Cultural Property: A Hybrid Threat Issue

Belligerents and competing powers, states and non-state actors alike, today increasingly exploit the social power of cultural property to show moral superiority, induce fear, provoke, destabilise communities and nations, escalate tensions and conflicts, and to restructure the cultural dimension of geopolitical orders.

The misappropriation, manipulation, destruction, and exploitation of CP can and are being employed as an element of hybrid warfare in the cognitive domain to create political, strategic, or tactical effects in support of policy objectives.

Such activities often form part of a broader strategy of transforming the history and ownership of a territory, as part of a strategy to recast the cognitive dimension of the geopolitical configuration of conquered or disputed territory, viz. “geopolitical engineering.”

During spring 2021, CHAC explores this situation through a number of workshops and consultations with experts and military and policy environments.

The CHAC report, 'NATO and Cultural Property: A Hybrid Threat', will be published early spring.

The workstream culminates with a NATO Science for Peace and Security Advanced Research Workshop in June 2021

Ground Zero, New York City September 2001 . (photo: United States Navy / wikicommons)