“It is increasingly the case that challenges to security occur and must be addressed in spaces inseparable from civilian populations.” (NATO, 2022b)
“It’s, of course, a political question how one wishes to use the power apparatus. But how far should we go down one operational line versus another? The dividing lines are clear as mud!” (Karl, military officer)
Military practitioners’ perspectives on policing and protecting populations warrant closer attention, as the implementation of security policies largely depends on their decisions and actions (Lipsky, 2010). Little attention has been paid to these perspectives, however, despite militaries’ frequent engagement with civilian populations and NATO’s renewed emphasis on protecting its citizens amid threat actors strategically targeting civilians and exploiting the grey zone between civil and military jurisdictions (Freedman, 2023; Ljungkvist, 2022; NATO, 2022a, 2025).
Delegating responsibilities for civilian safety to military professionals remains contentious. Decades of international military “constabularization” (Janowitz, 1960), tasking soldiers with policing foreign populations and compensating for ineffective criminal justice systems, have sparked concern about preserving combat proficiency (Bayer et al., 2023; Campbell & Campbell, 2010). Similarly, domestic reliance on military support for things such as crime prevention and pandemic relief triggers apprehensions about its implications for civil liberties and constitutional order (Acacio et al., 2023; Newman, 2022). As governments renew their attention on national security, partly due to interstate war returning to Europe, population protection has gained prominence (NATO, 2022a), although the military profession’s role remains ill-defined (Keenan & Beadle, 2015; Yilmaz, 2025). The demarcation of boundaries between military involvement in public security and conventional military security remains a persistent challenge (Zaalberg, 2005), as do determinations of where to draw the narrowing divide between military and police duties in the context of evolving security tasks.
Existing scholarship demonstrates the ambiguous boundary between military and police roles (Harig, 2020; Junior, 2022; Weiss, 2013). Academics have long decoupled “the police” from “policing”, acknowledging the various actors and activities now involved (Loader, 2000; Nøkleberg, 2020). This has engendered terminologies like “plural policing” (Rogers, 2017), “extraterritorial law enforcement” (Bowling & Sheptycki, 2012) or simply the “governance of security” (Müller, 2018) to underscore the notion that societal defences against threats – whether aimed at individuals, state integrity, or global peace – form an interwoven tapestry of how we think of security and safety (Johnston & Shearing, 2003, pp. 1–2). Nonetheless, Bittner’s classic description of policing as “something that ought not to be happening about which someone had better do something now!” (Bittner, 1990, p. 249) obliges the question of who that “someone” should be and the circumstances under which they should do “something”.
Despite advances in the interlaced research in civil-military relations and security governance (or policing), these frameworks rarely capture how practitioners navigate and enact the blurred lines between military and police roles in practice, particularly in relation to population protection (Weiss, 2011; Zaalberg, 2005). This article aims to bridge this gap by employing qualitative-exploratory methods to investigate the perceptions of Norwegian military officers with experience in volatile environments where civilian protection was paramount. Drawing on sociological theories of categorization and boundary-making (Durkheim, 1995 [1912]; Mau, 2019; Neumann, 1996), the study explores how officers invoke and contest binary constructs to justify or challenge their role as civilian protection providers relative to the police.
On the one hand, officers characterize policing as a task outside the soldier’s domain, reinforcing boundaries through dichotomies of war and peace, external and internal threats, the use and avoidance of force, and the separation of criminal law from war law. On the other hand, officers contest the logics separating the two professions, arguing that policing tasks are legitimate extensions of military responsibilities, valuing contextual flexibility over rigid security constructs. Some officers even challenge the paradigms separating the two professions, suggesting conventional models may be outdated. This article discusses the implications of these boundary-making processes, arguing that they are not merely descriptive but, rather, serve to stabilize professional identities and shape operational decisions.
The article offers new insight into the complex interplay of security references on which practitioners draw to make sense of their responsibilities when civilian populations face threats. By analysing how officers invoke and reject these logics, the study illuminates how practitioners navigate (in)security landscapes and articulate their roles within them. The article argues that understanding the dynamics of security logics among practitioners is crucial, particularly as contemporary security dynamics are marked by threat actors deliberately targeting civilian populations to destabilize societies, undermine democracies, and win wars.
Background
Population Protection and Military Policing
Since the late 20th century, especially, policing has been undertaken by a diverse range of individuals and institutions – within, beyond, and above the nation state (Loader, 2000). Militaries are no exception, having engaged in policing and protecting civilian populations internationally and domestically (Bigo, 2006; Eriksson & Rhinard, 2009; Johnston & Shearing, 2003). Liberal democracies have deployed troops overseas for extraterritorial law enforcement as local conflicts gained international significance (Bowling & Sheptycki, 2012; Delaforce, 2016). Through United Nations missions and later NATO and coalition stabilization operations, militaries have engaged in transnational policing that combines crime control with warfare (McCulloch, 2016), prioritizing civilian protection over combat objectives (Holmqvist, 2014; Kaldor, 2022). Recently, political interest in global policing has waned: international operations have either ceased or been reduced. Instead, military involvement in civilian life at home has intensified (Bayer et al., 2023).
