Securing Europe together: How to step into the future with confidence

Established norms and alliances are being tested in ways previously unheard of. In this world, governments are being forced to redefine how national security and defence fit into citizens’ everyday lives. Importantly, longstanding peacetime defence workforce, supply chain, and procurement models need to be redesigned in response to a variety of emerging threats.

As conflicts and threats escalate, European governments have responded by rapidly increasing defence spending to transform civil institutions, armed forces, and industry. But rapid scale brings new risks. Accelerated investment, if done without a clear strategy, precision and focus, could lead to fragmented capabilities, which in turn would undermine interoperability and system effectiveness. Further unexpected economic jolts could also reduce the ability to fund defence, leading to deeper issues with the maintenance of capabilities reliant on longer-term funding arrangements over years, not months.

At the recent Munich Security Conference, heads of state, security experts, and defence industry leaders came together to discuss ‘the elephant in the room’ of a past overdependence on what are now different transatlantic relations. As Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy said, “there is an urgent need to reclaim European agency,” and many attendees also echoed France's President Macron’s continued call for Europe to increase its ‘strategic autonomy’, not just in terms of traditional security but also energy security, supply chains, and new technologies.

This can only be achieved through a collective response in Europe that delivers real impact. Strategic intent must be translated into new capabilities that provide much-needed deterrence and operational readiness. Here, I want to set out three areas for immediate focus.

Focus on operational readiness

Europe, when it acts in concert has genuine influence over global affairs, and each nation has a crucial role in shaping a resilient, collective defence posture. In practice, this means we must drive deep collaboration. How we support, stand together, and fight together requires sharing insights, capabilities, skills, people, and a joint approach to defending our way of life. This needs the political intent to line up with defence structures and capabilities so all those who collaborate share in that burden and can interoperate. Being operationally ready requires clear decision making, speed, and a togetherness not seen for decades. It will also require a new purposeful approach to taking risk. Governments must balance the speed of execution with uncertainty to deliver operational readiness. Risk can no longer be mitigated in the ways of the past. We simply won’t move fast enough.

For example, more practical collaboration, like joint economic taskforces that look at rapid capability development could force a streamlined procurement approach, scale production capacity, and cut duplication across EU and NATO partners, ensuring critical capabilities are available when needed. These lessons must be taken from Ukraine into other militaries such that we adapt to a pace of change. And enable decision making at the lowest level possible with the centralised functions providing the right modular building blocks such that a workforce can be ready to operate advanced technologies or be more skilled in cyber security. By combining industrial cooperation with long‑term investment in people, Europe can enhance interoperability, speed, and overall preparedness.

Boost whole society resilience

Civil defence and resilience go far beyond military preparedness. A whole‑of‑society approach to defence takes a combined effort from government, industry, communities, and the armed forces. Bringing civil defence and resilience to life requires a deep collaboration between defence, civil authorities, and critical industries, enabling organisations across these key areas to respond jointly to crises. It encompasses supply chains, communication, interoperable systems, and a clear understanding of sharable information and insights across all domains.

In the Nordic and Baltic countries, they have developed best practice in the whole-society approach, although they would readily admit there is more to do – including tackling hybrid threats like cyber-attacks or misinformation campaigns. We must encourage and support our nations in Europe and allies to engage, agree plans, and execute this approach together. Gamifying and scenario planning happens in the centre of most governments, but it needs strategic leadership to fund and drive the resilience that is built from a constant focus on planning, preparing, and practicing. It is another essential part of our deterrence being prepared for all to defend your nation.

Innovation enabled by automation and artificial intelligence

Information underpins every dimension of defence and security. For Europe to have more agency, it needs to accelerate the pace of innovation to scale military information capabilities, develop the force and organisational structures, improve decision making, and driving workforce skills development.

This includes working together on shared solutions for advanced manufacturing, counter‑drone capabilities, hybrid‑warfare resilience, and financing. Joint industrial programmes can help scale cutting‑edge production and reduce bottlenecks, while collaborative R&D can fast‑track key technologies. Lessons from the war in Ukraine, with the IP developed, on the battlefield, between the military and industry must be captured, harnessed and hardened into new ways of thinking. We must not lose this opportunity.

At the same time, coordinated data‑sharing and resilience planning strengthen Europe’s ability to respond to hybrid threats. By coupling these efforts with funding models and predictable long‑term investment, Europe can build better and importantly build European.

Safer and stronger, together

Securing Europe’s future depends on the choices it makes together, not as individual entities, but as part of a greater whole. By aligning operational priorities, deepening resilience, and accelerating shared technological innovation, Europe, and the NATO alliance, can become more than the sum of its parts. They can confidently create a collective security ecosystem that is faster, smarter, and more adaptable than any adversary.