a distinct security threat was still markedly higher in the Czech Republic than in most countries and international institutions, at least according to some of our interviewees,20 the internationalisation was facilitated also by increased concerns over misinformation and malign foreign influence within EU and NATO. Such conditions enabled some members of the assemblage to profile themselves in the international field and even to contribute to certain ‘uploading’ of the Czech HW discourse. In the following section, we cover the internationalisation of the HW assemblage across three levels—Central European, European and Transatlantic. Central Europe became a natural networking space especially for the non-state part of the assemblage due to the previously established links and institutions in place. While Slovakia experienced similar rise in HW

20  Interview, Czech think-tank associate affiliated with Brussels-based organisation, 4 March 2020, Brussels; Czech security bureaucrat, 1 June 2022, Brussels; two international think-tank associates, 2 June 2022, Brussels; EU Officer, 3 June 2022, Brussels.

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and misinformation-linked civil society initiatives as the Czech Republic, countries such as Hungary or Poland generally lagged behind (Syrovátka, 2021, pp.  233–234). Nevertheless, facilitated by joint initiatives, often financially supported  by the Visegrad Fund, the  European Values and PSSI engaged in projects mapping misinformation and foreign influence across the region, comparing national approaches or developing connections to like-minded institutions (e.g. European Values Center for Security Policy, 2017b; Syrovatka et al., 2017). In this respect, the Slovak Globsec Policy Institute came to play an important role within the Central European space. This happened in particular due to its involvement in region-wide projects oriented on mapping HW vulnerabilities (e.g. Milo et  al., 2017, 2019) and the annual Globsec Forum that regularly put emphasis on HW-related topics and often featured members of the Czech assemblage. Other connections were then forged further in the CEE and beyond as the Czech HW assemblage established partnerships with institutions in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia or Balkans (e.g. Klečková, 2022; Michalcová, 2020). The HW assemblage expanded also at the broader European level, fostering connections to the EU institutions or the extensive Brussels think-­ tank milieu. Czech security bureaucrats became embedded in coordination mechanisms the EU gradually established to counter ‘hybrid threats’ or foreign influence.21 Czech EU officials became also very visible with regard to the HW agenda, contributing to the uploading of Czech debates to the European level. The Czech member of the European Commission Věra Jourová became strongly involved with misinformation, media freedom and regulation of social media platforms after she was promoted to the position of the Commission’s Vice President for Values and Transparency in 2019 (Pamment, 2020).22 Jourová has taken a deliberately broader view on misinformation and did not limit herself to seeing the problem exclusively through a HW optics. Nevertheless, she still relied on and reproduced the HW discourse occasionally; for instance, following the revelations about the Vrbětice attack and the subsequent Russian ban on her visa, she described herself as ‘a long-term critic of what the Russian

21  Interview, MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague; Czech security bureaucrat, 1 June 2022, Brussels. 22  Interview, EU Commission Officer, 1 June 2022, Brussels; EU Officer, 3 June 2022, Brussels.

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Federation is doing, specifically pro-Kremlin information sources in the Czech Republic and in other EU states’ (McEnchroe, 2021). Similar position of combining criticism of surveillance capitalism of big social media platforms with HW language was then taken by the Pirate Party MEP Markéta Gregorová, a member of the EP’s Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the EU, including Disinformation (INGE). Furthermore, Gregorová has been one of the connection points between the Czech HW assemblage and the Brussels milieu, relying on the expertise of Czech actors and supporting them in their activities in Brussels, for example by inviting them into INGE hearings. Finally, the Czech Republic deliberately kept its position in the EEAS StratCom East team that was established by Jakub Kalenský in 2015 (see Chap. 3).23 After Kalenský’s departure from the agency in 2018, two other Czech officers successively held his post. The Czech HW assemblage became also widely recognised and networked in the Brussels milieu of think tanks, civil society organisations and the EU institutions. Especially the European Values became a household name among more activist think-tank circles24 and contributed to several joint European advocacy and lobbying initiatives (e.g. Gotev, 2017). EV further developed its already existing strong working relationship with European think tanks such as the European People Party’s Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies that helped to fund its activities, including the Stratcom Summit (e.g. European Values Center for Security Policy, 2018b). The European Commission, European Parliament and other institutions got involved in funding specific projects carried out within the HW assemblage as well and helped to support events. In the case of the European Values, they supported also further internationalisation through reaching out to partners in the Eastern neighbourhood (Pataridze et al., 2020). However, the internationalisation on the European level also happened on more informal basis as multiple Czech think tankers from different organisations routinely passed through internships, traineeships or short-term project positions in Brussels. Finally, the Czech HW assemblage got embedded also in broader Transatlantic institutions and networks. Similarly to the coordination processes in the EU, Czech security bureaucrats tasked with the HW agenda  Interview, EU Officer, 3 June 2022, Brussels.  Interview, European think-tank director, 2 June 2022, Brussels; two international thinktank associates, 2 June 2022, Brussels. 23 24

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passed through coordination processes within NATO and, to an extent, became recognised as distinct experts with advanced knowledge on HW.25 The revolving doors between NATO postings and national security apparatus became also a recurrent feature in the state part of the HW assemblage. Multiple highly visible figures passed through positions within the Alliance and helped to circulate the HW discourse between the Czech public sphere and NATO. This concerned the already mentioned Jiří Šedivý, who was made the Special Envoy for Resilience and New Threats after his return from Brussels to Prague. Another example was the head of NÚKIB, Karel Ř ehka, who previously served as a commander of the NATO Multinational Division Northeast in Elbląg, Poland. Similarly, after serving in the Czech mission to NATO and in the office of the NATO Secretary General, Jan Havránek became the Czech Deputy Minister of Defence responsible for the preparation of the National Strategy for Countering Hybrid Interference (Magdoňová, 2020b). Such circulation of personnel thus helped to connect the HW discourses present in the Czech Republic to those in NATO and embed members of the state parts of the HW assemblage into transnational fields. The non-state part of the Czech HW assemblage established several connections with Transatlantic institutions as well. After his departure from the EEAS, Jakub Kalenský held a position the US Atlantic Council think tank for several years, before moving to the joint EU-NATO Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki. NATO Public Diplomacy Division funded several HW-related events organised by the European Values or PSSI. The European Values even received an official recognition from NATO for its role in uncovering the networks of HW in Czechia (European Values Center for Security Policy, 2018e). However, even greater role was played by US foundations. Institutions such as the International Republican Institute, National Endowment for Democracy or National Democratic Institute provided funding or tools for research, advocacy or networking projects carried out not only by the European Values or PSSI but also by organisations involved rather with media literacy and education (Beacon Project IRI, 2018). While certainly not essential for its existence, this funding helped to keep the HW assemblage active and supported its proliferation internationally and to new thematic areas.

25  Interview, two MoD officers, 12 August 2020, Prague; NATO officer, 2 June 2022, Brussels.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we captured the development of the Czech HW assemblage in 2017–2021 through the notions of politicisation, institutionalisation and internationalisation. We sketched how HW became an ever hotter topic in the public and political discourses and how it was used by both liberal parties and illiberal parties in political struggles. Furthermore, the chapter noted how HW-related concerns proliferated to other areas of social life (memory politics, Covid-19, etc.), while also proving the limits of the HW-lens that led to development of less geopoliticised and warified approaches to misinformation. In the second part, the chapter outlined the institutionalisation of the assemblage in the governmental apparatus as well as in civil society initiatives. Finally, we noted the increased interconnectedness of the Czech assemblage with the international sphere that enabled circulation of discourses and actors between both spheres. Throughout this period, HW became an increasingly nebulous agenda that extended far and wide from its humble beginnings in military ‘labs’. Arrival of new actors to the HW assemblage as well as its increasing familiarity among media commentators and politicians kept HW constantly in the public sphere and gave rise to differing narratives, which we explore in the following chapter. The politicisation of the agenda and its entanglement with the main cleavages in the country then further raised awareness, but also had several detrimental effects on the issue. Apart from slowing down a more comprehensive institutional response due to the limited willingness of the government to invest political capital, the geopoliticised and warified HW discourse contributed to the misrecognition of dissatisfaction and genuine social issues in the country. Instead, an ever-widening list of problems came to be read through the lenses of HW, misinformation and foreign malign influence. The politicisation of HW discourse reached the apex in the campaign before the parliamentary elections held in the autumn of 2021. The electoral victory and arrival of a centre-right government started a new cycle of the HW assemblage, as several of its members of the assemblage came to occupy leading positions in the governmental apparatus, armed forces and security institutions. The examination of these further transformations is outside of the scope of this book.

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Vangeli, B. (2022). Hledání možností obrany proti hybridním hrozbám v Č esku. In J. Kurfürst & J. Paďourek (Eds.), Za zrcadlem: Hybridní válka jako staronový fenomén mezinárodních vztahu ̊ (pp. 202–221). Academia. Verma, R. (2020). China’s ‘Mask Diplomacy’ to Change the COVID-19 Narrative in Europe. Asia Europe Journal, 18(2), 205–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10308-­020-­00576-­1 Vilímová, T. (2017, October 25). Fialovi věr ̌ím, ale v ODS má spoustu proruských švábů, říká Kalousek  - Echo24.cz. Echo24. //echo24.cz/a/pC2u5/fialovi-­ verim-­ ale-v-ods-ma-spoustu-proruskych-svabu-rika-kalousek. Accessed 24 February 2023. Vlach, T. (2020, February 29). Virus v informační válce. Poplašné zprávy o koronaviru šír ̌í na sociálních sítích tisíce účtů s původem v Rusku. Lidovky.cz. https://www.lidovky.cz/svet/virus-­v-­informacni-­valce-­poplasne-­zpravy-­o-­ koronaviru-­siri-­na-­socialnich-­sitich-­tisice-­uctu-­s-­puvode.A200228_181041_ ln_zahranici_ele. Accessed 25 February 2023. Vlach, T. (2021, April 21). Ruská stopa ve Vrběticích: Stojíme na Prahu další války? A jaké? Reflex.cz. https://www.reflex.cz//clanek/tema/106654/ ruska-­stopa-­ve-­vrbeticich-­stojime-­na-­prahu-­dalsi-­valky-­a-­jake.html. Accessed 14 February 2023. Vodrážka, P. (2020). Armáda, roušky i vyvracení fám: koronavirus si v Itálii vyžádal první oběti. I kvůli tomu, jak je země oblíbená mezi českými lyžarǐ , se nabízí otázka, jak je Č esko na nákazu pr ̌ipraveno. Deník N, 2(39), 2. Vondráček, D. (2019, September 2). Bitva o Koněva. Č eská televize. https://www. ceskatelevize.cz/porady/1142743803-­r eporteri-­c t/219452801240025/ 0/67331-­bitva-­o-­koneva/. Accessed 24 February 2023. Zelenka, J. (2019, August 28). Ministerstvo zahraničí reaguje na nové hrozby. Bude mít člověka na boj proti dezinformacím a ruskému vlivu. Deník N. https://denikn.cz/188162/ministerstvo-­zahranici-­reaguje-­na-­ nove-­h rozby-­b ude-­m it-­c loveka-­n a-­b oj-­p roti-­d ezinformacim-­a -­r uskemu-­ vlivu/. Accessed 25 February 2023. Zelenka, J. (2021). Č esko-c ̌ínské objímání (Vydání první.). N media. Zelenka, J., & Prchal, L. (2020, March 16). „Našli to u nás, ale prǐ šlo to z USA.“ Peking s přispěním Moskvy šíří v Č esku lži o původu nákazy. Deník N. https:// denikn.cz/314830/nasli-­to-­u-­nas-­ale-­prislo-­to-­z-­usa-­peking-­s-­prispenim-­ moskvy-­siri-­v-­cesku-­lzi-­o-­puvodu-­nakazy/. Accessed 25 February 2023.

CHAPTER 5

Differentiation: Three Main Narratives of ‘hybrid warfare’

In the previous chapters, we have focused on the emergence and rise of the broad and general ‘hybrid warfare’ (HW) discourse, repeatedly pointing out to the vagueness of the notion of HW that only grew with the ‘mutations’ of this ‘lab leak’ concept. We have suggested that the discourse was expansive enough to portray all sorts of issues as security threats and link them to the overarching geopoliticised and warified idea of HW. However, what are these threats exactly and how should we react to them precisely? Is HW primarily a military threat that stems from the expansion of traditional great power competition into cyberspace? Or is it rather an ideological threat, in which domestic anti-liberal forces and foreign agents together seek to covertly undermine liberal and democratic values? Or perhaps we should take even broader perspective and consider HW as part of a larger problem of the digital transformation of the information sphere? This chapter zooms on these different explanations and explores the dissonances and variations present in the HW assemblage. It aims to bring nuance to the story of the formation of the HW assemblage outlined in the preceding chapters by mapping and dissecting the diverse understanding of the HW threat. Although members of the assemblage in principle agreed with the notion of HW as a serious security, political and social issue, the discussions concerned with the particular character of the threat have simultaneously been marked by a great deal of confusion over what it © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_5

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means exactly and what the best response should be. Closer reading of texts produced by the assemblage reveals significant internal variation and diversity around the key questions concerning the nature of the HW threat, as well as diverging forms and extents to which the strategies of geopoliticisation and warification were deployed within the assemblage. This also reflects the diverse backgrounds of actors forming the assemblage, as well as the ever-growing vagueness of the notion of hybrid warfare, as discussed earlier. To map this internal diversity and reconstruct how the threat of HW is conceived, we rely on the concept of narrative (for IR approaches to narrative analysis, see e.g. Bliesemann de Guevara, 2016; Krebs, 2015; Miskimmon et al., 2014, 2017; Neumann, 2002; Spencer, 2016). In general, narratives are stories told by people in order to make sense of the problems they face and explain their reactions to these problems (Bueger, 2013; Selbin, 2010; Wagenaar, 2011). A particular narrative helps to craft a coherent interpretation of a certain issue. In order to do that, it assembles heterogenous elements (protagonists and antagonists of the story, as well as conditions influencing their behaviour) into a larger story, articulated along particularly defined causes and effects (Bueger & Gadinger, 2018, p. 74; Edkins, 2019; Homolar & Rodríguez-Merino, 2019). This means that narratives can speak about ostensibly the same problem (‘hybrid warfare’ in our case), yet they establish very different links between the presented causes of this problem, its effects and prospective actions, leading to stories with markedly different meanings (Stampnitzky, 2014, pp. 6–7). Different readings of a certain problem stem also from the broader reservoir of knowledge and expertise that is available to producers of narrative and reflect what is accepted and valued in their respective cultural, professional and political contexts (Bueger, 2013; Jasanoff, 2007; Wagenaar, 2011). Although this chapter focuses in particular on Czech narratives, this does not mean that these emerged in isolation, as the HW assemblage is a transnational one by nature. Rather, these narratives connect distinctly local knowledge with (particularly understood and interpreted) references to knowledge that is accepted and valued internationally. Together, these form a prism through which a policy issue is constructed in a certain way and they also stabilise the narrative links between what is presented as the main problems and their causes (Stampnitzky, 2014, pp. 6–7). Therefore, we pay attention to what sorts of knowledge provide the basis for narrative constructions of HW and what types of

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expertise—socially recognised and authoritative proficiency in certain issue—play a role also for the legitimation of the narrative’s reading of a problem (Berling & Bueger, 2015, p.  7; Boswell, 2008). At the same time, we are not losing sight of connections between distinctly national and international dimensions of the analysed narratives. Building on these narrative characteristics, together with basic insights on security narratives from securitisation theory (Buzan et  al., 1998; Ördén, 2019), we build a heuristic framework to reconstruct the different narratives in the Czech debate on HW. In particular, we focus on the main threat (its form and location), the main threatened value and the main action needed to counter the threat and protect the threatened value. In other words, as Stavrianakis (2019: 233) succinctly put it in her analysis of risk discourses, we explore how particular narratives explain ‘where potential harm comes from, to whom or what, and how?’ and ‘who has the ability to generate a constituency to act’. These together constitute a more or less coherent plot linking the security problem with its causes, potential negative consequences and a desirable reaction to avoid them (Bueger & Gadinger, 2018, p. 74). In the final step, we also add a fourth element: the type of knowledge and both national and international expertise these narratives put forward and rely on. We reconstruct the narratives in particular on the basis of two groups of key texts produced within the assemblage. First group of key texts comprises of the main official documents of the Czech government concerning foreign and security policy and dealing with the HW as well as Annual Reports of Czech intelligence services. Second group of texts is composed of six Czech books on the issue of HW. These are decidedly popular and non-scholarly publications aimed at non-expert public written mostly by journalists, public speakers and other types of public intellectuals (Alvarová, 2017; Kundra, 2016; Nutil, 2018; Táborský, 2019), although in one case also by a high-ranking Czech Army officer (Ř ehka, 2017) and in another by a group of students and academics (Gregor et al., 2018). Using the outlined framework, we identified three main HW narratives, which we will unpack in detail in this chapter. First is the defence narrative, which builds on military expertise and is primarily concerned with the possibility of a ‘real war’ resulting from great power competition, which it wants to avert by building appropriate defence capabilities. Second is the counterinfluence narrative that coheres around the societal and value threat in the form of Russian covert action practised through ‘disinformation’ and network of local proxies, stressing thus the need to protect the society

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against both foreign influence and its local allies. Finally, the education narrative, constructed on the basis of insights provided by popular cognitive and social psychology, zooms in on the individual ability to navigate and process information, calling for the development of media literacy and critical thinking skillsets. We summarise the main features of these three HW narratives in Table 5.1. Disentangling of the HW discourse into three distinct narratives telling markedly different stories of what the problem of HW is allows us to highlight the heterogeneity of the HW assemblage as well as the general vagueness of the notion of HW. As we showed in preceding chapters, the HW assemblage has involved several different groups of actors originating in think tanks, NGOs, different parts of government and security forces, Table 5.1  Three main narratives of the Czech HW debate and their elements Narrative

Threat

External and mostly military, based on hostile actions of foreign states Counterinfluence Networked— directly or ideologically linked foreign powers and domestic illiberal actors, jointly aiming to influence population and subvert liberal institutions Education Cognitive, based on changing media environment and individual ability to navigate it Defence

Protected value

Response

Knowledge

Ability to defend the state, survival of the state and its allies Liberal democratic character of the state, liberal and Western values in the society

Building resilient institutions and defence capabilities Awareness-­ raising and ideological struggle, uncovering foreign agents, debunking anti-liberal and anti-Western narratives

Military science, defence doctrines and military manuals Investigative journalism, intelligence expertise, popular science (history, international politics)

Individual capability to be an informed citizen, and, consequently, the preservation of liberal democratic order

Media education promoting media literacy, self-­ improvement

Studies on media consumption, popular science (psychology, sociology, media studies)

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journalism, business or education sector. The three HW narratives reflect in part this diversity as each group weighted on the HW problem with its own background knowledge, style of reasoning and preferences for particular policies and courses of action. The vagueness and broadness of HW as a threat spanning across multiple issues and policy domains then allowed for their relatively unproblematised coexistence, even despite their mutual contradictions in identifying the causes of the HW problem or preferred responses to it. At the same time, the coexistence of widely different stories under the same umbrella of HW discourse makes any effective critique of it difficult. Coexistence of these three narratives makes the HW a moving target which is impossible to pin down to any single problem or preferred solution to it.