Despite local variations (Collins & Hall, 2022), a global trend towards increased domestic military policing can be observed (Erickson et al., 2023; Harig, 2020; Pion-Berlin, 2016; Yılmaz, 2023). The reliance on the military for security enforcement has markedly increased in areas such as crime prevention (Bayer et al., 2023), reducing economic sabotage (Pion-Berlin, 2016), building infrastructure (Pion-Berlin, 2016), pandemic relief, and natural disaster response (Acacio et al., 2023; Collins & Hall, 2022). Military engagement in internal security in Europe might be less evident than in the United States or Latin America, due to paramilitary forces like the Gendarmerie and the Carabinieri (Collins & Hall, 2022). However, even in European countries where the military and the police have traditionally been distinct, security challenges erode this divide (Bigo, 2001; McCulloch, 2016). In Norway, for example, events such as the terrorist attack on 22 July, 2011 and the refugee crisis in 2015 have intertwined security and crime control (Kaufmann, 2018; Larssen, 2021; Spurkland, 2020). Norway’s Defence Plans further emphasize the relationship between state and societal security, acknowledging population safety as a cross-sectoral responsibility, albeit as a non-dimensional task for the military (MoD, 2020; 2024).
Military forces are now tasked with addressing challenges such as migration control, organized crime, cyber threats, and population protection (Junior, 2022, p. 635), encompassing security and crime control. Furthermore, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has refocused NATO’s attention on its populations, affirming its responsibility to prevent violence and protect against adversarial actions (NATO, 2022b). Scholars and politicians alike recognise that violent actors deliberately target civilian populations in their plight to harm other nations (Bellamy & McLoughlin, 2022, p. 354; Gjørv et al., 2022; Rutte, 2025; Slim, 2007; Casey-Maslen & Vestner, 2022). However, alongside NATO’s endorsement of protecting civilians (2016; 2018), rising nationalism, anti-globalization tendencies, and interstate rivalry have swung the political security pendulum back towards wartime efforts and a build-up of national defence.
Currently, several NATO countries, Norway among them, are revisiting the concept of total defence, something abandoned in the post-Cold War years and now held to be the civil-military cooperation strategy for near-future societal efforts (Rongved, 2025). Other security models, such as NATO’s “multi-domain” operations, are presented as solutions for comprehensive military efforts (Day, 2020; Jasper & Moreland, 2015). Nevertheless, NATO has yet to operationalize the protection of civilians as part of these (re)emerging concepts. Consequently, military personnel operate within environments suffused with multiple security ambitions. The question of how practitioners may navigate aspirations to ensure civilian protection while safeguarding the territorial integrity and political independence of member states remains unanswered.
Theoretical Approach and Previous Research
Boundary-making
This study draws on sociological theories of boundary-making and scholarship on civil–military relations and security governance (policing) to analyse how military officers interpret and enact responsibilities for civilian protection through the preservation and blurring of professional boundaries. These frameworks are operationalized by examining the binary constructs officers invoke – including war/peace, internal/external threats, using/avoiding force, and war/crime jurisprudence – and how these shape the negotiation of roles and decision-making in practice.
Sociological theories on categorization and boundary-making (Durkheim, 1995 [1912]; Lévi-Strauss, 1966; Lamont & Molnar, 2002; Mau, 2019) provide a lens for understanding how military personnel distinguish their civilian protection responsibilities from those of the police. Categories serve as the fundamental building blocks of our societal understanding, simplifying complex realities by grouping entities based on perceived similarities and establishing boundaries between what is included and excluded. Though often perceived as self-evident and used unconsciously, these boundaries are socially constructed and deeply embedded within professional practices (Lamont & Molnar, 2002). Consequently, boundary-making processes influence professional interpretations by creating distinctions such as “us” versus “them”, “self” versus “other”, or “inside” versus “outside” (Neumann, 1996).
Once institutionalized, these classifications shape decision-making by reducing social phenomena to certain bounded binaries (Mau, 2019) serving both to divide tasks and to define and stabilize professional identities and realities (Lamont & Molnar, 2002; Neumann, 1996). This indicates that practitioners might compress assessments into conventional bounds not because they represent the most accurate depictions of reality but, rather, as a means to justify decisions (Mau, 2019). Neumann (1996) contends that binary oppositions are pivotal in constructing social and political realities, necessitating scrutiny for their capacity to be deconstructed. This study uses these theoretical insights to explore how officers invoke and contest such binaries when articulating their roles in civilian protection.
The blurred boundary of green and blue
Civil-military relations scholarship often frames the discussion of military-police boundaries and the military’s role in population safety by emphasizing the need to preserve distinctions between the professions. Huntington (1985) argues that the fiduciary relationship between the state and the military is defined by the military’s primary role of defending the state and national territory against external, state-based adversaries. Involvement in civilian security, he warns, risks eroding this clarity. Even Janowitz (1960, p. 435), prescient in predicting that policing would form part of future military tasks, argued against encroaching on civilian realms as military goals should remain within “feasible and attainable objectives”.
