Call for Papers - Forum 2021

Grand Strategy, Foresight and Hybrid Threats in 21st Century

Strengthening Democracy, Protecting Freedom and Society

The global Corona crisis emphasized the need for a foresight-based grand strategy for national threat prevention and crisis management.  In order to effectively counter the hybrid threats of the 21st Century, future needs and capacities must be planned with foresight on possible threats, probabilities and outcomes. Strategic planning for the future must necessarily include strategic analyzes with different emerging variants of future events, if it wants to be designated as high quality, safe, reliable, feasible and sustainable. That is the link between strategic foresight and strategic analysis processes. Strategic foresight refers to development and consequences at the level of the individuals, community, organization, business entity, society and state. These are also essential gravitational points that are exposed to threats arising from the spectrum of hybrid activities.

Modern society is characterized by a strong, rapid, and intensive development of numerous technologies that should benefit humanity in order to create better conditions for a safer, healthier, more beautiful and more comfortable life. However, as the Chinese strategists in their book “Unrestricted warfare” clearly emphasized: “Everything that can benefit mankind can also harm it. This is to say, that there is nothing in the world today that can not become a weapon” .

The threats that technological developments need to address, and which are coming from the spectrum of hybrid activities, are real and have already been proven as a fact. There are several features of hybrid threats: tactical means can be used to achieve strategic goals, non-military means can be used to influence both military and civilian forces, and vice versa, military means can be used to achieve military and civilian goals; non-kinetic weapons have taken precedence in the processes of creating and managing crises. In the previous century, it used to be said “Information is Power”. Today we know that solely information is not enough. It is important to possess, or to have a control, of the communication channel through which this information can be transmitted. Without that integration of capabilities, it is very hard to achieve designated goals and objectives, nor tactical nor strategic. Especially in hybrid threats.

We welcome paper proposals, with scientific background, on every issue relating to the conference theme, with special emphasis on:

• Role of foresight in grand strategy planning, development, and training
• Strategic Leadership
• Role of strategic communication in hybrid threats and campaigns with deep analysis of practical case studies/examples
• Strategic concept of modern DIME (diplomacy, information, military, economy) instruments in developing, planning, conducting, and evaluating modern Hybrid Threats
• Concept of Strategic culture and its connectiveness with Hybrid threats as a target, mean and source of them in 21st Century (such as Digital Cold War, Economy Warfare with accent on Energy Warfare)
• Role of disinformation campaigns in modern health crises
• Role of Technology and R&D in 21st century conflicts and wars
• Hybrid Warfare, Radicalism, Political Extremism and Populism (with special accent on West Balkan 6 and MENA region)
• Modern threats to maritime security and safety (with emphasis on the Mediterranean Sea)
• Deep analysis of the election results in significant countries in 2020 (such as Serbia, Montenegro, N. Macedonia, USA) including suggestions and recommendations for future election protection from malicious influences
• Advantages, limitations, ethical questions and legal consequences of counter hybrid threats activities.

Please submit your paper proposal abstract of 250-300 words and your detailed CV in English by email provided in Call For Papers (.PDF) document. 

The deadline for proposal submissions is December 15, 2020. 

Notifications of acceptance will go out by end of December 2020. 

Conference presenters are invited to submit their revised paper after the Forum in form of an article to the National Security and The Future and Strategos journals.

Prof.Dr. Shlomo Shpiro, Europa Institute, BIU
Doc.Dr. Gordan Akrap, HWRI

For more info about Forum papers please Contact us. 

• Call For Papers 2021 (download .PDF)