Cynthia Cook:
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine puts the necessity for European resilience into sharper focus and argues for a new framing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) approach to resilience. While resilience is primarily a national responsibility that needs political commitment, investment, supporting policies and institutions, and prioritization, there is a strong case for resilience to become a collective imperative as well as a domestic one. Resilience should be reconceptualized as the individual and collective capacity to withstand, fight through, and quickly recover from disruption caused by military and non-military threats to Euro-Atlantic security from authoritarian actors and strategic competitors as well as global challenges. It merits a top priority in NATO and national planning, significant investment in building Europe’s credible resilience posture, and new approaches to amplifying allies’ combined capacity to tackle shared challenges and threats as well as increasing vigilance amid heightened tensions. Creating a NATO Resilience Planning Process akin to the NATO Defence Planning Process will be instrumental in harmonizing and integrating national resilience plans, strategies, and capabilities to marshal NATO’s strong collective response. In addition, a high-level resilience task force should be created to identify multidimensional resilience lessons from Ukraine across the spectrum of conventional, hybrid, and societal threats, as well as to make recommendations for future policies and investments that will bolster European resilience.