Campbell and Campbell (2010) emphasize that excessive engagement with civilian populations constitutes “mission creep”, in which policing tasks compromise combat capabilities and professionalism. Other highlighted risks include potential infringements on civil liberties, escalated violence (Flores-Macías & Zarkin, 2021), and threats to democratic governance and control by principal actors (Bayer et al., 2023; Pion-Berlin, 2017; Yılmaz, 2023). While Pion-Berlin (2016) argues that military involvement in domestic operations does not necessarily risk harm to society when conducted in a constructive fashion, he also emphasizes that there are clear limits to how far militaries can extend beyond their traditional roles (Pion-Berlin, 2016). Fears of disrupting the civil-military equilibrium remain strong (Huntington, 1985; von Clausewitz, 2013).
Nuancing these perspectives, the security governance (policing) scholarship examines the blurred boundaries between professional distinctions as a social phenomenon and natural development, driven by a security landscape of transversal threats and vulnerabilities (Angstrom & Ljungkvist, 2024; Eriksson & Rhinard, 2009; Weiss, 2011). Bigo (2001) and Loader (2000) describe how globalization fosters new, interconnected security measures that challenge the state-centric model. This natural evolution inevitably blurs boundaries between security realms, shifting policing towards more multiagency collaboration as security provision pluralizes and diversifies (Jones & Newburn, 2006). Therefore, the ideal ordering principles that separate public institutions such as the military and police become problematic (Dahl et al., 2022; Eriksson & Rhinard, 2009; Junior, 2022; Weiss, 2011). Lomell (2019) argues that this development has seen contemporary politics oscillate between the overarching ideologies of justice and security, blurring domains and complicating compatibility across professions that often operate with differing objectives and logics.
Empirical research into military personnel’s perspectives on a de facto development in “law enforcement” (Campbell & Campbell, 2010, p. 331; Flores-Macías & Zarkin, 2021) mainly focuses on military attitudes towards non-combat tasks. Segal and colleagues (1998) and Campbell and Campbell (2010) report resistance to the acceptance of policing roles rooted in the warrior ethos, framing policing as incompatible with the military identity. Easton and colleagues (2010) find rank-based variation, with junior personnel more pragmatic, while Sion (2006) observes that multinational deployments normalize policing tasks. However, studies also reveal ambivalence among military study groups, with Gustavsen and Rafoss (2019) and Miller (1997) identifying divisions in opinions and conflicting emotions. Ingesson (2016) notes that while military professionals may not be eager to undertake policing duties, they are prepared to protect populations from violence – a finding supported by Holen (2024) when violence is associated with “war”. Mattingsdal and colleagues (2023) correlate differing policing viewpoints with distinct past experiences, while Holen (2023) demonstrates soldiers’ agency in shifting from rejecting to embracing population protection roles, invoking different normative sources as situational needs change.
Supplementing these military empirical studies, policing scholars explore how the evolving security architecture transforms civil security agents’ everyday perceptions and actions (Bigo, 2001; Loader, 2000). Nøkleberg (2020), for instance, notes that the blurring of the boundary between the security’s public and private realms has not made the conceptual public-private pairs obsolete. Rather than finding a hybrid middle ground, Nøkleberg finds that such public-private demarcations remain significantly meaningful for the various policing agencies, who rely on traditional dividing lines to guide the way they make sense of their practices.
Despite these advancements, a more comprehensive analysis of practitioners’ entangled security references is required (Lipsky, 2010; Wrange, 2021), since these internal logics influence and constrain security enactment (Lomell, 2019). As military budgets increase, signalling that the military may continue to expand into civilian realms (Bayer et al., 2023, p. 18), a more sophisticated understanding of the interplay between security conceptualizations and practical applications becomes imperative (Sheptycki, 2000, p. 10; Steinbrecher et al., 2022). By untangling Norwegian officers’ security references to make sense of their protection roles juxtaposed with the police, this study speaks to debates about (in)security conceptualizations and their implications for security governance, impacting societal safety.
Methods
This study employs an inductive, qualitative-exploratory design (Stebbins, 2001, p. 7), suited to investigating the underexplored field of how military officers interpret and enact their responsibilities for civilian protection. The research methodology aims to generate conceptual insights and address practical challenges experienced by practitioners (Casula et al., 2021, p. 1708; Stebbins, 2001, p. 9) rather than produce statistical generalizations. Qualitative research seeks transferability or analytical generalization, meaning that insights from a specific context can inform understanding of broader theoretical phenomena rather than specific populations based on the richness of data and rigor of interpretation (Luker, 2008, p. 103; Nowell & Albrecht, 2019). The transferable value of this study lies in its attempt to illuminate how military officers use security references to navigate their protection roles in relation to the police, rather than constituting a case of Norwegian exceptionalism (Stebbins, 2001, p. 11; Lamont, 2000). By presenting a “thicker” description of the sample, readers are encouraged to consider local variances and assess how insights may apply to other ambiguous security environments involving civilian populations.
