Too many democracies have been asleep at the wheel in the face of oncoming threats to freedom and the systems that underpin it. Governments have chosen to see such threats as “wicked political problems” too challenging and complicated to deal with, even if the consequences of their inaction are dangerous, even potentially catastrophic. Adversaries such as China and Russia have used a series of crises and events – 9/11, the 2008-2010 banking and financial crisis, the refugee crisis, Brexit, and COVID 19 – to exacerbate divisions within open societies and thus weaken governance. They have also sought to dominate the digital domain and turn it from an enabler of communications into a weapon of misinformation.
There were several key themes that emerged during the course of the conference, focused on the need:
- to share resilience best practice between Allies and partners;
- for greater transparency between government, industry and citizens about the scope and scale of threats across the hybrid, cyber and kinetic war spectrum;
- to forge a much deeper partnership between the state and citizens;
- to build redundancy into critical national infrastructures allied to increased resilience;
- to involve the defence, technological and industrial bases and a wider supply chain in thinking, planning and action about resilience at an early stage;
- for a genuine EU-NATO strategic partnership across the defence, deterrence and resilience posture; and
- for whole-of-government approaches that underpin whole-of-society responses to ensure effective consequence management.
Above all, there was broad agreement that a very real threat is posed to democratic societies and their capacity to deter adversaries and defend themselves if current attempts by autocratic states to undermine resilience succeed. Above all, there is a pressing need for all Allies and partners to know the state of resilience in their respective countries by undertaking national audits based on a shared NATO and EU methodology.
Deterrence is only credible in the minds of an adversary if they are convinced that under no circumstances will they achieve expansionist and adventurist goals through coercion, be it real or virtual. Traditionally, deterrence has been built upon the credibly demonstrable capacity to project military power. In the 21st century power projection demands clear evidence of people protection, meaning that open societies have the political and social resilience to withstand All-Threats Warfare. Over the past thirty years Western societies have become ever more complex and diverse as well as ever more open.
Given that such openness is the very quality the West sees as essential to its way of life, defending it is unlikely to succeed unless there is also a new form of adaptive deterrence built upon resilience. That is why people protection is as important as power projection. Resilience means not simply the capacity to resist imposed shocks but to recover rapidly from them governmentally, societally and economically, allied to an indisputable capability to impose unacceptable shocks on adversaries and their societies and thus directly threaten the ability of autocrats to remain in power. Therefore, the West not only needs to get sharper, but it also needs to get harder.