Defence Narrative: Protecting the State from External Threats The first narrative pictures ‘hybrid warfare’ as a problem for national defence. In this reading, which is closest to the original formulations of HW in US military thought (Hoffman, 2007; Fridman, 2018; Bahenský, 2018), ‘hybrid’ is above all a form of war or at least an accompanying feature of conventional military confrontation. At the same time, HW is often difficult to precisely delineate as some of its methods intentionally blur divisions between peace, crisis and conflict (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2021, p. 5). This conceptual heritage leads to a narrative embedded in strategic studies and IR realism, where the threat comes from power politics backed up by military force and concerns primarily the state and its institutions. As such, the threat is to be minimised by building up and updating national and international security institutions and defence capabilities under the guiding logics of preparedness for potential escalation and resilience to hostile actions of foreign powers. This military and hard-power focus on the narrative means that warification and geopoliticisation are both used, yet also kept within rather strong limits. This narrative is not about extending these logics to all sorts of social issues, but rather about identifying the different channels and domains through which a geopolitical confrontation can turn into an actual war. The key sources developing this narrative within the assemblage have been representatives of national security institutions (Ministry of Defence,

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General Staff of the Armed Forces and others) and the official texts produced by these institutions, such as the Security Strategy, the Defence Strategy and the National Strategy for Countering Hybrid Interference. Moreover, this narrative has been strongly articulated also in the publications and interviews of Karel Ř ehka, a former Special Forces general, director of national cybersecurity agency NÚKIB and perhaps the publicly most visible military intellectual in Czechia (and the Chief of Staff at the time of writing). This narrative portrays HW as another type of actual war, rather than seeing all politics through a war-like logic. It is animated by the broader Clausewitzian discourse about war as a phenomenon with unchanging ‘nature’, but constantly shifting ‘character’, where the latter is dependent upon the social and technological developments of a given age (von Clausewitz, 1989). In Ř ehka’s words, ‘wars have always been and always will be a part of human society. And as long as people have different interests and there are conflicts between them and there comes a situation, when they are ready to use violence, we have a war’ (Golis, 2018b). A war that is always messy and waged through number of different methods available to a given actor. As then Deputy Minister of Defence Jakub Landovský noted for the official magazine of Czech Armed Forces: Hybrid threats have existed since time eternal […] If we look at history, warfare has been asymmetric all the time. Our fixed idea that adversaries met at the Marchfeld [site of a famous medieval battle – n. authors] and resolved their differences right there in a decisive battle has always been false. Take the long tradition of guerrilla war. Since the emergence of the financial system, it became possible to react to the adversary by using customs duties, tariffs, trade blockades, or isolation. Competition between states has always been highly complex. (Marek, 2018, p. 5)

In the same logic, it is natural that ‘information has been a weapon since the beginning of war […] The only change in history has been their role and use in particular conflict’, as argued by the head of the Czech Army Cybernetic and Information Operations Command, Miroslav Feix (Marek, 2019, p. 4). Nevertheless, it means that today, we might be facing slightly novel challenges as ‘[t]he expanding use of modern technologies, such as social networks and other internet applications, creates a range of new vulnerabilities that need to be addressed and reduced’ (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2021, p. 6).

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The realist and military logic underpinning this narrative of HW is apparent in the portrayal of the threat, which is understood as a combination of military and non-military means at service of great power politics. With an implicit yet clear allusion to Russia, Czech Security Strategy in this context talks about ‘states’ that are ready to pursue their power-seeking goals through hybrid warfare methods combining conventional and non-conventional military means with non-military tools (propaganda using traditional and new media, disinformation intelligence operations, cyber-attacks, political and economic pressures, and deployment of unmarked military personnel). (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015, p. 13)

Therefore, the Kremlin and its HW approaches are a threat first and foremost because of Russia’s military power that backs up its assertive policies in Eastern Europe (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7). This does not mean that Czech security intellectuals are worried by a direct prospect of Russian tanks in Prague. However, official documents present national security as ‘indivisible’ from that of other NATO and EU members (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2021, p. 5; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015, p. 6). In this logic, which is embedded in and echoes NATO’s famous Article 5, Russian assertiveness in its neighbourhood and thus Russia’s military threat to the Balts, Norwegians or Romanians is seen as a security issue also in Prague. While the line is not always crystal clear, it is rather collective defence and Article 5 than references to civilisational values that make the security of Estonia or Romania a Czech issue. This can be seen as a geopoliticisation of sorts, but not necessarily in the civilisational sense (although the two can be often complementary). Of course, Russia’s threat does not concern only conventional military operations, as ‘[t]hreats to the security of allies may be of the classical military nature or they may take the vague form of hybrid warfare’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015, p.  10). While these ‘vague’, ‘hybrid’ measures can take a range of manifestations, most attention has been given to their informational dimension or the ‘threats associated with information warfare and organised cyber-attacks’ (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7). Relying on US and NATO conceptual documents, Ř ehka treats information warfare as a subset of

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HW, defined as ‘the conduct of war in the information environment’ (Ř ehka, 2017, p. 23, 62). While the means may be different, war in the information domain and in cyberspace is clearly part and parcel of warfare. However, it has clear limits regarding what it can achieve alone and needs to be understood within the broader package of warfare methods. ‘Cyberattack as such does not make much sense without other domains, it can cause damage, but it cannot occupy [a territory] and break the will [of a population] to defend’ (Feix in Marek, 2019, p. 5). Or in Ř ehka’s words: ‘You can operate in an information and hybrid way as much as you like. You can try to polarize society and influence political decision making, but you must always be backed up by real military force’ (Golis, 2018b). The link to destructive military force and formally declared hostility is arguably what distinguishes ‘information operations’, ‘cyber attacks’ or ‘interference’ that are happening regularly in peacetime from the much more dangerous information war. Therefore, the primary danger of information operations lies in the possibility that they may one day turn into a ‘real’ war (Ř ehka, 2017, p. 178) and they might hamper the preparedness of the Czech Republic to adequately defend itself. Through statements like these, Ř ehka puts clear limit on the logic of warification, explicitly differentiating between types of war, and hostile information or cyber activities that should nevertheless be understood as form of confrontational peacetime politics. In this military- and state-centred logic of the defence narrative, the threatened value concerns above all the continuing ability of the state— with emphasis on defence and security institutions—to properly perform its role, react in time to potential threats and be prepared for effective defence (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2021, pp. 6–7). The official documents define this in the familiar terms of defending ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’ (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015, p. 6). Due to the abovementioned principle of ‘indivisibility’ and Czechia’s emphasis on ‘collective defence’ (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015), the threatened value is extended also to the functionality of international institutions of which Czechia is part, especially NATO and EU. Ř ehka’s work then outlines in detail how the functioning of institutions can be threatened by ‘hybrid’ operations, specifically by ‘manipulating information, information systems and [the] decision-making process’ in the case of information warfare, further listing a range of examples including

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‘psychological operations, physical destruction, electronic combat, attacks against computer networks’ (Ř ehka, 2017, p. 140). The specialised documents then add also corruption or leveraging of technological and energy dependence on hostile suppliers (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2021, p. 6). All of those are aiming at disrupting key institutions and disarming the state, making it vulnerable to a possible conventional attack. Consequently, the response is centred on reinforcing security and defence institutions. ‘The only thing that can effectively prevent the use of force by the Russian Federation, is resilience and preparedness of potential adversaries to face it, together with choosing the appropriate strategy’ (Ř ehka, 2017, p. 182). Security and defence institutions need to be able to correctly identify and evaluate the seemingly unconnected incidents that together constitute ‘hybrid warfare’ and choose an appropriate course of action to protect the state and its population (Landovský in Marek, 2018, p.  4). Therefore, the desirable answer of the state is ‘to strengthen its defence capacity and readiness, and to take its share of the responsibility in supporting those allies and partners who bear the greater share of the burden’ (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7). At home, this means above all more money for the army, as the ‘response to the deteriorating security environment’ lies in that ‘the Czech government has begun to increase defence funding’ (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7; Sobotka in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015, p. 3). In the broader view, it also means a complex adaptation of the whole defence and security system to the new realities of warfare and enhancing preparedness to previously unexpected threats (Landovský in Marek, 2018; Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016; Ř ehka, 2017). Abroad, the danger can be ‘eliminated’ through ‘the Czech Republic’s membership of NATO and the EU and its good relations with neighbouring countries’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015, p. 10). Within NATO, this means primarily conventional defence and deterrence measures (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7). As far as the broader knowledge and expertise behind the defence narrative is concerned, the threat and responses to it are constructed and legitimised by military expertise and the authority of the state apparatus. The official documents and short interviews with military intellectuals rarely elaborate on the sources of their claims in detail, even though they occasionally allude to NATO strategies and expert policy publications of the

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Czech allies and major Western think tanks.1 More detailed intertextual references could be traced in Ř ehka’s works, who grounds his views on HW also in the works of military classics such as Sun-Tzu, Clausewitz, Lidell Hart or Van Creveld and their studies on the nature of politics and warfare (Ř ehka in Golis, 2018b; Ř ehka, 2017, pp.  32–45). Ř ehka thus analyses Russian behaviour through references to the supposedly timeless rules of geopolitics, Russia’s anxiety about the defensibility of its borders (Ř ehka in Golis, 2018b) and Russia’s apparent concerns about its position in the international order (Ř ehka, 2017, pp.  177–178). He and other military intellectuals also frequently invoke past and present military conflicts to provide illustrations of practices combining different means to achieve political and military goals (Landovský in Marek, 2018, p.  5). When assessing the shift in Russian strategy following Crimea, Ř ehka argues with a historical lineage, suggesting that ‘we heard the statements, we had the signals, we saw changes in the Russian strategic documents, we saw cyber-attacks on Estonia, taking control of South Ossetia. Everyone ignored that and then we were shocked by the occupation of Crimea’ (Ř ehka in Golis, 2018b). Lastly, the narrative builds up the legitimacy of its reading of HW by references to other official strategic and governmental documents. In this respect, Ř ehka provides lengthy quotes from governmental documents and reports of intelligence services (Ř ehka, 2017, p. e.g. 178–182). Given its military nature and firm attachment to the indivisibility of Czechia’s security from NATO, the defence narrative is at the international level closely connected to the NATO debate on HW. It could be even understood as a direct localisation of (parts of) this debate to the Czech context. The defence narrative is based on frequent explicit references to the Alliance documents and their authoritative identifications of HW-related threats and suggested types of response (e.g. the Communique and Declarations of the 2014 Wales Summit, 2016 Warsaw Summit and 2018 Brussels Summit), studies published by NATO and official expertise of NATO members. In fact, NATO’s understanding of HW has been very much in line with the defence narrative in Czechia, as it is also concerned with the worsening of the regional security environment (due to Russian assertiveness in its neighbourhood as well as asymmetric threats in the South). Likewise, both have shared the preoccupation with the ability of the Alliance and its 1

 For example personal interview with two MoD officers, Prague, 12.8.2020.

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member states to properly react to different forms of foreign meddling happening under the threshold of what could conventionally be categorised as war. NATO further calls for strengthening preparedness for the potential ‘real war’, while it also emphasises the connection between different methods of waging conflict as a key feature of HW (NATO, 2016, 2018). Furthermore, NATO’s emphasis on resilience-building has also left its significant mark on the defence narrative. Preparedness for unexpected threats and resilience of the security institutions in case these threats materialize are emphasised as the key guiding ideas for the appropriate response (NATO, 2021).

Counterinfluence Narrative: Subversive Agents Within the Society While for the defence narrative the threat lies outside the Czech Republic, the counterinfluence narrative moves its attention inside the country—to the alleged networks of Russian influence and a range of pro-Russian actors who are directly or indirectly linked with the Kremlin. HW is thus about the promotion of the interest of states that do not share the same values as the Czech Republic through covert methods pursued within Czech borders (Vejvodová in Golis, 2019a). More specifically, HW aims at hidden manipulation of the Czech society with the intention of turning it away from the liberal West and bringing it closer to the Russian orbit. In its explicit and extensive use of East/West language, it is the most heavily geopoliticised from the three, and the idea of a civilisational confrontation is central here. If the previous narrative is concerned with HW as a tactic that seeks to weaken the defence before potential ‘real war’ and argues for strengthening preparedness and resilience, the counterinfluence narrative understands HW as a substitute for military action, something that can achieve the goals of warfare without resorting to arms at all—and something already happening. This idea that a kind of ‘war’ is happening here and now makes this narrative also the most warified one, extending the logic of war into potentially all aspects of politics. In this story, the Russians with their agents and local allies have already gained a foothold in the country (Alvarová, 2017; Vrábel in Golis, 2019b; Janda & Kundra, 2016; Kundra, 2016). The threat thus lies not only in the possibility that a part of the population might be manipulated, and the country might fall under Russian influence, but also that this process

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might remain undetected, or at least not properly acknowledged by the public and political class. In consequence, foreign meddling might not be appropriately reacted to, and the country could fall without even knowing it should defend itself. As a leading proponent, Alexandra Alvarová put it, ‘I am scared that my country will lose freedom and democracy before it even realizes it has come under attack’ (Alvarová, 2017, p.  11), or as claimed by the National Security Audit, ‘The principal risk to which a subject attacked by a hybrid campaign is exposed lies in the fact that they will not be able to identify the hybrid campaign – in time, in its full scale, or at all’ (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 129). Whereas for the defence narrative, the reaction to such uncertainty lies in enhancement and adaptation of the security apparatus and tools at their disposal, the counterinfluence narrative rather posits that the first step to an appropriate response is to alarm the public, expose the Russian agents and openly confront them. With its distinct rallying style, the counterinfluence narrative has been linked to the actors at the core of the assemblage. It has been primarily disseminated in texts produced by journalists, think tankers and activists, but its traces can be found also in some intelligence reports and governmental documents. Again, it is Russian ‘hybrid warfare’ that is the threat at the heart of this narrative, but its shape and sources are seen in a different way than in the defence narrative. Russia is depicted not only as an assertive great power but also as radically different and aggressive ‘Eastern Other’ (Neumann, 1999) whose actions are based on ‘distinct civilisational modalities of thinking’ (Alvarová, 2017, p.  193). The narrative thus explains Russian policy as based on a culture that is fundamentally alien, expansionist, antagonistic to the West and attempting to ‘destroy, or at least weaken the EU’ (Kalenský in Procházková, 2019). Consequently, these divisions produce an environment favourable for spreading Russia’s influence, especially to countries that lie close to the Russian borders. In this respect, there is little difference between the Putin’s regime, Tsarist Russia and Soviet Union, as they are all driven by a ‘permanent urge to threaten others [that] is a logical conclusion of its [Russia’s] history and geography’ (Kundra, 2016, p.  32). As present Russian attempts to gain local allies could be read as a ‘new reincarnation of the Comintern’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2015, p.  12) and turning ‘the direction of the

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country from the West to the East’ (Kočí, 2016),2 the threat is also reminiscent of the historical experience with Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe and incites fears of its potential return (see Chap. 6; see also Eberle & Daniel, 2019). This raises the stakes and connects the narrative to wider anxieties about the development of Czech democracy, for example with respect to the resurgence of anti-Western, nationalist or authoritarian tendencies in the country. Given its concerns over the liberal nature of the West and the Czech Republic more specifically, the counterinfluence narrative puts non-­ military and covert aspects of HW to the forefront. It understands HW primarily as a networked societal security issue stemming as much from Russia as from its multiple allies and assets already present inside Czechia or other European countries. These could be intelligence agents stationed at the then unreasonably large Russian embassy in Prague (Alvarová, 2017, p. 86; Kundra, 2016, pp. 150–158). However, equally important are also the ‘dozens of people paid by Russia’, those who are ‘writing for Putin’ and local ‘Trojan Horses’ as well as naïve ‘useful idiots’ collectively spreading Russian-made disinformation or serving Russian interests in other ways (Vrábel in Golis, 2019b, Kalenský in 2019c; Kundra, 2017; Špalková & Janda, 2018). Through this idea, geopoliticisation is extended also to local populations, seeing them as equally ‘alien’ as Russia itself. Moving to the threatened values, these are pictured in distinctly cultural and normative terms: the persistence of democratic institutions, liberal values and a certain vision of civilisational belonging to the West. Russians and their local allies aim to ‘uproot local [Czech] still developing and fragile democracy, sow chaos, and weaken its integration in defence and political structures of the West’ (Kundra, 2016, p.  27). By corruption and manipulation of the Czech public and formal and informal alliances with like-minded local actors, Russia threatens the very foundations of Czech democracy, self-determination and liberal Western identity. In this vein, the narrative warns that diverse methods of HW and especially misinformation campaigns threaten to destroy also the Czech public sphere and flood the population with multiple competing truth claims (for such debate in other countries see Bjola & Papadakis, 2020; Monsees, 2020; Wagnsson, 2020). 2  ‘We do not want to go to the East’ was also a name of highly medialised initiative by the European Values think tank that gathered support from diverse public figures ranging from ex-diplomats to academics and military officers (see Kočí, 2016).