The research is based on face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 29 white Norwegian military officers, 24 men and five women, conducted between mid-2019 and late 2020. Participant recruitment involved snowball sampling initiated through my contacts as a civilian researcher within the Norwegian military. Interviewees then recommended colleagues. Each interview, lasting between one and three hours, was conducted in Oslo, using inductive questions to elicit the officers’ perspectives on civilian protection and their roles relative to police duties.
The officers, mostly aged between 35 and 50, represent various military branches, including the army, air force, navy, and special forces, and hold diverse specializations such as engineering, mine and explosive clearance, communications, home guard, infantry, psychological operations, and medical sanitation. Two officers also had police training, offering unique cross-professional insights. Their operational backgrounds span United Nations, NATO, and coalition missions from 1982 to 2019, with a range of one to ten deployments in defensive and offensive operations across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
This intentional variation aimed to capture a broad spectrum of perspectives within the Norwegian Armed Forces. The participants were purposefully selected as key informants because they possess substantial experience with population insecurity and decision-making under taxing conditions (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007, p. 28). All are highly trained professional officers, educated to the highest military level and accustomed to leading in operations. All were asked questions about their experiences in volatile environments, which, for Norwegian military personnel, primarily means operations abroad. Thus, the officers’ perspectives largely reflect policing and protection roles in expeditionary warfare. However, when making sense of these experiences, they often referenced Norway. This revealed that attitudes toward policing and protection were not context-dependent: officers who embraced policing and protection tasks did so irrespective of location, and vice versa; those who rejected these tasks did not consider it an appropriate role in either operational context. Nevertheless, this study does not centre its research question on domestic roles, suggesting future empirical studies explore how beliefs about population security may vary by context. Moreover, the interviews were conducted after Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), but before the invasion of Ukraine (2022). Had the interviews occurred post-2022, the proximity of existential war might have influenced their perspectives.
During the interviews, the officers exhibited a strong presence and engagement. They first appeared confident and direct, with firm eye contact and a sense of gravity. Perhaps reminiscent of the police profession, their demeanour was calm yet alert. Direct and to the point, these officers approached the interviews with a task-oriented professionalism. Most interviews evolved into deeper reflections, revealing uncertainties and unsureness as the conversations progressed. They commonly expressed a desire for clarity and correct action, indicating their concern for doing the right thing. Culturally, these officers are shaped by a reasonably egalitarian Norwegian society with high trust in authorities. In democracies like Norway, elected governments task the armed forces to execute their decisions, a relationship that the officers in this study consistently respected.1
While Norway has participated in over 100 international operations since 1947, it has not been at war since World War II. In Norway, military careers commence at the conscript level, progressing through structured apprenticeship to gain rank (Danielsen, 2018: xxi). Most attained officer status before Norway’s structural division between officers and non-commissioned officers in 2016, indicating this separation may have less impact on this research than in other contexts.
The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2022) to discern patterns in meaning across the data related to population threats. Consistent themes emerged despite the variety of conflicts and operations. The analysis began with coding specific mentions into nodes and sub-nodes, which were further refined by arranging them into themes and sub-themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 90). The emergent empirical pattern was then interpreted through the theoretical lens of boundary-making, focusing on how officers involved binary constructs to justify or contest policing and protection tasks. While policing encompasses numerous responsibilities (Bayer et al., 2023, p. 9), this study constrains the term “policing” to protect populations from physical threats.
Given the often-insufficient distance between researchers and the armed forces (Steinbrecher et al., 2022), my dual role as both an “insider” and “outsider” nuanced the dynamics between the participants and me. My work for the Armed Forces, past mission experiences, and status as an academic within military circles ensured an entry not otherwise attainable. Conversely, my non-military training and gender positioned me on the fringes and may have affected the information shared. Nonetheless, my diverse background fostered collaborative relationships with participants.
The Norwegian Centre for Research Data granted ethical permission for the study. All participants gave informed consent after learning about the study’s nature. Pseudonyms ensure participants’ anonymity. Two main views emerged regarding the military’s role in policing and protecting populations: the first, described in the analysis section below, was that policing is not a job for the military; the second, described in the preceding section, was that it inevitably is.
Analysis
Perspectives Separating Military from Policing
Many officers argued how security governance should be organized through four binary conceptualizations, before explaining how military policing blurs professional divides and appropriate security organization.
Boundaries organizing security governance
“At home in Norway, it is straightforward. Until a theatre of war is declared, it is the police who handle internal affairs.” (Nils)
When articulating how to distinguish between the military and the police, numerous officers referred to the conflict classification system, which distinguishes between war and peace. As Nils underscored above, there are two distinct modes of governance: the police command in peacetime, and the military command in wartime (McCulloch, 2016, p. 250).
