Resilience of society - the basis of defence

The lesson of the Ukrainian crisis is to use non-military methods to weaken the opponent before the actual active phase of the conflict. These methods of hybrid influence targeted the vital functions and infrastructure of society, the political decision-making capacity and the public mood, and not necessarily the military targets.

Defending against hybrid influence requires the targeted country to have crisis resilience and the political decision-making capacity to take defensive action without a clear picture of the conflict. In addition, the defending country must be able to protect the critical functions on which its economy and society depend. These functions may even be entirely owned and controlled by the private sector or foreign actors and thus outside national jurisdiction. This requires better coordination and cooperation between the armed forces, other branches of government and the business community.

Armed forces around the world use a number of commercial operators to support their operations. These include food and water supply, fuel supply, some telecommunication links and some transport services. These facilities and networks, which often provide vital functions and services to the rest of society, are often designed and built for economic reasons and not inherently to operate in a crisis. At the same time, a situation has arisen where these infrastructures are no longer owned by governments but by the private sector.

In NATO, the issue of resilience in societies has recently become increasingly central. In NATO, the development of resilience is based on Article 3 of the NATO Treaty, which obliges member states to maintain both a national and a collective capability to resist armed attack. The current interpretation of the Treaty (1949) also covers hybrid threats and societies are developing resilience to respond to them.

Among other things, NATO estimates that 90% of the deployment of military forces by land, sea and air by member states relies on the civilian sector. For telecommunications, including satellite links, the reliance rate is 70% and for water and food supply 85%. For host country support, 85% is provided by the civil sector. For these reasons, support to the armed forces in particular has recently received considerable attention in NATO member countries. Unless these things are in place in society in times of crisis, military operations will be jeopardised. Societies must therefore have both the resilience and the capacity to support military operations with significant resources without compromising the functioning of the rest of society.

The changing security situation, and in particular the hybrid impact on the basic functions of civil society, on the economy and even directly on citizens, has made civilian preparedness a key area for development in the Alliance. According to NATO's defence planning paradigm, civilian preparedness both strengthens the resilience of societies and serves as an enabler for military defence. Resilience is the newest element of NATO's doctrine of deterrence and defence.

Currently, 30 NATO member states are reflecting on and planning to better integrate societal resilience and the actors that influence it into preparedness and defence planning. In Finland, too, societal resilience is the basis of Finland's defence. We can legitimately ask whether we in Finland have thought deeply enough about societal resilience and the coordination of all its activities from the point of view of preparedness and defence planning. Our concept of comprehensive security provides an excellent starting point for this.

Kari Pelkonen, M.Sc. (Econ.), Evl (evp)

The author is a special expert seconded by Finland to NATO headquarters in Brussels.