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The instruments of HW then could be anything that ‘questions the institutions underpinning the rule of law, that makes people believe that they are surrounded by injustice and few powerful figures that want to exploit them’ (Langšádlová in Spurný, 2020). In consequence, it seeks to ‘systematically undermine trust in authorities, relativize values and strengthen extreme opinions’ (Táborský, 2019, p.  92), as ‘the intended result of these activities is a mass of confused, suspicious and embittered voters’ (Táborský, 2019, p. 92). In a nutshell, Russia’s ‘aim is that we stop trusting democratic institutions. And when we stop trusting democratic institutions, the whole democracy falls like a house of cards’ (Vrábel in Č T24, 2019). The ensuing resignation and disillusion create an environment where illiberal populists and pro-Russian figures can thrive and gradually open the doors to authoritarianism and Russian control (Alvarová in Golis, 2018a; Táborský, 2019, p. 92). As the narrative posits, HW campaign waged against Czechia is just one piece of a larger struggle between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. This means that the narrative is not concerned only with the fate of the Czech democracy but also with the future and security of liberal West more broadly. In contrast to the defence narrative, this is less of a story of institutionalised reaction to a particular security threat. Rather, the counterinfluence narrative puts forward a geopoliticised story of a clash of different value systems and Russian covert exploitation of Western democratic mechanisms, such as elections, referenda and free speech more generally, in order to promote its illiberal and populist allies. In this respect, the proponents of the narrative frequently refer to the examples of Russian interference in other Western countries and argue that iterations of the same HW strategy that threaten Czechia have been applied in the Baltics, Western Balkans, Germany, during referenda in the Netherlands or Britain, or the 2016 US elections (Alvarová, 2017; Kalenský in Procházková, 2019; Langšádlová in Spurný, 2020; Kalenský in Zbavitelová, 2016). As far as the response is concerned, the narrative stresses that the gravity of the threat necessitates a resolute reaction of both the state and a range of non-governmental, civil society actors in defence of what is perceived as the core values of the society. ‘Until we all across the board realize that information war is our everyday reality and until we stop foolishly downplaying its manifestations, we don’t have a chance in this struggle’ (Táborský, 2019, p. 211). The authorities and others need to step up their game. ‘When one team shoots on the goal and the other does not, who will score more?’ (Kalenský in Golis, 2019c). As the football metaphor

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suggests, the key part of counter-reaction is to rally the public and politicians around liberal values and start pursuing more decisive policies to stop Russian and pro-Russian influence operations. Illustrating the Manichean and explicitly warified logic of this narrative, one of its articulators even explicitly claims that to overcome present indecisiveness, ‘we can use a little bit more of Cold War mentality, in order to clearly realize where is the diving line between an ally and an enemy’ (Kalenský in Procházková, 2019). Only by rallying around the flag, realising the seriousness of the struggle and clearly identifying the enemies, the Czechs will supposedly be able to ‘get out of Russian fog and start to be serious about defending liberty that we regained in 1989 and which the Kremlin and its secret services try to dismantle again’ (Kundra, 2016, pp. 194–195). State institutions naturally play a key role also in this narrative, as HW poses a threat for the constitutional order. Such tasks primarily fall to internal security agencies, such as the Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats and BIS as the counterintelligence agency (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016). However, ‘every sector of the society can do more  – be it politicians, governmental officers, NGOs or media’ (Kalenský in Procházková, 2019). It is up to the political class to ban Russian state media (Kalenský in Golis, 2019c), take a decisive step against Russian spies and their influence networks (Kundra, 2016, p. 194) or convince the dissatisfied and thus vulnerable parts of society about benefits of liberal democracy (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016; Táborský, 2019). The liberal-leaning public, too, should join the struggle as a part of its civic duties. As a member of the online counter-HW group Czech Elves put it: ‘We are people who would be resistance fighters during a war – citizens, who feel responsible for their homeland’ (Czech Elf in Skoupá, 2018). Beyond upholding liberal values and defending them in the online and offline public debates, the role of the engaged public also lies in exposing the pro-Russian voices and agents and thus publicly ‘naming and shaming’ them (Vrábel in Golis, 2019b, Kalenský in 2019c; Janda & Kundra, 2016). The key goal of the countercampaign is then to uncover the tools of Russian influence, push them out of the public sphere and ‘immunize’ the public against further interference. The counterinfluence narrative is based on an eclectic mixture of different knowledge and expertise. First and most importantly, it builds its credibility on the practical ability to unmask the strategies of Russian HW, thereby claiming to be able to bring the hidden dangers to light. Grounding the claims in investigative skills or advanced computational methods (see

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Chap. 6), the narrative points to ‘pro-Russian’ misinformation and propaganda circulating on the internet and subsequently connects it with Russia’s supposed intentions, usually by pointing to a shared ideological worldview (Vrábel in Golis, 2019b, Kalenský in 2019c). Alternatively, the narrative claims legitimacy by highlighting its articulators’ proficiency in methods of journalistic investigation and their ability to uncover links between Russian intelligence services and local figures (Janda & Kundra, 2016; Kundra, 2016), or own experience in PR and media industry that supposedly allows the narrator to see through the Russian manipulation (Alvarová, 2017; Táborský, 2019). Furthermore, the counterinfluence narrative also pieces together media reports on the Kremlin’s approach to information operations (Kalenský in Golis, 2019c; Kundra, 2016) with intelligence reports on networks of alleged Russian agents in the Czech Republic (Vrábel in Golis, 2019b; Security Intelligence Service, 2016; Táborský, 2019). Popular and academic studies on Soviet and Russian history, politics and approach to HW are often thrown into the mix to make sense of Russian behaviour and expose its falsehoods and subterfuge (Alvarová, 2017; Kundra, 2016; Security Intelligence Service, 2018; Táborský, 2019). By combining all these sources, the narrative shows the supposed roots and nature of Russian HW, localizes it in a certain reading of Russian ways of war and stresses its gravity by pointing to intelligence sources and own investigation that proves the presence of Russian agents and pro-Russian narratives in Czechia. Being rooted in the underlying story weaved around the struggle between liberal/Western values and global authoritarianism, the counterinfluence narrative is closely connected to stories circulating in the transnational public sphere. The narrative and its proponents often refer to widely read commentators and scholars who raise the alarm about the resurgence of illiberalism and Russian malicious activities in CEE and elsewhere that contribute to it. Among these, the counterinfluence narrative invokes especially books, essays and interviews of Anglophone intellectuals, such as Timothy Snyder (2017, 2018), Edward Lucas (2008; Lucas & Pomerantsev, 2016) or Anne Applebaum (e.g. 2016). Having several of their books translated to Czech, these authors have been frequently visiting the Czech Republic and they have assumed a strong position in the public sphere also thanks to several high-profile interviews and lectures. Above anything else, the Czech proponents of the counterinfluence narrative specifically pick up on international critics of Putin’s

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authoritarianism and foreign policy, warning about the impact of ‘disinformation’ on liberal democracy or frequent historic examples that draw lessons on HW and campaign against it from negative experience with the Soviet Russia or the rise of non-democratic regimes in 1930s (Kundra, 2016; Kalenský in Procházková, 2019). Applebaum, Snyder and Lucas have also explicitly covered cases concerning Russian activities in Czechia, while following the basic arguments of the counterinfluence narrative and its reading of Russian meddling in the country (Applebaum, 2018; Lucas & Pomerantsev, 2016, pp. 33–36; Snyder, 2018). Furthermore, the counterinfluence narrative frequently highlights personal experience and insights of those writers and experts, such as Peter Pomerantsev (2015) or Jessikka Aro (2016), who specialize in Russian strategies both in domestic and international politics. These activists themselves stepped up to Russian trolls and exposed the workings of Russian disinformation campaigns, providing thus a model for their Czech followers. Finally, given the activist and advocacy nature of the narrative as well as personal connection of many of its proponents, it also closely intersects both in mutual references and in the general arguments with the publications of more hawkish liberal and conservative think tanks. Among others, this specifically concerns CEE and Transatlantic organisations such as Atlantic Council, National Endowment for Democracy, Centre for European Policy Analysis, Globsec or Wilfred Martens Centre. Lastly, the online vigilant groups of citizens who themselves took up the task of fighting against HW in the information sphere, such as the Elves active in Baltic countries, are often referenced as a role-models when it comes to active citizen involvement in countering HW (Skoupá, 2018).

Education Narrative: Fostering Responsible Individuals The third of the main narratives has a distinctly individualistic and liberal flavour, as it is based around the notion of personal skills and responsibilities that are to be fostered by education, especially in critical thinking and media literacy. There is less emphasis on the specifically Russian dimension of the problem as the narrative identifies the key threat in the combination of individual psychological predispositions and the novel information environment that has been dramatically altered by the rising role of internet and social media. This means that the use of geopoliticisation and

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warification within this narrative is ambivalent and even contradictory, ranging from seeing the lacking skills as a vulnerability to be exploited by Russian HW, all the way to deemphasising and rejecting these links and the underlying HW logic. Therefore, this narrative can be seen as situated on the blurred and moveable boundary of the HW assemblage (more on this in Chap. 6). For the education narrative, the main problem to address is literally ‘in our head’ (Táborský, 2019, p. 9), as our natural cognitive limits are aggravated by the ‘flood’ of information that we have to deal with (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 106). This ‘information chaos’ (Valůch in Golis, 2019d) can be exploited by a range of actors for different purposes which may or may not be linked to security or politics. It can be Russia with its disinformation campaigns or it can be a range of more or less pro-Russian domestic actors, which links the narrative explicitly to HW discourse (e.g. Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 52; Nutil, 2018; Kaderka in Šára, 2018). However, it can also be businesses trying to trick the public into buying their product or just anyone else using manipulative techniques for their own gain. In short, media campaigns, manipulation and more generally propaganda, ‘is only a tool that can serve for good or bad, it can mislead us and at the same time, it can also raise our interest in new ideas, lead to cooperation and so on. One way or another, we need to be aware how propaganda functions and how it works on us’ (Nutil in Kyša, 2016). In consequence, the narrative shifts the attention to those on the receiving side of propaganda or misinformation—individual citizens—and their dealings with the contemporary information chaos (see Monsees, 2020; Wagnsson, 2020). The ability to successfully navigate this new situation, where confusion hampers individual decision-making and, in consequence, challenges also freedom and democracy, is a ‘crucial, if not even essential skill for a survival of the whole society’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 91). Such ability is also the main threatened value in this narrative. Following this identification of the main threat, the primary response concerns education of the individual citizens that would equip them with means to successfully orient themselves in the contemporary world. With its focus shifting away from conventionally understood security matters to the realm of social issues, the narrative is in the HW assemblage most often articulated by NGOs, journalists and academics. The main threat is seen as the interplay of changing information environment with human psychological limits. ‘In our thinking and reactions,

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we are still cavepeople, who are driven rather by instincts and emotions than by rationality. And we are still learning how to deal with a world that is highly connected and complicated, cosmopolitan and growing ever smaller’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 15). Although the 2014 war in Ukraine might have presented a moment when ‘the reality hit’ and many have understood the extent of the problem (Kaderka in Šára, 2018), the root cause is not Russia’s overt power politics or covert influence campaigns. Rather, it is the change in consumption of information and the way how people struggle to cope with it. ‘Technology accelerates together with globalisation’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 54) and consequently, ‘we are literally littered with information’ (Táborský, 2019, p. 10) coming from all corners of the world. The abundance of many contradictory claims that circulate on the web then becomes an even bigger issue in light of our psychological limits. ‘Our brain is not equipped to process such big amount of information; its cognitive capacity is limited’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 78). Therefore, while manipulation and propaganda have been known since time eternal, as the key texts for the education narrative illustrate in extensive detail (Gregor et al., 2018; Nutil, 2018; Táborský, 2019), the recent information overload makes it particularly dangerous: ‘We have the opportunity to read hundreds of media sources, even thousands and millions, if we count accounts across social networks. […] But this great freedom is simultaneously the biggest threat. How to navigate in this immeasurable information flood, which source to trust and which not?’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 106). This is certainly a problem as ‘we are programmed to generalise, simplify and create stereotypes’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 78) and when encountering multiple contradictory claims, ‘our internal processor that we use for evaluating news freezes’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 87). Such approximation of human minds to computers is sometimes articulated in explicitly securitised terms. ‘Just like computers and computer programmes have their weak spots […], weak spots are also in our head. We have different “backdoors” in our brain, which anyone can use to get in our heads’ (Táborský, 2019, p. 151). However, rather than outright ‘brain-hacking’ by Russian information operations and their ‘reflexive control’ strategies that feature in the counterinfluence narrative (e.g. Alvarová, 2017), the danger is typically seen as preventing individuals from making rational decisions due to confusion and inability to properly sort out relevant information. This gets even more difficult when emotions are involved. ‘Under the influence of emotions people are not able to think rationally

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enough […] and they can be easily manipulated and oriented in a given direction. High emotions can literally shut down the brain’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 165). The threatened value is thus defined as the capability to be an informed, critical and therefore responsible citizen. Consequently, and similarly to the counterinfluence narrative, this presents a danger to the liberal democratic order and, sometimes and by extension, also to Czechia’s geopolitical identity. However, the emphasis here is on the receiver side. It is the ‘ideals of humanism in the form of freedom, democracy, protection of human rights and human universalism that deserve to be defended from totalitarian, xenophobic or extremely nationalist tendencies’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 26). And it is precisely ‘our trust in democracy’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 98) that is being undermined by misinformation and by the inability to properly navigate the new information age. Unlike in the counterinfluence narrative with its emphasis on securing liberal values by pushing the pro-­ Russian voices out of the public sphere, the path towards the protection of these values runs above all via skills and capabilities that help individuals remain/become responsible citizens who themselves uphold liberal democracy. What needs to be secured or developed is a liberal civic subjectivity with its ‘[o]penness, ability to question oneself, elementary media literacy and the use of critical thinking’, since it is these skills that ‘can protect us from jumping into hatefulness’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 182). Logically, the response is constructed around education and empowerment. In line with the liberal roots of this narrative, it is the individual citizen that is the main actor here. In contrast to the other two narratives, this individual is not merely a passive object of protection but rather an active entrepreneur taking matters in their own hands. No individual is a lost cause just by the fact of being exposed to pro-Russian propaganda. ‘Yes, my bet is in this respect on the individual. On the independent, individual intelligence of every one of us, which can freely examine even the biggest crap’ (Nutil, 2018, p. 92). The two key skillsets than individuals should acquire via (self-)education are critical thinking and media literacy. ‘Every day, we found ourselves in media overflow. […] Fortunately, there is defence – media literacy and critical thinking’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 120). These should provide the citizens with the means needed for their orientation in the complicated and confusing contemporary information environment.

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While the state can, and certainly should, organise and promote educational programmes (rather than censoring information, which is seen as both undesirable and ineffective—see Gregor et al., 2018, p. 52; Nutil, 2018, p. 91) and fact-checking initiatives can nudge some to re-evaluate their biases and erroneous beliefs (Nutil in Kyša, 2016), the primary responsibility lies with the individual citizens who should start actively educating themselves. To this end, some of the books are intended as self-­ help manuals (esp. Gregor et al., 2018; Nutil, 2018), providing ‘how to’ sections and encouraging and empowering the readers to take responsibility: ‘our advice is: use our brains and think critically’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 124). Others highlight the role of public and civil society institutions such as libraries and clubs of senior citizens, or the paramount role of personal encounters between members of different groups and generations that help to support exchange of information and strengthening trust between different social groups (Valůch in Golis, 2019d). The knowledge and expertise base of the education narrative relates above all to communication. On the one hand, it is anchored in the fields of social and cognitive psychology, sociology and media studies, focusing on the audience and its interaction with (dis)information, often gleaned by research on the recipients of misinformation (Valůch in Golis, 2019d). The key publications promoting this narrative employ quasi-academic citation practices and routinely cite popular scholarship and textbooks on cognitive biases, the role of emotions in decision-making or the studies of manipulation in modern societies (Gregor et  al., 2018; Nutil, 2018; Táborský, 2019). Nevertheless, these are liberally mixed with popular texts, historical analogies, personal anecdotes and, as one author even admits, other ‘sources that would hardly meet the strict demands of scientific work: poets, song lyrics, movies, and others’ (Táborský, 2019, p. 9). Clearly, it is not the science-like presentation of arguments and evidence that is the source of expertise here, but often rather the personal claim of the narrators to be able to translate and authorise the knowledge provided to their lay audiences. The three key books developing this narrative distance themselves from academic production, explicitly stating that what they offer might by informed by science but it is not a proper ‘scientific publication’ (Gregor et al., 2018, p. 5; Nutil, 2018, p. 11; Táborský, 2019, p. 9). Instead, they aim at broad comprehension, constructing own personal authority and practical knowledge as grounded in their experience as fact-checkers and

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public speakers (Nutil, 2018, p.  11), journalists and PR consultants (Táborský, 2019, p. 9), or political communication experts and workshop organisers (Gregor et al., 2018). Following the practical orientation, the books present a range of tips and tricks, often in bullet points (Nutil, 2018, p. 182), in which the complexity of the issue is reduced to simple guidelines on how to identify argumentative fouls or verify sources. Falling within the broader logic of the education narrative, it is then up to the individual reader to make use of this knowledge, became better at navigating the new media environment and not fall for misinformation. Taking inspiration from multiple foreign sources and relying on the authority of several star academics, the education narrative corresponds to a range of similar stories circulating in the international public sphere. In comparison with the previous two narratives, it generally relies much less on international narratives concerned with security, HW and Russia. Instead, it draws on sources that call for improving individual decision-­ making in the context of complexity of contemporary world and media. This concerns attention to cognitive bias connected with emotions, information overload and/or simply our learned methods of thinking that are no longer sufficient. But it also emphasizes the need of training critical thinking that would help to overcome these bias and enable us to take more rational and thus better judgements (Ariely, 2008; Kahneman, 2013). Beyond, the education narrative is closely connected to those stories that warn about the detrimental impact of social media and sensational online journalism. These threaten the reasonable public debate and in consequence also might lead to decreasing social cohesion, radicalisation and polarisation taking place in online filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011). In this respect, the narrative more broadly relies also on structural and situational explanations of bad human behaviour (frequently referencing especially Zimbardo, 2007), or theories of crowd psychology and propaganda, as it explains how good people might fall for abhorrent ideas and commit horrible abuse online and in real world. Finally, the narrative refers to the international fact-checkers and media education organisations, such as Snopes.com, BBC Reality Check or Hoaxbusters, that decided to react to the deteriorating online information environment and come up with innovative (often technical) solutions, providing thus a positive example and educational resources for others and taking care of the shared information space.

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Conclusion As we demonstrated in this chapter, while a wider assemblage of actors with different backgrounds cohered around the notion of ‘hybrid warfare’, the Czech HW assemblage has also maintained its internal diversity. Variety of specific understandings of the problem have coexisted next to each other, showing different extents to which the strategies of geopoliticisation and warification were applied by the HW assemblage. To demonstrate this diversity, we specifically introduced three dominant narratives that have gained prominence in the assemblage and outlined how they are formed around the narrative structure of the main threat, protected value and desirable response. Furthermore, we showed how bodies of knowledge originating in different parts of the assemblage provide a basis for differing ways of narrating and justifying the specific understanding of HW.  Lastly, we also outlined how particular narratives correspond to international reading of HW, in particular, institutionalised NATO reading of ‘hybrid warfare’, stories of a global and/or civilisational struggle between liberalism and authoritarianism, or human adaptation to novel conditions of information age. The unmatching and at times even contradictory interpretations of the main ‘hybrid’ problem and needed solutions contained in these narratives further demonstrate the extreme vagueness of HW as an analytical category, which has been blurred even further by its overuse within the Czech HW assemblage. Besides pointing out this broadness and near meaninglessness of the HW concept, which further extends the general observations on HW in international contexts (Bahenský, 2018; Fridman, 2018), it also helps us to explain how the assemblage could grow so quickly and in so many directions. While nearly anything that has a vague reference to dangers in the information domain, challenges posed by illiberalism or great power politics can be attached to the HW label, it is difficult to know what HW points to exactly and where the threat is located precisely. At the same time, this vagueness and elasticity of the HW has enabled a range of different groups to attach their own issues and preferred stories to the broader HW discourse. Thereby, different narratives could both capitalise on the success of the general HW discourse and feed off each other, as well as maintain their autonomy by making sense of it in their own preferred ways. In this sense, the vagueness of HW was in fact one precondition for its success (Stengel, 2020, p. 183). At the same time, though, the difference between the respective narratives also led to tensions and contestations, some of which will be covered in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 6

Boundaries: Expertise, Authority and Contestation in the Czech ‘hybrid warfare’ Debate

In this chapter, we complement our interest in the proliferation of ‘hybrid warfare’ by probing the disputes about the boundaries of the HW assemblage and the expertise that the assemblage is based on. We specifically zoom on several moments of contestation that were spurred by the ongoing expansion of the assemblage and questions over who has the authority and expertise to talk about HW. If everything has become (hybrid) war, how could we delimit what is war and what is not? If we might not even be sure that ‘hybrid war’ is not already taking place (see Chap. 3), how can we actually know it and draw its boundaries? In the preceding chapters, we showed how the HW assemblage and the logic of war spread into new areas of social life and how they became entwined with everyday political debates as well as education and memory practices. We also pointed out how the ambiguity and confusion surrounding the causes and consequences of HW, as well as its very definition, gave rise to different interpretations of what the key issue of HW is and what should be done about it. This chapter specifically asks what kinds of expertise—understood as authoritative and socially recognised knowledge—make HW known and how the limits of such expertise are set in the public debate. We touched on these issues in the previous chapter when asking what kind of knowledge underpins the different narratives. In this chapter, we enhance this

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_6

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focus by exploring the expertise put forward by some of the key actors of the HW assemblage and analysing how such expertise is contested in the public debate. We approach these moments of contestation as instances of boundary work, that is practices of defining, justifying and defending logics that guide distinct areas of social life (Gieryn, 1983). In other words, we look at the moments when actors seek to define, extend or justify the boundaries of the HW assemblage and, by doing so, also their own authority. Such boundary work can take the form of internal differentiation of the assemblage, as seen, for example, in the practices of sorting out ‘real’ from ‘fake’ HW expertise. It can also take the form of various attempts to curb the proliferation of the logic of war into new areas of social life. Furthermore, analysing the expertise that gives the HW assemblage its authority together with its critique and contestation also enables us to discuss the strategies of establishing boundaries between the assemblage and its outside. Guided by this interest, this chapter features three vignettes that explore different dimensions of the HW assemblage, the related expertise and its public contestation. The first vignette introduces the Annual Reports of the Czech counterintelligence agency, the Security Information Service (BIS). The reports became a crucial manifestation of state expertise on HW and have been widely discussed in the media. However, some of the reports also attracted heated disputes due to certain claims or recommendations that they put forward. We specifically zoom on the controversy concerning BIS’s suggestion to transform history education curricula in schools so as to enhance resilience against HW. The second vignette turns to non-state actors and explores journalistic expertise on HW as one of the key sources of the authority of the assemblage. Specifically, we focus on the controversy surrounding the so-called Ricin Affair of 2020, in which the media brought forward unsubstantiated claims about an alleged Russian plot to poison several Czech politicians. The debate that these spurred, including a strong refutation by the BIS, showed the limits of such expertise and led to questions how we can really know much about HW and the related spy games. Finally, the third vignette unpacks critical engagement with the HW discourse from the side of academics who attempted to push back against warification.

