The Resilience Agenda

This white paper was originally published by Systemic and the result of a collaboration between Systemiq Ltd., University of Oxford and The Clingendael Institute.

European security, climate action and economic competitiveness are complementary and reinforce each other. We cannot choose one and drop the other

Europe stands at a crossroads. Security is firmly back on the agenda. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caught Europe off guard. The United States is steering European NATO members to prepare for their own defence and emphasised the NATO spending target of 5% of GDP in its National Security Strategy. The war in Ukraine has underscored the possibility of a more assertive Russia, even if hostilities pause. Critical infrastructure and maritime zones are increasingly being targeted by hybrid warfare tactics. China is asserting its leverage over crit ical materials and clean technologies. 

National security means resilience against all threats and credible deterrence. That requires adapting to the military threats of today, including hybrid warfare and autonomous, semi-autonomous and remote-controlled systems. Meanwhile, the security threat of climate change is becoming more tangible. The continent is warming twice as fast as the global average. Extreme weather events like floods and droughts bring the message home to European doorsteps, from Spain to Germany to Poland. Yet it is not only through extreme weather that Europe will be affected; climate change is driving insecurity globally, disrupting supply chains, increasing prices, and unsettling financial stability through complex, cascading impacts. 

Europe needs to face these immediate security and climate challenges while dealing with the urgency of its declining competitiveness – the result of an incomplete single market, fragmented governance, high public spending, underinvestment, strategic dependencies, high energy costs and an ageing population. Fiscal pres sures and borrowing costs for national governments are set to rise. Europe needs a strategic vision to foster political imagination, institutional agency and societal endurance to collectively face these challenges. 

Hard security, climate action and economic competitiveness are often framed as mutually exclusive: “investing in security means less action on climate”, “we cannot be competitive and decarbonize”, or “rearmament is too expensive when we need to invest in domestic industry”. These are false dichotomies. As former Finnish President and EU Special Advisor Sauli Niinistö pointed out, climate security, national security and a competitive economy are often complementary and reinforce each other. We cannot choose one and drop the other. 

An “all-of-society resilience” approach can act as an overarching lens spanning security, climate and competitiveness. It can clearly set out the win-wins across these agendas, including through dual-use technologies and mutual reinforcement between defence, climate and economic effectiveness through strong value chains. The objective is supporting strategic autonomy rather than self-sufficiency. 

If climate change is a security threat, then climate action supports peace and stability. In defence, immediate readiness for hostile acts has many complementarities with emergency response capabilities. As Europe pours billions into security spending, we have an opportunity to push innovative breakthroughs that build collective resilience in our defence, climate and competitiveness via material science, energy innovation and clean technologies. Strengthening our militaries and economies can break the same patterns that also drive climate change: wasteful, emissions-intensive resource extraction and consumption. Renewable energy sources, circular value chains and regenerative agriculture can provide more resilient outcomes for both European and planetary security. 

This white paper outlines seven priorities for Europe across the resilience nexus of security, climate action and competitiveness. Not claiming to be complete, this strategic agenda sets out to spark discussion.

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