Society Must Be Defended! Rethinking Defence and Security in the age of Cognitive Warfare and the WPS Agenda

In his 1975–76 lecture series at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault famously declared, ‘Society must be  defended’. While framed within the context of biopolitics and the genealogy of state violence, this provocation has found renewed relevance in the 21st century as new forms of warfare emerge. Today, the greatest threats to societies are not only kinetic or territorial but epistemic and cognitive. Cognitive warfare – an increasingly salient form of conflict – operates by targeting perception, social cohesion and identity, often exploiting the fault lines of gender, race, and class, to undermine collective resilience.

This blog post explores how NATO’s instrumental engagement with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda intersects with these new threat environments. Despite normative commitments to inclusion, NATO’s implementation of WPS remains structurally tethered to operational efficiency and military effectiveness, rather than transformative gender justice. The rise of cognitive warfare, which thrives on polarization and symbolic manipulation, underscores the urgent need to reassess what it means to defend society. Rethinking defence in the cognitive age requires not merely stronger militaries but stronger democracies – and this is only possible by fully integrating marginalized voices, particularly women, into the foundations of security thinking and practice.

Cognitive Warfare: Targeting the social fabric

Cognitive warfare is a strategic practice that seeks to influence, destabilize and control the minds and behaviours of target populations through information manipulation, disinformation, psychological operations and narrative disruption. Unlike traditional warfare, its objective is not the destruction of infrastructure but the corrosion of shared meaning and societal coherence. In this form of conflict, the ‘battlespace’ is everyday life: news media, education systems, social media platforms and interpersonal trust.

Actors – both state and non-state – engage in cognitive warfare to reshape identities, manipulate emotions and undermine public consensus. These operations often capitalize on gender, ethnic and ideological divisions to deepen internal discord. For example, campaigns may weaponize narratives about gender roles, women’s rights, or ‘wokeness’ to generate backlash, recruit supporters or delegitimize institutions. Importantly, cognitive warfare targets not just what people believe, but their capacity to believe ‘together’, fragmenting the cognitive unity that underpins democratic societies.

The challenge cognitive warfare presents to traditional security paradigms is profound. Institutions such as NATO, built on hierarchical, masculinized models of defence, remain structurally oriented toward external threats, kinetic action and deterrence. However, when societies themselves become the battleground – through misinformation, distrust and symbolic violence – conventional tools fall short. A broader, more inclusive understanding of what constitutes security and who is responsible for producing it becomes indispensable.

The WPS Agenda and NATO: Between inclusion and instrumentalization

Since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has sought to mainstream gender perspectives within security and peacebuilding processes. NATO, as one of the earliest international actors to adopt a WPS action plan, has made formal commitments to increasing women’s participation, integrating gender-sensitive policies and addressing conflict-related sexual violence. However, feminist critiques have consistently argued that NATO’s engagement with the WPS Agenda has remained instrumental rather than transformative.

Rather than challenging militarized logics or hegemonic masculinity, NATO has largely used gender inclusion as a means of enhancing operational efficiency. Gender advisors, female engagement teams and gender training have been deployed to bolster mission success – particularly visible during operations in Afghanistan – without addressing the broader patriarchal structures of the alliance itself. Gender becomes a force multiplier, not a site of political transformation.

This approach not only limits the potential of the WPS Agenda but also creates vulnerabilities within the alliance. In an age of cognitive warfare, where legitimacy and perception are key, superficial inclusion can be co-opted or weaponized. Anti-gender movements, emboldened by populist and nationalist currents, have already begun to frame gender-sensitive policies as distractions from ‘real’ military priorities. Recent statements by US officials, such as Pete Hegseth’s denunciation of the WPS programme as ‘woke’, reflect a broader backlash against gender equality within defence institutions.

Such politicization renders NATO’s fragile engagement with WPS even more precarious. It also highlights a core contradiction: an institution that seeks to defend democratic societies cannot afford to marginalize the very constituencies that embody those democratic values. In failing to fully embrace gender justice, NATO not only undermines its own legitimacy but also cedes ideological ground to actors who seek to destabilize democratic cohesion through cognitive means.

The intersection of cognitive warfare and WPS reveals the limitations of a security architecture premised on traditional threat-response frameworks. Defence, in this context, cannot merely be about protecting borders or building military capacity. It must involve cultivating epistemic resilience, narrative sovereignty and social inclusion.

Women’s participation is not just normatively important – it is strategically essential. Excluding or tokenizing women undermines collective intelligence and leaves societies vulnerable to the very divisions cognitive warfare exploits. Conversely, including women in meaningful, leadership-level roles across security institutions expands the range of perspectives, narratives and strategies available to resist cognitive incursions.

Moreover, feminist security thinking – rooted in care, relationality and structural critique – offers tools for reimagining defence beyond violence. It prompts us to ask: What are we defending? Whose society is being protected? And how do we define threat in the first place? These are not ancillary questions but central ones in an age when the terrain of conflict is symbolic, social and affective.

To truly defend society, institutions must undergo epistemic transformation – not just integrate more women, but reconfigure how knowledge is produced, valued and operationalized. This involves dismantling the false binary between hard and soft security, and recognizing that resilience against cognitive warfare begins with inclusion, trust and equity.

Rethinking defence: Defending democracy from within

In light of these dynamics, it is time to revisit Foucault’s challenge: ‘Society must be defended’ – but how? The answer lies not in a return to fortress mentalities or reactive militarism, but in a proactive commitment to inclusive, democratic resilience. In the face of cognitive warfare, defending society means defending its pluralism, its capacity for critical thought and its inclusive institutions. It means moving beyond tokenistic gender inclusion toward structural empowerment.

NATO and other security actors must rethink what constitutes strength. In the long run, it is not military hardware but social cohesion, narrative legitimacy and institutional trust that will determine whether societies withstand the assaults of cognitive conflict. Women are not auxiliary to this project – they are central to it. As the global security landscape evolves, so too must our understanding of defence. In an age where societies themselves are the battlefield, the imperative is not only to defend, but to transform. And that transformation begins by taking seriously the voices, knowledges and futures that have long been sidelined.

 

This blog post is based on the authors’ presentations delivered at the Pre-NATO Summit event at De Haagse Hogeschool / The Hague University of Applied Sciences on 5^h June 2025.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors

Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits is an Associate Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at ISS/Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a transdisciplinary researcher specializing in Political Science, with expertise in International Relations and Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the intersections of governance, development, armed conflict, post-war transitions, and peacebuilding.

Bilge Sahin  is an Assistant Professor of Conflict and Peace Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her teaching and research explore the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, war, and security.

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