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Assemblage, Expertise and Its Boundaries The assemblage perspective enabled us to unpack the diverse organisations, individuals, narratives or practices that have been brought together in the name of defending against HW.  On top of that, the concept of assemblage provides also a useful tool for exploring how a particular issue becomes attached to HW and how it is proposed to be governed in the name of countering HW (Bueger, 2018; Li, 2007). Thereby, it allows us to understand the intimate relationship between how particular issues are ‘made known’ in the context of the HW discourse and how this way of knowing is justified with references to expertise. Expertise plays one of the key roles in the production of the HW discourse and attaching it to new issues, as references to a certain type of expertise help to justify claims about the desired course of action, validate the actors’ position and contain potential criticism (Baker & McGuirk, 2017, p. 432; Li, 2007, p. 264). We understand expertise as socially recognised knowledge of a particular issue or socially valued set of specific skills and capabilities that are needed to propose a solution to a particular problem. In this respect, we use the term contextually for both expertise acquired by attachment to an organisation as well as expert status of an individual that is based purely on recognition of her knowledge and skills (Berling & Bueger, 2015, pp. 6–8). In effect, this perspective posits that diverse forms of expertise are a necessary aspect of an assemblage as they help to define its authority over particular areas of social reality (Bueger, 2018, p. 620). Put differently, geopoliticisation and warification of social issues and their embedding into the HW discourse are made possible also by actors’ claims at possessing the expertise that endows them with the authority of ‘knowing’ HW, its dangers, manifestations and inner workings. Although references to expertise have the power to shut down a debate and support the assemblage’s authority over certain issues, it does not mean that they are uncontested. As the ever-shifting area of HW is far from settled into a single expertise domain, there are often multiple competing expertise claims, similarly to many other emerging policy areas (Sending, 2015, pp.  28–29). We showed in the preceding chapter how different forms of knowledge and expertise have helped create different narratives about what the main problem of HW is. The differences came to the forefront several times, when diverse actors came to clash with each other as they claimed authority over the ‘correct’ ways of knowing HW and proposed unmatching courses of future (re)actions. However, these

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conflicts were by no means limited only to internal disputes within the assemblage but extended also to what issues should be connected to the assemblage and its general ways of knowing HW. To make sense of these conflicts, we employ the notion of boundary work. The concept was originally developed to grasp practices through which scientists and other actors are demarcating what the correct form of science is—and what is not (Gieryn, 1983). In the field of security studies, the concept of boundary work has been utilised to explore how actors mobilise for or against security logics in different professional fields and how they seek to expand or protect their own professional domains (Klimburg-Witjes, 2021; Rychnovská, 2017). Defining where the boundaries of a particular field, such as science, lie is extremely difficult and the definitions have been changing in time and space (Gieryn, 1999). Hence, the perspective offered by boundary work rather attends to how actors seek to set up boundaries to protect or extend the autonomy of their own field of action, thereby including or excluding others. Delimitation of a boundary is, however, a power-laden act, as it allows for enhancing the symbolic status of particular actors involved in these struggles and in effect, their control over certain areas and issues (Eyal, 2006; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010). Employing the concept of boundary work thus provides us with a tool to understand how the boundary of the HW assemblage’s authority and expertise is being constantly re-established. We will zoom on three such moments that included either attempts to push the boundaries of the assemblage into new areas, sorting out internal boundaries within the assemblage, or, finally, a pushback against the assemblage from the outside to put a boundary to its practices of warification.

Intelligence Expertise and History Education While there are many ways how actors from the assemblage made HW known in the public debate and how they claimed authority, the expertise held by the intelligence services has always had a special status. In this vignette, we explore the nature of this intelligence expertise, treating intelligence as a social phenomenon (Ben Jaffel et al., 2020). We zoom on the annual public reports of the Czech counterintelligence agency, the Security Intelligence Service (BIS), that became understood as a particularly authoritative source of knowledge on HW.

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(Counter)Intelligence Expertise and the HW Threat in the BIS Annual Reports The expertise that has enabled the BIS to make authoritative claims on HW has been based on its publicly and officially recognised role as a producer of intelligence. Regarded as a ‘special kind of knowledge’ (Eriksson, 2016, p. 1) or a ‘validated knowledge’ (Vrist Rønn & Høffding, 2013, pp. 707–708), intelligence is based on data gathering and evaluation processes carried by the agencies themselves. Intelligence organisations strive to produce information as objective and truthful as possible, but it also needs to be delivered as fast as necessary, directly actionable and able to inform the policy process (Bar-Joseph, 2013). This makes it a prime example of the highly instrumental ‘knowledge for war’ (Davies, 2019, pp. 123–126). Intelligence knowledge, and with it the expertise of intelligence agencies and their authority over certain issues, is to a large degree based on exclusive sources and internal validation processes, both of which are secret by definition (Eriksson, 2016, pp.  62–64; Petersen, 2019, pp. 320–321; see also Räsänen & Nyce, 2013). However, the status, expertise and authority of intelligence agencies have been in practice (and by no means only in the case of the BIS) far more precarious and contested. It has been pointed out that intelligence agencies are not completely autonomous actors that would be only devoted to the production of ‘pure truth’. They constantly have to navigate the political and bureaucratic context that they are necessarily entangled in (Bar-Joseph, 2013; McQuade, 2016), while they also grapple with socialisation of their own analysts into ideological frameworks and thinking styles of the agencies themselves (Eriksson, 2016). Therefore, the information communicated by them is often shaped as much by these contextual social and political factors as by the exclusive intelligence gathered through their secretive means. Put differently, despite their special status, intelligence agencies are also social actors, populated by people influenced by the social circulation of discourses and narratives, as well as embedded in broader political contexts. As we sketched in particular in Chap. 4, the entanglement of the HW discourse with domestic politics cleavages has impacted also the BIS and its role in the public sphere. The agency and its director Michal Koudelka (appointed in 2016) became some of the most visible and active actors in the HW assemblage. In the context of ongoing politicisation of HW issues, the BIS became celebrated as a staunch defender of Czechia’s

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Western identity by many within the assemblage and beyond (Kundra, 2018, 2021). However, the agency also arguably developed a sense of embattlement, due to public attacks by President Zeman and others, which contributed to its much stronger public outreach and the heavily exposed presence of intelligence expertise in public debates (Ditrych, 2020). Among the most impactful interventions of the BIS into the public sphere have been its regular Annual Reports. The declassified, abridged versions of the Reports, as published each autumn, present both an overview of the main activities of the BIS and an authoritative delimitation of the main threats in the agency’s responsibility. As such, the Reports have been fulfilling the typical roles of these documents, namely raising awareness of certain threats and justifying the position of the agency and its activities in the wider social and political space (see Petersen, 2019; Security Intelligence Service, 2019, p.  3). On the other hand, the BIS Reports have been arguably more direct in style, more open in how much information they divulge and significantly more alarmed by Russian activities than reports of other European intelligence agencies (Ditrych, 2020; Svárovský et al., 2019). The Reports became one of the key sources on recent developments of the HW agenda. As such, they have strongly resonated in the media (see Chap. 4). However, as they remain embedded in the traditionally secretive intelligence expertise, the Reports are assertive in tone, yet scarce on details and sources. Rather, when it comes to HW, the Reports overview different areas of activities of foreign intelligence services and accompany them with anecdotes, quasi-scientific references and broader claims concerning Russian (and other foreign powers’) strategy in the Czech Republic and beyond. The overview has been generally consistent in presentation and content throughout the period covered in this book, although it frequently coined new areas where Russian activities had been particularly worrying in the particular year. Thereby, the Reports both reiterated the authority of the HW assemblage over certain issues and helped to push it into new directions. Informed by the core assumptions of the counterinfluence narrative (see Chap. 5), the Reports frequently foregrounded risks supposedly related to the communist/Eastern past and the transition from the Soviet era in both Czechia and Russia. For instance, in the 2013 Report, the BIS pointed to the CNN interview of ex-KGB General Kalugin as an evidence of continuities in Soviet and Russian thinking (Security Intelligence Service, 2014, pp. 10–11). This claim, including the reference to Kalugin,

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was then reiterated also in a later report to support the argument that ‘hybrid warfare therefore does not constitute a revolution, but an evolution in running a conflict’ and it draws directly on Soviet practices (Security Intelligence Service, 2017, p. 10n). On the other hand, notable shifts took place in the ways how the HW threat was presented, how it was supposed to work and where it was located.1 In the 2014 Report, the agency expanded on the continuities with old Soviet practices, but also warned that its assessment showed the formation of what was spectacularly labelled as the ‘New Reincarnation of the Comintern’—a loose network of actors dissatisfied with Western liberal democracy and allied with Russia. Spending several lines on the description of the historic Comintern—a ‘tool used for promoting Soviet influence and interests beyond the borders of the Soviet Union’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2015, p.  12) that consisted of Soviet-controlled group of ideologically affiliated political parties, agitators and agents—the 2014 Report portrayed Russian HW as merely a new version of this Soviet strategy. While the New Reincarnation of the Comintern was admittedly slightly different than the old one, it does not mean it ‘has lesser propaganda and espionage capabilities than the Comintern’ and it has a ‘great potential for recruiting active informants’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2015, p. 12). Despite being previously used as the main interpretive framework of how to understand Russian HW and the proliferation of pro-Russian voices in the Czech society, the concept of the New Reincarnation of the Comintern disappeared from the following Reports. The 2015 Report merely outlined several areas where the Russian intelligence was particularly active (such as energy infrastructure). Manifesting its exclusive knowledge, it also warned that ‘a large number of Russian intelligence officers were active under diplomatic cover of the Russian Embassy’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2016, p. 8). With regard to HW, it portrayed information operations targeting the Czech Republic as an extension of Russian strategy in conflicts elsewhere, seeing them as aiming at ‘weakening society’s will for resistance or confrontation’, ‘creating or promoting inter-­ societal and inter-political tensions in the Czech Republic’ and ‘disrupting the coherence and readiness of NATO and the EU’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2016, p. 9). Although the establishment of pro-Russian puppet 1  The following paragraphs partially overlap with and expand on a very brief analytical sketch provided in our older study (see Eberle & Daniel, 2022, p. 102508).

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organisations and support of local extremists might be part of this strategy, HW has now been transformed rather to an external threat. The following year, the nature of the HW threat shifted again. The new Report stated that ‘the Czech Republic was not a primary target of Russian hybrid campaign in 2016 (or before). It was, however, affected by influence operations or other measures, which constituted direct or indirect components of Russian hybrid campaign against other targets’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2017, p. 10), these being namely Ukraine, the EU and NATO. In this respect, the Report noted that the Czech Republic is indeed targeted by Russian influence and intelligence activities; however, these are part of a wider hybrid campaign against other targets. A campaign that is realised by both kinetic and non-kinetic means and that aims at ‘entrapping the adversary in his own definitions and schemes’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2017, p. 11) to paralyse their decision-making. BIS further highlighted also Russia’s efforts to create ‘networks consisting of Western politicians, whose minds the [Russian] intelligence services “infiltrate, understand and then dominate them”’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2017, p. 10n), signalling that its emphasis now moved towards uncovering more traditional influence operations. Finally, in the 2017 Report, the agency even concluded that the HW threat should be seen as decentralised and disentangled. The threat was now located in a much wider and looser combination of often uncoordinated and disconnected actions of Russian intelligence and authentic Czech figures. Moving completely away from the imaginary of the New Reincarnation of the Comintern, the BIS claimed that ‘an overwhelming majority of disinformation websites in Czech are the work of Czech (ideologically motivated and convinced of the harmfulness of NATO, the EU, USA, and liberal democracy, or principally pro-Russian) citizens, who are not supported by Russian entities’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2018, p. 8). At least these domestic disinformation then became seen as rather ‘a smokescreen’, which provides cover for more serious intelligence activities pursued by Russian intelligence services and more profound vulnerabilities that Russia can exploit (Security Intelligence Service, 2018, pp. 6–8). Close reading of the public version of the BIS Annual Reports thus reveals a far less stable picture of HW than what the authoritative nature of the intelligence expertise might seem to propose. Rather, it points to shifting assessments of the threat, informed by freshly generated knowledge, but arguably also by the internal beliefs of the agency and political considerations of what the public needs to hear and in what form (Eriksson,

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2016; Petersen, 2019, pp. 319–320). This would not necessary be a significant problem, yet the Annual Reports in this respect stand in a peculiar (‘hybrid’) position between a document intended for (political) communication with the public and a manifestation of exclusive intelligence expertise that represents the threat ‘as it really is’. This dual identity of the document and the problems that it creates are more closely discussed in the following exploration of the debate sparked by the 2017 Annual Report. Setting the Boundaries of BIS Authority: The Supposedly Pro-­Soviet History Education The 2017 BIS Annual Report invited a significant pushback aiming to set the limits to the BIS authority over areas that had previously not been warified and incorporated into the HW discourse. In this section we explore the boundary work pursued by both the BIS, which attempted to connect new issues to the HW assemblage, and that of its critics, who instead pointed out that the agency’s expertise did not cover the areas that it sought to speak about. Although the threat of the New Comintern was already gone in the 2017 Report, other ‘shadows’ of the communist past were still presented as looming in the society and opening ways for Russian influence. More specifically, in a table summarising ‘Russian hybrid strategy’, complemented in the Report by an extensive footnote, as well as in the related press communication, the agency pointed out the supposed failures of contemporary history education in schools as an issue that makes Czechs more susceptible to pro-Russian misinformation (Brzybohatá, 2018). As the Report stated, history that is presented in schools is de facto a Soviet version of modern history and even the education of the Czech language, or more precisely literature (National Revival), is influenced by pro-Russian pan-Slavism to a degree. The enduring influence of Soviet propaganda and the fact that Russians control modern history (Orwell: He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.) form the basis for various current Russian influence operations and thus also for hybrid strategies. (Security Intelligence Service, 2018, p. 7n)

The claim was in line with the overall broadening of the HW discourse to domestic vulnerabilities and the local ‘disinformation’ community that

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supposedly all form part of ‘Russian hybrid strategy system’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2018, p. 8). Yet, the assertion was also not backed up by any evidence, with the only source of authorisation provided being the Orwell quote. The Spokesperson of the BIS, Ladislav Šticha, only mentioned that ‘we notice that the older generation is inclined to, for instance, Panslavism. We know that these people went through Socialist education […] And we want to prevent the younger generation from ending up in the same place, [so that] we would not  be surprised how they see the world’ (Šticha in Brzybohatá, 2018). This move towards warification and geopoliticisation of public education spurred a public controversy concerning the reach of BIS authority, the boundaries of the HW assemblage, and the different roles of security and education fields in a liberal society. A number of historians and teachers questioned the authority of the counterintelligence service in the sphere of education policy (Brzybohatá, 2018). Eventually, the debate invited also the attention of MPs in the Education Committee that backed the autonomy of the education sphere (Endrštová, 2019b). The critical voices pointed specifically to the lacking BIS expertise in this area and the absence of evidence. As the historian Vojtěch Ripka argued, ‘no contemporary serious academic research of history education has pointed to anything like that and I have not noticed that the BIS would back up or even provided evidence for its claims’ (Ripka in Endrštová, 2019a). As another historian, Matěj Spurný, stated: ‘Assessment of history education is an incredibly complex issue […] The BIS is not the type of institution that would conduct such large research’ (Spurný in Svobodová, 2019). Others then concluded that there was nothing ‘pro-­ Soviet’ in the history education curricula and, in fact, such curricula did not even exist as history education was guided only by broader framework plans. In this respect, the boundaries between areas of authority governed by different agencies and logics needed to be respected. As summarised by the high school history teacher, Jiří Karen, ‘intelligence agencies should not have any say in history education in a democratic country. And the Ministry of Education in a democratic country should have enough self-­ confidence to tell them to back off when they try to do something like that’ (Karen, 2019). While the debate reverberated throughout the public sphere, the representatives of the Ministry of Education, the Teachers Platform (an independent professional association of teachers) and the BIS settled the controversy on the official level. In their statements, they confirmed the

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existence of the boundary between security and education, as these areas should be governed by different expertise, but also the simultaneous blurring of these boundaries as ‘hybrid threats’ target previously unknown vulnerabilities (Endrštová, 2019a). As the Ministry of Education emphasised in its statement, acquiring proper skills needed for orientation in contemporary history is necessary ‘especially in this era of hybrid threats’ (Endrštová, 2019a). At the same time, the minister and the BIS director concluded that the agency might have used a potentially misleading statement in the public version of the Report, reaffirming the division of authority between the ministry and the agency over different areas. ‘The BIS does not want and never wanted to tell anyone what should be taught in schools, it does not want to create new curricula and overwrite textbooks,’ claimed the BIS director Koudelka (2019), while also pointing to the findings of the Czech School Inspection and the ‘expert community’ that called for the enhancement of contemporary history education. Highlighting the exclusive nature of intelligence expertise, it was also ambiguously hinted that a more careful and detailed description of the threat, backed-up by evidence, might—or might not—exist in the classified version of the Report, as claimed by both the BIS and members of the Teachers Platform who met with Koudelka (Endrštová, 2019c). While the resistance pointing to the lack of BIS expertise in this area was able to set certain limits to its proliferation, the HW discourse did ultimately penetrate the education sector as well. Even during the initial debate, some in the HW assemblage and beyond welcomed more attention to the topic of modern history education and its impact on society as brought by the BIS Report. ‘Hybrid perception of the world. Alternative facts. Everything that mainstream media hides from you […] If we want to “defend libraries” from all of this as the firm standing ground preventing us all from falling into the swamp, we need to know and include history [into defence against these threats],’ argued the editor of Aktuálně. cz, Jan Lipold (2019; see also Kundra, 2019). Moreover, as HW got connected more strongly to the symbolic battles over interpretation of history, the concerns that the ‘Czechs are a nation that have been for years educated within a framework of falsified history’ (Fendrych, 2019) would resurface also in other moments where history as a tool of HW came to the forefront (e.g. during the Night Wolves Rides or during the Konev Affair, see Chap. 4). In this respect, the debate on the BIS and history education has shown how difficult is it to establish firm boundaries of HW

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and the related authority of the assemblage. Nevertheless, the boundary work performed by those who criticised the BIS also showed the potential to limit warification and geopoliticisation of certain areas of social life.

