NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte addressed the 2024 NATO Resilience Symposium in Bratislava, Slovakia, on Tuesday (12 November).
In his video address, Mr Rutte highlighted the substantial progress that NATO and individual Allies have made since 2014 to strengthen resilience – an increasingly important task as societies across NATO are faced with growing challenges, whether from climate-related disasters or malign cyber activities. In a NATO context, resilience is the ability to prepare for, resist, respond to and quickly recover from shocks or disruptions and is a priority for Allies and partners alike. The Secretary General highlighted that resilience is not strictly military or civilian but “a whole-of-government and whole-of-society responsibility.”
This is why Allies decided to integrate civilian planning into national and collective defence planning. And while this progress is important, Mr Rutte recognised that there is more work to do, emphasizing the “need to double-down on building a shared culture of resilience across the Euro-Atlantic” while building a NATO community involving public and private sectors, along with other international organisations, especially the European Union.
“Together, we can better resist the growing pressure from those who seek to exploit our vulnerabilities,” the Secretary General concluded.
This year, the Symposium focused on promoting a proactive civil-military approach to resilience, in support of NATO’s defence plans and in line with commitments made by Allies at the 2024 Washington Summit.
Bringing together over 200 civil and military leaders, policymakers, practitioners and experts from Allied nations, partners, academia and industry, the annual NATO Resilience Symposium offers an opportunity to take stock of ongoing work and explore ideas to inform NATO’s resilience agenda.