Dražen Kapusta (COTRUGLI Business School) · Damir Stručić (Croatian Defence Academy “Dr. Franjo Tuđman”)
International Leadership Journal · July 2026 · Published by COTRUGLI Business School, Zagreb
Abstract
Europe’s security architecture faces a cognitive frontier: adversaries now wage conflict by degrading institutional sensemaking, manufacturing social consensus, and exploiting the seams of democratic deliberation. The EU has advanced important policy responses, yet a structural gap persists: no pan-European institution systematically trains, measures, and improves decision superiority under cognitive attack across civil-military boundaries. This article proposes a European Dual-Use Cognitive Intelligence Centre (EU-DUCCI) to close that gap. Drawing on NATO’s scientific findings on cognitive warfare, the Cotruglian tradition of merchant ethics (1458), the Vanguard Leadership framework, and the operational instruments HAI5 and VIS, the article argues that cognitive resilience is an institutional capability that can be trained and measured. It offers a conceptual framework grounded in a mixed methodology, outlines a Decision Theatre architecture, proposes metrics and governance requirements, and maps a pragmatic eighteen-month implementation path.
Keywords: cognitive warfare; hybrid threats; FIMI; decision superiority; mission command; human-AI collaboration; Vanguard Leadership; dual-use; EU strategic autonomy; resilience