Journalistic Expertise and the Ricin Affair Journalists have belonged to the backbone of the Czech HW assemblage and many of them supported the establishment of the notion of HW in the Czech public sphere, as shown in Chaps. 3 and 4. Several of them, most prominently Ondr ̌ej Kundra, Lukáš Prchal and Lukáš Valášek, also became recognised as distinct experts on HW issues, helping to define the very authority of the HW assemblage. In this vignette, we move to the journalistic expertise and its particular style of making HW known to the public. In the second part of the section, we explore the so-called Ricin Affair of 2020 and show the problems linked to overreliance on secret sources, as well as the boundary work performed inside the assemblage over the authority to properly define HW threats. Journalistic Expertise and HW The involvement of journalists and the role of their expertise in the HW assemblage are not surprising. Journalism understands itself as an endeavour based on the value of objectivity and adherence to truth. The rise of misinformation in the public sphere in the 2010s has alarmed journalism as a profession worldwide and led to attempts to reaffirm its credibility, often specifically by waging campaigns against misinformation and HW more broadly (Farkas, 2023, p.  3; Monsees, 2020; Tong, 2018). This changed information environment, marked by the democratisation of information production and journalistic practices, led to much soul-­ searching within the profession and defining what makes it unique and what expertise defines it (Waisbord, 2018). However, journalistic expertise is similarly hard to define as the profession itself. Journalistic practice does not require formal training and it can exist outside formal institutions—that is newspapers and journals (Tucher, 2022, p. 5). Despite specialisation of some journalists on particular topics, journalistic expertise generally covers a range of different areas which usually require their own skills and specialised knowledge (in the case of HW these areas could mean diplomacy, law, intelligence, cybersecurity, military affairs, area studies, etc.). Journalistic expertise is not based on deep

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specialist knowledge of these issues but rather on the ability to work with sources able of providing the necessary information—more specifically, on locating them, assessing their reliability and communicating the gained information to the public in an engaging way (Reich, 2012; Schudson & Anderson, 2008, p. 99). This form of expertise, based on access to sources and ability to craft stories that resonate with the public, while professing adherence to truth and objectivity, has defined how journalists engaged with HW and how they sought to make it known. While HW regularly filled the pages of main newspapers in the country, several journalists have become particularly recognised as experts on the matter by the broader public as well as the professional community. These journalists carried significant authority over what aspects of HW came to the public spotlight. Their reporting also opened several controversies that broadened the reach of the assemblage into new areas, such as foreign influence in Czech universities (Valášek & Halaštová, 2019) and in the media (Prchal & Horák, 2019). Among the most prominent journalists active in the assemblage from the start were Ondřej Kundra (whose role and work were covered in the previous chapters) and Jaroslav Spurný of the liberal weekly Respekt. Both were established and recognised as leading journalists well before 2014, with authority especially on issues connected with Czech and foreign intelligence services, political and economic corruption, as well as the Czech security apparatus more generally. Other prominent voices were rather newcomers whose early career came to be strongly attached to HW issues. Jakub Zelenka, then of Aktuálne ̌.cz and Hospodářské noviny (which both share the publishing house with Respekt), became a significant voice since his work on Russian misinformation campaigns on social media and the community that had formed around them. His colleagues from Aktuálne ̌.cz, Lukáš Prchal and Lukáš Valášek, then carved a space for themselves by covering the ‘disinformation community’ as well as Russian and Chinese influence networks and supposed collaborators in the Czech Republic. This list is decidedly non-exhaustive as HW-linked issues came to be covered by nearly all mainstream media following 2017 (see Chap. 4). The professional recognition of this group and its expertise could be illustrated by the awards received for their work specifically on HW. Kundra was granted the prestigious Ferdinand Peroutka Prize, being lauded for his achievements in covering Russian influence in his book, Putin’s Agents, and for his efforts to ‘raise awareness about lies. To try to uncover who is behind disinformation websites and what their motivations are. To shine a

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light on them and put them under public control and critique’ (Koubská in Cena Ferdinanda Peroutky, 2019). Zelenka, Prchal and Valášek were similarly praised by peers and received young journalists awards for their reporting on misinformation and foreign influence (Aktuálně.cz., 2020b; Luštinec & Harzer, 2018). Furthermore, Zelenka, Prchal and Kundra were all awarded the Open Society Fund Press Prize for their work on misinformation and foreign influence in Czech politics (Wittichová, 2018). These awards for journalistic work on HW show that expertise in covering HW and related problems came to be perceived as particularly important and valuable by the Czech journalist community. Journalistic expertise on HW took several different forms. For some within the group, it has been based on privileged access to sources inside the government apparatus, as well as their networking within the state and non-state parts of the HW assemblage. We already noted numerous connections that think tanks such as the European Values forged with journalists and how they brokered the links between the state and non-state parts of the assemblage (see in particular Chap. 3). This exclusive access has been coupled with the ability to perform investigative work, especially dig into the background of supposedly pro-Russian figures and other alleged agents of foreign influence and reveal their ties, or at least some affinity, with foreign powers. Other journalists utilised their ability to navigate digital spaces and penetrate closed social media groups to gain access to networks of creators of misinformation content on the Czech internet and beyond. These forms of journalistic expertise resulted in broad investigations into the pro-Russian ‘disinformation community’ in the Czech Republic (Kundra, 2017; Zelenka & Prchal, 2017). They were deployed also to uncover supposed agents of foreign influence active in universities, key governmental institutions and the society at large (Prchal, 2018; Valášek & Halaštová, 2019; Valášek & Horák, 2019; Zelenka, 2021). Finally, this expertise was utilised in articles and books detailing spy games in the country (Kundra, 2016; Kundra & Prchal, 2018). While journalistic expertise based on access to exclusive sources shaped the HW discourse in the country and the set of issues that it focused on, it has also been contested on several occasions. This often happened from the side of those being accused of collaboration with foreign influence, as well as of critics of the HW agenda at large. The following section will

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zoom rather on a less obvious instance of boundary setting, when problematic journalistic practices were challenged within the media community itself and by the otherwise like-minded counterintelligence service (BIS). Ricin Affair and the Limits of Journalistic HW Expertise The so-called Ricin Affair of April and May 2020 represents a curious case of how a sensationalist piece based on unclear sourcing can be made believable when it fits within the established patterns of the HW discourse (see Eberle & Daniel, 2019). At the same time, the affair opened a debate about the limits of journalistic expertise based on exclusive access to sources inside the security apparatus and the responsibility in covering the secretive and opaque topics related to HW that are prone to intelligence games. In other words, the debate called into question the very form of expertise that much of the high-profile knowledge-production on HW has been built on. Finally, we also use this vignette for exploring the boundary work happening within the assemblage itself and sorting out who ‘really’ knows HW and how. The Ricin Affair has its roots in the aftermaths of the Konev Affair (see Chap. 4). The rhetorical battles between the supporters and opponents of the removal of the Konev statue as well as the spats between Czech and Russian politicians in the autumn of 2019 have created an atmosphere of anticipation of further potential escalation. Disputes surrounding the statue continued to resonate in the following months and attracted considerable attention in both Czechia and Russia (Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022, pp. 1162–1163). The Konev statue was finally replaced by the decision of the Prague 6 Mayor, Ondřej Kolář, in the middle of the pandemic lockdown on 3 April 2020 (Č TK, 2020a). The removal was met with condemnation from the Russian side, threats to prosecute Kolár ̌ by a specially adopted Russian law, as well as verbal abuse and even an attack on Czech diplomatic offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a group of far-­ right nationalists (Aktuálně.cz., 2020a). About two weeks later, Ondr ̌ej Kundra published an article in Respekt, based on sources in the security apparatus, which claimed that Kolár ̌, together with Prague’s Mayor, Zdeněk Hr ̌ib, and the local politician and public provocateur Pavel Novotný all received special protection by the

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Czech police.2 As Kundra claimed, this was partly due to Russian officials’ threatening statements, previous incidents in Russia and anonymous threats that Kolár ̌ received, but also due to the fact that ‘a Russian citizen, who could present a threat to Kolář, has arrived to Prague’ (Kundra, 2020a). In a short article published a few days after the original one, Kundra revealed that the threat was, according to ‘claims of Respekt’s sources’, specifically posed by a man with a Russian diplomatic passport who ‘was travelling with a suitcase in which he was supposed to have the deadly poison ricin’ (Kundra, 2020b). The man, who arrived just before the closure of the airport due to pandemic measures, was picked up by a car belonging to the Russian embassy and taken to the embassy premises. According to Kundra, Czech security services knew about the man and evaluated his presence to pose a significant risk to the three local politicians. However sensational, the story of agents and poison attacks aimed against those willing to confront Russia fitted perfectly into the established HW narratives. Moreover, the allegations also resonated with the previous track record of Russian intelligence services in the Litvinenko and Skripals poisoning. The revelations about the planned Russian poison attack on local Czech politicians, although unconventionally and strangely published as mere short notice on page 10 (see Neumann, 2020), spurred heated public debate. The story seemed plausible to many at start and created significant concern. ‘It is clear that Respekt had to verify the information first […] Nevertheless, the information that a Russian secret agent – a murderer – arrived in Prague is insane. That does not mean it is implausible,’ according to one commentator (Fendrych, 2020). Being picked up by international media (Cameron, 2020; Shotter & Foy, 2020; Wesolowsky, 2020), the revelations escalated into a diplomatic crisis. The Russian embassy officially protested against the allegations, while the Czech government confirmed the arrival of a Russian diplomat without further elaborating on details (Kolář, 2020). Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Affairs 2  Hřib previously authorised renaming the square where the Russian Embassy in Prague is located as the Boris Nemtsov Square to honour the murdered Russian opposition activist. Novotný initiated the construction of a memorial dedicated to fallen soldiers of the Russian Liberation Army (RLA). RLA is perceived as pro-Nazi organisation by Russia as it fought alongside the German forces against the Red Army in World War II. RLA’s position in the Czech memory is more complex, as it also helped defend parts of Prague during the antiNazi uprising in the closing days of the war in 1945 (on this and Novotný’s further exploits see Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022, pp. 1164–1166).

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Committee called for reducing the number of Russian diplomats in Prague and a group of security experts close to the HW assemblage, which included also Mayor Kolář’s father, demanded a stronger reaction to the Russian threat (Č TK, 2020b; Gavriněv, 2020). Adding more confusion to the debate, the BIS confirmed some form of suspicious activity to the parliament but at the same time also filed a lawsuit against the unknown source of the intelligence leak that led to Kundra’s original article (Shabu, 2020a). After the original revelations in late April, the media started digging deeper into Kundra’s story, questioning some of his findings and speculating about the broader ramifications of the affair. In particular, a debate followed on how to assess information and journalistic expertise more largely when it is based on hidden, probably intelligence, sources. Although Kundra added further details and statements of local academic experts on Russia later in May (Kundra & Spurný, 2020) and additional information about the supposed perpetrator were revealed by other media (Kroupa, 2020; Shabu, 2020b), some journalists started to question the validity of Kundra’s account and to ask for more information that would enable them to make sense of it. ‘It is not normal that we know what secret services know,’ argued Martin Fendrych (2020) and wondered about the reasons for the intelligence leak, while still supporting Kundra’s claims due to his long-standing credentials in HW-related issues. Other commentators were more critical and pointed to several inconsistencies and questionable claims in Kundra’s article that stood in contrast to its juicy but meaningless details (see Neumann, 2020). ‘There are not that many actually verifiable facts in the whole affair so far,’ argued journalist Matouš Hrdina (2020) several days after the initial revelations. Hrdina specifically pointed out that Kundra presented serious allegations based on anonymous sources but never provided the full story and the contextual information needed to make sense of it. Moreover, the rapid publication of the dubious story in other media ‘only leads to the point, where otherwise respected media, through their struggle for clicks and prestige, become a convenient messenger for the impenetrable games of Czech intelligence agents’ (Hrdina, 2020). Finally, experts on Russian intelligence and journalists with sources in the local Russian community started to poke more holes in the story. Mobilising different sources and their own expertise, they asked, for instance, about the plausibility of such high-profile assassination against people who were not Russians and not particularly politically important, all of that in the middle of pandemic

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lockdowns (Galeotti, 2020). Others then questioned whether the alleged ‘man with the suitcase’, in the meantime identified as a locally well-known Russian diplomat, would really be a suitable candidate for a mysterious killer (Procházková & Prchal, 2020). Kundra’s story eventually turned out to be based on misleading information originating, according to the official explanation from June 2020, from personal disagreements among Russian diplomats. The BIS declared that it received an anonymous email detailing the threat to local politicians and decided to minimise the risk by providing them with protection. The agency then concluded that the information about the planned poison attack was false and the likely motive for providing it was an attempt by one Russian diplomat to remove a professional rival from the position. In sum, this was ‘a simple and sad story of hostility and envy between two employees of the Embassy’ (Security Intelligence Service, 2020). Whereas the two diplomats were expelled from the country, the BIS scolded the media for working with unconfirmed leaks, which had interfered with the investigation and posed significant difficulties for the agency in assessing the level of the threat. By directly criticising the media leaks, the BIS attempted to set a boundary within the assemblage between the ‘real’, that is intelligence, expertise on HW and the journalistic one. In this respect, the controversy showed the limits of the particular style of knowledge-production on HW that relies on exclusive access to secretive sources, often located in the security and intelligence apparatus. Moreover, it also opened questions regarding the responsibility of journalists who are dealing with the opaque and secretive, yet often extremely serious issues related to HW.

Academic Criticism: Limits to Warification and the Possibility to Think HW Differently In this vignette, as a sort of postscript, we focus on a dispute which sought to push the boundaries of the assemblage from the outside, limit its logic of war and present a way of thinking issues linked to the HW discourse differently. It is a case of two researchers’ polemical engagement informed by academic debates in security studies and social theory. Compared to the two previous boundary disputes, its reach into the public debate was rather limited. However, it speaks very well to the concerns about warification and geopoliticisation that have animated this book and that led to its

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writing in the first place and shows an example of attempts to set boundaries to these problematic practices. As we are collaborators and friends of the authors of the polemic and share its normative commitments, exploration of this boundary-setting dispute enables us also to write ourselves and our own position directly into this account (for a personal reflection on this dispute see Evans et al., 2021, pp. 195–198). This line is then further picked up in Chap. 7. And Against the Trolls Have Risen the Elves … The dispute unpacked in this section originated in a polemical article titled ‘And Against the Trolls have Risen the Elves…’, written by two early career security studies scholars, Dagmar Rychnovská and Michal Smetana (2019), in response to a high-profile Czech TV discussion on ‘disinformation age’ (Č eská televize, 2018). The article criticised the Czech debate on HW, as epitomised by the TV show and beyond, in particular warification of the discourse on misinformation. The reactions that the article spurred became indicative of the contours of the assemblage, as well as of the arguments in favour and against warification and geopoliticisation of social issues, as introduced by the HW discourse. The programme, Fokus Václava Moravce, aired in December 2018, featured a debate on misinformation among several invited guests, many of whom took part in the activities of the HW assemblage (Č eská televize, 2018). These included, among others, Petr Pavel, freshly retired from the position of chairman of NATO Military Committee, František Vrábel, the director of the Semantics Visions software company (see Chap. 4), and the political geographer Michael Romancov. The show also featured an anonymised interview with a representative of the Czech Elves, a volunteer group that seeks to protect Czech cyberspace from (pro-)Russian campaigns (see Chap. 4). While the debate offered a wider spectrum of views and included all the three narratives described in the Chap. 5, the highly warified and geopoliticised framing of misinformation and the expertise connected with it remained dominant. In one example, while asked about social media algorithms as a potential threat to freedom of speech on digital platforms, Vrábel answered that ‘what really threatens us is hostile propaganda, of which disinformation is part, which is straightaway directed from Moscow […] it is a part of information security, where information war plays important role’ (Vrábel in Č eská televize, 2018).

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The article of Rychnovská and Smetana criticised this warification, challenging the practice that ‘the problems of the information chaos era are being described by many politicians and analysts in the language of war’ (Rychnovská & Smetana, 2019). By invoking the alternative imaginary of ‘information chaos’—an issue that is much broader and requires a range of non-militarised and society-oriented responses—the authors offered a different framing of the problem rooted in different expertise. As they argued, warification complicates the understanding of the complex transformations of the society and the information environment. It also poses a threat for civic freedoms, as shown, for example, by the many excesses of the ‘War on Terror’. Referring to the BIS 2017 Annual Report (2018, p. 8), the authors further argued that the misinformation scene was often homegrown rather than orchestrated by foreign powers. The HW discourse, then, leads to ‘stigmatization of different opinions […] de facto excluding these groups from the national community and understanding them as a fifth column of the enemy on our territory, with whom we do not deliberate, but whom we fight’ (Rychnovská & Smetana, 2019). Finally, they argued, the geopoliticised language, in which misinformation is presented as an ‘Eastern’ threat invading the Czech cyberspace, legitimises the activities of groups such as the Czech Elves that step up to defend the country in the spirit of a ‘fairy-tale-like struggle between good and evil’ (Rychnovská & Smetana, 2019). Yet, it presents a misleading narrative that does not provide space for understanding the other side and for adequate reactions needed to face the complex issues of information chaos. In the language of this chapter, grounding their account in their distinct academic expertise, Rychnovská and Smetana sought to push back the boundaries of the HW assemblage, countering its claims of authority over the information environment and trying to reclaim space for other than warified policies. The article provoked several reactions, both polemical and supportive, as well as heated debates on social media, being shared more than thousand times on Facebook only (for a polemical summary of the debate see also Romancov, 2019; Syrovátka, 2019). The defence of the HW assemblage’s authority was, first, justified by the supposed urgency of the war-­ like situation, implying that academic expertise may not be wrong, but it is not an appropriate guide in such testing times. This was well encapsulated in the title of a response written by the spokesman of the Czech Elves, Bohumil Kartous: ‘It is Pointless to Deal with Dirty Laundry When There is a Fire’ (Kartous, 2019). While acknowledging the need to focus

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on social issues that enable the proliferation of misinformation, Kartous’ article painted Czechia as nearly a captured state where ‘the President attacks the counterintelligence’, and the Prime Minister does not act against threats posed by Chinese communication technology. In this context, he continued, it is necessary to get involved in the ongoing ‘information war’, because ‘we need to deal with acute problem first – that is the basic instinct of self-defence’ (Kartous, 2019). Other reactions geopoliticised the criticism, pointing out to the supposedly unclear allegiance of Rychnovská and Smetana in the East/West conflict. This was the case of the other public representative of the Czech Elves, Vít Kučík. Rychnovská and Smetana’s aversion to warification betrays, according to Kučík, their ideological wavering, as they ‘very clearly defend the freedom to be critical of the West and namely the USA, but when it comes to Putin’s Russia, they rather accentuate empathy’ (Kučík, 2019). Finally, a range of reactions sought to defend the warified approach simply by stressing the supposedly exclusive authority of the HW discourse on ‘calling things by their real names’ (Klíma, 2019), implying that it is the HW assemblage that possesses the expertise to tell what these ‘real names’ are—and not the academics. In the words of Michal Klíma, a journalist and later the official governmental representative for media and ‘disinformation’: ‘avoiding this [war] description, appeals for empathy for the thinking of the other side instead of defence, is just a distraction and can lead to the end of democracy as we know it’ (Klíma, 2019). This controversy became indicative of the boundary work by the means of intellectual and ideological critique. It showed how attempts to limit warification of the public sphere were contested by doubling down on the logics of war, civilisational geopolitics and the exceptionalist urgency of the supposedly war-like situation. The critique raised by Rychnovská and Smetana was not the only one, though. Others sought to push back the boundaries of the HW assemblage from a conservative position, arguing on the basis of military expertise and/or different ideological convictions for less attention to misinformation, proposing to invest resources and attention rather to the hard-security, military issues (Kofroň, 2019; Šmigol, 2019). Neither of these lines of critique made a decisive impact on the HW assemblage and the role of the HW discourse in the public sphere. However, the continuous boundary work by the means of critique of warification and geopoliticisation arguably provided at least some, if extremely limited, intellectual space for exploring alternatives to the HW discourse by showing that a different thinking is possible and can be legitimised by other forms of expertise, for example that of academic social science.