Many informants also invoked the traditional separation between internal and external security, as shared by the officers Sander and Georg:
In Norway, there are clear and distinct boundaries between the tasks of the police and the Armed Forces, crystal clear principles that form the basis. … The principles we use in Norway are good. The police should handle security inside the country, and we should protect against attacks from outside. (Sander)
The primary role of the police is to maintain peace: law and order. Meanwhile, the military has traditionally been tasked with protecting the borders and attacks from outside. (Georg)
This definition is territorial, with military security focused on protecting the state and national borders from external military threats while police defend individual citizens and communities (Idachaba, 2019; Ulriksen, 2002). Officers presented themselves as guardians of the nation state, adhering to the school of statehood, advocating that the military’s primary duty is safeguarding the state against outside threats (Landru, 2018), while the police are responsible for internal security and maintaining public order. Thus, another informant, William, declared: “It’s the police and justice sector that should protect the civilian population.”
A third way in which officers distinguished between military and police roles concerned the use of force. Another officer, Lars, explained:
We engage in extreme violence. Which, in a way, is our profession. Using lethal force is our main activity. For the police, it is an exceptional activity – two different mindsets which must be present. (Lars)
For Lars, the primary distinction between military and police practices centres on the use of force: the military operates with maximum coercive and violent power as the norm, while the police regard force as an exception and adhere to the principle of minimal necessary force (Campbell & Campbell, 2010, p. 331; Pion-Berlin, 2016; Weiss, 2011). This distinction is a significant aspect of Lars’s understanding of his role as a soldier.
Tied to this third logic, officers frequently relied on legal realms to differentiate professional duties. William, for instance, perceived the use of force as an exception within the law of armed conflict as opposed to ordinary (national) criminal law. While the military adheres to rules governing armed conflict (also known as “international humanitarian law” or simply “war law”), dictating when (lethal) force is lawful (Jones, 2020), the police adhere to criminal law, governing “regular” situations in which force should be avoided. William stated:
The Armed Forces, as an instrument employing violence … is tied to war law and its requirements, which are completely different from those in a normal… where it is the justice sector that has the lead and which has a much higher threshold for the use of violence. … The military mindset is “overwhelming power”. You want to saturate your opponent with so much violence and action that he becomes completely paralysed. You do not create parity; you go in to create superiority. On the civil side, except for some nations, it is the exact opposite. You should use as little violence as possible, and it should not escalate. [Force] is the last resort. (William)
Officers repeatedly employed the following four distinctions between military and police functions – conflict spectrum divides of war and peace; territorial divides between internal and external security; instrumental divides between using and avoiding force; and legal divides between criminal and war law – to position the military profession within the security landscape.
Military policing blurs professional divides
Many officers described how these distinctions blur when population security is promoted overseas. Several stated that the war/peace divide is disregarded when police responsibilities for upholding law and order and protecting the public are transferred to the military (Easton et al., 2010). Georg, for example, pointed out: “We have a mixed role. Military forces are used in semi-police capacities.”
Likewise, Nils expressed difficulty in differentiating military and police work overseas:
When we talk about the wider world, which is destabilized by bad governance and a lousy state superstructure, it is difficult to say what is a concrete police job and what is not. It feels fluid. (Nils)
These statements suggest that policing wars is oxymoronic, conflating clearly defined combat roles at home with the promotion of peace and societal stabilization abroad (Holmqvist, 2014).
Similarly, the demarcation between internal and external security (Weiss, 2011) becomes blurred when soldiers assume foreign security tasks that police would handle in their home countries (McCulloch, 2016). William reflected:
Protection of civilians is a task for others. It is the police and the justice sector which should protect the civilian population. … We cannot become as good as a police force. Because then we are no longer a military force. Look at nations that try it. The USA’s use of violence against its own citizens, for example, is entirely beyond what we accept. Is that what we want? (William)
William argued against the military presence among populations due to the potential for escalation that could lead to harmful control of the populace (McCulloch, 2016), endangering public safety and democracy (Acacio et al., 2023). The officer Karl, meanwhile, argued the value of an internal-external separation in well-functioning societies:
The Norwegian Armed Forces should not be used against the Norwegian population. I think we take this opinion with us overseas. It’s so powerful, so enshrined in law, in history and all that. One could include in the mandate that the military should actively target organized crime; give them a police mandate. [But] that doesn’t work well with the Norwegian constitution and Menstad. (Karl)
Karl cites the constitutional separation of powers limiting military autonomy and the misuse of power (Spurkland, 2020).2 Given the principle that the domestic use of force should be a last resort, he believed the military should not be entrusted with public safety tasks. Like others, he mentioned Menstad, an infamous labour dispute in Norway in 1931, in which a pitched battle between strikers and police prompted the government to deploy the navy. Though soldiers never took part in the fighting, the government’s decision to parade its monopoly on power was heavily criticized (Johansen, 1977).
William and Stian were among many officers arguing that military involvement in policing civilian safety goes against the distinction between police and military use of force:
The challenge we have is about what force to use. What constraints do you place on the military force when using violence? Rules of Engagement can be used, but they create a dilemma for the military, trained for maximum violence, to use minimum violence. If you turn a military force into a police force, you no longer have a military force. You have a police force. (William)
There is an art to switching from war to the use of the least possible force. The soldier must understand the transition very quickly [snaps fingers]. Insanely demanding. (Stian)
William and Stian differentiated military readiness for maximum lethal force against norms of restraint (Junior, 2022). They argued that untrained soldiers may find it difficult to calibrate force levels when tasked with controlling the enemy rather than destroying them (Bigo, 2001, p. 103).
