The Monocle Minute

Hybrid warfare – the use of both conventional and unconventional methods to inflict damage on your opponent; anything from cyberattacks to the sabotage of critical infrastructure – is one of the 21st century’s security buzzwords. “We in the West did not take these threats seriously at first, which is why we are on the defensive,” Teija Tiilikainen, director of the Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid Coe), tells Monocle. Hybrid Coe, which describes itself as a “do tank”, is an autonomous organisation founded in 2017 with a remit to provide expertise and training to its 35 participating states to help them counter hybrid threats.

But what does “counter” mean in this context? If hybrid warfare is an extension of conventional warfare, shouldn’t the West respond to these attacks with ones of its own? Why hasn’t the West launched a cyberattack against Russia as a response to all of those it has suffered at the hands of the country and its proxies? “The West has a disadvantage because we want to uphold a rules-based international order and the rule of law but our opponents are not bound by the same rules,” says Tiilikainen. In other words, if the West wanted to fight fire with fire, it would have to renounce its core values, which is exactly what its opponents, such as Russia and China, want. But if it can’t strike back, how can it ever win the war?

The West needs a credible deterrent against hybrid operations. “Western countries need to learn to put a price tag on these acts. That means responding with both sanctions as well as naming and shaming,” says Tiilikainen. There is talk within Nato of making it clear that a hybrid attack will trigger the alliance’s collective defence clause, Article 5, which is currently reserved for armed attacks. It is unclear what this would mean in practice but it’s a step in the right direction. Hybrid warfare has changed the nature of conflict – it’s time we moved from the defensive to the offensive.

Petri Burtsoff is Monocle’s Helsinki correspondent. For more on defence and diplomacy, Monocle’s April issue is out now. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Lisbon’s steep, cobbled streets add to its charm and allure but they also come with challenges. Now one particularly precipitous commute in the Mouraria neighbourhood has just become easier with the inauguration of the Graça Funicular. The long-awaited project opened to the public earlier this month. It connects Martim Moniz in the city’s downtown with the Largo da Graça up the hill.

The single route takes around a minute and a half, operates daily and is free to ride until May. It’s a smart mobility solution for a city that’s perched on seven hills, but it’s also a reminder to take cues from the past: 120 years ago there was an elevator that connected the two areas together before it was eventually decommissioned. Perhaps a deeper dive into the city’s archives can inspire other changes to Lisbon’s urban landscape.

Would you ever willingly sit in on a council meeting? What if you were paid to? This is roughly the question that inspired the Documenters programme, an initiative launched by Chicago’s City Bureau journalism lab in 2018 to increase awareness of local democracy by training and paying residents to take notes, live-tweet and even video-record public meetings. The positive effects are manifold. By offering training and cash incentives, the programme encourages civic engagement while providing those out of work with an income; it also makes life easier for cash-strapped journalists too busy to sit in on every meeting. The programme has proven a success and expanded nationwide, partnering with news outlets in 11 cities. More than 2,200 documenters have been trained, covering some 5,000 meetings for an outlay of about $600,000 (€550,000).

Chicago’s Documenters initiative features in Monocle’s April issue, which is out now. For more unlikely finds, insights and ideas from our global network of reporters, subscribe to Monocle today.

Wedged between Turkey, Russia and Iran, the Caucasus region covers an area that is smaller than Sweden and sits at the heart of the old Silk Road. Monocle journeyed by foot, car, train and plane on a trip that took us three days and served as a stark lesson in the region’s shifting relations.

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Lederhosen and dirndls aren’t just donned for Oktoberfest in southern Germany; Tracht has been experiencing a renaissance in recent years with many wearing these traditional clothes every day. Monocle Films travels across the region to meet the makers and retailers who are successfully keeping this traditional heritage alive and adapting it for contemporary tastes.