From 10-12 September the Swedish Defence University is host for the International Society of Military Sciences (ISMS) Annual Conference 2024. This years theme is “Scaling up, Learning Lessons, Ensuring Quality.”
I am co-chairing WG 1: War Studies, Operations and Tactics with LtCol Dr Lars Henåker. The program contains a range of interesting papers and presentations on the themes WAR IN UKRAINE, OPERATIONAL ARTS AND STRATEGY, INFORMATION SPACE AND THE COGNITIVE FRONTIERS OF WARFARE, and HYBRID/PRIVATE/AI. Conference Program
I am presenting three papers:
“Reevaluating Urban Warfare: Lessons and Strategies from the Ukraine Conflict” co-authored with Prof. Douglas W. Winton of the Dwight D. David Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, National Defense University, US.
“From Battlefield to Classroom: Incorporating War Games and Staff Rides in Professional Military Education (PME) to enhance Urban Combat preparedness” co-authored with
Major Jonas Björkqvist of the Land Operations Division, Department of War Studies, Swedish Defence University
“Operationalizing Psychological Defense: A framework for assessing, addressing and evaluating hybrid threats in democratic societies”, discussing the findings of the report Building Resilience and Psychological Defence – An analytical framework for countering hybrid
threats and foreign influence and interference which I have co-authored with Björn Palmertz, Lund University Psychological Defence Research Institute, Docent Niklas Nilsson, Swedish Defence University and Dr Johan Engvall, Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.
On 21-22 September, we organised an international workshop on “Case Studies of Russian Warfare and Influence” with participants from Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, Latvia, the United States and Sweden. The aim of the workshop was to take a holistic approach to how Russia conducts warfare and influence against countries in its immediate surroundings, i.e. against states at the intersection between the East and West.
The findings of the workshop will be part of a forthcoming book on “Russian Warfare and Influence: Small States in the intersection between the East and West” (Bloomsbury Academic). We here focus on the small states at the intersection between the East and West as actors and stakeholders and are interested in how they operate and react based on their specific conditions, rather than on the modus of major powers.