Without being able to use the frame of lethal force legitimized under the laws of war, the officers encountered an unfamiliar criminal justice system. Karl emphasized:
If military forces are going to do something about [threats against civilians] should they have the right to arrest for a criminal act? What is the next step? Should this person be brought before a prosecutor? Trial? Conviction? And so on. No military organization is set up for that. (Karl)
Karl suggests that safeguarding civilians thrusts military personnel into a different mode of operation. Describing criminal justice as a cohesive response to deviant behaviour in the chain of arrest, investigation, prosecution, trial, and punishment (McLaughlin & Muncie, 2019, p. 121), Karl highlighted the piecemeal nature of military involvement in civilian affairs. The officers Ove and Vegard questioned the military’s lack of enforcement authority, further complicating military engagement: “You don’t have any law enforcement authority over crime” (Ove); “Who is a criminal? How does one conduct neighbourhood policing? The result is neither one thing nor the other.” (Vegard)
Overall, officers highlighted blurred intersections between the police and military, compromising effective security governance (Huntington, 1985). They warned that constabularized militaries jeopardize civil liberties by obscuring the distinctions between war versus peace, internal versus external security, minimum versus maximum force, and war law versus criminal law (Bayer et al., 2023, p. 18), as well as reducing the capacity of military forces to respond to conventional threats (Junior, 2022, p. 638). Their perceptions of fuzzy lines between conventional security models generated ambiguous security spaces. Requiring soldiers to embrace contradictory mindsets involving both protective and predatory postures asks too much of a single profession (Delaforce, 2016). However, other officers revealed alternative views.
Perspectives Aligning the Military and Policing
Unlike the officers in the previous section, many others considered policing unproblematic, emphasizing the risks associated with the stringent separation between the two professions.
Care and killing lie at the heart of both professions
We were both uniformed, had the same lousy humour, the same problems, and were government employees – brothers in arms – we who watch and ward. We are very similar. You could throw everyone in one basket and then distribute responsibilities. It is somewhat random whether a task falls to the military or the police. (Ulrikke)
Ulrikke emphasized similarities between police and soldiers and situation-driven determination of roles when engaged in population protection. Likewise, the officer Casper, who had done similar work decades before Ulrikke, considered it irrelevant whether it was the police or the military performing any specific task. Recalling his experiences pursuing war criminals, collecting victim testimonies, and extending military support to an international criminal court, he believed the military profession to be well-equipped to support criminal justice. Arguing that the insecurities on the ground should drive responses, he asserted:
There are so many different types of situations. I mean, violence against civilian populations can come from one person or from a mass of people. And everything in between. And the form could be anything from aerial bombing to stabbing. It is entirely situation-dependent. (Casper)
Casper expressed no qualms about societal security tasks, including criminal proceedings and retributive justice. Officers like him embraced switching between fighting and policing roles as a normal part of professional versatility. Uniformed personnel, regardless of military or police affiliation, require mental agility and adaptability (Idachaba, 2019, p. 4), employing all possible means to combat human misbehaviour. The officer Anne stated:
You have to deal with the full spectrum of humanity. One moment, you pick up a child and give them a hug, show some care. The next moment, you must take up arms and kill someone. You have to engage with people. And quickly realise where the person in front of you is on a scale, and then you must adapt. We all must operate in that spectrum. (Anne)
For Anne, ensuring human security transcends the division between police and military practices: those trained to use minimum force and those trained to use maximum force. She and several others said showing force was a skill the two professions shared (Campbell & Campbell, 2010, p. 328). The officer Bjarne agreed that both are ultimately concerned with upholding societal order. He even depicted the military as custodians of “law and order” who deter crime by adopting a patrolman’s posture:
After all, we are all trained to be exposed to organized and structured violence. … When chaos begins, we, with our military background, have a greater vantage just to be there. That creates a sense of security, which is stabilizing in itself. … Presence [means to] set an example that shows we won’t let ourselves be taken lightly. Those in the area will think “here come the police. Here comes someone who will maintain order. And if we don’t behave, we will face difficulties.” (Bjarne)
Bjarne uses the term “police” to refer to the action of preventing violent crime rather than people clad in blue (Loader, 2000). According to him, military training equips soldiers to confront and stabilize chaos, and restore order (Bigo, 2001, p. 103), reflecting a pragmatic conflict resolution encompassing all facets of power and organization (Janowitz, 1960, p. 418). Bjarne’s unhesitating espousal of the role reminds us that “policing” is an age-old concept exercised in any civil society as a socio-political function, while the idea of “the police” as an institution confined to the state is relatively modern, emerging in the late nineteenth century (Bigo, 2001, p. 102; Johnston, 1992).
