In association with The Alphen Group and with major funding support from NATO and sponsorship from BAE systems and Microsoft.
Summary by Dr Julian Lindley-French and General the Lord Richards of Herstmonceux
In memory and in honour of Robert G. Bell
Wilton Park reports are brief summaries of the main points and conclusions of a conference. The reports reflect rapporteurs’ personal interpretations of the proceedings. As such they do not constitute any institutional policy of Wilton Park nor do they necessarily represent the views of the rapporteur. Wilton Park reports and any recommendations contained therein are for participants and are not a statement of policy for Wilton Park, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) or His Majesty’s Government.
An assessment of the dialogue by The Alphen Group, with details of thematic working group discussions, can be found here.
For the purposes of this report, ‘resilience’ is defined as the ability of a state, institution and democratic society to recover from shock and maintain capability and functionality under extreme duress.
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“Too many leaders do not recognise we are in a state of conflict, maybe in a state of war. The Free World is moving into an era in which autocratic predator powers seek to prey on free open peoples. For too long Western leaders have enabled the transformation of their open societies into prey. It is time the predators re-learned simple lessons: freedom is not weakness, and prey have hard shells and sharp claws”.
Julian Lindley-French
Key takeaway
The core contention of this conference was validated: that the capacity to project legitimate coercive power is central to credible defence and deterrence but that such power can only be credible if Allied and Partner societies are demonstrably secure to friends and foes alike. The key to effective resilience and thus credible defence and deterrence is shared, well-designed, and responsive architecture built on a range of critical partnerships. These partnerships must be deeper and more planned than hitherto between NATO and the EU, between member states and partners, but above all, between governments and civil society. There is much to relearn from civil defence during the Cold War.
Introduction
The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference was the third in a trilogy of policy-focused future war/defence conferences. The 2022 Future War and Deterrence Conference considered defence strategy going forward in an uncertain and strategically competitive world for the Alliance and Partners. The 2023 Future War, Strategy and Technology Conference examined the impact of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDT) on Allied and Partner defence strategy. The 2024 Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference focused on the balance to be struck between people protection and power projection, civil defence and military defence in the face of the hybrid war in which autocratic powers are already engaged against open, democratic societies. As such, the Conference explored the civil military partnerships that will be vital to affecting such resilience.
All three conferences revealed the urgent need for choices to be made by the governments of free nations if a balance is to be struck between capability, capacity, resilience and affordability to meet the challenge going forward of preserving a just peace and the Western way of life. Credible deterrence rests as much on convincing an adversary that society and governance is sufficiently secure to resist all forms of aggression, of which the fielding of adequate and legitimate military power is a vital, albeit only one, part. Hybrid or ‘grey zone’ war comes in many forms, but it essentially seeks to disrupt, destabilise and disinform, possibly as a prelude to decapitation and destruction of a state. The threat must thus be seen as precisely that.
Systemic hybrid war by a peer competitor would also involve a sustained and systematic campaign to denude and degrade a state’s communications and energy nodes and infrastructure, as well as systems vital to the critical functioning of the state, continuity of government and governance, and the resilience and robustness needed to minimise the impact of attacks. Effective resilience demands effective consequence management, strong cyber defences (and offensive capability), civilian structures vital to the maintenance of the military effort and military mobility, and prevention of applied disinformation and propaganda on social media.
Summary of findings
The Conference was centred on six high-level working groups:
- Technology, Deterrence and Resilience: The Foundation of Future Defence;
- Building a Strategic Public-Private Partnership;
- Consequence Management, Critical Protection, and Civil Defence;
- Ensuring the Integrity of Democracy;
- Economic and Energy Security: The Critical Vulnerabilities; and
- Reinforcing Resilience: People Protection, Power Projection, Pan-Institutional and Whole of Government Solutions.