Hybrid Warfare and the Legacy of Carl Schmitt

This chapter touches upon inherent and deep-going features in our Western culture, which has been used in hybrid warfare to weaken the resilience and trustworthiness of the political West in international politics. The theoretical basis for this is a return to Carl Schmitt with a contemporary interpretation. The authoritarian regimes have identified a rift in our societies between softer liberal values such as democracy, freedom of speech, and human rights on the one hand and market values accentuated with the global economy on the other hand. In the political West (hereinafter just called NATO or NATO members), we can entertain both values, but when they come in conflict regarding other parts of the world, we usually choose the market over the softer values mentioned above. This is something the authoritarian regimes point out as a hypocrisy of especially NATO members as this is an information war about the legitimacy of political systems. Authoritarian states mean that NATO states showcase their own societies as good examples, even though the practice on the international level forces them to choose between fundamentally liberal values as on the one hand market logic and on the other hand human rights on a regular basis. Thus, by breaching the rules of the international system without a following firm reaction from the NATO states, the authoritarian states show that the NATO states care more about their own welfare than about supporting democracy and human rights abroad. This is a way to alienate the NATO members from the rest of the world, certainly those who perform badly on the democracy index (The Economist Intelligence Unit. Democracy Index 2021).