Insecurity knows no borders
Several officers criticized rigid sectoral dividing practices that impede effective management of insecure environments. Frank, for example, argued that society would handle emergencies better if, instead of focusing on which body “owned” a crisis, there was more attention to the actual problem:
I think we would have got further without discussing whether it is a military or police responsibility. And more attention to how we – civilians, military and police – can solve it. If it were actually seamless, instead of saying, “It’s the police’s task,” next time, “It’s the military’s task,” and the third time, “It’s a civilian task.” (Frank)
Similarly, the informant Stian wearily deplored policies that seek to lay down which sectors undertake which jobs and the mania for pigeonholing insecurity. Reflecting on his experiences in volatile environments where populations were unsafe, he was depressed by what he viewed as the Norwegian government’s discouragement of meaningful civil-military cooperation:
If everyone works on their separate parts in silos, then you have no unity of effort, nothing. As I see it, military forces on overseas missions naturally have a responsibility, even a duty, to prevent population violence. Although semantically, one can call it policing. (Stian)
Unlike earlier sceptics who highlighted the “wrongs” in foreign countries, officers such as Bjarne and Arne, who supported military policing, stressed that it is the homeland that needs a reality check:
It is a massive paradox that the organization in Norway most capable of command and control and effective coordination of individuals to combat or exercise violence, is the Armed Forces. But the response in the public, or perhaps at the political level, is: “No, no, no, we’re not going to have any cooperation because the Armed Forces must not attack their own population. Menstad and so on. Very important!” [sarcastically] It’s just a habit… we’re just used to saying it. (Bjarne)
The distinction we are used to in Norway is unnatural. And based on outdated world views, dating from a time when the monarchy used military force to oppress and control the people. We have more of a people’s army than China does! We share the same values and goals across sectors, with violent means at our disposal. (Arne)
Officers here reference the constitutional separation of powers and the Menstad battle satirically to mock obsolete security theorizing and the absurdity of basing security governance on events that occurred more than a century ago. Their perspectives resemble those of scholars who stress the inherent wiggle room for constitutional interpretation (Spurkland, 2020) and the use of force, a monopoly that the military has, today, increasingly come to share with multiple security actors (Bayer et al., 2023; Junior, 2022). What they say suggests that mobilizing military forces for civilian relief is not, in itself, cause for alarm (Acacio et al., 2023, p. 374; Pion-Berlin, 2016).
Pointing to anachronistic concepts, Lars suggested that it is high time to reconsider the security setup:
Should we look at the distinction [between] public and state security? There are parts of the police force that primarily focus on state security. Is it then appropriate to separate police and military authority? Or should we envisage a national security force? With a common chain of command for police and the Armed Forces. But we’re not ready for that because of Menstad. (Lars)
Lars refers to the myriad collaborative jobs and support functions that now interlace the military and police worlds, challenging the circumscribed images of “combat soldier” and “street cop” (Campbell & Campbell, 2010, p. 338; Larsson et al., 2014). His notion of a new, unified national force aligns with the view of scholars who believe security should be radically changed, perhaps to include “third-force” protective services combining warrior and constable roles (Campbell & Campbell, 2010, p. 345; Kaldor, 2020; Wood & Shearing, 2007, p. 78). Officers such as Lars do not see police and military as separate worlds, with security incidents awkwardly positioned between them, but as belonging to a single security universe (Bigo, 2001, p. 103).
Some officers even suggested that sticking to compartmentalized arrangements represents a security risk. Georg, for example, noted that those motivated to harm democracies like Norway are likely to take advantage of professional divisions, such as restricting the use of military measures at home. He foresaw the benefit to malign actors of creating disorder by using contentious issues to incite discontent and conflict:
In a modern conflict scenario, we’re unable to adapt the structures meant to protect our society. [Enemies] will try to locate our weaknesses to determine where they should attack. Structures like ours, with clear non-use of military force against the Norwegian population or internal threats. Its use is supposed to be outward against the enemy, rolling across the border into Finnmark with tanks, while the police handle internal matters. We will have to reconsider this traditional way of thinking in future. Imagine major inequalities and groups in society dissatisfied with something. It could be climate issues: many people are willing to fight for the cause. Foreign powers can exploit this. It can also be exploited by people within the country seeking power. Who is going to deal with that obvious threat to civilians? If there’s no legislation or system to address potential insider threats, then we have a problem, to put it mildly. (Georg)
Georg thus signals the risks arising from security governance adapting too slowly, so that there is confusion about who should handle incidents (Haga, 2021, p. 49). His belief that ordinary citizens can be used to cause havoc and hamper security responses echoes those scholars who have argued that many current threats are composite and increasingly complex to identify (Bigo, 2001, p. 107; Borch & Heier, 2025; Delaforce, 2016, p. 213). Undermining trust between people and authorities, and thus democracy itself, is a viable objective (Haga, 2021, p. 52). While aware of the challenges of increased military interaction with the public, officers like Georg argue it to be a necessary adaptation when traditional insecurity coexists with nontraditional issues.
