Putin is doing our job with hybrid attacks, says Schäfer

Dr Martin Schäfer, Defence Policy Director at Germany’s defence ministry, has said Vladimir Putin is in a sense doing Europe’s job by stepping up hybrid warfare, because his attacks show publics the real risks, according to remarks made at the Atlantic Future Forum in Oslo.

Asked on board HMS Prince of Wales what Germany has learned from the Nordic approach to total defence, Schäfer said the tone and timing of government communication both matter. He said: “In in in a sense, Vladimir Putin is doing our job by stepping up the hybrid warfare.”

He said Putin shows public opinion in allied countries every single day what the real risks are. Drawing on the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, he distinguished constructive fear of a concrete danger that people can understand and answer rationally from irrational anxiety about something in the air that cannot be pinned down.

Schäfer said governments must strike the right tone and timing in giving people the right level of fear, “for maybe for lack of a better word to tell our people that there are real dangers out there, but we have all the resources in the world. We have all the allies in the world that we need to be able to counter this threat”. Earlier, he said Germany may be slower to wake up than others because it benefited most from European peace and integration.

He said: “I think, in a dialectic sense, we are the victims of our own success.” Citing Machiavelli’s pity for societies that have had too much peace, he said it is difficult to get people to understand that they need to be resilient and ready to defend what they have built.

Russia’s campaign of sabotage, drone incursions and cyber attacks has intensified across Europe, and Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary General, told the forum on Wednesday that “For every Russian hybrid attack against our nations, we are sending more support to Ukraine.” Dan Jarvis, the Security Minister, told the same panel that Britain wants people “alert but not alarmed”.