Strengthened Resilience Commitment
- We, the Heads of State and Government of the North Atlantic Alliance, affirm that national and collective resilience are an essential basis for credible deterrence and defence and the effective fulfilment of the Alliance’s core tasks, and vital in our efforts to safeguard our societies, our populations and our shared values.
- Today, we renew and strengthen the commitment we made in 2016 in Warsaw by further enhancing our national and collective resilience and civil preparedness in an increasingly complex security environment.
- Our commitment to strengthen our national and collective resilience is firmly anchored in the Washington Treaty, in particular Article 3, which states that Allies, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack. Our commitment is based on the indivisibility of our security and underpins our solidarity and commitment to defend one another.
- Resilience is a national responsibility and a collective commitment. NATO’s baseline requirements for national resilience, which we keep updated to reflect emerging challenges and priorities, provide a comprehensive framework to support the effective enablement of our armed forces and of NATO’s three core tasks of collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security. We have made good progress towards achieving these requirements and we commit to intensify our efforts.
- Under NATO 2030, we have agreed today to enhance our resilience. Noting that resilience remains a national responsibility, we will adopt a more integrated and better coordinated approach, consistent with our collective commitment under Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty, to reduce vulnerabilities and ensure our militaries can effectively operate in peace, crisis and conflict. Allies will develop a proposal to establish, assess, review and monitor resilience objectives to guide nationally-developed resilience goals and implementation plans. It will be up to each individual Ally to determine how to establish and meet national resilience goals and implementation plans, allowing them to do so in a manner that is compatible with respective national competences, structures, processes and obligations, and where applicable those of the EU.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has severely tested our nations and our resilience. Our response has underlined the importance of civil-military engagement and cooperation, and demonstrated the vital roles that our armed forces play in supporting our societies. We are drawing important lessons for the future, which will help shape our preparation for, and response to other such major crises.
- We are addressing threats and challenges to our resilience, from both state and non-state actors, which take diverse forms and involve the use of a variety of tactics and tools. These include conventional, non-conventional and hybrid threats and activities; terrorist attacks; increasing and more sophisticated malicious cyber activities; increasingly pervasive hostile information activities, including disinformation, aimed at destabilising our societies and undermining our shared values; and attempts to interfere with our democratic processes and good governance. Our commitment in Warsaw has made us more resilient to these threats and challenges. But we need to do more.
- NATO and Allies, within their respective authority, also commit now to further strengthening our approach. We will step up efforts to secure and diversify our supply chains, as well as to ensure the resilience of our critical infrastructure (on land, at sea, in space and in cyberspace) and key industries, including by protecting them from harmful economic activities. We will build on our work to address the impact of emerging technologies, to secure next-generation communications systems and to protect technology and intellectual property. We will bolster our efforts to meet challenges to our energy security, and to deal with the impact of natural hazards that are being exacerbated by climate change. We will enhance resilience by strengthening our efforts to invest in robust, flexible and interoperable military capabilities. NATO will further strengthen its own resilience, ensuring our ability to consult, decide and act together. Above all, we will adapt our approach when needed, swiftly and with decisiveness, demonstrating our strength individually and as a unified Alliance.
- Strengthening our resilience requires a broad approach. We will work across the whole of government, with the private and non-governmental sectors, with programmes and centres of expertise on resilience established by Allies, and with our societies and populations, to strengthen the resilience of our nations and societies. We will do so in an inclusive manner, including through integrating gender perspectives in the context of our Women, Peace and Security policy. We will strengthen public communication as part of our overall approach.
- As we strengthen our efforts to build resilience, we will continue to work with our partners engaged in similar efforts in order to make the Euro-Atlantic area and our broader neighbourhood more secure. The actions, commitments and legal obligations of individual Allies in other international bodies also contribute to enhancing our resilience. This includes the European Union, with which we will continue to build on the scope for mutually complementary and beneficial coordination in strengthening resilience, and to seek further concrete steps and effective synergies.
- The foundation of our resilience lies in our shared commitment to the principles of individual liberty, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. The common values enshrined in the Washington Treaty, which underpin our security, remain as valid today as at NATO’s founding. We are taking the necessary steps now, and will in the years to come, to strengthen our resilience. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to defend our populations and territory against any threat, and to uphold our shared values.