Discussion and Conclusion
This study examines the interplay of security references Norwegian military officers utilize to interpret and enact responsibilities for civilian protection in relation to the police. The findings reveal a striking coexistence of diametrically opposed views within a relatively small officer corps: some officers assert that policing should remain distinct from soldiering, while others advocate for integration, seeing soldiers and police as virtually indistinguishable. This divergence is not trivial; it challenges assumptions about professional cohesion and raises questions about the stability of military conduct in complex (in)security situations. The oscillation across officer perspectives and coexistence of conventional and hybrid security models, begs consideration of what these security concepts do – the function they play in shaping security governance and supporting military operations.
Officers who reject protection and policing roles rely on institutionalized binaries, such as war/peace, internal/external threats, avoiding/applying force, and criminal/war law to maintain professional identity and role clarity. This reflects Durkheimian notions of categorical ordering and Lamont and Molnar’s (2002) argument that boundaries stabilize social order by defining what is inside and what is outside. These officers reproduce Huntington’s (1985) emphasis on preserving civil-military distinctions, reinforcing a professional logic that prioritizes combat readiness and state defence. Conversely, officers embracing population protection tasks frame them as legitimate extensions of military duties, prioritizing contextual flexibility over rigid constructs. This resonates with security governance scholarship, which highlights the pluralization of policing responsibilities and interagency collaboration as natural developments in a globalized and interconnected security landscape (Bigo, 2001; Loader, 2000; Weiss, 2011).
The reliance on binary frameworks – whether to reject or justify expanded roles – illustrates how boundary-making functions as a cognitive shortcut rather than an accurate depiction of reality (Mau, 2019; Neumann, 1996). When events clash with established binary categories, they appear as anomalies, irregularities or glitches to the norm (Kuhn, 1962). As Douglas (1984) articulates in her concept of “matter out of place”, categorical blurs generate discomfort, explaining why officers might default to conventional logics even when acknowledging blurred boundaries.
The persistence of binary frameworks, even among officers who recognize the need for flexibility, suggests that categorical thinking remains a powerful organizing principle. This has practical implications: boundary reinforcement may safeguard professionalism but hinder responsiveness to civilians under attack, while boundary erosion may enhance adaptability but be hard to enforce in operational practice. Meanwhile, they may be eclipsed by more hegemonic security models. Observing violent threats targeting civilians may result in reactive reflection rather than proactive responses. These tensions are amplified by contemporary conflicts where civilian populations are inseparable elements of the battlespace. As starkly demonstrated by the relentless war in Ukraine, civilian populations are deliberately targeted to cripple nations at large. Modern warfare involves whole societies and the mobilization of populations en masse, highlighting the acute need for policing and public protection expertise alongside maintaining a warfighting orientation.
Janowitz (1960) argued that military goals should remain within “feasible and attainable objectives”, yet militaries increasingly deter crime, prevent sabotage, build infrastructure, and provide humanitarian relief as part of national security. Concepts such as total defence and NATO’s multi-domain operations illustrate the ambition to integrate civil-military efforts for comprehensive security. However, assumptions about how far militaries can stretch beyond traditional roles remain precarious. If civilian protection continues to occupy a hybrid space between policing and soldiering, there is a risk of delayed or inconsistent responses to threats targeting populations. Making political and strategic statements about protecting civilians will not necessarily translate into operational effects, as security actors constantly seek ways to (re)set their boundaries even when the security terrain traverses them.
The question is no longer whether civilian protection should fall solely within civil responsibility but, rather, how far it should extend into the military ambit. The military and police professions have always had a wide remit (Bittner, 1990), and modern insecurities have seen the services they provide woven together (Bigo, 2001). Although the exact makeup of security personnel and institutions is unknown, emergent threats suggest that soldiers will need proficiency in both fighting and policing for the foreseeable future. For governments, the challenge lies in balancing the risks of over-reliance on militaries to tackle societal challenges impacting democratic oversight and civil liberties with the risks of under-reliance on military capabilities to defend populations against targeted threats. Treating modern conflicts as a technical matter of more or less civil-military coordination may inadvertently neglect the adaptive nature of security needs where governance zones may be considered to overlap. For militaries, the challenge ahead involves adapting binary security models and considering military means to defend against targeted attacks on civilian populations as an integral factor in the operational design.
Future research should delve further into how boundary-making logics influence decision-making during large-scale crises such as pandemics, mass migration, or infrastructure attacks – crises where societal sectors quickly become overstretched. Investigation into the ways in which parallel security models align or conflict can inform preparedness and defence strategies, preventing civilian protection from falling between policy and professional priorities.
While this study focused primarily on expeditionary experiences, its findings suggest that attitudes towards protection and policing are not context-dependent. Further empirical studies on military perceptions of civilian protection and their responsibilities vis-à-vis the police in domestic operations are therefore needed to understand how security logics play out when threats move closer to home.
Notes
[1] For an in-depth description of the Norwegian armed forces’ involvement in domestic security, see, e.g., Heier & Larssen (2024) and Larssen (2021).
[2] Like most stable democracies, the Norwegian constitution restricts the military’s role in civilian affairs by criminalising unauthorised engagement by the armed forces (Spurkland, 2020).
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the officers who contributed to the study and thank Professor Sveinung Sandberg for constructive comments while drafting this article.
Competing interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.