A hybrid security environment

The ever-increasing technological sophistication of our social, economic and military systems generates new vulnerabilities. Threats in the modern era have become an extremely complex, multidimensional continuum (state – non-state, military – non-military, kinetic – non-kinetic) capable of causing disruptions within our national and collective security systems. More broadly, it is the very foundation of our governance – i.e. the institutional continuity of government functions, but also the unity of our society and its cohesion in terms of shared values and norms, that may be targeted.

Under such conditions, resilience must be seen as a multi-layered and dynamic process. It is the ability of a (biological, social or technical) system to respond to emergencies or shocks in at least three ways: (i) absorbing the shock of a crisis while maintaining the continuity of vital functions; (ii) recovery, i.e. the ability to return to a previous state as quickly as possible, to bounce back; (iii) adaptation, i.e. an analysis of the impact of the crisis, identification of lessons learned and corresponding adjustment of the relevant aspect of resilience within the system.

In a hybrid security environment, building resilience requires horizontal interconnectedness and synergies between the civilian and military sectors and the public and private spheres. Vertically then, enhancing or implementing resilience spans from the top level of government down to the local and even individual levels.

Same objective, different emphasis

The joint NATO-EU Declaration signed in the margins of the NATO Warsaw Summit identified amongst its strategic priorities the need to “boost our ability to counter hybrid threats, including by bolstering resilience” (i.e. internal direction) as well as to “foster the resilience of our partners in the East and South” (i.e. external direction).

The question of how to define, assess and enhance resilience turned out to be one of the major topics at NATO’s Warsaw Summit. The Allies undertook (para. 73 of the Summit communiqué) to “continue to enhance (...) resilience,” with civil preparedness seen as a “central pillar of Allies’ resilience and a critical enabler for Alliance collective defence.”

Implementing that commitment remains a national responsibility, the assumption being that resilient Allies make for a resilient Alliance. However, the resilience of the Alliance is greater than the sum of its parts. In order to achieve a synergetic effect in resilience building, NATO is ready to support Allies in assessing and, upon request enhancing, their civil preparedness. To that end, the NATO Baseline Requirements for National Resilience focus on seven areas: continuity of government, energy supplies, ability to deal effectively with the uncontrolled movement of people, food and water resources, ability to deal with mass casualties, communication systems and transport systems.

What lies behind the baseline requirements?

According to NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges Jamie Shea, behind these baseline requirements lie two interrelated objectives: first, to ensure that NATO can speedily move all the forces and equipment required to any part of the Alliance facing an imminent threat or attack, ensuring full and unimpeded access to all the infrastructure it needs for that purpose; and second, to be able to anticipate, identify, mitigate and recover from hybrid attacks with a minimum disruptive impact on the Alliance’s social, political and military cohesion (NATO Review, March 2016). Since resilience is ultimately a cross-cutting theme, the requirements for resilience can now be found in a number of Allied policies and strategies, in domains such as civil preparedness, cyber defence, countering hybrid threats or partnership cooperation.

The EU – somewhat hesitant about implementation

While in NATO the concept has experienced a boom over the relatively short period of the past two years, the pace seems to be slower in the EU. HR/VP Federica Mogherini presented resilience building (together with an integrated approach to conflicts and crises) as one of the six main building blocks for implementation of the EU Global Strategy. Yet, unlike for NATO, which lays the emphasis on building the Allies’ resilience, the EU´s direction is external, i.e. supporting the resilience of partner countries, be it as one of the instruments for conflict prevention and post-conflict stabilisation or as an element of capacity building. Nevertheless, already in 2006 the Commission launched the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP) that sets the overall framework for activities aimed at improving the protection of critical infrastructure in Europe across all EU States and in all relevant sectors of economic activity. The threats to which the programme aims to respond are not confined to terrorism, but also include criminal activities, natural disasters and other causes of accidents. It seeks to provide an all-hazards, cross-sectoral approach. This is basically resilience building by another name and, indeed it covers the full cycle of the resilience concept, i.e. shock-absorption, recovery, adaptation (see the Commission Communication on a European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection COM(2006) 786). Much like NATO, the EU also stipulates that it is “the ultimate responsibility of the Member States to manage arrangements for the protection of critical infrastructures within their national borders while welcoming the efforts of the Commission to develop a European procedure for the identification and designation of European critical infrastructures (‘ECIs’) and the assessment of the need to improve their protection” (see Council Directive on European Critical Infrastructure 2008/114/EC).

The Joint Framework on Countering Hybrid Threats

The latest important step in the process of developing responses in the context of hybrid security challenges was the launch by the Commission and High Representative F. Mogherini of the Joint Framework on Countering Hybrid Threats in April 2016. The Framework brings together existing policies and proposes 22 operational actions aimed at: (1) raising awareness by establishing dedicated mechanisms for the exchange of information between Member States and by coordinating EU actions to deliver strategic communication; (2) building resilience by addressing potential strategic and critical sectors such as cyber security, critical infrastructures (energy, transport, space), protection of the financial system from illicit use, protection of public health and supporting efforts to counter violent extremism and radicalisation; (iii) preventing and responding to crises and recovering by defining effective procedures to follow, but also by examining the feasibility of applying the solidarity clause (Article 222 TFEU) and the mutual defence clause (Art. 42(7) TEU), in the event of a wide-ranging and serious hybrid attack; (iv) stepping up cooperation and coordination between the EU and NATO as well as other partner organisations.

Towards deepening NATO-EU cooperation

The NATO-EU Declaration certainly gave “new impetus and new substance to the NATO-EU strategic partnership”. It embodies the positive momentum generated these past few years between the two organisations and their top leaderships. At the same time, the Declaration demonstrates the limits to closer cooperation: the fact that in the end it was signed by the two organisations’ top bureaucrats and not by Member States – even though 22 EU Nations are also NATO Allies – proves that the fundamental political barrier between the two remains very high.

Another unhelpful element is the asymmetry that exists between the NATO and EU staffs in terms of their enthusiasm for closer collaboration – with the latter usually showing more reluctance, although staff-to-staff consultations and informal coordination have been going on for years now. Against that backdrop, a well-developed and effective consultation mechanism still remains to be developed between the European Defence Agency (EDA) and the Allied Command Transformation (ACT).

The institutional fragmentation on the Union side does not help either. NATO’s structure and agenda division are inevitably simpler than those of the more complex Union. The hybrid security and resilience policies spread across several DGs and the External Action Service are a case in point.

By way of conclusion, suffice it to emphasise that while most of the past obstacles and institutional incompatibilities persist, the Declaration has established a substantive level of ambition as well as a platform for cooperation between NATO and the EU, including a way-ahead mechanism (albeit quite a “soft” one). Of the seven areas mentioned in the text, four are directly relevant for countering hybrid challenges and for resilience building. In view of the two organisations’ differing but complementary (and non-competing) priorities within these agendas, it is difficult to imagine better themes for coordination, cooperation and synergy building than these two.

 

Autor: Jiří Šedivý, stálý zástupce České republiky při NATO

Článek byl publikován současně v periodiku The European Security and Defense Union, Volume N° 26 a ve sborníku Behördenspiegel Congress-Magazin, 15th Berlin Security Conference 2016, Berlin 11 /2016, strany 20–21.