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Conclusion In this chapter we probed the interplay of expertise, authority and boundary work that aims to (de)limit the areas covered by the HW discourse. Exploring two forms of expertise which have held a prominent position in the HW assemblage—intelligence and journalistic—we have shown how authoritative claims on HW are made and justified in the public sphere. We have also pointed out two major disputes that sought to define the areas of the HW assemblage’s authority (or that of different actors within it) through narrative struggles over who really ‘knows’ HW and can speak of it in the public sphere. Thereby, we explored also several attempts to limit warification and geopoliticisation of distinct areas of social life and to push back the boundaries of the HW assemblage, as well as the related disputes over the responsibility of different professions. By exploring the expertise of distinct actors in the HW assemblage together with its contestation, we make a broader argument about the authority of the HW assemblage. The discourse of HW often carries with itself a certain sense of urgency, exceptionality and secrecy inherent to the logic of war—in many cases rightly so. However, the Ricin Affair or the history education controversy shows that careful and critical probing of the initial claims and assumptions in an open public debate eventually proved beneficial to the broader public interest. Not only that these debates defined the boundary of appropriate expertise, but they also opened important questions of what exactly we want from such expertise. In this sense, these two disputes enabled a healthy debate about professional responsibility of journalists or intelligence services, as well as the responsibility of those making highly consequential authoritative claims. From an optimistic angle, we can therefore say that these controversies were good both for particular policy, for example in respect to who is supposed to design education curricula and how, as well as for democracy at large. At the same time, as the third case showed, debates that concern matters of security and identity easily slip back to arguments based on warification and geopoliticisation of social issues. This begs the question of how we should relate to the HW discourse in the first place. In the concluding chapter, we follow this line of thinking and elaborate on how we imagine the basic ethics and guiding principles of engagement with the HW discourse more generally.

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Shabu, M. (2020a, May 6). BIS podala trestní oznámení kvůli úniku informací v kauze Rusa s ricinem. Šetří to Bradáčová. Lidovky.cz. https://www.lidovky.cz/ domov/bis-­podala-­trestni-­oznameni-­kvuli-­uniku-­informaci-­v-­kauze-­r usa-­s-­ ricinem-­setri-­to-­bradacova.A200506_161043_ln_domov_tmr. Accessed 13 March 2023. Shabu, M. (2020b, May 9). Před Rusem s ricinem varoval českou kontrarozvědku anonym. Důstojník FSB měl přivézt ještě další jed | Domov. Lidovky.cz. https:// w w w. l i d o v k y. c z / d o m o v / p r e d -­r u s e m -­s -­r i c i n e m -­v a r o v a l -­c e s k o u -­ kontrarozvedku-­a nonym-­d ustojnik-­f sb-­m el-­p rivezt-­j este-­d alsi-­j ed. A200508_211848_ln_domov_sei. Accessed 13 March 2023. Shotter, J., & Foy, H. (2020, May 4). Prague Gripped by Suspected Russian Intrigue. Financial Times. Šmigol, O. (2019, May 25). Elfové na hlídce proti ruským trollům. Echo Prime. http://echoprime.cz/a/StXWr/elfove-­n a-­h lidce-­p roti-­r uskym-­t rollum. Accessed 24 March 2023. Svárovský, M., Zvejniece, P., & Tamasauskas, A. (2019, June 29). Russia and China Through Eyes of NATO and EU Intelligence Agencies. European Values. https://europeanvalues.cz/en/russia-­and-­china-­through-­eyes-­of-­nato-­and-­ eu-­intelligence-­agencies/. Accessed 3 March 2023. Svobodová, E. (2019, February 21). Existuje málo tak rozmanitých jevů jako výuka dějepisu ve školách, r ̌íká v reakci na BIS historik. Radio Wave. https:// wave.rozhlas.cz/existuje-­malo-­tak-­rozmanitych-­jevu-­jako-­vyuka-­dejepisu-­ve-­ skolach-­rika-­v-­reakci-­7766958. Accessed 7 March 2023. Syrovátka, J. (2019, January 6). Dobrě hozená rukavice. Názory Aktuálne ̌.cz. https://blog.aktualne.cz/blogy/jonas-­s yrovatka.php?itemid=33158. Accessed 22 March 2023. Tong, J. (2018). Journalistic Legitimacy Revisited. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 256–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360785 Tucher, A. (2022). Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History (p. 384). Columbia University Press. Valášek, L., & Halaštová, E. (2019, October 29). Č ínská ambasáda tajně financovala i předmět na univerzitě o výhodách Hedvábné stezky. Aktuálne ̌.cz. https:// zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/cinska-­a mbasada-­t ajne-­p oslala-­p enize-­i -­n a-­ predmet-­uk-­o-­vyhod/r~7fa1adb8f71311e9b1410cc47ab5f122/. Accessed 12 March 2023. Valášek, L., & Horák, J. (2019, December 11). Home Credit of Wealthiest Czech Petr Kellner Has Paid for a Campaign Promoting China. Aktuálne ̌.cz. https:// zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/home-­credit-­ppf-­petr-­kellner-­campaign-­china/ r~265579361bf511ea926e0cc47ab5f122/. Accessed 12 March 2023. Vrist Rønn, K., & Høffding, S. (2013). The Epistemic Status of Intelligence: An Epistemological Contribution to the Understanding of Intelligence. Intelligence and National Security, 28(5), 694–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268452 7.2012.701438

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Waisbord, S. (2018). Truth Is What Happens to News. Journalism Studies, 19(13), 1866–1878. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1492881 Wesolowsky, T. (2020, April 30). Alleged Kremlin Poison Plot Highlights Czechs’ Russian Spy Problem. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. https://www.rferl. org/a/alleged-­k remlin-­p oison-­p lot-­h ighlights-­c zechs-­r ussian-­s py-­ problem/30585899.html. Accessed 13 March 2023. Wittichová, M. (2018, May 4). Novinárš ké ceny Nadace OSF za rok 2017 tematicky ovládla politická investigace. Č eskoslovenskou cenu veřejnosti získala Saša Uhlová za svou reportáž Hrdinové kapitalistické práce. Nadace OSF. https://osf.cz/2018/05/04/novinarske-­ceny-­nadace-­osf-­za-­rok-­2017-­ tematicky-­o vladla-­p oliticka-­i nvestigace-­c eskoslovenskou-­c enu-­v erejnosti-­ ziskala-­s asa-­u hlova-­z a-­s vou-­r eportaz-­h rdinove-­k apitalisticke-­p race-­2 /. Accessed 11 March 2023. Zelenka, J. (2021). Č esko-c ̌ínské objímání (Vydání první.). N media. Zelenka, J., & Prchal, L. (2017, April 27). Velká mapa českých dezinformátorů na YouTube. Rozkrýváme obrí̌ sít ̌ šířící lži, vládne jí jeden kanál. Aktuálne ̌.cz. https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/na-­y outube-­c ili-­n a-­c echy-­d esitky-­ dezinformatoru-­v idea-­s iri-­r /r~9fadcb602a8c11e7afda0025900fea04/. Accessed 12 March 2023. Zietsma, C., & Lawrence, T. B. (2010). Institutional Work in the Transformation of an Organizational Field: The Interplay of Boundary Work and Practice Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(2), 189–221. https://doi.org/ 10.2189/asqu.2010.55.2.189

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Reclaiming Politics from the Logic of War

This book offered a comprehensive analysis of how the rise of the ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse transformed the understanding of (in)security in Czechia in the aftermath of 2014. Through a detailed empirical study based on an extensive amount of both primary and secondary sources, we unpacked simultaneously the socio-psychological (ontological insecurity), socio-linguistic (discourse and narratives) as well as socio-material (assemblage) aspects of this process. By combining these different concepts that are usually kept apart, we contribute to a range of IR and human geography literatures, as outlined in Chap. 1. Our focus was primarily on events, actors and institutions in Czechia, and we have indeed emphasised the distinctly domestic character of many aspects of the problem, especially the variety of domestic social, economic and political crises and grievances. At the same time, though, we repeatedly highlighted that the HW discourse emerged at the intersection of specifically Czech developments with broader transnational trends occurring beyond the single country. It is in relation to these regional, European and even global trends that our study gains a broader relevance, as it speaks to matters that are manifested not only in Czechia but also elsewhere—albeit in their specific local modifications and in intersections with different domestic trends. This concerns the concept of HW, which is used across EU/NATO countries (and beyond), responses to liminality by states and societies across Central and Eastern Europe (and beyond), as well as the global trend of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2_7

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increasingly approaching politics and complex societal issues through the uncompromising logic of war. Therefore, we believe that many of our findings should be useful also for understanding other cases of political developments marked by the presence of geopoliticisation, warification or even the whole discourse of HW. The extent of this relevance, though, has to be determined by detailed studies sensitive to local and contextual variations, for which our conclusions should be seen as open-ended, guiding hypotheses. Our ambition was both analytical and normative. While most of the book was spent rather on detailed analysis, this concluding chapter is devoted to the articulation of lessons driven by our normative position, as grounded in various strands of critical theory. Throughout the book, we have criticised the discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’ and the assemblage that emerged around it for approaching politics through the logic of war. Via strategies of geopoliticisation and warification, ‘hybrid warfare’ came to redress a broad array of disparate political issues as somehow linked to an existential, war-like East/West struggle. This logic of war, we suggested, contributes to the deepening of social fragmentation and polarisation, and to the reproduction of the underlying anxieties—rather than resolving them as purported (also Eberle & Daniel, 2022). As argued in Chap. 1, we consider this a price too high, given the limited utility of the HW discourse in dealing with both domestic and international challenges, as well as the problematic or flawed assumptions upon which it relies. Fortunately enough, HW is just one among the possible responses to the underlying crises and anxieties that have shaken up societies in Czechia, Europe and even further across the globe. There is nothing natural about the HW discourse and its rise in the aftermath of 2014, as the shape it eventually took was a contingent result of often unruly and decentralised processes and interactions, transnational and domestic, that could have turned out in a very different way. Therefore, there is no reason why we should accept it as a given. Instead, given the limited utility and significant damage brought by the HW discourse, we believe it is paramount to strive for different approaches not only to security but also to democratic politics and our relations to one another. In the following pages, we offer a sketch of how this alternative, one driven by the ambition to reclaim politics from the uncompromising logic of war, could look like. While developed chiefly from Czechia’s experience with ‘hybrid warfare’, we believe that these lessons are generalisable enough to be of potential use in relation to all sorts of ‘culture wars’ and other instances of ‘weaponization’ or ‘militarisation’

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of politics in general (Davies, 2019; Galeotti, 2022; Larsson, 2021; Stavrianakis & Stern, 2018), and for (Central and Eastern) European debates in particular. That said and to repeat, local modifications may be necessary. On the one hand, some of the key lessons are relatively clear. We discuss them in the first section around the ideas of dismantling ‘hybrid warfare’, de-weaponising language and abandoning East/West thinking. These should be adopted as general principles, that is if we want to have a more productive debate on social issues, security or Russia. On the other hand, taking these suggestions seriously may require a more profound shift in thinking about politics and society. We sketch the contours of this alternative political imagination in the second part. We start by returning to the subversive potential of liminality and continue by presenting slowness, vulnerability and democratic conflict as central for our project of politics that resists geopoliticisation and warification. Given the hyper-masculine character of ‘war’ discourses, it is perhaps not surprising that many our arguments are at least partially based on or aligned with feminist thinking—most explicitly that of Judith Butler and Chantal Mouffe—that embraces reciprocity, solidarity and care.

Dismantling ‘hybrid warfare’ Some of the key lessons from our analysis can be articulated in rather simple terms. First and foremost, we believe that the notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ should be dismantled, as its utility is limited and the damage is considerable. As argued throughout, HW is an ambiguous ‘lab leak’ from military debates that has ‘mutated’ over time so that it can mean almost anything. Even its proponents offer markedly different narratives of the threats it poses and how to deal with them, as shown in Chap. 5. The key assumptions upon which HW relies, such as the supposedly high effectiveness of misinformation campaigns, have been put in serious doubt, as shown in Chap. 1. As such, HW ‘undermines strategic thinking’ (Caliskan & Liégeois, 2020) and is of little value in grasping the character of the challenge posed by Russia. Instead, the HW discourse has strongly negative side-effects, as it stigmatises whole sections of societies and makes it difficult to lead an open and critical public debate. For this reason, forgetting and abandoning the notion would be best for almost everyone involved—with the exception of the ‘“hybrid-industrial complex” of government agencies, think-tanks, non-governmental organisations (NGOs)

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and pundits’ that use it for their particular interests (Galeotti, 2019, p. 11). As this ‘complex’, or assemblage, is transnational by nature, this recommendation is of value for all countries or international institutions that have adopted HW and its local modifications into their thinking (Janičatová & Mlejnková, 2021; Libiseller, 2023; Wrange, 2022). Crucially, dismantling means more than simply crossing out ‘hybrid warfare’ from the vocabulary. It is important to challenge the discourse that underlies it and that links social issues together and subsumes them under the idea that they are part of a broader war-like confrontation. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine makes this more relevant than ever. The scale of brutality and suffering unleashed by Russia’s forces should alert us to the importance of drawing clear boundaries between the bombing of cities that characterises war and the annoying, yet essentially non-violent nuisances like trolling or spreading misinformation on social networks, that does not. Just to reiterate, as large parts of Ukraine are suffering from the sheer material force of industrial warfare, we should stop applying ‘the ethics of total war […] to the smallest skirmish’ (Galeotti, 2019, p. 8). Therefore, proper dismantling needs to break up the discursive links that tie together issues as different as cyberattacks, disputes over societal values and media literacy and present them jointly as a matter of war-like security governance, often under the conditions of exception and emergency. Instead, each of these problems should be first approached individually, with two simple questions in mind: Would this be a major problem in its own right, without the supposed link to the broader threat of ‘hybrid warfare’ that makes it so disturbing? Are security agencies, rather than other institutions, really best equipped to address it? In certain cases, the response will be a ‘yes’ on both accounts—and rightly so. The threat of cyberattacks against state infrastructures such as the energy grid or hospitals is clearly a major issue in its own right. They could bring significant damage, including loss of life, completely regardless of whether done by hackers linked to the Russian state or anybody else. Clearly, the state security apparatus plays a central and irreplaceable role in protecting and defending these infrastructures. In this sense, some of the conceptions and measures offered by the defence narrative (as outlined in Chap. 5) can serve as a legitimate and useful starting point, as long as they are kept apart from the more expansive versions and logics of HW.

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However, the same response would probably not stand for many other issues grouped under the expansive definition of HW, especially those articulated by the counterinfluence narrative. Limited media literacy, issues with history education, trust in conspiracy theories or diverging opinions on same-sex marriage can be seen as legitimate problems. But, perhaps, the importance of some of them (e.g. conspiracy theories, diverging values) may not be as high as that of more pressing questions of the day that might be the actual drivers of public discontent and widespread insecurity, such as cost of living crisis, rising energy prices or, of course, the Russian attack against Ukraine. Political attention is a scarce resource and devoting too much of it to comparatively secondary problems because of their supposed HW-links means that it will probably be missing elsewhere. While other issues, such as those concerning media literacy skills and history education, can still be considered highly relevant, security optics in general and security agencies in particular may not be the best way to address them. Would it not be better to approach them as problems that should be solved primarily for the reason of having better educated citizens, capable of exercising qualified and independent judgement regardless of whether it fits into Russia’s supposed plans or narratives? And, as discussed in Chap. 6, are security institutions even qualified to make decisions on these matters? In this sense, we align also with some of the key ideas of the education narrative, especially in its focus on education— again, as long as this is dissociated from the broader HW logic as well as some of its patronising tendencies towards elderly people or underprivileged classes. Second, this means that instead of being used as warification, ‘[l]anguage needs to be de-weaponized’ (Davies, 2019, p. 223). As long as we want to strive for a less divided society, one of the simplest things to do is to avoid the plethora of deeply derogatory labels that circulate in the HW debate. Everyone will be better off if we stop using words ‘like weapons’ so as to ‘demoralize and hurt’ the other side (Davies, 2019, p. 148). Throughout the book, we have criticised the Czech HW assemblage for calling their opponents ‘Russia’s agents’, ‘fifth column’, ‘collaborators’ or ‘useful idiots’. Unfortunately, especially (if not exclusively) social media debates bring in a range of even worse slurs and insults, including ‘desolates’, ‘patryots’ (flastenci) or ‘drunkriots’ (chlastenci) (Břešťan, 2023), which often do not even pretend to hide the underlying class-based

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disdain.1 In a particularly worrying Czech example, the Minister of the Interior, Vít Rakušan, publicly denounced on his official social media profile some potential opponents of a decision connecting extremism and ‘disinformation’ as ‘pro-Russian cockroaches’ (Rakušan, 2022a), channelling the classic dehumanising trope of comparing humans to insects, one that had been used also in a range of mass atrocities (Abdalla et al., 2021; de Ruiter, 2023). As the proliferation of terms like ‘libtards’ or ‘gammons’ in Anglo-Saxon discourses shows, to give just one example, this is also a trend that goes beyond Czechia. The key problem is that through these labels, opponents are automatically delegitimised or even dehumanised. If the other is seen as a ‘Russian fifth column’, uneducated ‘patryot’ or a mere ‘cockroach’, there is little space to take their grievances seriously and accept them as legitimate subjects of a political conversation. Unsurprisingly, there is also little goodwill on the side of those labelled in this way to engage in such conversation. In this sense, we believe it is detrimental to put anyone’s worth in question before the conversation even started. On top of that, we also suggest that more attention is paid to the results of reputable research into the actual motivations of those engaging in protests or believing and spreading misinformation. Studies from Czechia show that these are people from different classes and age groups, who often neither admire nor trust Russia, and whose activities can be seen as misled, yet not entirely irrational responses to genuine grievances (Buchtík et al., 2021; Hořejš et al., 2020). Third, and here we are most explicitly channelling the CEE dimension, instead of geopoliticising domestic and international issues, ‘East’ and ‘West’ should be abandoned as political concepts. Rather than neutral descriptive categories, ‘East’ and ‘West’ are arbitrary tools through which individuals, states and societies are ranked according to their degree of supposed development and backwardness. This creates dubious and problematic hierarchies, in which people or attributes seen as closer to ‘the West’ are constructed as superior and desirable, while links to ‘the East’ are inferior and despicable (Neumann, 1999; Said, 1978; Todorova, 2009). Dubious, because ‘the West’ is an ambiguous category, with very 1  To be sure, this indeed works both ways so that the mostly urban, liberal and educated ‘pro-Western’ classes are denounced back as ‘betterpeople’ (lepšolidi), ‘libtards’ or ‘Havloids’ (a pun on Václav Havel), allegedly dwelling in their detached ‘Prague cafés’ or even ‘fascio-­ cafés’ (Brě šťan, 2023). In line with this book’s aims, though, our focus is on the HW discourse and we try to speak especially to elites that form the assemblage that pushes it further.

