Defence and strategy

Countering Hybrid Threats in V4 Countries

Josef PROCHÁZKA, Pavel VINKLER, Krisztián JÓJÁRT, Zoltán SZENES, Artur GRUSZCZAK, Matej KANDRÍK

The new dynamics in the global security environment accompanied by the renewal of great power competition and its impact on security provision of Central European countries brought new challenges, especially in countering hybrid threats. The article embraces the outcome of a multilateral research analysing countering hybrid threat policies in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The goal of the article is to discuss and explain the four nations’ policies towards the mitigation of the hybrid challenges and their complexity. Those national approaches are comprehensively assessed in four case studies and their main commonalities and key differences are discussed. The conclusion is that although the V4 countries have the same conceptual theoretical basis, the policies against the hybrid threat differ. The authors propose more efficient way ahead at the national level and the improvement of coordination between the V4 countries.