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While conventional military forces have long been the focus of modern warfare, unconventional warfare (UW) will be waged behind enemy lines by US, allied, partner special operations forces (SOF), and civilian resistance movements. Prolonged field care (PFC) will be a forced necessity in the UW environment with unique challenges to mobility and security. Recorded experiences from World War II of allied surgeons and others reveal insights about how to prepare for this unique set of special warfare in the future, including in the areas of manning, training, planning, operations, and equipping. Countries at potential seams of conflict, like the Baltic States, possess significant UW experience. Lithuanian SOF medical leaders have developed a guerilla medicine course that increases readiness to provide PFC and austere resuscitative surgical care in UW. US military medical forces can benefit from partners like Lithuania and others by sharing knowledge, experiences, and adapting best practices to our tactics, techniques, and procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to provide an insight into academic and military studies that investigate security challenges in the Baltic region after the annexation of Crimea. To do this in a systematic way, numerous academic and military studies and analyses in this field are divided into six broad categories: literature on conventional threat scenarios in the Baltic region; studies on nuclear escalation scenarios; publications that describe Russian viewpoints in the current confrontation with the West; studies that discuss security policy and security perceptions of the Baltic countries and the national security models of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; studies on anti-access and area denial; and articles that analyse the dilemmas and challenges in association with understanding the essence of deterrence in the context of modern hybrid warfare and the build-up of a viable deterrence model in the Baltic region. In total, about 40 publications from the period between 2014 and 2019 are represented in this article. While some studies are already well known, others have undeservedly remained somewhat overlooked. This article attempts to correct this by highlighting and comparing the results of the most interesting and intriguing studies in this field. Through this, the author strived to maintain a balance between studies conducted both by military experts and by academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meanwhile, energy security is threatened in new domains -- maritime and cyber. In the maritime domain, military operations target construction works of the new objects as well as operating interconnectors, cables, LNG terminals, and other strategic assets. Regular situational awareness in the Baltic Sea region is lacking, as is sufficient naval and civilian maritime cooperation. In the cyber realm attacks become more frequent and more complex, critical infrastructure being the main target. As cyber security expertise and exercise are lacking and integration into European natural gas and electricity systems is not completed, blackout scenario in the Baltic States remains possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses a key legal debate that the Baltic NATO members ought to engage in: what constitutes an "armed attack" and what interpretation should be made of this concept in order to deter recent Russian hybrid warfare strategies. These questions are considered in connection with a more general issue regarding the law of self-defence: the question of what constitutes an armed attack in international law. This article will try to present a broad definition and context of Russian hybrid warfare and how it is challenging traditional jus ad bellum paradigms. Too few policy-makers have paid detailed attention to the new Russian "lawfare" in Ukraine, using specific military and non-military tactics in order to blur the lines between "armed attack" and mere political intervention. Meanwhile, legal scholars detach their analysis from actual policy-serving considerations and tend to acquiesce to some very restrictive theories of the use force in self-defence. For some countries, like the Baltic ones, facing strategic exposure - because of both threatening neighbours and low military capacities - the jus ad bellum paradigm should not be construed as another layer of obstacle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid warfare represents new security challenge for whole Europe. However, hybrid warfare cannot be considered as new phenomenon, Russian aggressive exercise of hybrid warfare (annexation of Crimean Peninsula) took all European states by surprise. It consists of effective combination of tools, such as, information warfare, psychological operations, cyber operations and use of special forces. Russian hybrid warfare is designed to directly challenge the cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, the Article V., because it combines conventional and unconventional measures, which are difficult to predict and counter. NATO and EU member states are forced to develop new capabilities, to build new infrastructure and to strengthen the eastern boundary of the Alliance to successfully deter potential Russian aggression in its close neighbourhood. It is also very important to build inner resilience of the member states against Russian propaganda that has massively spread throughout Eastern and Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the responses made by the Baltic States to the threat they face from Russian hybrid warfare. It looks first at the nature of this threat and at the many modes of warfare that are being employed by Russia, including, and in particular, information warfare. The article then goes on to examine the way in which this threat is viewed in the Baltic States and the debate over how it can best be countered. Raising defenses, though, as is made clear here, is not easy. Indeed, this article argues that the defenses that are being raised by the Baltic States will prove largely ineffective and possibly counterproductive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]