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different contents, boundaries and membership depending on the given speaker and the given time (Browning & Lehti, 2010; Jackson, 2006). This should be clear in the returning debates about where ‘the West’ ‘ends’ or how to evaluate the ‘Westernness’ of ‘borderline’ countries like Turkey, Ukraine, Russia or Georgia, or how to grasp the like-minded yet far-away countries like Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. Problematic, because of how political difference is redressed as deep-seated, even unbridgeable civilisational otherness. This becomes even more apparent when geopoliticising discourses enter domestic political debate. Considering whole parts of our societies as somehow ‘not Western enough’—effectively meaning culturally and morally inferior—can hardly be the basis for a cohesive society or a well-functioning polity. As such, it would also hardly help us in tackling the social issues that, as we believe, contribute to the proliferation of the very anxieties that gave rise to the HW discourse in the first place. But would the abandoning of the idea of ‘the West’ not undermine the fundaments of EU and NATO unity, identity and foreign policy? Not one bit. As believers in the importance of EU and NATO—and the indispensability of Czechia’s membership in both—we do not see any damage incurred to these institutions coming from the rejection of East/West thinking. There is no mention of ‘West’ or ‘Westernness’ in their founding documents, NATO’s Washington Treaty and EU’s Lisbon Treaty. On the contrary, the values listed—democracy, human rights, rule of law—are distinctly universal. Similarly, we do not need the dubious and problematic notion of a ‘Western civilisation’ to see the benefits of EU and NATO. The provision of collective security, economic prosperity and shared governance of transnational issues can all be easily maintained without indulging in a civilisational discourse. Ditching East/West thinking could even bring added value, especially in EU and NATO’s relationship with other partners. In relation to the Global South, it could help the EU overcome the colonial and racist associations ‘the West’ has earned in these countries historically. Crucially, it could also open the way for accepting Ukraine— and other states of the region—in EU and NATO as equals, not repeating the mistakes of the previous enlargements (Krastev & Holmes, 2019).

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Thinking Different Politics The three principles discussed above—dismantling ‘hybrid warfare’, de-­ weaponising language, abandoning East/West thinking—should not be too abstract to understand. Their proper implementation, however, may require more fundamental rethinking of how politics could look like. Put differently, the key ideas about war and peace, East and West, or how to relate to one another that have enabled the rise of the HW discourse may be just too deeply embedded in the ways we think, speak and act to be changed overnight. Broader transformations may be necessary in our search for reclaiming politics from the uncompromising logic war. As a starting point, it is helpful to revisit the discussions of liminality, above all in the two articles written by Maria Mälksoo (2012) and Bahar Rumelili (2012) that are directly concerned with matters of international politics, war and Central and Eastern Europe. Building on their work, we have argued that the rise of HW in Czechia should be read as one possible response to the condition of East/West and war/peace liminalities. Part of the appeal of the HW discourse lies in the promise of escaping from the troubling liminal ambiguities by identifying firmly with the West and adopting war as the organising logic of politics. This coping strategy is ultimately a conservative one, having ‘an overall reproductive effect on structure’ (Rumelili, 2012, p. 503) and bringing in little novel solutions to the far-reaching challenges our societies nowadays face. Put simply, instead of thinking and acting afresh, the HW discourse pushes us to view the world through the well-worn optics of civilisational geopolitics and to adopt an uncompromising war-like approach to dissent and difference. However, Mälksoo and Rumelili also argue that liminality bears the promise of seeing politics in a different light—and even to do things differently. Not fitting into the established categories, liminality is simultaneously ‘a realm of social possibility; […] a fluid space, which can be occupied’ (Rumelili, 2012, p.  503) and ‘a vital moment of creativity, a potential platform for renewing the societal make-up’ (Mälksoo, 2012, p.  481). Following this line of argument, being stuck between the East and the West, as well as being at unease about the blurring of war and peace, can prompt us to reflect on these very categories and how they structure our politics—and change it accordingly. In simpler terms, ‘there is also a positive, productive aspect of the situations of crisis and transition as the new setting emerging from these transitions can be better than the old order of things’ (Mälksoo, 2012, p. 489).

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Therefore, the position of liminality is not only one of insecurity but also of opportunity: not to conserve the existing structures, as the HW discourse does, but to transform them. This realisation underpins the normative project of this book, which is not only about criticising the HW discourse but also about searching for ways how to move beyond it. Taking up this opportunity, though, requires responding to liminality with ‘a more subversive strategy that seeks to convert the ambiguity […] into an asset, and to challenge the existing social categories’ by thinking and acting in ‘a way that embraces […] ambiguity and in-betweenness’ (Rumelili, 2012, pp. 503, 505). From this point of view, the particular flavour of the Czech and CEE experience at the intersection of East/West and war/ peace liminalities can be productively utilised to rethink both civilisational geopolitics and the growing feeding of ‘the spirit of warfare into civilian life’ at large (Davies, 2019, p. xvi). Naturally, this does not mean reifying some assumed, essentialised or supposedly timeless qualities of Czech or CEE in-betweeness, but rather cherishing sensitivity to certain issues that living through the liminal condition makes apparent to us. The following sections sketch the key tenets of this project. Slowness as De-escalation The first task is to deescalate—rather than deny or resolve—tensions within societies, instead of fuelling them up through geopoliticisation and warification. Valuable lessons can be learnt from our study of almost a decade of living with HW in Czechia. Russia’s misinformation and propaganda machine is at work, yet its results have been limited (as shown in Chap. 1). Still, disagreements and tensions do not seem to disappear. Politics remains heavily polarised, which is a picture familiar also elsewhere in Europe and beyond. While only small minorities seem to be genuinely impressed or attracted by Putin’s Russia, much larger groups are alienated and discontent. Democracy indeed remains under duress in the Euro-Atlantic space, yet it appears that Russia’s dark arts of HW do not necessarily have that much to do with it (which may be less valid in countries like Moldova or Montenegro, where Russia sponsored direct attempts to overthrow the governments). Quick fixes from the anti-HW playbook, like fact-checking or ‘strategic communication’, do not seem to be the silver bullets some may have wished. What else, then, is there? One step in de-escalation can be to strive for more slowness in our political actions and reactions (Davies, 2019). Speed is a crucial factor behind

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warification, as the logic of war requires that no time is wasted. Knowledge produced at speed tends be the highly instrumental ‘knowledge for war’, whose main purpose is to harm the opponent and gain a competitive advantage (Davies, 2019, pp. 124, 133). Needless to say, the information economy based on immediacy and instant engagement amplifies this issue. Yet, ‘[i]mpulsive reactions can be paranoid and aggressive, whereas more careful ones can be more understanding and attentive to context’ (Davies, 2019, p.  223). This may not be applicable to the security and defence agencies tasked with protecting state infrastructures from attacks (physical or in cyberspace alike). Yet, the rest of us, especially actors engaged in public debate, would be well-advised to exercise more caution and restraint. If the experience of liminality teaches us that some people, problems and situations do not always fit in the existing categories, this means that we should also take the time for a deeper reflection before trying to impose unequivocal interpretations on the world. Indeed, multiple of the controversies discussed in this book were fuelled by the habit to come up quickly with a tweet, a TV appearance or an article. These would be followed by both passionate endorsements and uncompromising rejections, often based on pre-existing alliances formed around the ‘identities and values’ that define ‘culture wars’ (Barša et al., 2021, p. 10). Positions formed in this way are often inaccurate (or plain wrong), yet the ‘us versus them’ logic makes it difficult to backtrack on them. Prime example is the Ricin Affair of 2020, initiated by a highly problematic article and followed by (over)reactions from commentators, politicians and influencers alike (see Chap. 6). A more recent case was on display during Russia’s war against Ukraine, when an initially unspecified missile killed two people on the Polish territory in November 2022. Within minutes of the incidents, multiple members of the Czech government (and many other figures) went to Twitter and on air to paint this as a likely Russian attack and even called for retaliation (Novinky, 2022; Rakušan, 2022b). In a few hours, Polish and US officials declared that the missiles were most likely fired by Ukraine’s anti-rocket systems, as the country was under severe Russian bombardment at that point, and the deaths were an unfortunate accident (Mattingly et al., 2022). Cases like these clearly demonstrate the need for ‘less speed and more care, both in our thinking and our feeling’ (Davies, 2019, p. xvii). Fortunately enough, they also bring us examples of how such slow, responsible and even empathic and reassuring behaviour may look like. Sometimes, being slow means nothing more than focusing on the

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standard of one’s job, such as some of the journalists in the Ricin Affair, who stuck to their standards and conducted the slow routine of collecting solid evidence and evaluating it in a diligent manner. Similarly, during the 2022 missile incident, both Polish and US governments were cautious from the very beginning, recognising the risks of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. Even though we can imagine the pressure to act quickly as well as the complexity of the situation, both US and Polish leaders were very careful not to provide rushed conclusions before investigating the matter and giving the situation proper deliberation. In Czechia, a similar line was set by Petr Pavel, then only a presidential candidate, who distinguished himself from his more hawkish contenders by sharing a calming and emphatic video, in which he asked the audience to remain patient and reassured that this does not have to lead to a broader confrontation (iDNES.cz., 2022).2 If Joe Biden, Andrzej Duda or Petr Pavel could remain careful in situation as serious as this, then perhaps all of us can be a little slower before making judgements and screaming them into the world. Vulnerability as We-ness Second, these de-escalating efforts can be furthered by rebuilding a shared sense of community, a collective we-ness. Warification and ‘war’ discourses divide societies along an uncompromising ‘us versus them’ boundary, in which the other side is seen as dangerous, inferior or radically ‘other’. Yet, it appears that winning such ‘wars’ is not possible, as this would imply conversion or annihilation of one of the two camps. Instead, the more time passes without a ‘victory’ in sight, the more we are confronted with the disturbing possibility that people with very different, even incommensurable worldviews may be condemned to coexistence. This is easiest to demonstrate for democratic politics at the state level, as one cannot simply wish away large parts of their fellow citizens, who continue to cast their vote in the same elections. However, we are bound to coexist—or, alternatively, perish—together also on the planetary level, as we all rely on the functioning of the same, seriously endangered ecosystems. The liminal experience of passing through the state of being ‘neither one thing nor the 2  Interestingly, this laudably cautious, restraint and ‘slow’ line was adopted also by Jakub Janda, whom we have otherwise identified as one of the key actors driving geopoliticisation and warification in Czechia (Janda, 2022).

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other’ (Beech, 2011, p. 286) could serve as a springboard for meditation on how to coexist with difference in both national and global politics. Yet, how to rebuild such shared we-ness, when societies are divided not only by values and identities but by even interpretations of what counts as reality? One option is offered by Judith Butler’s call for ‘reimagining the possibility of community on the basis of vulnerability’ (Butler, 2004, p. 20, emph. added). For Butler, vulnerability is the one thing that is universal. Everyone is vulnerable to the possibility of being hurt and everyone can suffer trauma, anxiety and loss (although, it should be said, this vulnerability is distributed highly unequally). It is this ‘precarious’ nature of our lives that we all have in common, regardless of different truth claims, worldviews and values. Therefore, against the particularistic struggles of ‘culture wars’ or ‘hybrid warfare’, Butler suggests recovering shared we-­ ness based on the fragility and mutual dependence of our lives. The key question is how to grasp vulnerability politically. The problem is similar as with the closely related notions of ontological insecurity and liminality. We can attempt to build our politics on denying vulnerability, which will often lead to the classical Freudian response, in which repression leads to aggression. In Butler’s words, ‘denial of this vulnerability through a fantasy of mastery (an institutionalized fantasy of mastery) can fuel the instruments of war’ (2004, p. 29). This is very much the logic of warification and geopoliticisation, through which liminal vulnerabilities are denied and (supposedly) mastered through the muscular and often aggressive discourse of ‘hybrid warfare’. There is, however, another option, namely to attempt to face the precarious nature of ourselves and others and approach ‘vulnerability [as] one precondition for humanization’ (Butler, 2004, p.  43). By building on vulnerability as something shared (see Browne et al., 2021, pp. 7–10), we can partially break down us/them boundaries, rather than fortifying them through warification and geopoliticisation. But what would this mean in practical terms? We can start from the observation that the idea of vulnerability is by no means foreign to the HW discourse. It could perhaps be even said that the HW discourse is obsessed by identifying all sorts of vulnerabilities that can possibly be exploited by foreign actors, ranging from state infrastructures, through social values, all the way to individual skills, as argued in detail in Chap. 5. Yet, this admission rarely serves as a point for reflection. Instead, vulnerability is invoked rather as something to be resolved by quick fixes ranging from national security measures, through collecting lists of supposed

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‘agents’, ‘useful idiots’ or collaborators, to fact-checking and ‘critical thinking’ education. Very often, this is connected to the singling out of certain parts of populations, for example elderly people, unprivileged classes or discontent citizens. They come to be seen as particularly ‘vulnerable’ communities that are ‘at risk’ of being manipulated by malign misinformation and thus becoming ‘risky’ for the rest of the society (see Heath-Kelly, 2013). As such, they need to be either educated and made thus more resilient, or surveilled and contained, depending on the particular HW narrative. Rather than a shared attribute upon which communities can be built, vulnerability is used as a stigma to harden the existing divisions. As a consequence, these ‘vulnerable’ people are treated as objects to be protected, contained or re-educated, rather than subjects to be heard or accepted within the community as equals. Such dilemma of emphatic care and patronising control as two intertwined modes of reaction to vulnerability has been frequently discussed in the vulnerability literature (Browne et al., 2021, pp. 11–14). These contrasting ways of approaching vulnerability can be illustrated on the ways how politicians and other public figures responded to the growing discontent within the Czech society. Anxiety and tensions were again on the rise through 2022, peaking in a series of eclectic demonstrations in the autumn, which expressed a combination of economic angst (triggered by double digit inflation and high energy costs) with nationalist, anti-establishment and even Russia-friendly messages. Commenting on one of these demonstrations, Prime Minister Fiala labelled it chiefly as a gathering of ‘forces’ with ‘strongly pro-Russian positions’: ‘It is clear that Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns are present on our territory and some people simply succumb to them’ (Č TK, 2022). In statements like this, vulnerability is presented as other people’s vulnerability to Russian misinformation and propaganda—and, by implication, hardly a basis of a legitimate political position, let alone shared we-ness.3 Fiala’s approach, therefore, cannot be seen as one of humanisation of the other and community-building around the shared experience of

3  Fiala later somewhat backtracked on the statement, clarifying that he was talking about the organisers of the protest, whom he continued to call ‘members of Russia’s fifth column’, but not necessarily the participants (Fiala, 2022). Arguably, even this follow-up was rather short on empathy, especially when compared to the more understanding tone struck by some of his government and party colleagues.

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vulnerability. Rather, it hints on the riskiness of having these groups as a part of the imagined national body. Some of Fiala’s government colleagues chose a very different approach, based on the affirmation that we are all vulnerable and need to work together, rather than trying to single out someone else’s vulnerability as a problem. Particularly interesting was Deputy Prime Minister and Pirate Party Chairman, Ivan Bartoš, whose Facebook post gives an example of how an alternative politics of vulnerability may look like. Bartoš began by implicitly distancing himself from the geopoliticising logic of Fiala’s approach. ‘I refuse to diminish people’s fears of the energy crisis and to label as pro-Kremlin supporter everyone who challenges the government policy’ (Bartoš, 2022). He continued by an explicit and emphatic acknowledgement—even validation—of anxieties expressed through the protests, mentioning ‘a range of entirely common people, families, small business owners, who are anxious when they think about following months and look at rising prices’ (ibid.). Most importantly, Bartoš not only affirmed the vulnerability expressed by the protesters as legitimate and shared but also transformed it into an appeal for solidarity. ‘Resolving these issues is in the interest of the whole of our society, because it will break down if we fail. One part cannot prosper without the other by ignoring their problems and letting them fall to the bottom’ (Bartoš, 2022). On the one hand, statements like this present a case for cautious optimism, as they show that there is some openness to affirming social vulnerability and transforming it into a sense of shared we-ness, for which humanisation of the other—including protestors with whose positions we may deeply disagree—is a key precondition. On the other hand, taking the worries of other people seriously requires much more than emphatic language. First of all, a genuine acceptance of shared vulnerability should not fall into patronising care translated into quick fixes that reify the hierarchy between those holding power and those who are deemed vulnerable (Browne et al., 2021, pp. 4–5). Second, as Davies argues, the reinvigoration of democracy and the rebuilding of community does not require only that public ‘feelings […] are recognized’, but also that ‘the urgency of our social, economic, and environmental situation is taken seriously’ (Davies, 2019, p. 223). Put differently, a productive politics of vulnerability requires empathic rhetoric but also government action that would harness the crisis into resolving the social and economic issues that bring people to the streets or to misinformation websites. Sensitive ‘stratcom’ needs to be followed by a genuine reform to address the needs of ‘particularly those who

