Europe’s Gray Zone of Non-Peace:

As NATO’s eastern flank prepares for a potential conflict, defense can no longer be reduced to weapons, soldiers and shelters. States are increasingly turning toward a model of comprehensive defense, in which civilian institutions, local governments and ordinary citizens all play a role in national resilience. Kyiv Post spoke with Dr. Weronika Grzebalska, a sociologist at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and editor of the Batory Foundation report on women in Poland’s comprehensive defense, about resilience, preparedness and the changing role of society in times of crisis. Michał Kujawski: On NATO’s eastern flank, defense is the number one issue, particularly when it comes to weapons and, more recently, shelters. But it seems that this is not the whole picture.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Weronika Grzebalska: No, it is not. But from the first years of the war, starting in 2014, Poland really did focus on modernizing the military arm of its defense. Defense spending was increased, the Territorial Defense Forces (WOT) were established, and weapons have been modernized. Societies have a sense that they pay taxes and see military equipment being purchased, and as a result they believe there is some professional army that will defend them. Do we forget that it is the entire country that has to be defended, and that war is not simply a brief interruption of normal life? Other Topics of Interest Poland Officially Confirms Russian Kh-101 Missile Crashed on Its Territory A Ukrainian fighter pilot tracking the missile turned back about 20 seconds before reaching the Polish border as they’re not permitted enter Polish airspace. The initial rebuilding of mainly hard power eventually began to change and diversify. Work started on strengthening population protection and societal resilience within the framework of comprehensive defense, sometimes referred to as total defense. Decades of relative peace after joining NATO caused people to detach themselves from security. Conscription was suspended, among other things. This even happened in Sweden, which had been something of a poster child for total defense. After the Cold War, its system was also rolled back to some extent. Finland was the main exception, with Estonia also retaining some elements. Did we experience a brief end of history? We all believed that Europe was “prosperous, secure and free.” Armies became professionalized and increasingly took on an expeditionary character. The assumption was that the role of society was to pay taxes and support military spending, rather than participate directly in security. All of this led to the expectation that security was the responsibility of “some services,” rather than us as citizens. This applies across the West. Perhaps societies that are relatively affluent, bourgeois and consumer-oriented are paralyzed by the very word “war”? Prosperity, democratization and progress lead societies more toward self-realization and emancipatory values. We have seen this across Europe. I have the impression that Western societies, after seeing millions of refugees in 2022 – mostly women, children and elderly people – and seeing the front line, tend to assume that all men of military age are going to the front. There are many volunteers, many mobilized soldiers, and also people who want to avoid military service without leaving the country. But war and fighting are not limited to the front. They also affect the economy and demography. What does defense actually look like? Perceptions of war, particularly in countries such as Poland, are primarily shaped by the memory of the Second World War, as conveyed both through family stories and popular culture. This creates an image of war as purely a kinetic, military conflict involving the literal occupation of an entire country. Images from Bucha and the waves of refugees seen by Western societies have only reinforced this perception. And then those same people see parties in Kyiv and Odesa on social media and are surprised. They cannot understand that during a brutal war, and in between missile and drone attacks, people also lead ordinary lives. Sometimes this even results in denial. Societies do not fully understand that we are already in a state of non-peace. This is where we encounter what we might call the paradox of resilience: the more resilient our institutions are, and the more effectively they sustain cyberattacks, hybrid operations or acts of sabotage without people being killed, the weaker our sense of the reality of war can paradoxically become. On the one hand, we expect resilience; on the other, the seriousness of the threat becomes increasingly abstract. Have cyberattacks and other hostile activities become commonplace? Have we simply become accustomed to them? Yes. This is one reason why it is difficult to understand some aspects of the war in Ukraine, where everyone comes into contact with the reality of war. In a country like Poland, that is in a gray zone state of non-peace, it is more difficult for people to fully internalize the threat and understand what it looks like. Many people ask themselves how, in a situation of undeclared warfare, democratic elections and the logic of election campaigns, we can build wide-scale defense awareness and engagement. There is no immediate threat in the conventional sense. The only answer is to convince society and seek public support. So we need to make society aware that resilience has many dimensions – from going to work and keeping the economy functioning to resisting disinformation or putting on a uniform? Exactly. We are building resilience as we go. Take Poland, for example. There is no fully integrated system yet, but there are areas that function effectively. One of them is the Territorial Defense Forces, which serve as a kind of link between society and the military. Thanks to the WOT, the state and national defense have become tangible for people – for example, during various natural disasters, floods and the Covid-19 pandemic. There is also significant progress in strengthening the resilience of state institutions to threats – procedures, resources and so on. Poland is also energetically laying the foundations for a system of civil protection and civil defense which, following the Swedish model, is based on local governments. Local authorities are in turn required to cooperate with other social actors, services and institutions. Institutionalizing cooperation at the local level is fundamental. Poland’s comprehensive defense recently came under test during the wave of refugees from Ukraine in 2022 and the 2023 flood. The problem is that nobody had ever practiced this cooperation on such a scale. In such situations, people may be afraid to make decisions or may not know exactly what their responsibilities are. But that is understandable – crises have their own logic. That is difficult in a situation where peacetime law remains in force. Not everything can be tested. Yes, but Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries have begun working on preparedness. In Poland, for example, a crisis manual was distributed to every citizen. There are also various campaigns and training programs for civilians, organized by the MOD as well as Ministry of Interior in cooperation with NGOs such as the volunteer fire service or the Red Cross. Such initiatives mobilize people who are not attracted to the military. Interestingly, women accounted for 70 percent of participants in the recent Polish Red Cross training programs. This brings me to my next question. When we look at popular culture, we see war as something in which men participate. Mobilization and conscription apply to men. War is portrayed as a male occupation. At the same time, many armies have large numbers of women, including in professional military service. Around 37,000 women serve in the Polish Armed Forces. In the Territorial Defense Forces, women make up around 21 percent of personnel. So is the military and national defense really something only for men, or is that no longer the case? In Poland, we are building comprehensive defense, and the defense system is undergoing a transformation. This requires the involvement of civilian institutions and civilians themselves. The social contract between citizens and the state is also changing. The division of roles into male protectors and female objects of protection is being reconsidered as well, because total defense is broadening defense beyond a male obligation into a whole-of-society endeavor. This is particularly visible in Scandinavian countries that introduced gender-neutral conscription. So what is the role of women in resilience and national defense? We certainly need different people with different skills. I am not talking only about the military, but about society as a whole. The military is not a solution to every problem. We need different paths to mobilization – both military and civilian. I mean medical, humanitarian, cyber and other areas. As for women, in Poland they constitute the majority of sectors responsible for societal resilience. This is clearly visible in areas such as healthcare, volunteering and humanitarian work, social assistance and local administration. Should this ultimately lead to a situation where, when there is a genuine threat – not only a military one, but perhaps a natural disaster – everyone performs tasks according to their own skills and competencies? That is what it should lead to. The mistaken assumption that defense is limited to the armed forces still persists in parts of the society. However, there is growing awareness that we need a single, integrated system for registering defense resources, not only military ones. A comprehensive defense system must also rely on civilian actors, including businesses and NGOs. Civilian women have an enormous role to play there, although contrary to what some might think, defense mobilization of women is nothing new. History shows this clearly. Female camp followers in Napoleon’s army were responsible for vital support, while when men in Britain went off to fight during the Second World War, women replaced them in factories. What is new, and what we argue in our report, is the need to formally recognize and institutionalize these feminized, civilian actors within the defense system, granting them representation and resources. What matters is that different civilian sectors become an integral part of the overall system. We need to institutionalize whole-of-society defense and resilience.