criticism of diversity damages the cohesion and resilience of society. The state must focus more on the equal treatment of the most vulnerable segments in society, protecting their fundamental rights and creating a liveable environment for them. The cohesion and integration, as well as the resilience, of society can be reinforced if the population is better and more reliably informed. Strategic communication involves planning the state’s political, economic and defence-related statements and activities, preparing a comprehensive informative whole on the basis of these, and transmitting it to the population. It is based on the nation’s values expressed in a democratic, versatile and deep dialogue, which the government will follow in serving society. The main objective of strategic communication—the resilience and better cohesion of society—cannot be achieved by political declarations alone; it comes about due to the combined influence of many factors. As a result, the living environment will grow more stable and secure, and the vulnerability of society (due also to security threats) will decrease. Psychological defence is about informing society and raising awareness about informationrelated activities aimed at harming Estonia’s constitutional order, society’s values and virtues. Psychological defence is needed to neutralise attacks by terrorist organisations as well as assaults proceeding from the military doctrine of certain states with the help of efforts to influence the society under attack with cognitive methods. Appropriate measures must be drawn up for this. The purpose of psychological defence is to prevent crises in Estonia, facilitate security awareness in society and neutralise information attacks that provoke violence in the population by manipulation and the provision of false information, or that promote crisis management with resources that are not compatible with constitutional order. The best tool of psychological defence is to inform the public of attacks, manipulation and false information and guarantee access to multifaceted information for all segments of society. Psychological defence is developed in cooperation with civil society. Strategic communication and psychological defence complement one another. While the notification methods of psychological defence are mostly reactive, strategic communication must be able to reach society as well as foreign target groups, which play an important part in conflict management in the context of the greater information noise generated during a conflict. To achieve this, networks of people and the media must provide their support. 3.9 The Distant Future Although Estonian security is assured, maintaining stability requires constant attention and action. The vigilance have to be sustained into the distant future since, although the security environment is more and more unpredictable and ever-changing, there are security factors whose influence will be revealed only decades from now but whose seeds are already present. For this reason, there is in addition to current and highly likely security threats a need to monitor factors that may affect Estonian security in the more distant future. We must raise awareness about this subject and use preventive measures if possible. The three trends that could hinder or obstruct achieving the main objective of Estonian security policy are the ageing and gradual decreasing size of the Estonian population; failure to reach the goals of global sustainable development, or the low effectiveness thereof; and the impact of technological evolution on humankind and security. To cope with all these trends, we must develop research-based methods that should be realised, depending on their impact, in cooperation with Estonian society or in the context of global measures. Although the trends may 20