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have been disadvantaged or ignored in the last few decades’ (Kundnani, 2020). Such ethics of shared vulnerability should extend beyond the relations between the government and citizens. Rather, they should inform our common conversations about how we want to live together also on the mundane inter-personal level of everyday interactions. Rethinking Democratic Conflict Third and finally, our calls for de-escalation and community-building, as well as the whole project of reclaiming politics from the logic of war, do not mean that we would reject or deny the importance of conflict for democratic politics. In fact, the opposite is true. First of all, we believe that conflicts within a society are inevitable, as people genuinely have often directly opposed interests and values. These differences, be they over socio-economic issues like taxes and redistribution or over the socio-­ cultural questions of collective memory, identity or same-sex marriage, cannot be fully resolved by argumentation, fact-checking or strategic communication. This is because they rely on often incommensurable material interests and worldviews, with radically different values and even interpretations of what counts as reality. Second, we believe that this may actually be good news, as plurality and dissent are preconditions for a vibrant and evolving democracy—or even its defining features. ‘Conflict in liberal democratic societies cannot and should not be eradicated, since the specificity of pluralist democracy is precisely the recognition and the legitimation of conflict’ (Mouffe, 2013, p. 7). The key problem, therefore, is not how to remove conflict from our societies but rather how to incorporate it into democratic politics in less toxic and damaging ways than those offered by the uncompromising logic of war. This has been a central problem also for Chantal Mouffe, who argues that ‘[w]hat liberal democratic politics requires is that the others are not seen as the enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries whose ideas might be fought, even fiercely, but whose right to defend those ideas is not to be questioned’ (Mouffe, 2013, p.  7). Mouffe develops this claim by making a distinction between two versions of conflict: antagonism and agonism. In antagonism, the two sides understand each other as uncompromising enemies. This corresponds with the warified politics of ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘culture wars’, as it leads to the perception that much more is at stake than different interests, narratives or policies. Instead, the other side becomes ‘perceived as putting into question our identity and

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threatening our existence’ (Mouffe, 2013, pp. 5, original emph.). In contrast, an agonistic approach to conflict considers the other side not as enemy but as an adversary—a legitimate if often radically opposed opponent, whom I consider as my equal and who remains part of the same community on a national, transnational or planetary level. Thinking politics differently is then essentially about transforming the antagonist politics of war-like confrontation into an agonistic conflict, in which dissent and plurality are seen as legitimate and tolerable, however difficult this often may be. One small step in this respect would be pushing for a broader openness in debates on social and security issues so that critical voices are valued and invited. This is not merely a matter of courtesy or nicety but should be instead seen as vital for the quality of both concrete decision-making and democracy at large. As Butler puts it, ‘foreclosure of critique empties the public domain of debate and democratic contestation itself, so that debate becomes the exchange of views among the like-­ minded’ (Butler, 2004, p. xx). In such conditions, the only things that prosper are groupthink and ‘analytical monocultures’ (Bronk & Jacoby, 2013), which are notoriously bad for decision-making. In contrast, ‘criticism, which ought to be central to any democracy, becomes a fugitive and suspect activity’ (Butler, 2004, p. xx). Arguably, this tendency to exclude, ignore or attack even moderately critical voices has been a feature of the activities of the HW assemblage, as shown in the treatment of dissenting academic voices (see Chap. 6). Therefore, inviting a broader array of voices into the debates on social and security policy and treating them in an agonistic manner should be another inroad into reclaiming politics from the logic of war. Two caveats need to be made. First, this is not a naïve invitation equally valid for everyone. Sometimes, antagonistic relationship is inevitable, as it may be imposed on us. Tolerating those trying to damage the democracy that agonism strives to enliven or even physically destroy individuals and societies, such as anti-democratic forces and violent extremists at home and aggressionists like Vladimir Putin abroad, would be suicidal. We do not suggest that the antagonistic logic of war should banished from the world altogether, but rather that it is reserved only for the most extreme cases, such as when defending in actual wars of aggression, as Ukraine does at the time of writing. Instead, we call for keeping the tent for agonistic conflict broad and open and giving others the benefit of the doubt. After all, it may perhaps be possible to try to isolate, re-educate, remove or suppress a marginal segment of population or a dictator in a small country.

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It is much less so if we are speaking about those 52% that voted for Brexit in the UK or Miloš Zeman’s presidency in Czechia or about great powers like China. Antagonism, therefore, should be reserved only for the rarest cases and even there it should be applied with extreme caution. Second, this affirmation of pluralism and agonistic conflict does not sit comfortably with our earlier calls for de-escalation and community-­ building. While we believe that conflict should be both accepted and de-­ escalated, and that democracy needs both shared we-ness and irresolvable difference, we understand that holding the two together is never easy. Yet, rather than an obstacle, it is perhaps fruitful to see it as another of liberal democracy’s in-built, necessary and defining tensions, together with the clash between the principles of individual rights and popular sovereignty (Mouffe, 2000), or the discrepancy in democracy’s simultaneous insistence ‘on the idea that truth both matters and that nobody gets to say definitively what it is’ (Chotiner, 2019). It is perhaps in accepting and even cherishing these elements of tension and ambiguity, similarly to those stemming from the experience of liminality, that a different, distinctly non-war-like and agonistic politics could be grounded. * * * Throughout the book, we have analysed and criticised the politics of ‘hybrid warfare’—a process through which security is remade as constantly endangered by a range of existential yet invisible threats, and in which virtually any issues can be drawn in via the strategies of geopoliticisation and warification. As a result, politics becomes colonised by the uncompromising logic of war, which takes air out of vital democratic debates and denies the disturbing possibility that we all may be condemned to coexist with incommensurable, even unbearable difference. We have rejected the alarmism of the ‘hybrid warfare’ discourse, in particular because of the way how it effectively blocks any meaningful debate on security and social issues. This, though, certainly does not mean that we are at ease in relation to the state of Czech and European democracies or the ever-more pressing global issues, of which Russia’s aggression is certainly one. However, we are concerned that if these are to be resolved, we need to open space for thinking politics differently. We hope that this book has made a small contribution in this direction by its effort to reclaim politics from the logic of war by turning to slowness, vulnerability and genuine democratic pluralism.

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List of Interviews

Former Czech think-tank associate, 15 March 2017, Prague. Two Czech think-tank associates, 15 March 2017, Prague. Czech think-tank associate, 17 March 2017, Prague. Ministry of the Interior official, 5 May 2017, Prague. NÚKIB officer, 23 June 2017, Brno. MFA officer, 28 August 2017, Prague. EU officer, 30 August 2017, online call. Masaryk University academic, 6 September 2017. NÚKIB officer, 6 September 2017, Brno. Masaryk University academic, 7 September 2017, Brno. NÚKIB officer, 7 September 2017, Brno. Two Masaryk University academics, 7 September 2017, Brno. Czech think-tank associate, 8 September 2017, Prague. Czech journalist, 12 September 2017, Prague. Czech think-tank associate, 12 September 2017, Prague. Masaryk University academic, 13 September 2017, Prague. Ministry of the Interior official, 18 September 2017, Prague. Charles University academic, 31 October 2017, Prague. Former donor organisation employee, 12 February 2018, Prague. Former student civil society organization affiliate, 22 August 2018, Prague. Czech journalist, 19 September 2019, Prague.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Eberle, J. Daniel, Politics of Hybrid Warfare, Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32703-2

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Czech think-tank associate, 14 January 2020, Prague. Czech think-tank associate affiliated with Brussels-based organisation, 4 March 2020, Brussels. Former Czech think-tank associate, 5 March 2020, Brussels. Member of European Parliament, 5 March 2020, Brussels. International think-tank associate, 5 March 2020, Brussels. MFA officer, 4 August 2020, Prague. MFA officer, 11 August 2020, Prague. Two MoD officers, 12 August 2020, Prague. MFA officer, 13 August 2020, Prague. Member of the Czech Elves, 31 August 2020, Prague. Czech journalist, 1 September 2020, Prague. Former Czech activist and think tank associate, 14 October 2020, online call. Czech student researcher, 19 May 2022, Prague. Czech journalist, 24 May 2022, Prague. Charles University academic, 26 May 2022, Prague. EU Commission Officer, 1 June 2022, Brussels. Czech security bureaucrat, 1 June 2022, Brussels. European think-tank director, Brussels, 2 June 2022. NATO officer, 2 June 2022, Brussels. Two international think-tank associates, 2 June 2022, Brussels. EU Officer, 3 June 2022, Brussels. University of Vienna academic, 7 June 2022, Prague. Charles University academic, 15 June 2022, Prague. Former think-tank associate and private sector misinformation researcher, 16 June 2022, Prague.

Index1

A Aeronet, 66, 67, 73, 85 Affect, 61 Agonism, 217, 218 Aktuálně.cz, 183, 185–187 Alvarová, Alexandra, 110, 120, 145, 153–156, 158, 161 ANO (political movement), 9, 102, 103, 105 Antagonism, 217, 219 Anxiety, 16, 17, 33, 33n1, 34, 36, 37, 41, 46–50, 62, 63, 68, 68n2, 102, 108–110, 152, 155, 204, 209, 214–216 Applebaum, Anne, 76, 158, 159 Authoritarianism, 156, 158, 159, 165 B Babiš, Andrej, 9, 10, 40, 102, 104, 105, 110, 112–114 Bartoš, Ivan, 105, 216

Biden, Joe, 213 Boundary work, 174, 176, 181, 184, 187, 193, 194 Butler, Judith, 205, 214, 218 C Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), 3, 14, 16, 30, 36, 37, 41, 42, 44, 45, 203, 208, 210, 211 Centre against Hybrid Threats, 4 Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH), 74, 77–82, 86–88, 99, 102, 110, 114, 115 Č ernochová, Jana, 112 Chain emails, 104, 119, 121 China, 106, 108–111, 118 Chovanec, Milan, 65, 79, 80 Civic Democratic Party (ODS), 38, 39, 112 Civilisational geopolitics, 17, 41–43, 43n3, 45, 46, 49, 210, 211

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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226 

INDEX

Clausewitz, Carl von, 148, 152 Comintern, 73, 154, 179, 180 Covid-19, 22, 101, 107–111, 122, 126 Critical Geopolitics, 1, 14, 41 Critical Security Studies, 1, 14 Critical thinking, 146, 159, 162, 164 Culture wars, 13, 43, 48, 80, 204, 212, 214, 217 Czech Elves, 104, 119, 122, 191–193 Czech Social Democratic Party (Č SSD), 9, 38–40, 65, 79, 103, 105 D Deleuze, Gilles, 61 Democracy, 154–157, 159, 160, 162, 179, 180, 193, 194 Democratic decline, 2–3, 5, 12 Disinformation, 4, 4n1, 8, 47, 99, 101–106, 108–111, 114, 116–119, 121, 122, 124 Dobrovský, Luboš, 36 Drahoš, Jiří, 104 Drulák, Petr, 37, 38 Duda, Andrzej, 213 E East, 3, 14, 16, 17, 23, 30, 31, 34, 41–45, 49, 50, 105, 153, 155, 155n2, 193, 204, 205, 208–211 East StratCom Task Force, 68, 72, 124 European Commission, 123, 124 European Parliament, 124 European Union (EU), 3–5, 9, 10, 12, 19, 39, 66, 68, 73–76, 78, 79n18, 81n20, 99, 108, 109, 122–124, 149–151, 154, 179, 180

European Values (EV), 71, 72, 74, 76–77, 80–88, 103–106, 110, 118, 119, 123–125, 186 Expertise, 144, 145, 151, 152, 157, 163, 173–194 F Feix, Miroslav, 116, 148, 150 Feminism, 205 Fendrych, Martin, 183, 188, 189 Fiala, Petr, 38, 112, 215, 215n3, 216 Fifth column, 107, 108 Foldyna, Jaroslav, 107 Fridman, Ofer, 59, 65–67, 68n2 G Galeotti, Mark, 7n2, 13, 14, 17 Geopoliticisation, 17, 18, 22, 30, 31, 38, 41–45, 48, 50, 63, 70, 78, 79, 82, 102, 103, 144, 147, 149, 155, 165, 175, 182, 184, 190, 191, 193, 194, 204, 205, 211, 213n2, 214, 219 Geopolitics, 152 Gerasimov Doctrine, 7n2, 68, 68n2, 70 Globsec, 123, 159 Gregor, Miloš, 81n20, 82, 85, 120 Gregorová, Markéta, 124 GRU (Russian intelligence agency), 111, 112 Guzzini, Stefano, 41, 42 H Hamáček, Jan, 113 Havel, Václav, 36, 38 Havránek, Jan, 125 History education, 7, 100, 174, 176–184, 194

 INDEX 

Hlídací Pes, 70, 86 Hoffman, Frank, 7 Hokovský, Radko, 118 Hospodářské noviny (HN), 70, 79, 86, 185 Hrdina, Matouš, 189 Hřib, Zdeněk, 187, 188n2 Hungary, 123 I Information environment, 150, 159, 160, 162, 164 Internalisation, 42, 43, 45 International Political Sociology, 1, 14 International Republican Institute, 125 J Jagello 2000, 72, 84, 87 Janda, Jakub, 65, 71, 74, 76, 80–83, 81n20, 102, 104, 109, 118, 213n2 Jankowicz, Nina, 35 Joch, Roman, 5 Jourová, Věra, 123 Jurečka, Marian, 44 K Kalenský, Jakub, 72, 81n20, 82, 107, 124, 125 Kalousek, Miroslav, 103 Kalugin (KGB General), 178 Kartous, Bohumil (Bob), 120, 122, 192, 193 Klíma, Michal, 193 Kolář, Ondřej, 107, 187, 188 Kolář, Petr, 70, 188, 189

227

Konev, Ivan, 100, 105–107 Konev Affair, 101, 107–109, 183 Koudelka, Michal, 177, 183 Kučík, Vít, 193 Kundra, Ondřej, 67, 70, 81n20, 82, 85, 86, 88, 178, 183–190 L Landovský, Jakub, 87 Langšádlová, Helena, 117 Lauder, Silvie, 5 Liminality, 14, 16–18, 22, 29–34, 41–50, 203, 205, 210–212, 214, 219 Lipavský, Jan, 105 Lipold, Jan, 183 Litvinenko, 188 Logic of war, 2, 3, 5, 18, 23, 29–51, 203–219 Lucas, Edward, 66, 76, 158, 159 M Mälksoo, Maria, 210 Masaryk University, 82–85, 87, 88 Matouš, Petr, 112, 117 Media literacy, 5, 7, 15, 72, 85, 100, 105, 120, 121, 125, 146, 159, 162 Memory, 105, 126 Memory wars, 22 Methodology, 18 Migration, 68, 71, 73–74 Misinformation, 1, 4n1, 6, 10–13, 17, 20–22, 35, 66–68, 71–76, 78, 80, 82, 85, 86, 102–104, 108–112, 116, 117, 119–123, 126, 155, 158, 160, 162–164, 181, 184–186, 191–193 Mouffe, Chantal, 205, 217–219

228 

INDEX

N Nagyová, Jana, 40 Narrative, 14–17, 20, 22, 23, 29, 33, 35, 41, 44, 173, 175, 177, 178, 188, 191, 192, 194, 203, 205–207, 215, 217 National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB), 69n4, 79n18, 85, 87, 87n28, 88, 116, 125 National Democratic Institute, 125 National Endowment for Democracy, 84, 125, 159 National Security Audit, 59, 74, 77–79, 87, 115, 154 NATO, 3–5, 8–12, 19, 48, 59, 64–67, 69n4, 74–76, 78, 83, 84, 88, 99, 106, 108, 109, 117, 122, 125, 149–153, 165 Nečas, Petr, 39, 40 Nelež, 122 Nemtsov, Boris, 188n2 Neovlivni, 70, 82, 86 Night Wolves, 100, 105, 106, 108, 183 Novotný, Pavel, 187, 188n2 O Ontological insecurity, 59 Ontological security, 16, 17, 30–34, 33n2, 38, 41, 42, 45, 48, 49, 214 Open Society Fund, 76, 84 Orenstein, Mitchell, 35, 36, 44, 45 Orwell, George, 181, 182 Ovčáček, Jiří, 107 P Party of Direct Democracy (SPD), 104 Pavel, Petr, 10, 69, 69n4, 70, 87, 106, 213

Pirate Party, 105, 124 Poland, 123, 125 Polarisation, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12, 13, 164, 204 Policymaking, 64, 74, 89 Pomerantsev, Peter, 158, 159 Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI), 71, 84, 87, 103, 104, 118, 119, 123, 125 Prchal, Lukáš, 184–186, 190 Preparedness, 147, 150, 151, 153 Propaganda, 1, 6, 68, 71–73, 75, 149, 158, 160–162, 164, 211, 215 Public Affairs (VV, political party), 39 Putin, Vladimir, 5, 9, 10, 13 R Rakušan, Vít, 105, 208, 212 Ř ehka, Karel, 65, 69, 69n4, 69n5, 70, 87, 87n29, 116, 125, 145, 148–152 Resilience, 147, 151, 153 Respekt, 70, 85, 86, 185, 187, 188 Restoration, 42, 44, 45 Ricin Affair, 174, 184–190, 194 Role-reversal, 42, 44, 45 Romancovová, Eva, 81n20, 86 Rumelili, Bahar, 210, 211 Russia, 1–11, 13, 14, 17, 20, 22, 29, 34–38, 42, 44, 48, 50, 59, 60, 64–73, 68n2, 75, 78, 79, 83, 88, 101–113, 116, 118, 149, 152, 154–156, 158, 160, 161, 164, 178–180, 187–189, 188n2, 193, 205–209, 211–213, 215n3, 219 Rychnovská, Dagmar, 176, 191–193 S Schwarzenberg, Karel, 36 Securitisation, 17n4

 INDEX 

Security Information Service (BIS), 72, 78, 103, 104, 114, 115, 174, 176–184, 187, 189, 190, 192 Security Strategy, 65, 68, 69, 148, 149 Šedivý, Jiří, 117, 125 Semantic Visions, 109, 110, 121, 122 Skripals, 99–101, 112, 188 Slowness, 205, 211–213, 219 Smetana, Michal, 191–193 Smoleňová, Ivana, 71, 81n20, 84 Snyder, Timothy, 35, 158, 159 Sobotka, Bohuslav, 65, 74, 79, 80 Speed, 46, 47, 49, 211, 212 Spurný, Jaroslav, 182, 185, 189 Sputnik V, 110, 113 State terrorism, 111–113 STEM, 111 Šticha, Ladislav, 182 Stoltenberg, Jens, 108 Stratcom Summit, 83, 118, 124 Strategic communication, 116, 117, 122 Stropnický, Martin, 69, 79 T Terrorism, 112 TOP 09 (political party), 39, 107, 117 Topolánek, Mirek, 38 Trust, 156, 161–163 U Ukraine, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 29, 38, 50, 59, 65–67, 69, 71, 88, 123, 161, 180, 206, 207, 209, 212, 218

229

V Vaccine, 108, 110, 113 Valášek, Lukáš, 184–186 Vangeli, Benedikt, 73, 80, 86, 110, 111, 114–116 Vondra, Alexander, 36 Vrábel, František, 191 Vrbětice, 10, 22, 101, 111–113, 123 Vulnerability, 205, 213–217, 219 Vystrčil, Miloš, 112 W Wales Summit, 66 Warification, 5, 17, 17n4, 18, 22, 30, 31, 38, 45–50, 63–74, 78, 79, 82, 102, 103, 144, 147, 150, 160, 165, 174–176, 182, 184, 190–194, 204, 205, 207, 211–214, 213n2, 219 Warsaw Summit, 75 Weaponization of language, 46, 47 West, 1, 3, 5, 10–12, 14, 16–18, 23, 29–31, 34–36, 41–45, 43n3, 49, 50, 101, 109, 110, 153–156, 193, 204, 205, 208–211 Wilfred Martens Centre, 124, 159 World War II, 106 Z Zaorálek, Lubomír, 65, 79 Zelenka, Jakub, 185, 186 Zeman, Miloš, 9, 10, 40, 67, 73, 79, 80, 82, 100, 102, 104–107, 110, 112, 113, 116, 219