An Economic Security Alliance of likeminded Western states would enable economic challenges, including those impacting on energy security, to be discussed and mitigating measures to be developed. There are a range of steps that need to be taken and which such an alliance might help foster.
- Invest in multi-domain monitoring capabilities, either by reallocating existing means or developing new ones. This should enhance situational awareness and may contribute to preventing threats to the integrity of energy infrastructure.
- Threat signalling by governments may allow Western nations to take countermeasures and convince the potential attacker to change course. The willingness to attribute grey zone activities to a perpetrator might also offer options for de-escalation.
- Allies and partners must consider formalising proportionate strategic retribution, ranging from targeted economic measures (e.g., sanctions, export controls, trade measures, industrial policy), to well-considered covert operations.
- NATO should explore the creation of an investment vehicle to provide additional maintenance capabilities for critical energy infrastructure. This mechanism, which could be developed from within NATO’s Innovation Fund, should also include NATO’s four Asia-Pacific Partners.
There needs to be a much fuller appreciation by policymakers of the vital leveraging and influence role that economics, and in particular trade, plays in security policy. Specifically, much more attention needs to be paid to the long-term goals pursued by strategic competitors, notably China, to force Western countries into dependency, including using renewable energy. To prevent such economic/energy warfare, Western countries should make a greater effort to adjust and strengthen their respective national legislation, create redundancy by finding new partner countries with whom to forge energy partnerships; and take a closer look at the longer-term consequences of subsidising certain national industries. Perhaps the most important immediate step would be for the West to better understand how its own financial system could act as an enabler to compete more successfully against adversaries. This is particularly important, considering regulatory and fiduciary constraints on financial institutions in funding the defence industry in Europe. Create financial mechanisms for co-investment and funding of defence and security supply chains, and to mandate European public investment banks and other large funds to invest in these supply chains.
Given the importance of stockpiling critical energy resources for coping with at least short-term disruptions, a broadening of a Solidarity Principle would communicate a determination to respond collectively to what will remain a long-term challenge. To do this, leaders will need to change their mindsets and recognise together that economic and energy security will require painful trade-offs. They will also need to confront together contradictory and sometimes outright irresolvable policy conflicts, such as the profound tension between energy and environmental concerns. One element of any such change could be the re-branding of certain policy goals. For example, describing the green transition as a security gain (fewer dependencies) instead of a climate change mitigation measure.