The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference

In October, I had the honour of directing the Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference at Wilton Park in the UK. Under the leadership of General Lord Richards seventy leading practitioners and experts considered the vital relationship between people protection and defence-vital power projection.  My full conference report Cn be downloaded at https://thealphengroup.com/

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-focussed 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 Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference focuses 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 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.

Core Messages

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 – 9/11, the 2008-2010 banking and financial crisis, the refugee and immigration 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 free West not only needs to get sharper, but it also needs to get harder.    

Julian Lindley-French and David Richards